Take a stroll around the lake with local poets Winifred Hughes Spar and Barbara H. Williams, who will stop at scenic spots to read their poems inspired by the natural world. We’ll explore scenic trails and pause to read and reflect on poetry. Let the beauty of the landscape and the rhythm of words deepen your connection to nature.
Space is limited to 20 participants; be sure to sign up in advance. Please note that this event is geared towards adults.
BYO: Please bring water and wear comfortable hiking shoes or sneakers, the trails can get muddy especially around the lake.
Meeting Location: Mountain Lakes House located within the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve at 57 Mountain Avenue, Princeton, N.J. 08540.
Winifred Hughes is the author of The Village of New Ghosts, winner of the 2024 Henry Morgenthau III poetry award from Passager Books, as well as two chapbooks, Frost Flowers and Nine-Bend Bridge. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Atlanta Review, and International Poetry Review, among other journals. “Dyslexic” has been recorded for the Poetry Foundation’s permanent audio archive. “The Scene Without” was overall poetry winner in the competition for the 2023 Fish Anthology, chosen by Billy Collins and published in Bantry, Ireland. She is a long-time member of U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative and former managing editor of U.S. 1 Worksheets. She currently leads bird walks in local refuges, teaches courses in nature writing at the Watershed Center, and serves on the boards of Friends of Princeton Open Space and Washington Crossing Audubon Society.
Barbara H. Williams was drawn to poetry while still an active professional flutist, enjoying a career as an orchestral, chamber and solo flutist, and faculty member at Westminster Conservatory in Princeton. She began to write poems in 2013 in workshops with Jean Hollander. With the late poet Daniel A. Harris, she founded AEOLUS, a performance duo, to explore a dialogue of poetry with music for flute. She later joined Lois Marie Harrod’s Zoom workshops and the DVP/US1 Poets collective. Her poems have been published in US1 Worksheets, Paterson Literary Review, The Raven’s Perch, and Cool Women Press. Continuo is her first poetry collection. Many of her poems have been conceived while walking in Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve and Witherspoon Woods.