Leanne Ponder died peacefully at home in East Montpelier, Vt., on Christmas Eve at 1:45 p.m., after a long illness. She was surrounded by family and friends and received loving care.
She tackled her difficult final years with the same strength, discipline, skill and attention to essentials as she brought to being a poet, spoken word artist, Celtic harper, friend and wife.
Her poetry was published both in small journals and in large-circulation magazines as diverse as Esquire and Cricket. A few years ago, she brought out a book of her poems, Tonight Not Even My Skin. She helped many hundreds of children write strong poetry as an artist-in-residence in schools across Vermont. She spent many years performing around the state in the character of a 1850s backwoods peddler, first through the Shelburne Museum, then through the Vermont Humanities Council.
She had a 30-year loving and productive artistic partnership with her husband, Tim Jennings; their duo storytelling performances with Celtic music were widely recognized as being among the best of their kind; their spoken word albums received multiple awards. A self-taught Irish harper, she released two instrumental music albums, The Water Kelpie and Sheefra, that were acquired by the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin.
She is survived by her husband, a brother, a sister-in-law and brother-in-law, and many nieces and nephews scattered around the globe. There will be a very small memorial service at home and a joyful celebration of life in mid-July 2022.
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This article appears in Winter Reading Issue 2021.
Tim, my sympathies in this sad time.
Leanne was a wonderful woman, and we’ll all miss her.
You will miss her most, I know. It will be hard, but your friends are here for you.
Her poetry, her spirit, her voice and her harp will resound through these hills forever.
Tim, Please accept my deepest sympathy. I knew Leanne many years ago — first in Philadelphia and then later in Vermont. (In the very early 1980s. (At that time I was an associate dean at Castleton State College.) (You may have been with her then.) In the 1970s and 1980s Eugene Sapadin was one of my closest friends, and he was the reason that I knew Leanne. She also lived with my then wife and me in Philadelphia for a couple of months while she and Gene were separated. (Perhaps 1972).
She was one of the kindest, funny, and creative people I have ever known. You are a very lucky man to have been her life- and artistic partner for so many years. Jeff Willens, (jwillensphd@bellsouth.net)