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Brett Rutherford's Bibliography

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Consulting & Teaching

 

 

Distance Learning/WebCT Consultant, University of Rhode Island, Fall 2004 through Summer 2007, developing web content for on-line courses, assisting instructors with technology issues, and assisting students with computer problems.

Conference presentation at "Identities," the URI Graduate Student Conference, March 31, 2007: "Niobe's Tears and Naval Gentlemen: The Classical Poetry of Phillis Wheatley."

Lecturer on “Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters,” Providence Public Library Arts & Crafts Symposium, 2002.

Lecturer on “Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman” in a series sponsored by the Providence Athenaeum and the Rhode Island Council on the Humanities, April 2003.

Lecturer on “Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe,” at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, for the John Russell Bartlett Society, April 2003.

Lecture on "Small Press and On-Demand Publishing" for The Writers Circle, Providence, RI. Spring 2004. Consultant and advisor to The Writers' Circle as they produced their first contest anthology, a hardcover book, Spring 2004. Several follow-up workshops in Summer 2004 for members of The Writers Circle.

Guest lecturer on “H.P. Lovecraft and the Horror Film,” and “Edgar Allan Poe in Providence” at New England Institute of Art (AI), Brookline Village, Mass, 2003 and 2004.

Informal talks and presentations on many literary and musical topics including: H.P. Lovecraft, Chinese art and Chinese opera, the music of Gustav Mahler, Edgar Allan Poe, classical music, horror and Greek mythology, and other topics.

Internet consulting, writing and editing for ID Brands, Inc., a marketing business with offices in New York and Providence, April 2004 to Summer 2006.

Consulting projects with a Manhattan directory publisher (A.F. Lewis & Co.) including conversion of data from mainframe computer to PCs; selection, installation and networking of PCs; training staff in word processing and database management software; creation of custom database applications for publishing, advertising sales and other functions. Ongoing project to led to complete desktop production of directories and integration of all computer activities at two business locations.

Word processing, database management and desktop publishing consulting engagements with trade associations, in-plant printing plants, design studios and publishers. Selected equipment, trained operators, and created automated correspondence systems.

Consultant to several small press publishers on design, typesetting, printing and bindery.

Instructor, Evening School, Printing Industries of Metropolitan New York, Spring Semester 1984, Seminar in “Word Processing for Printers.”

Seminars for American Society of Association Executives, November 1983 and April 1984: “Word Processing for Meeting Planners,” and “How to Buy Printing.”

Promotional and consulting engagements for Technical and Education Center of the Graphic Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology.

Seminar for Meeting Industry Microcomputer Users Group, New York, March 1984.

Consultant to United Nations Personnel Division; with Don Merit, created personnel examinations for testing printing knowledge of employees seeking advancement to management positions.

Speaker at national and regional conferences of National Association of Printers and Lithographers, Southwest Litho Clinic, Typographers Association of New York, Long Island Graphic Arts Association, American Society of Association Executives, Gravure Association of America, and others.

Three Books

First up is the huge 208-page new collection of Brett Rutherford's The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets. This is available as a free PDF on this site, or can be ordered from Our NEW ON-LINE BOOKSTORE. The Providence-based poet has included in this book all the poems he has written and revised since his last big collection, Poems from Providence. CLICK HERE TO READ THE PDF

The second new book is the expanded third edition of Brett Rutherford's landmark poetry collection, Whippoorwill Road: The Supernatural Poetry. This extraordinary 272-page paperback contains all the poet's supernatural poems, including more than 70 pages of new poems since 1998. Praised by Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury, these poems may be the best supernatural poems of the 20th century. Now you can read the entire PDF free on this site, or order the print edition from our NEW ON-LINE BOOKSTORE. To READ THE PDF, CLICK HERE.

The third book is the expanded second edition of Brett Rutherford's biographical play, Night Gaunts: An Entertainment Based on the Life and Writings of H.P. Lovecraft. The book also includes a number of "ceremonial" poems written to be read at H.P. Lovecraft's grave in Swan Point Cemetery, Providence. The play has been performed twice at The Providence Athenaeum, and was recently adapted as a radio play by New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass. You can order the print edition from our NEW ON-LINE BOOKSTORE. To read the PDF, CLICK HERE

The Death of Jocasta The Writer's Circle of Providence selected Brett Rutherford's dramatic scene, "The Death of Jocasta," for a staged reading in April 2004. This reading was at Alumni Hall at Brown University, with a cast of professional actresses and students. The scene, in blank verse in ancient Greek style, is written to be inserted in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. In the Sophocles original, Queen Jocasta does the "proper" thing by committing suicide offstage when she learns that she has been married to her own son for twenty years. Rutherford's drama is a feminist exploration of Queen Jocasta's dilemma. In this version, she does not commit suicide: she is put on trial and condemned by the women of Thebes, and offers up a spirited self-defense. This small play had a tremendous impact on its audience, many of whom mistook it for a translation.

Printing History & Literature Lecturer Brett Rutherford has written articles and book reviews on printing history and is a book collector. He has given lectures for the John Russell Bartlett Society at The Providence Athenaeum, Brown University, and The Providence Public Library on "Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters," "Poe and Mrs. Whitman," and "Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe." At the Athenaeum, he has lectured on Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman, and has read his supernatural poems there in a series of annual Halloween readings.
For the last two years, Rutherford has been a guest lecturer at New England Institute of Art (AI) in Brookline, Mass, where he has presented on H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.

Classical Music Connections An avid collector of classical music and an occasional composer of keyboard music, Brett Rutherford has helped The Providence Athenaeum establish Rhode Island's best and most accessible circulating library of classical CDs. He has donated his entire collection of 4,000 CDs, ranging from Chinese opera to 20th century music, to be the foundation of the new circulating collection. He hopes to organize programs and lectures that will help re-establish the historic link between literature and art music. This collection also has a strong emphasis on American music.

Brett Rutherford also writes program notes for the invitational chamber music concerts given by pianist Varda Lev, and for the concert series of The Rhode Island Chamber Music Society.

The H.P. Lovecraft Friends Group To foster local and international interest in H.P. Lovecraft and his Providence connections, Brett Rutherford established an informal H.P. Lovecraft Friends Group. This group meets sporadically for luncheons and field trips to graveyards, Lovecraft haunts, and other locales of spectral or literary interest. Rutherford usually runs these meetings and includes informal lectures on such topics as the origin of Gorgons, sea monsters, classic horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, Goethe's Faust, Lizzie Borden, and Poe- and Lovecraft-related topics. Sixteen issues of a tabloid-sized newsletter, titled The Cthulhu Prayer Society Newsletter, have been produced in print and on-line. Rutherford also runs a Yahoo discussion group called "Lovecraft In Providence," which encourages worldwide dissemination of these materials. Some people take delight in these things, although one librarian looked at the newsletter and snapped, "You people are nuts!"

Night Gaunts Brett Rutherford's play, Night Gaunts, was written to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the death of America's greatest horror writer, who spent almost his entire life in Providence. Two staged readings in 1987 and 1990 featured actor Carl Johnson as H.P. Lovecraft and played to sold-out houses. The script was published by The Poet's Press in 1988, and in a new, revised edition in 2005. The play includes two vivid female characters — Lovecraft's mother, who gets a great mad scene, and Lovecraft's New York wife, Sonia Greene, who enacts a kind of "Horror Honeymooners" with the romantically inept author. This play was adapted by Hal Hamilton into a radio drama, broadcast in Boston in October 2004.
Night Gaunts has also been translated into German and was performed by the theater company Expressis Verbis in Heidelberg, Germany in 2006.

Never Far From A Library Libraries are central to Brett Rutherford's existence. He grew up in places where they were minimal if not nonexistent. In recent years, he has donated almost all of his personal collections to libraries where they will be preserved and made accessible to the public. He gave more than 350 specimens of printing by the Roycrofters to The Providence Athenaeum, as well as his collection of 4,000 classical CDs. He has donated a collection of wood engravings by artist John DePol to the Providence Public Library's Daniel Berkeley Updike Collection, along with a number of books on printing history. Complete sets of the editions published by The Poet's Press have been donated to the Harris Collection at the John Hay Library at Brown University, and to Poets House in New York City. Rutherford serves on the Philbrick Poetry Prize Committee for the Providence Athenaeum, and is a member of Friends of the Library at Brown University.

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