Tag: Open Mic

(Postponed due to weather)

Williams Center for the Arts

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Free

Emily Vogel’s poetry, reviews, essays, and translations have most recently been published in Omniverse, The North American Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, City Lit Rag, Luna Luna, Maggy, Lyre Lyre, The Comstock Review, The Broome Review, Tiferet, The San Pedro River Review, 2 Bridges Review, and PEN, among several others. She is the author of five chapbooks, and a full-length collection, The Philosopher’s Wife, published in 2011 by Chester River Press, a collaborative book of poetry, West of Home, with her husband Joe Weil (Blast Press), First Words (NYQ Books), and recently, Dante’s Unintended Flight (NYQ Books). She has work forthcoming in The Boston Review and Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulism. She teaches writing at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College and is married to the poet, Joe Weil.

Joe Weil is a poet, storyteller, and pianist who has played at art centers, universities, and festivals throughout the United States, including the Detroit Opera House, the Long Beach poetry festival, NJPAC, the Geraldine R. Dodge poetry festival and Pittsburgh University. He is the co-founder of Monk Books, currently runs Cat-In-The-Sun Books with his wife Emily Vogel, and teaches at Binghamton University. His latest poetry collection, A Night in Duluth, was a finalist for the Lascaux poetry prize in 2017. Weil was the 2013 recipient of the People’s Poetry Award by Partisan Press and currently performs with a music/poetry group called Dark River Ensemble. He lived most of his life in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but now makes his home in Binghamton. He is always happy to return to the Garden State.

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Free

Christopher Salerno is the author of four books of poems and the editor of Saturnalia Books. His newest collection Sun & Urn, selected by Thomas Lux for the Georgia Poetry Prize, was recently published by University of Georgia Press. A NJ State Council on the Arts fellow, his poems have appeared in The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Jubilat, Fence, and elsewhere. He’s an Associate Professor at William Paterson University in NJ where he teaches in the B.A. and M.F.A. Programs in Creative and Professional Writing.

SELF PORTRAIT WITH SICK BACCHUS

You climb a tree to eat the day’s fruit
until the boughs crap out
because a body must test the air
to be art. Braid legs with branches
until the sun dulls. I am no docent
but so much depends upon
proper diffusion of light. It’s not
the moon, though it pursues you. It’s how
faces in paintings are lit like dead
relatives in dreams, their eyes
pairs of dark gems. Caravaggio
painted over several of his apostles
before giving Bacchus those sick eyes,
that crown of vines. We like this
kind of art, but to buy it would cost us
everything. Like listening to the story
of our own afterlife: once the stars
pull out and frost hits the field.
Honey crystalizes in the jar.
We vie for a view of something real—
oleander or our old selves—
but both contain poison.

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Free

Martin Woodside is a writer, translator, and founding member of Calypso Editions. He spent 2009-10 as a Fulbright Fellow in Romania. Martin’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Kenyon Review, Asymptote, Guernica, The Cimarron Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Poetry International. Martin’s published five books for children, a chapbook of poetry, and a full-length collection of poems, This River Goes Two Ways. He edited Of Gentle Wolves, an anthology of Romanian poetry, worked with MARGENTO to translate Gellu Naum’s poetry for the English language collection, Athanor & Other Pohems, and contributed to Ruxandra Cesereanu’s anthology of contemporary Romanian Erotic Poetry, Moods & Women & Men & Once Again Moods. For more, visit martinwoodside.com.

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

Wednesday, August 2, 2017, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Free

Pamela Hughes is the editor of Narrative Northeast, a literary and arts magazine that supports diverse voices and visions, the arts in New Jersey, and the environment. Her full length collection of poems, Meadowland Take My Hand, was published by Three Mile Harbor Press in January of 2017. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Mama, Thema, The Paterson Literary Review, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, The Minnesota Review Isotope: A Journal of Science and Nature Writing; The Brooklyn Review, PANK Magazine and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Allen Ginsberg. Visit her at http://www.narrativenortheast.com or www.pamelahugheswrites.com.

Greenwood

The cold this first fall
Like when we first fell

In love, the light still
Warm but the wind chilled,

Like a fresh cube dropped
In the great blue drink

Of sky, stirred by some
Round god for us edged

Now to bear it, life
On life, as we knifed

Through thick groves of graves
In search of a way

Out, the gate now closed,
Our steps all but one.

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com