Women of the World Poet Saroya Marsh

Bang! by Saroya Marsh in surprise February feature before the White Plains Library's slam.

Wednesday at the spur of the moment I decided to go to the White Plains Library to see Zork and Sweetie. Hadn't seen them in a while. For the first time in a long time, I read a poem in an open mic. On this night, that was after falling flat on my face getting on the stage. Really. Literally. Nose to carpet. Oh well. 

The format at the White Plains Library is, open mic, FEATURED POET, then last the SLAM. And on this night, another poet had cancelled and  Saroya Marsh  - an educator, poet, personable activist, "voice for the voiceless," and high power performer was the feature!  See the Split Journal Interview  Check out her Poets & Writers page  

Later at the diner, big smiles

Zork and Sweetie, slam veterans. Zork runs the White Plains Slam. They are also known for a crazy vlog, BedVlogs - recorded fully clothed in bed. (yes you read that right)

Great triple play Three Wordsmiths

One of my favorite poets Charles Rafferty (Man on the Tower, The Unleashable Dog etc etc) gave a dynamic reading Monday (9/8/24) evening at the Booth Library in Newtown at an event called Three Wordsmiths. On the bill and just as wonderful were Barry Dougherty, head writer for Friars Club Roast and playwright, actor, performance poet Patrick Kearney. Wow. 

The triple bill drew a large audience leaving few empty seats in the program room - and they wowed that audience. Frankly we loved them all!  They were funny unpredictable and so hysterically human.  For more events from the Newtown Arts Festival: http://newtownartsfestival.com For more poets (including me) check the events table for the two day main festival on Sept 13-14. The column on the far right is the Poetry Salon.

PS love library events. after-dinner timing, home by 9:15.

Poet Guss Stepp

I've been thinking about Poet Guss Stepp who died in 2007. I always have wondered how his name came to be spelled that way, but I guess I am never going to know that now. I didn't know him well but admired his work. He always had a great smile and something engaging to read at his featured readings and at open mics. He sent poems to me when I was editor of Bent Pin Quarterly and subsequently died before he could see his work online in Bent Pin. Today I thought I would collect and offer some links.

Guss Stepp on Wednesday Night Poetry's archive:

http://wedpoetrypast.wordpress.com/tag/guss-stepp/

Guss Stepp passing noted on Stamford Writes:

http://www.stamfordwrites.org/tw/tiki-view_articles.php?find=&topic=&type=&offset=30&sort_mode=publishDate_desc

Guss Stepp's work in Bent Pin Quarterly:

        1)  Existance

        2) The Blues is

        3) Looking For Vincient

        4) The Ghosts Of Halloween

Women's Voices at the Bank Street Coffeehouse

Four differing voices made an interesting evening for poetry in New Milford last night. The reading, called "Women's Voices" was organized by reporter and poet Susan Tuz, who made the poster on the right.  I snapped the picture as it hung in the coffeehouse window and you can see a faint reflection of the buildings on Bank Street.

The four poets were Susan Tuz, Joan Kantor, Robin Sampon & me. (Mad Mar Walker - no pic of me):

Elizabeth Thomas at last year's Sunkin Garden

Love this poem! If you like this go to it on YouTube and hit LIKE!

Alice-Anne Harwood and Robert Messore: The Woulds wow

Out of New Haven -- The combination of Alice-Anne Harwood's clear evocative voice (both in the singing and as a lyricist) and Robert Messore's nuanced guitar work and excellent arranging make The Woulds superb. They are sooo worth hearing.  With heart and musical skill, poetic lyrics, an organic weaving of guitar and voice lines, an actual conversation between two musical entities - with humor & humanity  - well you have to hear them live. There isn't any substitute for it.  I saw them at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown, for the Riverwood Poetry Series on Saturday night where  the duo performed both musical compositions and AA's poetry with a guitar accompaniment.

You can like their Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Woulds/161183917263131

Past, Present, Future Wedpoetry stuff...

Wednesday Night Poetry is prepping a few changes for the new year, so I thought I'd post one of the 2006 series posters I made, (click on it for a larger image) as an excuse to gab about it a bit.

Snow And Ice -- This past winter  Wedpoetry was canceled at the last minute at least four times (it might have been more)  for bad-ass storms that made travel hazardous.  So this winter, the series is going to take a winter break starting after its meeting on Dec 14th. through January and February. The first meetup of the new year will be March 7, 2012, when the all new 2012 Wednesday Poetry will begin.

Coming soon -- Tomorrow, (Nov 30)  is a Leonard Cohen themed open mic, followed by a workshop.  Next week (Dec 7), the feature had to cancel , there will be an open mic but the rest of the evening program is still to be determined.  The feature  On Dec 14, the last meeting of 2011, there is a four-person panel discussion called Putting Your Poetry Collection Together!  Panelists include Brad Davis, Leslie McGrath, Claire Zoghb and  Faith Vicinanza. During the open mic - it;s Grinch Night.

Changes in offing for 2012 are still up in the air. The group will likely be meeting in a different venue, and format may change a bit as well.  To mark the change, all entries on the wedpoetry wordpress  website have been archived to a site called http://wedpoetrypast.wordpress.com.  So if you have a link to a reading you did there that now is broken - just slip the word "past" into the address and it should work.

Honoring The Women Beats

Helen Peterson

Yvon Cormier

An event called Women Beat Era Poets/Authors/Artisits: A Celebration, took place at Broad Street Bookstore in Middletown, CT on Sunday. Like most women during the 50s, they were a bit under-exposed, and despite their own rebellions they seemed overshadowed at the time by their outlaw men.  I have to admit I enjoyed listening to their work.
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 Poet Yvon Cormier who organized the event, asked to me read poems representing someone, and I chose Jay Defeo - a visual artist rather than a poet, who now in retrospect is considered one of the definitive American Abstract Expressionists.
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Joan Kantor

Colon Haskins

For the occasion I put together six poems, five so called found poems gleaned from her own words as found in a lengthy oral history interview with Defeo conducted around 1976. The last was a reaction poem to her monumental one ton painting, The Rose which was eleven feet high, eight feet wide, 11 inches deep and eight years of effort long. It's now owned by the Whitney Museum.
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Dolores Lawler

Mad Mar Walker

The former Poet Laureate of Long Island, George Wallace was suppoed to read Janine Pommy Vega. He was unable to come at the last minute so Dolores Lawler read Pommy Vega's work instead, as well as some some Denise Levertov and some of her own. Helen Peterson, co-editor of the Waterhouse Review read Diane DiPrima, Joan Kantor, author of Shadow Sounds, read Hettie Jones, Yvon, who organized the reading, read Mary Fabilli and Colin,Haskins, who's put out a whole slew of fine poetry chapbooks and started the Free Poets Collective among many other ventures, read Elise Cowen.
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Robin Sampson

Sympetalous

 I only have two pics from the open mic, Robin Sampson and Sympetalous.  I have video but give me a month or two to sort that out.

According to the press release: This event is proudly presented by the FREE POETS COLLECTIVE, IN COLLABORATION WITH BROAD STREET BOOKS & CAFÉ, The Wesleyan Bookstore. The next Free Poets Collective event is Farmtober on 10/22, 1-4 at Fort Hill Farms in Thompson, CT

On the Women Beats - a reading this Sunday

On Sunday October 16th 11A.M. - 2:30P.M. at Broad Street Books in Middletown Ct there will be:

 A CELEBRATION OF THE WOMEN BEAT ERA POETS/AUTHORS/ARTISTS　　 

The press release reads:

"This rare spectacular event commemorates Women Beat Generation poets, authors, and artists, featuring international poet GEORGE WALLACE, former Poet Laureate of Long Island, N.Y. based in N.Y. City, author of twenty-one chapbooks and was named artist in residence at Walt Whitman’s birthplace, reads Janine Pommy Vega; Helen R. Peterson, of Canterbury CT, writes poetry and fiction and is coeditor of The Waterhouse Review reads Diane DiPrima; Joan B. Kantor of Collinsvile CT, author of Shadow Sounds (Antrim House) reads Hettie Jones; Mar (Mistryel) Walker of Danbury, CT, painter singer and author of Inverse Origami the art of unfolding, reads Jay DeFeo; Yvon J. Cormier of West Haven CT, author of Life Sketches in Blue, reads Mary Fabilli, and Colin Haskins of Glastonbury, CT, latest poetry collection Drinking of You (Ye Olde Font Shoppe) is Free Poets Collective founder will read Elise Cowen. Following the features there will be open mic, music and a reception.

 This event is proudly presented by the FREE POETS COLLECTIVE, IN COLLABORATION WITH BROAD STREET BOOKS & CAFÉ, The Wesleyan Bookstore. YVON J. CORMIER will host the event at BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 Broad St, Middletown, on Sunday, October 16, from 11:00A.M. to 2:30P.M. For more details visit http://freepoetscollective.webs.com/ or questions, call 860-233-4984."

Chris August at White Plains Library

This past Wednesday, (10/5/2011) I headed over to the first Wed. poetry and Zorkslam event at the White Plains Library. I read in the open mic, one poem "Travel Ready."  The highlight of the night for me was the feature Chris August, a teacher, and a touring poet from the D.C. area who has a wildly vigorous performance style. I really loved it. He gets his whole body involved, like a dance....

Rev Bill, from Worchester way shares poems

Last week "Rev." Bill MacMillan, a national slammer, poet and most especially a human being interested in what happens to fellow humans - featured at the Wednesday Night Poetry Series in Newtown, CT.

Until recently he was slammaster of the Worchester Poetry Slam.  Among the many wonderful poems he presented in Newtown were two items I found particularly interesting for my own hair-brained reasons. The first was a poem called "Reentry (for Larry Walters)" which is about a guy dubbed Lawn Chair Larry, who apparently many years ago, launched himself to 16,000 feet while sitting in a lawn chair dangling from some hot air balloons.  I'd never heard this true tale before. It really is an amazing story of human endeavor and eccentricity!

Besides Larry himself, lawn chairs are peculiar items, colorful and odd. When I lived in North Conway, I believe there was a summer parade featuring a precision marching troupe which slung aluminum lawn chairs around in maneuvers the way Marines might sling their weapons. Another point for lawn chairs. Amazing. I also have a poem titled "I Sing the Lawn Chair Electric" (see the poems page for a video of that one), though riding one airborne was certainly not what I had in mind when I wrote it....

The other item that knocked my socks off was a "last will" poem called "A Humble Request"  MacMillan said he handed it to his attorney and said "Make it so...."  It bans services and memorials in favor of a bon voyage party, requests the singing of the Monte Python song "Always Look on The Brighter Side," and the distribution of his ashes to everyone in tiny vials with a long list of interesting places they might be scattered. All excellent notions and quite similar to a half written will I have on hand. He carries it a bit farther though than I did and I really like where it ended up with a final request on how we should "be yourselves, be the people I knew and loved," and to move on and live on with joy.

Both poems can be found in his chapbook Searching for DB Cooper, which has many other gems. Check out his facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rev-Bill-MacMillan/169733419736107

Just back from the National Poetry Slam in Cambridge, MA

  What a great week at the National Poetry Slam which was in Cambridge/Boston this year. I heard some fine performances, brought home interesting points of view to ponder and a slew of photos of the architecture on the MIT campus.

  Congratulations to Slam Nuba from Denver, the winning team in the finals. And thank you PSI for all the unsung work you do. And thank you Zork & Sweetie (of Bed vLog fame) and Jonathan Harris, my teammates at nationals, for making this wonderful field trip happen!!!

  Though I have dabbled in performance poetry for many years, even being an alternate ten years ago, this is the first time I have actually gone to the National Slam as a competing poet.

  Slammers are a crazy weird and wonderful family really. As an old grandma type, they were very kind to me. I like the tee-shirt design this year too.

For poems, I did Alternate Theories on Wednesday night at the Democracy Center, and Blood Brothers, an old saw from my 1998 chapbook Inverse Origami on Thursday night at the Cantab. I am glad to be back - I missed Henry Cort, my guitar. It was all poetry this week, and for logistical reasons Henry stayed at home.

Poetry at New Britain's Museum of American Art

On April 17th, 2011, twenty poets read poems on paintings that were hanging at the Museum of American Art in New Britain. The poems were all written specifically for painting the museum had on display. Behind the podium was a large slide show of the paintings - so that as the poet read, the listeners could see the painting that inspired the poem.

This extravaganza was dreamed up and arranged by Colin Haskins (the CT Beat Festival & The Free Poets Collective) in cahoots with the very congenial museum staff. Particulars of the reading were fussed with by a few busy ladies from the free poets collective. I will be adding a few shots the readers are below, in the grainy manor of my phone. I wrote a poem for the occasion on a Georgia O'Keeffe painting in the museum's collection, that I had never seen before - of New York and East River, a surprising subject for O'Keeffe.

It was a wonderful event, really wonderful and I got a great poem out of it, well I like it anyway:


East River from the 30th Floor of the Shelton Hotel, 1928
a painting by Georgia O'Keefe

New York morning panorama
Center stage: blue wedge of river
of tugs and steamers
barges, buoys
gruff handlers yawning,
a days work taken on,
busy already at dawn

On its banks: A greyed up city of squared rooftops
synchronous to the horizon
aligned with smoke stacks and chimneys
ingrained with streets and avenues
a structure of shelter, housing:
the sleepy and the busy,
the languid and the industrious,
the despairing and the inspired alike

Here is a vast city as smooth as the velvet petal
of a white flower filling a picture frame
Or a row of desert bleached skulls
empty and eyeless, cast like dice
yet full of various purpose.

A city ready. egalitarian a city welcoming the day
a city that history will alter
as a painter alters a canvas
one layer covering another
visions and revisions
in this accented high-rise air
waking to this earnest tenement light


Written for an ekphrastic Event of the Free Poets Collective at the museum of American Art in New Britain CT, April 12?, 2011 subsequently included in Visions and Verses? an Exile Press/Free Poets Collective publication

Riverwood's Last Hurrah open mic had some gems

This is John Jeffrey with his long long poem very funny, which was published in Bent Pin Quarterly

I'm opening at for Riverwood's Last Hurrah! Music, then Poetry

The Riverwood Festival has quite a line up for this year!  Check out the poster on the right, which lists the events the venues, the poets - and the many open mics.

This year I will be opening at the Last Hurrah at the City Steam Brewry hosted by Kathryn Kelly.   Starting around 6PM I will be playing a few tunes. At 6:30 the poetry begins. I will read for around 20 minutes followed the fabulous poet John Surowiecki - That's on Sunday, June 27, 942 Main Street in Hartford. A "MEGA" open mic is planned as well.

"Twice before I was asked, but this will be my first appearance there."

// UPDATE AND ASIDE: Actually this is apparently NOT TRUE.  My previous invites were for the CONNECITCUT BEAT FESTIVAL. THIS last one WAS FOR THE RIVERWOOD. I had thought they were the same but apparently they are not at all, though for a while they seemed to converge..... ///

In 2008 Tom Nicotera asked me to read at the venue he was running for the festival.  I accepted and  two days before my scheduled date, my 34 year old boss, friend and music director/mentor suddenly died. We were all in shock. He wasn't' ill. To boot,  for his funeral, I had to learn the mezzo soloist part to a quartet from  the Mozart Requiem  and I only had three days to do it. (I am not a quick study really at this sort of thing.)  Depressed and stressed out, I asked Anne Marie Marra to read in my place. She was a big hit, as she always was and she had a great time.

In 2009,  Yvon Cormier asked if I'd read  at the Outlaw Poets venue - (How cool is that!)  but that March Anne Marie Marra died.  The date of the reading was the same as a memorial gathering for Anne Marie. This gathering given by her brother Reggie, was held on her birthday in June. It was a terrible loss for us all as we'd also lost poet Terry McLain the previous November.And I had lost Rob the year before.  I was really numb and  I needed to be there at the gathering fully present, not thinking about reading or having to rush off to perform.

So this year, Kathryn Kelly kindly asked me if I would read some poems and also add a little music to the festival's Last Hurrah event.  SOOOO  if I live that long - and though the creek may rise, and winds blow  --- I WILL BE THERE on June 27th to read some poems  and play a few tunes at the Festival's last Hurrah at the City Steam Brewery! WooHoo!

The details of the Last Hurrah:

Poet Jason Labbe recommends daily writing discipline

Waiting for inspiration won't help you find some, according to Jason Labbe, who read at Wednesday Night Poetry last week at the Blue Z Coffeehouse in Newtown.

It's important to write every day, and out of that discipline discoveries come, he told the Wed. Night Poetry crowd during the Q & A following his reading. (I think that might be good advice for practicing almost any skill or art form - a discipline of playful, purposeful exploration.

Labbe has an unassuming, understated reading style. His work is evocative, surreal, yet somehow spare and stoic. I really enjoyed his featured reading. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Vigrinia and a chapbook called Dear Photographer (Phylum Press, 2009) which is out of stock already. He's also a musician and drummer actively involved in performing and recording. Visit his website for details of his doings www.studyinblue.com (If you run the cursor towards the top of the page a menu will appear.)

NaPoWriMo # 25 - Green Fuse Ignites!

"The Green Fuse," at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Stamford, CT yesterday, was a moving event. The name was from Dylan Thomas quote - " The force that through the green fuse drives the flowers, drives my green age..."

Put together by professor Ralph Nazareth, and Poem Alley, the event included words delivered in Japanese by two survivors of Hiroshima, Takashi Morita and Junko Watanabe who asked us all to support a nuclear free future. It was an honor to hear their words.


The program included an a cappella duet sung by Dev Crasta and Rebeka Radna.  Ms. Radna wrote the music, for words from Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” .  Their pitch, blend  and voicing were excellent. A wonderful violinist, Darwin Shea performed four works by Bach. His playing was full of precision and restrained overarching emotion. Dale Shaw told a true story about silent witnesses frozen and unable to take action, and he drew out an analogy out as to how, in the face of environmental disaster today, we react in similar fashion.  Kate Heichler lead a group sing of  Woody Guthrie's tune, This Land is Your Land.

And that was just the first half of the program.  Ed Granger-Happ of the Fairfield Review, journalist Robert Masterson, and green party guy, Richard Duffee and Ralph Nazareth himself, and many others were among the readers I missed. (I had to be in Middletown for a Shijin event, along with Faith Vicinanza who read a Mary Oliver poem in the first half..)   A music finale was by David Balzano on guitar and Lloyd Gritz on drums. There were too many performers to be named herein, -including all of the folks from the Curley's Diner Tuesday night poetry gathering, and many guests.

Below my NaPoWriMo #25
The green fuse ignites.

with gentle arms

illumined in full spectrum
light like a sycamore's pale

upper-story at dawn
singing on every breeze,
with poems and
the motion of birds and men
interweaving, going forward:
tread lightly here,

our home, our nest, the earth.

POETRY: Dick Allen enlightens listeners

Poet Dick Allen read at the Blue Z Coffeehouse last Wednesday. As always, his work is  fresh and filled with details in layers of image and nuance. Though he had three books for sale, (Present Vanishing, The Day Before: New Poems and Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected), he did us the great favor or reading lots of his new work.  When this happens in a reading - not only do you get to see where the writer is headed in terms of  ideas and technique - you also get the heightened delivery because people are frequently more excited about their recent works.

Afterwards during Q&A  Allen spoke to his self-taught Zen Buddhist  roots.  He expressed how mindfulness lends itself to poetry, and his involvement in meditation, his belief in nondualism, and also reincarnation. (I thought those last two seemed to conflict, but I see there are several meanings for nondualism. In one, matter is  illusion, in the other, there is only matter....)

All in all, it was quite a very interesting evening.Allen noted that there are over 3000 print journals publishing poetry and an unknown number of online journals, blogs and sites.  One interesting point: apparently many of these publications are staffed by younger editors who send form rejections to everyone. While even a fine writer's work isn't always a fit with a particular publication,  he said old school notables are hoping for at least a personal rejection not a form letter.  I suspect these editors often don't know who they are rejecting or they would be inviting further submissions. (Makes me wonder who I rejected when I had Bent Pin Quarterly!)

Allen surely qualifies as one of those notables. He has a Pushcart Prize, and has gotten NEA and an Ingram Merrill Poetry Writing Fellowships. He's been published all over the map: The New Criterion, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, American Scholar, The Georgia Review, The Yale Review, Poetry, Stone Boat, Gettysburg Review, The New York Quarterly, and The Hudson Review.  Literally hundreds of his poems  have been in publications ranging from The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and Agni to The New England Review, as well as 40 + national poetry anthologies including five editions of The Best American Poetry . That's notable.

We also got another insight into  Dick Allen, in the form of his  wife, poet L. N. Allen, who read some fine work during the open mic. I am not sure but a "little bird told me" she may be reading for Wed. poetry fairly soon. Tweet.

-- Mar Walker
Read about a workshop on short poems given by Dick Allen Several years ago...
Read his book Ode to the Cold War on Google Books

POETRY: Robin E. Sampson in Stamford this past week

It's an adventure careening across the winding paths of Route 124 and 137 on the way to Stamford. The destination was  the Stamford Town Center Barnes and Noble  which has a once a month poetry series run by Frank Chambers. This month the feature was Robin Sampson of  Wednesday Night Poetry, Shijin and editor of  Poetry Liner Notes, She gave a nice tight reading,  with a well-planned set that  seemed to have something of an emotional arc. It was smoothly executed with no paper rattling, no indecision, no apologies.  Well done.  Read some of her short poems in Bent Pin:

 Loom     Staring Back    Tangible Rain    
The Christmas Letter Life    The Sentence    Throw It To The Wind

-- Mar Walker

Poet Laurel Peterson at Blue Z

Poet, and Norwalk Community College professor Laurel S. Peterson featured for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series last week.  During her reading, at one point I laughed so hard I lost my grip on my coffee cup which fell to the floor creating a lake of coffee.  It was during a poem where she was describing various things she contemplated doing to other women who pursued her husband....   I imagine she also is a fierce defender of battered or abused women - she is a co-founder of the Fairfield County Women’s Center. She also started the  women’s studies program at the college. Her chapbook, "That's the Way Music Sounds,"   from Finishing Line Press (July 2009) is available through Amazon.

Visit her webpage at http://www.laurelpeterson.com/  where you can read a few of her poems.

-- Mar Walker