Tag: Open Mic

Wednesday, February 4, 2015, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

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

Valery Oisteanu is a writer and artist with international flavor. Born in USSR (1943) and educated in Romania, he adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life. He has been writing in English for the past 42 years. He is the author of 11 books of poetry, a book of short fiction and a book of essays: The Avant-Gods. A new collection of poetry with collage illustrations, titled Perks in Purgatory, was published by Fly by Night Press, New York, in 2010. For the past 10 years, he wrote art critic essays for Brooklyn Rail (New York). Oisteanu is also a contributing writer for French, Spanish & Romanian art and literary magazines. He exhibits collages and assemblages on a regular basis at the galleries in New York and also creates collages as covers and illustrations for books and magazines. Oisteanu also performs theater plays and musical collaborations with jazz musicians from all over the world, in sessions known as Jazzoetry. Valery Oisteanu is the receiver of Acker Award NYC 2013 for contribution to the avant-garde in Poetry Performance.

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

Spill green beer onto the ground
From a glass with a clover on it
Talking to Astrid about your Irish mother
Happy St Patrick’s Day Barney!
I cannot believe you are gone
Gone but not forgotten
The phosphorescence of your voice
On the corner of Grove Street
The shadows of Miller and Becket
They come to me in a dream
Barney in his couch, in his chair at Veselka
Lost in the maze of books at the Strand
Books that created resistance in Bucharest
Ionesco in the Evergreen review, devoured by the underground
Translating Gregory Corso into Romanian
I cannot believe Barney is gone

Lisa Marie Basile

Wednesday, January 7, 2015, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

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

Lisa Marie Basile is the editor of Luna Luna Magazine and the small press Patasola Press. Her poetry and essays can be seen in Best American Poetry, Coldfront, Tin House, PEN American Center, Poets & Artists Magazine, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, Huffington Post, Thrush Poetry Journal, Poetry Crush, and Prick of the Spindle, among others. She is the author of the chapbooks Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press) and of the full-length collection Apocryphal (Noctuary Press, 2014). Lisa Marie has edited for Sundress Publications and Weave Magazine. Her work has been nominated for the Best Small Fiction 2015 and the Best American Experimental Writing 2015 anthologies. She was the February 2014 feature poet for Poets & Artists Magazine, and has been named a top contemporary NYC poet to watch in features by The New York Daily News & Relapse Magazine. She is a graduate of The New School’s Masters in Fine Arts program for creative writing.

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

today my father came to pray
black denim & brown suede
a little tattoo of something holy
only he isn’t holy
he was raised at church & in fields of flora
in the back seat of the family Ambassador sedan
his eyes the color of that caballero tan
pinching his sister those pretty curls
setting fire to stacks of Playboy magazines.

Robert P. Langdon

Wednesday, December 3, 2014, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

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

Robert P. Langdon is a poet living in Northern NJ. He has worn many hats over the years, including Director of Sales and Marketing at a publishing house, Director and Curator at an art gallery, professional photographer and teacher. Robert lived in San Francisco for 13 years which helped raise his political and social consciousness and a strong appreciation for diversity and community in all it’s forms. These themes show up often in his writing.

Robert has been writing poetry and the occasional short fiction since the late 1980s. He began writing after being exposed to the poetry of Anne Sexton and discovering, through her writing, that poetry can be exciting and accessible. He is drawn to strong imagery and is influenced by confessional poetry and the works of Sexton, Sharon Olds, Diane Ackerman, Robert Lowell, Ai, and Gregory Orr among others. Robert’s own writing tends to focus on issues of identity and he uses poetry as a way to work through personal issues and reflect on meaningful events in his life. He recently released his first collection, The Candied Road Ahead: Poems & Stories available through Amazon.com in print and Kindle formats.

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

Malled

The Disney dream is a lie. Bambi has been rewritten.
No longer is it the danger of flames and firearms. It’s crossing
a four lane highway and being trapped against a median.
A warm blood Flower streaked by the wipers of a Humvee.

J. Scott Brownlee

Wednesday, November 5, 2014, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

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

Originally from Llano, Texas, J. Scott Brownlee is a founding member of the Localists, a literary collective that emphasizes place-based writing of personal witness, cultural memory, and the aesthetically marginalized working class. His poems appear in The Kenyon Review, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Drunken Boat, RATTLE, The Greensboro Review, [PANK], BOXCAR Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of two chapbooks: Highway or Belief, which won the 2013 Button Poetry Prize, and Ascension, which won the 2014 Texas Review Press Robert Phillips Poetry Prize, and is a former Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at NYU. He currently lives in Brooklyn and is the Assistant Director of the University Learning Center for the College of Arts & Science at NYU.

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

Llano River, Sunrise

This morning dark, the light is turning
into morning. Slowly, clouds sift
sand and yellow perch. You walk beside
the river, falling in. Fish swim.
Fish swim the river. Falling in,
you walk beside the sand and yellow perch.
Clouds sift slowly into mourning:
this morning light. The dark turns
into mourning. Slowly, clouds sift
sand and yellow perch. You walk beside
the river, falling in. Fish swim
this morning dark. The light is
turning.

George Witte & Tina Kelley

Wednesday, October 1, 2014, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

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

George Witte has published three books of poems: Does She Have a Name? (NYQ Books, 2014), Deniability (Orchises Press, 2009), and The Apparitioners (Orchises Press, 2005). A New Jersey native, he works as the editor in chief of St. Martin’s Press and lives with his family in Ridgewood.

Tina Kelley’s second collection of poetry, Precise, was published in 2013 by Word Press, which also published her first collection, The Gospel of Galore, winner of a 2003 Washington State Book Award. She co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, (2012) a national bestseller about homeless young people helped by Covenant House. She was a reporter at The New York Times for ten years, shared in a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service Journalism for being a part of the Times’ coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, and wrote 121 Portraits of Grief, short descriptions of the victims. Her writing has appeared in Audubon, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Orion, People, Poetry Northwest, Poetry East, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Best American Poetry 2009. She is on the staff of Covenant House and lives in Maplewood, NJ with her husband and two children.

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

Adele Kenny
Gail Fishman Gerwin
Bob Rosenbloom

Wednesday, August 6, 2014, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

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

Adele Kenny is the author of twenty-four books (poetry & nonfiction). Her poems, reviews, and articles have been published worldwide, and her poems have appeared in books and anthologies published by Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. She is the recipient of various awards, including poetry fellowships from the NJ State Arts Council, first place Merit Book and Henderson Awards, a Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, a Writer’s Digest Poetry Award, and the 2012 International Book Award. She is founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor of Tiferet. Website: www.Adelekenny.com.

Gail Fishman Gerwin’s memoir Sugar and Sand was a finalist for the 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her second collection Dear Kinfolk, (www.chayacairnpress.com) earned a 2013 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. She also is the author of Bella’s Family, a two-act play about a Jewish immigrant family in the early 20th century; Dropping Names, a one-act play about old loves; and Women in Motion, a monologue set. Her poems, reviews, fiction, features, and essays appear in print and online. Gail, associate poetry editor of Tiferet, facilitates writing workshops at varied venues.

Robert Rosenbloom hosts a monthly poetry reading at the Bridgewater Public Library for the Somerset Poetry Group. His poetry has appeared in the Paterson Literary Review, US 1 Worksheets, Lips, Edison Literary Review, among others. He’s the author of a chapbook, Reunion, published by Finishing Line Press. He is a certified civil trial lawyer. He lives with his wife in Bound Brook.

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