A Celebration of the Life of Siv Cedering
 Robert Giard photographed Ms. Cedering, then of Amagansett, in “Woman Reading Aloud,” part of a 1985 series. |
(4/10/2008) Friends and fellow writers will celebrate the life and poetry of Siv Cedering at a memorial reading at Stony Brook Southampton at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Sponsored by the Frank Melville Library of the State University at Stony Brook and hosted by Daniel Thomas Moran, a Shelter Island poet, the event will also celebrate National Poetry Month.
Ms. Cedering was an extraordinarily prolific poet, novelist, screenwriter, children’s book author, songwriter, illustrator, sculptor, painter, musician, and translator. Born in Sweden, she lived with her husband, the sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp, at the Twin Oaks Farm and Sculpture Garden in Sagaponack, where she died at age 68 in November.
She was widely admired not only for the reach of her talents but also for the joy and energy with which she put them to use.
Reading poems or short prose pieces will be Louis Simpson, Harvey Shapiro, Edward Butscher, Denise Regan, Anne Porter, Diane Giardi, Dava Sobel, Michelle Murphy, Simon Van Booy, Lucas Hunt, Nondita Mason, Fran Castan, Martin Tucker, Claire Nicolas White, Connie Fox, Allen Planz, and Bill Henderson.
Mr. Simpson, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Butscher, Mr. Hunt, Ms. Castan, Ms. White, Mr. Planz, and Ms. Porter are poets. Ms. Fox, Ms. Giardi, Ms. Murphy, and Ms. Regan are artists. Ms. Sobel is a novelist, Mr. Van Booy writes short stories, and Ms. Mason and Mr. Tucker teach at universities. Mr. Henderson is the publisher of the Pushcart Press.
Ms. Cedering’s husband and Zachariah Fox Gamble, who is her grandson, will also read on Saturday.
Each has been asked to select a work of Ms. Cedering’s that holds special meaning, Mr. Moran said. Ms. Castan, who lives in Amagansett, chose “Poem for My Mother.” She heard Ms. Cedering read it at a memorial for the young poet Amy Rothholz many years ago.
“I was blown away,” Ms. Castan said. Later they participated in workshops and readings together and became friends. In Ms. Cedering’s last few months, Ms. Castan worked with her on “Vixen,” a book of poetry with illustrations by Connie Fox.
“What a privilege it was to be with her and watch her somehow have joy in her work right in the face of death,” Ms. Castan said.
 Eva Van de Bovenkamp |
The daughter in “Poem for My Mother” stands behind her chair, “brushing the stars out of your hair” by creating friction. Ms. Castan chose it in part because it was “tender” and emblematic of “the generous heart that I loved.”
“She loved to play the piano and sing. We used to have a lot of fun singing popular American songs. She knew every lyric. I love this poem because it has that kind of music.”
Because her first language was Swedish, Ms. Castan said, Ms. Cedering could make “not only vowel music but also consonant music.”
Mr. Planz, a poet who lives in East Hampton, will read “The Floor of the Lantern Is Filling With Flies” from Ms. Cedering’s “Adirondack Notebook.”
“I liked it,” he said simply. “It’s nice.”
He met Ms. Cedering in San Francisco when she was a very young woman and part of the “poetry scene out there.” They met again in New York, when she and her husband at the time had parties Mr. Planz would attend.
“She was a very fine poet and dear friend,” he said, “and out here she had a lively social life and a lot of parties when she lived on Further Lane” in Amagansett. “Then she married Hans Van de Bovenkamp. . . . They had a great match, were a lovely couple together.”
Ms. Sobel, who lives in Springs, will read “Orbium Coelestium.”
“When I met her she was an Amazon goddess, not just stunning, but so accomplished and interesting to talk to,” she said. “I don’t remember how many languages she spoke [in addition to Swedish and English], and the fact that she wrote in both — that impressed me mightily.”
“It came out fairly early that she was interested in astronomy and she’d written poems about astronomy,” also the subject of Ms. Sobel’s books. “I was fascinated that she had these interests and had written on these topics . . . was just a great admirer.”
When they did readings at the Marine Museum in Amagansett, Ms. Sobel said, Ms. Cedering read “incredibly well.”
“She was a force of nature and I knew her when she met Hans and that just seemed such an extremely good match. The two of them, that was just really good, just radiated. . . . I couldn’t call myself a close friend, but every time I saw them it made me feel good.”
Of the poem she chose, Ms. Sobel said, “The way I take it is that she’s addressing a man she loves and relating the idea of being transported to heaven in a nice way, in a manner of delight.”
In “Constellation,” the second part of the poem, “she’s talking about people being associated with one another, all aspects of nature being associated together. One of the lines says, ‘if we connected them dot to dot.’ ”
Very much like stars are the light, flight, and fireflies that appear in “Ukiyo-E,” the poem Mr. Henderson chose. “Hiroshige’s landscape is so soft, / What child, woman, would not want to go out / Into that dark, and be caught, / And caught again, by you?”
Mr. Henderson said he and Ms. Cedering had been friends “for a long, long time,” since the 1970s in New York City. “Ukiyo-E” derives from about that time period, from the 1977 Pushcart Prize anthology.
“She was a gigantic presence,” Mr. Henderson said. “Her spirit is still in the air around here, and I’m looking forward to the reading.”
The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will follow.