Scheduled Events
Inviting guest speakers to Derry to celebrate the work of America's foremost poet is a tradition at the farm. Lectures are held in the Farm's barn theater beginning at 2:00 pm and are open to the public free of charge.
Programs are made possible by grants from the New Hampshire Humanities Council and are sponsored by the Division of Parks and Recreation, the Robert Frost Homestead Trustees, and the Friends of the Robert Frost Farm.
The Frost Farm, a national historic landmark, is located on NH Route 28, 1-3/4 miles south of the traffic circle in Derry, NH.
For more information, call (603) 432-3091.
Programs are free (except appraisals) and open to the public.
The Robert Frost Farm
Literary Series
Summer 2014
SUNDAY JULY 13th 2 PM "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn"
Thomas C. Hubka will present an illustrated talk focusing on several case studies that show how farmers converted their typical separate house and barns into connected farmsteads…architecture unique to northern New England. Mr. Hubka's research in his award-winning book, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (UPNE, 2004), demonstrates that average farmers were, in fact, motivated by competition with farmers in other regions of America, who had better soils and growing seasons and fewer rocks to clear. Mr. Hubka graduated from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Oregon and has taught architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for over twenty years where he has published widely on topics about popular architecture. He has worked as a writer, an academic and a historian.
SUNDAY JULY 20th 2 PM "Remembering My Mother, Lesley Frost"”
Lesley Lee Francis, Robert Frost's granddaughter, will be the featured speaker in this season's Literary Series program. Dr. Francis, with her sister Elinor Wilber, is the daughter of Lesley Frost. She has graciously consented to share memories and stories from her mother's life as Robert Frost's eldest surviving child. Dr. Francis, who holds an AB from Radcliffe College, an MA from the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Duke University, taught Spanish Language and Literature summers at the family school in Spain, and at colleges and universities in Virginia and Texas, before moving to Arlington, Va., with her three daughters. Since retirement from the professional staff of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), she continues teaching Spanish literature and her grandfather's poetry in adult programs in the Washington, D. C. area. Her book about her famous grandfather, Robert Frost: An Adventure in Poetry, 1900-1918 (Transaction Publishers, 2005), is available in paperback.
SUNDAY AUGUST 10th 2 PM "Strange Bedfellows: Ezra Pound and Robert Frost"
Jay Satterfield and Laura Braunstein will present a fascinating program on the relationship between literary contemporaries, Robert Frost and Ezra Pound. When Ezra Pound was committed to Saint Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital to avoid treason charges following World War II, Robert Frost drew on their shared literary network to secure his release in 1958. Ms. Braunstein and Mr. Satterfield will tell the story of Frost's stormy relationship with Pound through letters and other documents from the Robert Frost Collection at Dartmouth College's Rauner Special Collections Library. Jay Satterfield is the head of Rauner Special Collections Library and author of The World's Best Books: Taste Culture and the Modern Library (2002). Laura Braunstein is the librarian for English and Writing at Dartmouth College and is a consultant for the Schulz Library at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.
SUNDAY AUGUST 17th 2 PM "Papa is a Poet: A Story about Robert Frost"…and more
Natalie S. Bober, award-winning biographer and historian, will discuss her Frost-related publications including her wonderful new picture book, Papa is a Poet: A Story About Robert Frost (Henry Holt, 2013), which describes Frost's crucial years at the Derry farm as told from the point of view of Lesley, his oldest daughter. In addition to A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost, Mrs. Bober has also published YA biographies of Thomas Jefferson, William Wordsworth, Marc Chagall, Louise Nevelson, and Abigail Adams (Boston Globe/Horn Book Award Winner), and a book on pre-Revolutionary American history. Her books have been cited by the New York Times Book Review as among the best of their genre being written today. She's also compiled an anthology of children's poetry called Let's Pretend: Poems of Flight and Fancy (Viking, 1986).
SUNDAY September 14th 2 PM "Robert Frost, Light and Dark"
J. T. Turner, actor, director, voice-over talent, seminar leader, and public speaker will conduct our final presentation of the season as he portrays Robert Frost in his highly acclaimed one-man show which was three years in the making. Turner's script amplifies the situations in Frost's poems by relating them to the poet's life, which was often not only dramatic, but tragic, as well. Join J.T. Turner as he brings America's great poet to life, and hear the stories behind his work. Hear how Frost relates stories of his life, the tragedy as well as the humor, as he reads some of his most popular poems, including, Mending Wall, Birches, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Late Walk, Desert Places, Road Not Taken, and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
The 2014 Robert Frost Farm Summer Literary Series is funded by The New Hampshire Humanities Council, The Robert Frost Farm Board of Trustees, and Friends of the Robert Frost Farm. Programs are free (except appraisals) and open to the public. For more information, call 603-432-3091.