Inspired: Northport’s own Jesse Curran named Long Island Poet of the Year

Northport resident Jesse Curran is the kind of poet that makes you want to look up the word ekphrasis. 

Her recent book project,The Space Between Two Necks: Poems and Essays, turns to the north shore of Long Island, including Northport, to explore the metaphorical resonance of local landmarks, using as her centerpiece landscapes and other works by Arthur Dove and Helen “Reds” Torr, American modernist painters who called Long Island home and often used its geography as inspiration for their art. 

(Torr and Dove lived in Huntington for decades. During that time the couple made art in which they both embraced and depicted nature.)

In her book, Curran said, she really tries “to ask questions concerning how we might ‘travel in place’ – how do we see what is familiar with new eyes and deepened attention? I try to do that myself and narrate that process.” 

It’s pretty ekphrastic. 

Ekphrasis, by the way, is a literary description of a visual work of art. It’s a process of creating art to understand art, Curran explains. “And so, writing a poem about a painting. Or, as Arthur Dove often did, making a painting to represent a song,” she said.

At the April 13 award ceremony held at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, where she was honored as the organization’s 2025 Long Island Poet of the Year, Curran read two poems that engage with the Arthur Dove paintings, “Sunrise,” and “After the Storm, Silver and Green (Vault Sky).” 

The Long Island Poet of the Year award is an annual award given by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association to honor a notable and distinguished local poet who actively promotes poetry on Long Island. For over 20 years now, the Poet of the Year has been awarded to nationally recognized poets who champion poetry and, through their writing, inspire and support the Long Island poetry community.

Currently a lecturer in the English Department of SUNY Old Westbury, Curran told the Journal she feels like she’s having her five minutes of fame with all the attention of this most recent honor (“hard for an introverted poet,” she added). 

“But I am really devoted to promoting and celebrating art and poetry made in dialogue with Long Island’s natural and cultural histories,” she said. “Art and literature provide a communal space for developing a sense of place, which is really important to ethical environment engagement.”

While we all know of the famous Walt Whitman, he’s always worth a read and re-read, especially for Long Islanders, Curran said. “His democratic principles drew strength and vision from the natural world and the geographic singularity of the island,” she explained. “As a poet and essayist, I am devoted to the restoration of a sense of place and of helping bring Whitman’s poetic vision into the present moment.”

Curran will soon be creating programming at the Walt Whitman Birthplace that offers “the community opportunities to explore these connections,” she said. 

Founded in 1949, the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association is a not-for-profit organization first established to preserve Whitman’s birthplace. In 1985, the Huntington property was listed on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.

Along with her teaching, Curran is an accomplished poet and essayist. Her creative work has appeared in dozens of literary journals, including “About Place,” “Blueline,” and “Ruminate.” She has also authored two chapbooks of poems and a lyric novel, “A Handful of Earth.” She’s working on developing a new center at SUNY Old Westbury – the Campus Environmental Education Center – which will help bring her mission into practice.

Her poem “Sunrise” is below.      

Reds always said he was a morning person,
that he was most alive in the rising sun…
– Mary Torr Rehm

Some friend said you had a halo round your head.
Maybe that’s what happens when you worship
sun and moon, when you spend each day on the sea,
seeing things twice, real and reflection, both become
actual, unquestionable, worthy of paint and line
and glaze and perception. For all his gabbing,
when Emerson said nature was the body of God,
I think he was on to something. Art is the pew
where we kneel down and pray, poetry the incense
we burn to clap our senses awake. Halo a word
used by the ancients, the discs of light surrounding
both sun and moon, and it seems, you too—
look at all the circle work, ascending orbs, prism
palette—I hear a lark, an ode, a morning song. 

“Sunrise” was originally published in the Ekphrastic Review in September 2023. 

Learn more about Jesse Curran and her work at  www.jesseleecurran.com. Read about the Heckscher Museum of Art’s preservation of the Dove/Torr cottage on the banks of Titus Mill Pond in Centerport here.