Tag: Open Mic

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

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

Lois Marie Harrod’s 16th and most recent collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June from Five Oaks. Her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016, and Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). She is the recipient of 3 New Jersey Council on the Arts fellowships and 4 fellowships to Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work at www.loismarieharrod.org.

A Girl like a Vulture

fell out of her kettle
into my life.
Give me, she said.
your days,
one by one.
Suffer me, she said,
like Christ.

What could I reply?
She was as blind
as a beggar,
the legal sort,
Nothing I gave
could make her see.
Yet she kept
picking at my heart.

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

Wednesday, January 4, 2017, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

Brandon Courtney cancelled due to a family emergency.

Sophie Malleret read her English/French poetry in NY: Howl Festival, Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Café, New Museum, Reuben Foundation, NY Library, Art Fairs, Galleries. Also read at the Amherst Library, Woodstock Poetry Festival, in Europe: Paris, the Prague International Microfestival… Working on simultaneous performance of her bilingual poems with poet Bob Holman. Developing German poetry for a show in Germany. Collaborated with musician Marlon Cherry on his upcoming CD. Has also been active in film/theater. Recently associate producer credit for film “Claire in motion”, release date January 13. You can find her poetry in various issues of Vlak, Maintenent, Art in Odd Places…

From “A thrift store paints a shelf”

In four years I’ll be a hundred years old
The trees will be leafless
The sun will be warmer
The stars will taste of rot
Blueberry pies will fly
Wildly across your closet
Back and forth Complete chaos
You will miss holes in your sweaters and every little thing
You will catch me at night
Throwing rusty nets in the dark
Trapping nightmares
To the underground

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

Wednesday, January 4, 2017, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

Brandon Courtney is a veteran of the United States Navy, and the author of The Grief Muscles (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2014) and Rooms for Rent in the Burning City (Spark Wheel Press, 2015), as well as the chapbook Inadequate Grave (YesYes Bøøks, 2016). YesYes Bøøks will publish a full-length collection in 2017-18. He has received fellowships and scholarships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Colgate University, Juniper Summer Writers’ Institute, and Seaside Writers’ Conference. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2009, Tin House, Boston Review, Guernica, Memorious, The Progressive, and American Literary Review.

From from Lazaretto

Without a shipboard morgue,
we kept the dead Iraqi
in the dairy box—his corpse
supine beside the eggs
and sour cream—a figure
draped in cotton sheets,
stretched to keep the still alive
from witnessing the mouth
and eyes of the nameless
drowned, whose tongue,
embalmed in wind and ocean
brine, capsized between
his teeth and, like a ruined
clementine, hung low: a thick
inch of fruit on the branch
of his throat. Yet every look
I stole revealed some skin
still beautiful: oil slick,
sulfuric-sweet beneath a shroud
of faded sheets, quiet
as a Mezzo note. Forgive me:
I saw the man as meat—

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

Wednesday, December 7, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

DAVIDSON GARRETT, a native of Shreveport, Louisiana, is an actor, a poet, a writer and a taxi driver. Poems from his book King Lear of the Taxi, published by Advent Purple Press in 2006, were used as text in the short film Taxi Driver – King Lear of the Taxi by Flashgun Films of Great Britain. In 2015, Advent Purple Press published a new chapbook by Garrett titled Southern Low Protestant Departure: A Funeral Poem. The poem is a long narrative work, written in the verse form of tercets, which depicts a Protestant funeral in a small Southern town. Also in 2015, Garrett had a spoken-word play published titled Conspiracy Theory: The Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen. This play was published in Issue 8 of the performance art journal Nerve Lantern.

From Southern Low Protestant Departure: A Funeral Poem

Southern folks
tend to die
during the zenith of
summer’s hellish heat
as death itself
drips beads of sweat.

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

Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

Emilia Phillips is the author of two poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, Groundspeed (2016) and Signaletics (2013). Her poetry appears in Boston Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015 Nonfiction Prize from StoryQuarterly, the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, among other places. She’s the Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Centenary University.

Pastoral (Radio)

Out of range the stations’ signals confuse—
like grasses, crossing. Over the fields,
a field of waves. I have thrown my voice into
the future. I’ve called after
it to return. Like the radio,
I’m waiting for something to come, flickering
meanwhile with half-songs.

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