2009 Celebration of Excellence
Our Sixth Annual Celebration of Excellence Dinner was on May 21, 2009 at Lake of Isles.
Lisa Silverberg Star was our distinguished guest speaker.
Lisa Silverberg Starr is a 1984 graduate of Ledyard high School. Lisa is Rhode Island’s poet laureate as well as an inn-keeper, mother, and basketball coach. She lives and writes on Block Island, where she and her husband, Champlin, own and operate the Hygeia House, a small inn, with their children, Orrin and Camille. As Poet Laureate of Rhode Island in 2007 which is the highest achievement in poetry in the state, she is generating a statewide poetry pen-pal system between student and elderly writing circles, and has established poetry circles in hospitals, homeless shelters, the state prison, and agencies for children with severe mental and physical disabilities. She is the founder and director of the Block Island Poetry Project. The project began as the Lisa’s vision as a way for her to combine her seemingly disparate vocations as poet and innkeeper with her love for the land and devotion to building community. She always emphasizes that it is her intent that everyone have a voice at the table, as well as promoting individuals passions, enabling them to return home with a clearer vision of how they can best serve the world.
Starr has published three full-length collections of poetry: Days of Dogs and Driftwood (1993), This Place Here (2001), and Mad with Yellow (2008), and her individual works appear in journals and publications around the country.
Lisa Silverberg Star was our distinguished guest speaker.
Lisa Silverberg Starr is a 1984 graduate of Ledyard high School. Lisa is Rhode Island’s poet laureate as well as an inn-keeper, mother, and basketball coach. She lives and writes on Block Island, where she and her husband, Champlin, own and operate the Hygeia House, a small inn, with their children, Orrin and Camille. As Poet Laureate of Rhode Island in 2007 which is the highest achievement in poetry in the state, she is generating a statewide poetry pen-pal system between student and elderly writing circles, and has established poetry circles in hospitals, homeless shelters, the state prison, and agencies for children with severe mental and physical disabilities. She is the founder and director of the Block Island Poetry Project. The project began as the Lisa’s vision as a way for her to combine her seemingly disparate vocations as poet and innkeeper with her love for the land and devotion to building community. She always emphasizes that it is her intent that everyone have a voice at the table, as well as promoting individuals passions, enabling them to return home with a clearer vision of how they can best serve the world.
Starr has published three full-length collections of poetry: Days of Dogs and Driftwood (1993), This Place Here (2001), and Mad with Yellow (2008), and her individual works appear in journals and publications around the country.