7/15/09 - Pete Dolack

Pete Dolack is a poet, essayist, photographer, activist and sometimes a wanderer in deserts who increasingly tinkers with different styles but often integrates a story-telling style layered with satire that is sometimes subtle, sometimes caustic and sometimes both, with a range of voices and characters to burrow into the fault lines of contemporary society and the inside of his head. He is a 2000 Pushcart Prize nominee and his poetry book, And Now a Word From Our Sponsors, is in its second printing. Currently, he is working on a book about the 20th century's socialist experiments and the lessons that can be drawn from them, but is happy to remember that he is still a poet.

For more info see http://www.eastwaterfront.com/

7/22/09 - Susannah Lawrence

Susannah Lawrence is a passionate and active environmentalist and has been for many years. She is a member of the Monday Poets of Litchfield, and of a Block Island Poetry Peer Review group. She says she writes poetry " to see what can happen out of my life." She lives and works in Norfolk, CT.

Spring River

On the Androscoggin, ice imitates life, its gray luster buckling
under the thumb of time and weather until the river gets what it wants
like the seventeen year old who
muscles into your party, draws everyone into her current, trashes the place;

and, in spite of yourself
you're glad to see her;

she picks up the pace, turns on the jokes, throws sex in the punch;
she's like the start of a rodeo
when the 4-H girls gallop in, all shocking pink and white
fringe, holding six foot flags streaming out behind palominos,
whose muscles surge under glossy skin
like water in spate - girls perched on a thousand pounds of power

as if they owned it,
and you want,
between your knees,

palomino - and a clear run, all the way to the river.

7/29/09 Dog Days of Summer Open Myk

Too hot?
Get your iced poetry right here! This open myk is dedicated to poems of water fights, of restless heat sleeping, of working and sweating, or taking vacations, or not taking vacations because of the ecomony or dogs in the lake or the bathtub, lawn mower trials, squirrels inside, skunks under the porch, kids running wild, of gardens and lemon-aide stands, air conditioners that break, or odes to parts of the world where it's too hot in other ways, ice caps that melt, etc, etc. As always, though we like to keep the theme, you can really read anything you are hot and bothered to read to us!!! Sign up starts around 7:45 or whenever the host puts out the signup sheet! Usually, in our open myk, readers get three poems or five minutes. But on a theme night, sometimes the sign up list is called up twice, so bring poems! Come down and get in the hot seat! WOOF!

8/5/09 - Dan DeRosa feature & Send Off bash

More info coming.

8/12/09 - ????

8/19 Lisa Siedlarz & Vietnam Vet Poets (TBA)

Lisa L. Siedlarz of New Haven, CT received her Masters in Fine Arts from WCSU in 2009. She is Editor of Connecticut River Review, the national poetry journal supported by the CT Poetry Society, and Managing Editor for Connecticut Review. Awarded the 2006 John Holmes and the 2007 Leo Connellan poetry prizes, publications include: The MacGuffin, Calyx, Rattle, War, Literature & the Arts, Louisiana Literature, Main Street Rag, the Patterson Review, Big Bridge, Kritya, Caduceus and others. Her work has been nominated for the 2009 Best New Poets Anthology. She also facilitated a 16 week writing workshop with Vietnam veterans and edited a collection of their work called A Season of Now. Her debut chapbook, I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball, is from Clemson University Digital Press (2009).

Names & Bios of the featured Vietnam Vet poets on the way, so check back

8/26/09 - ????

9/2/09 - Chris Bolster

Chris Bolster has read at our open myks, and won a slam here as well. He has a book through Lulu.com called Dangerously Metaphorical. Bio coming...

9/9/09 - Ngoma

Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter, who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness. He is a former member of the SPIRIT HOUSE MOVERS AND PLAYERS with Amiri Baraka and the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, SERIOUS BIZNESS. Ngoma weaves poetry and song with the goal of raising contradictions and searching for a solution for a just and peaceful world.

He was the Prop Slam winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and was published in AFRICAN VOICES MAGAZINE, LONG SHOT ANTHOLOGY, THE UNDERWOOD REVIEW, SIGNIFYIN' HARLEM REVIEW,BUM RUSH THE PAGE/DEF POETRY JAM ANTHOLOGY and POEMS ON THE ROAD TO PEACE (Volumes 1,2 & 3)-Yale Press. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary, "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg.

Ngoma has hosted the slam at the Dr. Martin Luther King Festival of Social and Environmental Justice Festival (Yale University-New Haven, CT) for the past 11 years. He has a CD Movie Documentary "Ngoma: Alive and In Your Face from NYC" which features Jazz/Funk/Fusion and Spoken Word,and two more CDs "Didgitation: Solo Didgeridoo Musik for Meditation" and "Ancient Future Meditational Musik" which focus on altered states of consciousness. His latest CD," Ngoma:State of Emergency" is a 2 Disc compilation of poems and music. For further info check out www.myspace.com/notyouraveragestringthing and www.Ngomazworld.com His new CD is available on www.CDBaby.com and www.iTunes.com

9/16/09 - ????

9/23/09 - ????

9/30/09 - Cortney Davis

Cortney Davis, a career RN, and nurse practitioner and award winning writer and poet has written numerous volumes of poetry and prose. She is the poetry editor of Alimentum: the Literature of Food (www.alimentumjournal.com)

Cortney has a new poetry chapbook called, "Conversion / Return," coming out in August from Finishing Line Press. The poems are all religious and very personal, documenting first her conversion to Judeaism, then to Catholisim. The book is $13 at Finishing Line Press.com, and click on new releases. Visit her website at www.cortneydavis.com.

Then It Was Simple*

You walked up Sylvandell Drive
Father would be home soon,
easing the gray Plymouth into the one-car garage,
and Mother, who was always home,
was cooking meatloaf with its two
sizzling strips of bacon. Snow stung your face,
snow crunched beneath your boots, and the glow
from Pittsburgh’s steel mills hung in the sky.
In such a place, in 1955, Mary could appear to you
casually, leaning out the neighbor’s window—
a blue domestic angel with a movie star face,
round arms crossed on the sill, her brown hair
in a friendly page boy. She smiled, you smiled back,
grounding you, and the frozen snow and the whirl of gravity
holding you, and Mary,
as if she were not from another world,
so happy to see you.

*(First appeared in her book Leopold’s Maneuvers)

10/7/09 Matthew Hupert

Matthew is a multi-media artist, a writer, and that rarest of birds - the native new-yorker. He is the Founder of the Neuronautic Institute, Chairman of The NALF (New Amsterdam Liberation Front, which is dedicated to returning new york city back to the dutch) and president of the Norman Bates School of Motel Management. He believes the primary role of the Artist is to be the stick that your Zen master smacks you in the head with. His poetry has been published in "The Formalist", the dadaist journal "Maintenant3", and the Anthology "150 contemporary sonnets." He has self published 4 chapbooks, and has a major book publication coming - that is as soon as one of you publishers get off your ass and approach him.

poetry blog: http://neuronautic.blogspot.com/

10/14/09 - ????

10/21/09 - David Leff

David K. Leff, who retired in 2006 after years as a Deputy Commissioner with the state Department of Environmental Protection, is author of The Last Undiscovered Place, (University of Virginia Press,) which was a Connecticut Book Award finalist. He also wrote Deep Travel, (University of Iowa Press) and a volume of poetry, The Price of Water, published by Antrim House in 2008. He is a freelance writer, a member of the Hartford Courant Place Board of Contributors and is a columnist for The Valley News, a local weekly.

As Deputy Commissioner at the DEP he was responsible for conservation programs including parks, forests, fisheries and wildlife. His primary concerns were preservation of open space and protection of sensitive and unusual natural habitats. Leff recieved the 2006 Olmsted Award from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, The Rockfall Foundation’s 2006 Certificate of Honor as well as the 2007 Sportsman of the Year Award from the United Bow Hunters of Connecticut, and the 2008 American Institute of Architects Connecticut Public Service Award. A law graduate, a maker of maple syrup, a 20-year volunteer fireman, a tutor and merit badge counselor, father of two teens, he lives in Collinville, CT.

10/28 - WNPS HALLOWEEN WITH JACK MCCARTHY!!!

Put on Your Pirate Hat - Jack McCarthy is coming for Halloween!!
Every year we have our annual Halloween bash with costume contest - This year we have a feature as well. And what could be better on Halloween than the consumate storyteller poet!!!!

Jack McCarthy is a working guy from the Boston area who’s been writing poetry since the mid-60s. He’d been averaging about a poem a year until 1992-93, when two things happened. First, his new wife, Carol, blackmailed him into attending a workshop with Galway Kinnell; then he brought his daughter Annie, for her birthday, to the open mike at the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, Cambridge, hoping she’d get excited about poetry. Jack was the one who got hooked. Since then he’s brought out Grace Notes, two chapbooks (Actual Grace Notes and Too Old to Make Excuses (But Still Young Enough to Make Love)), a 60-minute cassette tape (Poems for Hannah), and a CD (Breaking Down Outside a Gas Station). A major book, Say Goodnight, Grace Notes, was released in 2003 by EM Press to rave reviews. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Spoken Word Revolution. Among his influences he numbers Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Garrison Keillor. He doesn't think of himself as a "performance poet," but as a "standup poetry guy," a writer of poems that perform themselves. -- from http://standupoet.net

From here on down, the events already occurred!

The first part of our WNPS blog runs into future time, with the nearest date at the top. Once the end (of the booked schedule that has been put online) is reached, the blog turns tail, turns around and runs in chronological time with the most recent past reading at the top. So, unless you are looking for a reading that's already gone by - turn around and scroll back towards the top!

7/8/09 - Aaron Jafferis

AARON JAFFERIS has performed his hip hop poetry at Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center, and the National Poetry Slam Championships, where he is a former Open Rap Slam champion.

In 2007, Aaron was named one of “50 To Watch” by The Dramatist. His numerous plays, and collaborations have won awards and recognition from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and others. His work includes a hip hop musical Kingdom, (music by Ian Williams); a solo opera Stuck Elevator: The Super-Heroic Stationary Journey of Ming Kuang Chen; two hip hop plays: No Lie, and Shakespeare: The Remix. They have been widely produced at venues around the country from the Nuyorican Poets Café, H.E.R.E., Passage Theatre, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, to TheatreWorks and the St. Louis Black Rep, Capital Rep, Zachary Scott Theatre, and Collective Consciousness, and more. He has written poetry for the Urban Bush Women dance troupe and for The Nation and Northeast magazines.

JAFFERIS holds a BA in Arts & Social Change from the University of California at Berkeley, studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and received his MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU, where he was an Alberto Vilar Global Fellow in the Performing Arts. For the last decade he has taught playwriting, poetry, and hip hop theatre in urban high schools, middle schools, and detention centers.

* Bio adapted from http://www.aaronjafferis.com *

7/1/09 - Open Poetry Slam & Open Myk - all comers welcome!

On the first of July, WNPS will hold a poetry slam!

Slam, for the curious, is a competitive poetry reading where judges, chosen at random from the audience, judge the performances & poems Olympic style - with a mark of 0 to 10. Each poem must be performed in three minutes or less, and must be the original work of the poet. Though poets may sing, humm, stamp and make weird noises during their performance - NO "PROPS" (objects or instruments, etc ) maybe used. Several rounds may be needed to determine a victor depending on how many poets compete. However ALL participants in a slam win because they have had the courage to share their poems in a rowdy and fun environment in the service of POETRY! Slam Judges are supposed to give equal weight to the quality of the poem AND to the quality of the performance. The Audience is allowed to BOO the judges!

Slam was invented in Chicago by Marc Kelly Smith ("SO WHAT!") at the Green Mill - a bar! The goal was to put poetry forward in way that was fun - rather than the sedate perhaps over-dignified type readings that appealed to quieter souls. That was over a decade ago and now there is a National Slam organization and a National Slam held every year at a different part of the country. The movement has spawned several movies, an entire Youth Slam movement and many touring groups including Def Poetry Jam, etc etc.

For those not wishing to compete - an regular open myk will be held before the slam.
SLAM MASTER/MISTRESS of the evening is...
You can sign up at the venue for either the open myk or the slam. Sign up begins around 7:45 pm.

6/24/09 -Timothy Mason

Host: Ernie

Timothy Mason has performed poetry and promoted folk music since the 1980's, honed his performance style in the early poetry slams and around the campfires of the fabled Kerrville Folk Festival. He has an extensive background in human services. He's volunteered on a telephone crisis intervention hotline, trained as a rape crisis counselor, worked with developmentally disabled adults and court-involved youth. This along with his eight years volunteer work in a battered women's shelter have given him a unique empathy with the quiet battles of daily survival.

Born in the Midwest, he still calls Salt Lake City home though he has been a New Englander for over two decades. Over his 25 plus years presenting folk music to New England audiences his work has included reviving Club Passim, the legendary Harvard Square coffeehouse that began as Club 47, pioneering new audiences at Capo's in Lowell MA and bringing The Old Vienna Kaffeehaus in Westboro, Massachusetts, to national prominence. By day he provides bookkeeping services, tax preparation and consultations to independent artists and arts oriented small businesses. He is also the Director of the New England Folk Music Archives.

6/17/09 - Susan Allison

HOST: Mar

Poet Susan Allison is founder of Ibis Books & Gallery which in 1991 became NEAR, Inc./, better known to us as The Buttonwood Tree, an arts and cultural performance space on Main Street in Middletown.

Born in Derby, Connecticut and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, she calls poetry and wanderlust the two main constants in her life. After mountain-climbing and hitch-hiking through East Africa, she returned to Wesleyan University to earn a BA in African Studies in 1985. Shortly after graduation, she sought out bookstores handling used and rare books, and these became a new destination point for her wanderlust - until she opened Ibis in 1989. Hundreds of poets, performers, artists and book-lovers all over the state are so very glad she did: The Buttonwood Tree is a lively on-going venue for artists and art in many forms!

Susan Allison lives in Middletown with her husband, Stephan, and son, John. Her most recent book of poetry "Down by the Riverside Ways," has had a warm and enthusiastic reception. According to John Bassinger, “Some poets produce highly polished and showy zirconium studded with many well-behaved commas. Susan Allison has created poems that seem to have become naturally what they are as diamonds, emerge from carbon under pressure, not laid out on black velvet, but set in mother earth.” For sample poems:

http://www.antrimhousebooks.com/allison.html#poems

6/10/09 - Charlie Bondhus

HOST: Louise
Charlie Bondhus’s poetry chapbook What We Have Learned to Love was the recipient of BrickHouse Books’s 2009 Stonewall Series Chapbook Award. He earned his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College in 2005, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches writing and literature. His poetry manuscript, How the Boy Might See It, was a finalist for the 2007 Blue Light Press Award for a first book. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Harrow, Potter’s Field 3, The Starry Night Review, Swell, Red Owl Magazine, Poetry Motel, and Mirage #4: Period[ical], and he has an academic article forthcoming in the May 2010 edition of Gothic Studies.

6/3/09 - Norah Pollard & a Favorite Poem Project Reading

This week, we have something of a double feature: Norah Pollard (see below), and a community reading of America's favorite poetry which is a part of the Favorite Poem Project started by Robert Pinski in 1997 when he was poet laureate of the United States.

So bring a poem NOT YOUR OWN - a masterwork poem by a famous poet - hopefully one that sparked your interest in poetry, or that speaks to you in some deep way. During the open myk which precedes Norah Pollard's reading you will get to share your favorite masterwork poem. Is your taste Longfellow, Whitman, Sandburg, Poe, Shakespeare, Clifton, Ashberry ? Whatever your favorite famous poem bring it to share with our Wednesday Night Poetry Community.

HOST: Robin
According to Atrium House, poet Norah Pollard, who holds an M.A. in English from the University of Rhode Island, has been variously "a folk singer, waitress, nanny, teacher, solderer, and print shop calligrapher. She currently works for a Bridgeport steel company. In 1983 she received the Academy of American Poets Prize from the University of Bridgeport, and for several years was editor of The Connecticut River Review. She lives in Stratford, Connecticut."

She's also daughter of "Seabiscuit's" jockey, Red Pollard, and has written a collection of poems called "Leaning In" from Atrium House, (after you click, then page down for poem samples from the book), which speak to her early life, as well as about her father. The book has excellent reviews from Dick Allen and Rennie McQuilkan among others. If you miss the reading, you can order her book directly from Atrium House by calling 860-217-0023.

5/27/09 - Kelly Woodard + Song Lyrics Theme

HOST: Moriah
KELLY WOODARD - a riviting performer -- plus a musical themed open myk night. Songs as poems - poems as songs. (So write some song lyrics!)

Kelly Woodard has been performing slam since 2001 and has participated and placed in slams from Florida to Connecticut. Kelly does workshops for several local groups based in CT, and finds that the power of expression does wonders with adjudicated youth, teens in crisis and other youth around the state who need that voice. Other interests include playing football for the only pro-Women's football team in CT, volunteering on behalf of trans issues and working as both an adolescent development specialist and Residential Manager.

"...and so shines a good deed in a weary world..."

5/20/09 - Ralph Nazareth

HOST: Faith

Ralph Nazareth was born and educated in India. He crossed over to the West when young Americans were flying east on their tragic mission in Vietnam. His poetry explores his movement between worlds.

He is a professor of English at Nassau Community College, New York, where he leads PeaceWork, a group committed to peace and justice issues. He is also a volunteer teacher of writing in the CMHS program at Green Haven, a maximum security prison in New York. As Managing Editor of Yuganta Press in Stamford, CT, he has overseen the publication of over twenty books of poetry by writers from all over the world. You can watch a video interview with him currently on this Week's Ben Pin.

Glass

I've seen
glass blowers
stretch little

into much.
Such is my hope
for words—

blowing syllables up
to hold a world
close to breaking.

----------------------------------
For his latest published work, please go to Muse India: Literary Journal at http://www.museindia.com/showfeature12.asp?id=1145. A Ralph Nazareth essay on imagination

5/13/09 - 3 UCONN Poets & a SLAM!

HOST: Ernie

Josh Brunetti is a UConn student finishing his undergraduate requirements
and is applying to graduate school. He plans to eventually become a
college professor of English. After having taken a creative writing class
with Davyne Verstandig, Josh began attending open mics, writing workshops,
and even decided to help begin a writing club at Torrington UConn. The
club will meet weekly as a workshop and as a forum for planning open mics
at the school.

Castle Yuran is a junior at the Torrington campus of UConn, and is
majoring in English with hopes of getting a Masters in either creative
writing or screenwriting. Poetry is her passion, and she's thus far had
one poem published in a book put out by poetry.com, called Timeless
Voices. She also submits regularly to an online magazine entitled "Life
In Stereo." Castle currently works at the Torrington UConn Writing
Center, and occasionally assists the Litchfield County Writers Project.
She plans to help run, alongside Josh Brunetti, a writing club at the
campus that will eventually host an open mic or even slam. Castle dreams
of being a successful author, poet, and ultimately screenwriter, and plans
to finish her first novel by the end of her senior year.

Tina Parziale is a junior at UConn majoring in English. Next semester she
will be interning with author, editor, and professor Leigh Grossman and
working as a student editor on the Long River Review. Last summer she won
first place in the Artwell Poetry Slam and participated in several CT open
mics. After she graduates next December she intends to travel for a few
months before going to graduate school. She hopes to one day change the
world, but doesn’t everyone?

5/6/09 - Jerry Brooker

HOST: Barb
Jerry is a poet, novelist,, a peace activist, world-traveler, frequent reader in Connecticut, a retired teacher with two books of poetry and several novels to his credit, and more novels under construction. He has over 300 articles and poems published; was chairman of the English Department at Staples High School in Westport for over 25 years; and is very active in national and international peace and hunger community efforts with students from America and abroad. Jerry is a Fullbright Fellow, has received the Peace and Understanding Award from the National Education Association, the Mahatma Gandhi-Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Award from the Connecticut Education Association, two honorary degrees and other awards for humanitarian contributions, along with being inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in 1998.

4/29/08 - Alison Moncrief

HOST: MORIAH

Poetry by Alison D. Moncrief has appeared in Images, Soul Fountain, Caduceus, and The Connecticut River Review among others. She has earned multiple degrees - a Master's degree in English Lit from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and by now, an MFA in poetry from New York University and has taught at the Foote School in New Haven, and as part of the EWP program at NYU. She lives in East Rock with her husband Andy Bromage and with "two cats in the yard."

4/22/09 - Chris Brandt

HOST: Robin
Chris Brandt is a writer and political activist. Also a translator, carpenter, furniture designer, theatre worker. He teaches poetry at Fordham University. His poems and essays have been published in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and About the Police (Soft Skull, edited by Jackie Sheeler); Lateral (Barcelona); El signo del gorrion (Valladolid); Liqueur 44 (Paris); La Jornada (Mexico); Phati'tude, Appearances; The Unbearables; National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side and the anthology Crimes of the Beats. His translations of Cuban fiction have been published in The New Yorker and by Seven Stories Press, and his translations of two volumes of Carmen Valle’s poetry by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. Seven Stories published his translation of Clara Nieto’s Masters of War, a history of U.S. interventions in Latin America. Translations of contemporary Cuban poetry will be included in a University of California Berkeley anthology to be published this year.

4/15/09 Rose Drew

HOST: Louise
Rose Drew is a bio-anthropologist who works with human skeletons. She is currently living in York England in (never-ending) pursuit of a PhD. Her day job consists of interpreting lifestyle and behavior from skeletal remains; but at night she can be found reading her poems anywhere there's a myk and a gathering of people. She has been told her poetry is "too dark", whatever that means. She has been published in anthologies, journals, newsprint, books. Rose has been hosting a poetry open myk either in CT or York for over 6 years: where else can you give running commentary and a monologue every single month?

For a sample of her work previously published on this blog

click right here