It has been a busy year for West Tisbury poet laureate Justen Ahren. Recently he opened the Noepe Center for Literary Arts, a creative refuge on the Island to foster writing through the gift of time and solitude. He also just completed his first book of poetry, A Strange Catechism. He will give a reading at the Noepe Center, 104 Main street, Edgartown on Tuesday, August 6 at 7 p.m.

Mr. Ahren’s book tells a story through poetry of a mother and her son as they try to navigate their relationship to each other and to life itself. To put it more poetically, consider these lines from his poem The Bells in Her Mouth:

“I went to her with a nest the swallows/ started above the door, with cuttings/ from the forsythia she beat back/ from the windows year after year.”