Poet Adele V. Holden will present observations and readings during a performance titled "Sharings from Life on Maryland's Eastern Shore: A Memoir of Growing Up Black During the Depression" at noon on Wednesday, March 15, in Shriver Hall, Homewood campus.

Holden, author of Down on the Shore: The Family and Place that Forged a Poet's Voice, will take her audience on a trip to a 1930s segregated world known simply as "The Shore," that isolated patchwork of Maryland counties wedged between the Chesapeake and the Atlantic. Mixed in with hatred, prejudice and sometimes the threat of death are joyful Christmases, peaceful Sundays, church revivals, first crushes and the budding of a young poet.

Holden, a graduate of Morgan State University and of The Writing Seminars at Hopkins, taught at Dunbar Senior High School and at the Community College of Baltimore, from which she retired in 1982.

This performance is part of the Wednesday Noon Series presented by the Office of Special Events. Admission is free.