Jay Graham was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, as were his parents, who listened to the music of their day—the big bands and the popular singers of the 1940s and '50s. That music remains among Jay's favorites, along with his attachment to his beloved folk songs. In early manhood Jay became increasingly aware of his Scottish-Irish heritage and within folk music cultivated his knowledge of Irish and Scottish songs, history, and family history. An old acquaintance once asked if there were any connection between his performing of folk music and his career teaching literature in college, and Jay's answer was that the common thread was story. Another he would add today is the variety of subjects dealt with in both, a variety hardly found in the arrested development of adolescence in most popular music. That variety will be shown in the selections he has chosen for this evening.
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Victoria McCabe grew up in Clare, Iowa. She studied with poets Tom McAfee and Donald F. Drummond at the University of Missouri and completed her Ph.D. under John Williams at the University of Denver. She teaches Holocaust Studies and Catholic literature at Regis University in Denver, where she also directs an annual Gerard Manley Hopkins Conference and runs the Father Woody Service Program, which transports college students into various realms of need in the Denver community. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including PRAIRIE SCHOONER, THE HOLLINS CRITIC, SHENANDOAH, POETRY NOW, THE SOUTH DAKOTA REVIEW, NEW LETTERS, POETRY, THE NEW YORK QUARTERLY, and many others. For many years she served as Poetry Editor of Writers Forum, based in Colorado Springs.
Cast and Creative team for Music & Poetry: Jay Graham / Victoria McCabe at ARTCORE