5/17: Embracing Wetlands reading in Kent

From RC Wilson:

Please consider coming out for this poetry reading next Friday. Poets from around Ohio and beyond. An important event!

5/10: Philip Metres, John James, Zach Savich, Bridget Lowe, & Dave Lucas at Visible Voice

From our friends at Visible Voice Books:

Friday, May 10 @ 7:00 P.M.

An evening of readings from five excellent poets, hosted by Virginia Konchan.

Philip Metres has written twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge (2024) and Shrapnel Maps (2020). Winner of three Arab American Book Awards, a Guggenheim, and two NEA fellowships, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.

John James is the author of The Milk Hours (Milkweed, 2019), selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Best American Poetry, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia and is completing a PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Zach Savich‘s latest book is the poetry collection Momently (Black Ocean, 2024). He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Dave Lucas’s first book of poems, Weather (VQR / Georgia, 2011), received the 2012 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. He has also received a “Discovery/The Nation Prize and a Cleveland Arts Prize. In 2018, he was appointed the second Poet Laureate of the State of Ohio. A co-founder of Cleveland Book Week and Brews + Prose at Market Garden Brewery, he also teaches at the John Carroll Young Writers Workshop, the Oklahoma Arts Institute, and in the Medical Humanities program at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.

Bridget Lowe is the author of the poetry collections My Second Work (2020) and At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky (2013), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press.  Her poems have appeared widely in publications including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Republic, Parnassus, Boston Review, A Public Space, Plume, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her honors include the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, a “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize, a fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship to the MacDowell Colony. She lives in Kansas City, where she was born.

Visible Voice Books
2258 Professor Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44113

5/8: John Burroughs, Jeremy Jusek and Barbara Marie Minney at Mac's Backs

I look forward to reading with Jeremy Jusek and Barbara Marie Minney on May 8th, 7 p.m. at Mac's Backs-Books On Coventry in Cleveland Heights.

 

ABOUT BARBARA MARIE MINNEY

Barbara Marie Minney is a transgender woman, award winning poet, writer, speaker, teaching artist, and quiet activist. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Politico, The Buckeye Flame, The Gasconade Review, Gargoyle Magazine, The Pine Cone Review, Women Speak: Women of Appalachia Project, Woman Scream: The International Poetry Anthology of Female Voices, and I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing, Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. Barbara’s poetry has also been translated into Spanish. She is the author of If There’s No Heaven, the winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award and an Akron Beacon Journal Best Northeast Ohio Book in 2020; the "Poetic Memoir Chapbook Challenge;" "Dance Naked With God;" and "A Woman in Progress." Barbara is a retired attorney and a seventh generation Appalachian and lives in Tallmadge, Ohio, with her wife of over 42 years and a menagerie of stuffed animals. You can follow Barbara at https://www.barbaramarieminneypoetry.com.

ABOUT JEREMY JUSEK

Jeremy is the poet laureate of Parma, Ohio. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University and chemistry/theatre degrees from Marietta College. He has authored more than a half-dozen plays and three poetry collections: We Grow Tomatoes in Tiny Towns (Unsolicited Press, 2019), The Less-Traveled Street (Maverick Duck Press, 2022), and The Details Will Be Gone Soon (ELJ Editions, 2023). He hosts the Ohio Poetry Association's podcast Poetry Spotlight, runs the West Side Poetry Workshop, teaches through Literary Cleveland, and founded the Flamingo Writers’ Guild. To learn more, please visit www.jeremyjusek.com.

Mac's Backs
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
216-321-2665
www.macsbacks.com

May 3rd thru 5th: Jawbone in Kent

Join us at the annual Jawbone poetry festival in Kent! Contact RC Wilson at rcwilsonii@gmail.com for more information.

April 27: Fireside Poetry Festival in Chagrin Falls

From our friends at Fireside Book Shop:

More info: https://www.firesidebookshop.com/events/2024/4/27/fireside-book-shop-poetry-festival.

Fireside Book Shop
29 North Franklin Street
Chagrin Falls, OH, 44022

April 15th: Pádraig Ó Tuama comes to John Carroll University

Reposted from our friend Philip Metres:

NOT TO BE MISSED! On April 15th at 6pm, in JCU’s Donahue Auditorium (Dolan Science Center) at John Carroll University, join us for a talk and reading of poems by celebrated Irish poet, theologian, and podcaster Pádraig Ó Tuama.

Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, conflict resolution mediator, and the author of Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love (2024), Poetry Unbound (2022), Feed the Beast (2022), Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community (2017), In the Shelter (2015), Sorry for Your Troubles (2013), and Readings from the Books of Exile (2012). About his most recent collection of poems, Feed the Beast, Jericho Brown says, “This book is unashamed about poetry’s relationship to the spirit. I would go as far as saying this book is one way we know poetry is prayer.” His memoir, In the Shelter, interweaves everyday stories with narrative theology, gospel reflections with mindfulness, and Celtic spirituality with poetry for a memoir that relates ideas of shelter and welcome to journeys of life.

For those who don’t know Pádraig, he is a man of many talents—a poet, theologian, mediator, podcaster (one of the best podcasts on poetry, and another on peacebuilding for Corrymeela). He’s wise, engaging, and deeply moving, and NOT TO BE MISSED!

All are welcome! Free and open to the public. Books for sale by Mac’s Backs.

John Carroll University
1 John Carroll Boulevard
University Heights, OH 44118

April 18th: Ekphrastacy at Heights Arts

Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk and Poets Respond

Thursday, April 18th at 7:00 p.m.

Join Heights Poet Laureate Siaara Freeman and guest poets Beks Freeman, Carrie George, and Philip Metres for a night of surrealism and the unconventional. For this Ekphrastacy, poets respond to the current exhibition on view in Heights Art's gallery, Irrational Objects: Backwards Into the Future. Their live poetry will undoubtedly respond to and interrogate surrealist themes of the unexpected and uncanny. Artists in the exhibition will also speak about their work. Reserve your spot today!

Heights Arts
2175 Lee Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
heightsarts.org

April 10: Cornelius Eady and Arlene Keizer at Kent State

Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Reading
Featuring Cornelius Eady and Arlene Keizer

When: Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 pm
Where: African Community Theatre, Oscar Ritchie Hall (225 Terrace Drive), Kent, Ohio

Cornelius Eady is the author of several books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Hardheaded Weather, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, The Gathering of My Name, which was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, and his most recent collection The War Against the Obvious. With poet Toi Derricote, Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award. Eady has been a teacher for over twenty years, and is currently the Chair of Excellence in the English Department at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Arlene Keizer, an Afro-Caribbean-American poet and scholar, writes about the literature, lived experience, theory, and visual art of the African Diaspora. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, she later earned an MA in English and Creative Writing (Poetry) at Stanford University and a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery, and her poems and articles have appeared in African American Review, American Literature, Kenyon Review, PMLA, Radical Teacher, TriQuarterly, and other journals and exhibit catalogues. New poems are forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora. Arlene completed Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black published by The Kent State University Press with the support of fellowships from the Beinecke Library at Yale and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she has been reading Beauford Delaney's mail. Born to emigrants from Trinidad, she lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches at Pratt Institute.

April 12: Zach Savich and Joyelle McSweeny kick off the Cleveland Poetry Festival

John Panza on Blackout Poetry and Eclipses

Available for your reading pleasure at Inkfish:

https://inkfishmag.com/erasure-poetry/2024/03/1.

A Gathering of Laurels II - April 6th in South Euclid

A Gathering of Laurels II

Ohio Poets Laureate read from their work for National Poetry Month on Saturday, April 06, 2024 from 2:00pm to 3:30pm EDT at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

Join us as Poets Laureate from around Ohio share their work. Doc Janning, the Inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of South Euclid, will emcee the event. Books will be available for sale and signing, and we'll celebrate with light refreshments.

Featured poets:

John Burroughs, Beat Poet Laureate Emeritus of Ohio and the U.S.

Sandra Feen, Beat Poet Laureate of Ohio

Doc Janning, Inaugural Poet Laureate of South Euclid and Third Poet Laureate of Cuyahoga County

Jeremy Jusek, Poet Laureate of Parma

Jonie McIntire, Poet Laureate of Lucas County

Ray McNiece, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Cleveland Heights

Dr. Mary Weems, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Cleveland Heights

https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/9574197 

1876 S. Green Road
Writers Center Conference Room
South Euclid, Ohio 44121

Poets John Dorsey & Ken Gierke to appear March 22nd at Mac's Backs

Friday, March 22, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Poets John Dorsey, author of Pocatello Wildflower and Ken Gierke, author of Glass Awash will read at Mac's on Friday, March 22nd at 7 pm.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO and the author of several collections of poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, and Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023). 

Ken Gierke is a retired truck driver, transplanted to Missouri from Western New York. In spite of muddy water and a dearth of maples, after only ten years he is coming to think of Missouri as home. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming both in print and online in such places as Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, Silver Birch Press, and The Gasconade Review. His first collection of poetry, Glass Awash, has been published by Spartan Press.

Mac's Backs Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland, Heights, Ohio
www.macsbacks.com

 

You're Invited to Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with Word and Song

 Ray McNiece at

Sandusky's Mr. Smith's Coffeehouse

2:00 Saturday March 16th

Open-Mic to Follow 

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Ohio Center for the Book

From our friends at Ohio Center for the Book:

Celebrate National Poetry Month With Us

This April, celebrate National Poetry Month with the Ohio Center for the Book as four acclaimed Ohio poets representing Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton visit us at Cleveland Public Library for two weekend poetry readings. These events are free and open to the public. Sat., April 20: Lindsay Turner and Noah Falck Sat., April 27: Stephanie Ginese and Taylor Byas For location information, check out our host library's Calendar of Events.

Get Details on our National Poetry Month Events At Our Website

2024 Cleveland Poetry Festival: April 12-14

From our friends at Literary Cleveland:

Cleveland Poetry Festival: April 12-14

We’re thrilled to announce that Cleveland Poetry Festival is back Friday-Sunday April 12-14 at Cleveland Museum of Art Community Art Center on West 25th.

This year, we're exploring an exciting new theme: the intersection of POETRY + ART, commemorating visual poetry, the interplay between image and text, the use of type in art, and the ways poetry and virtual art influence each other.

🖊️ Draft new poems in workshops on poetry & photos, ekphrastic writing, and comics

🗨️ Participate in dynamic panel discussions on looking, image & text, and artists/poets

📚 Browse the book and art fair with booksellers, journals, presses, and artists

🎤 Attend readings and join the open mic to share your work

Local presenters include Northeast Ohio poets and artists Mansa L. Bey, Ali Black, Donald Black, Danny Caine, Siaara Freeman, Carrie George, Stephanie Ginese, J.P. Hernandez, Kevin Latimer, Michael Lorderstedt, Philip Metres, Wendy Partridge, Alyssa Perry, and Zach Savich.

Visiting authors include Lauren Haldeman (poet, graphic artist, and Iowa Arts Fellow), Joyelle McSweeney (Guggenheim fellow and co-founder of Action Books), Diana Khoi Nguyen (author of Ghost Of which was a finalist for the National Book Award), and Cindy Juyoung Ok (author of Ward Toward, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize).

Space is limited so don't miss out! Register here

2/9: Environmental Arts Night in Shaker Heights

 

2/18: Rebel Readers / Quartez Harris / Poets Against Racism & Hate

From our friends at Poets Against Racism & Hate USA:

"We’re so pleased to help facilitate an appearance by PARH USA member (and talented poet) Quartez Harris and the Rebel Readers Book Club at Loganberry Books in Shaker Heights, OH. Co-founder Debbie Allen will join Quartez to discuss his compelling collection, We Made It To School Alive" (on February 18th at 3 pm).

 
Follow Poets Against Racism & Hate USA at https://poetsagainstracism-usa.org.

Submissions call: Words Not Weapons anthology

Submit at https://forms.gle/1KNLbbgejYydC26L9.

Follow Simple Simons Press at facebook.com/SimpleSimonsPress.

MLGBTQ Reader at Sandusky

Barbara Marie Minney: “My poetry is a challenge to stereotypical beliefs 

and to accept other people for who and what they are. . . .My poetry is 

also a challenge to unapologetically and proudly accept and love yourself 

for who you are.”

Open-Mic to Follow. Join Us. 

 

 

Join us for a celebration of freedom and diversity

through our writing

Last Exit Poetry Readings in Kent - 1st Half of 2024

 

Join the Last Exit Books Poetry Readings group on Facebook for all the latest.

Applications Being Accepted for an $8,000 Fellowship

From our friends at Literary Cleveland:

 

Apply for a paid $8,000 four-month Amplify Fellowship to create a literary project for your community.

 

Two fellows will work with Literary Cleveland staff from February-May 2024 and receive funding, resources, mentorship, and support to pilot a new community project. Fellows will gain experience in literary programming, event planning, communications, and community outreach.

 

This opportunity is intended for Northeast Ohio writers who are members of groups that have been historically underrepresented in the writing and publishing industry.

 

Apply by December 11 at
https://www.litcleveland.org/events-programs/amplify-fellowship. 

RC Wilson reviews Katie Daley's new book, Any Closer to Home

ANY CLOSER TO HOME by Katie Daley (2023, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY)

 

Available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/any-closer-to-home-by-katie-daley/ or your favorite local bookstore

 

 

Review by RC Wilson:

 

Katie Daley is a performing poet who also writes for publication. A lot of writers work the other way around, writing for the page and reading aloud mostly when launching a new book. Katie has mesmerized audiences all over the country, but that does not make this book any less special. Just be aware that these poems were written to be spoken, almost sung. I suggest you find a good place to read them out loud, like incantations or spells. Take this book down in a tunnel, or out to the middle of a bridge, and speak her poems. Or better yet, borrowing an image from two of these poems, if you have access to an old grand piano, take a few blankets and make a nest for yourself under there and speak the poems, letting her words resonate with the taut wire harp above you. Just kidding. Read them anyway you want to but read them.

 

The book sort-of invites you to sing along. The first poem is titled “Artists’ Lullaby”, followed by quotes from Muddy Waters and Henry James. That unique pairing kind of announces the poet’s playful nature. It is a beautiful love poem with the poetic voice addressing the artist lover on “the last day on earth.” The images are synaesthetic, commingling vision and hearing into a single soothing sense. Daley is one of those ecstatic poets, who work the border between the ordinary and the miraculous. Her poems plead and extol for us to see the magic all around us hiding in plain sight. In her poem, “Homecoming,” she begins with:

 

"What do you call it, at dusk, after a long day’s drive,

when you hurry your suitcase through the rain

and are pulled up short by thousands of fireflies in the yard,

gliding like gondolas among the glimmering drops?"

 

The poem uses the second person narration to make this OUR experience, and yes, we are all pulled up short by such moments. She goes on to spell out our obligation to live large and lean into it, to taste the sacred rain. 

 

I love the individual poems, but also how well they are stitched together to make a coherent chapbook. We find ourselves dancing naked in the rain in one poem, and naked in a laundromat in another. A bottle of glue in the first poem is sought after in another poem. Living under a piano shows up as the beginning of one poem, and is echoed in another. Then there is the overall shape of the narrative, with defiant joy at the beginning and the end, all wrapped around a deep dive into grief and loss in the heart of the book. As I get older, poetry sometimes makes me cry. One of Katie’s poems set the record for me, and had me weeping two words into the first stanza, after a long title: “His Mother Still Speaks in the Present Tense When She Speaks of Him.” The first two words? “Tamir Rice…” This is a fine little book that expands greatly when you open it up.

 

Cuyahoga Arts and Culture Informational Session and Q&A

Cuyahoga Arts and Culture announces a Zoom event that they say will aim "to increase understanding about [their grantmaking] process and broaden transparency." To register to attend, please click here.

10/28: Meet the authors of the Poem for Cleveland Anthology

Meet the authors of the Poem for Cleveland Anthology

Saturday, October 28

2:00pm - 4:00pm
South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch
Cuyahoga County Public Library
1876 South Green Road, South Euclid, Ohio 44121

Meeting Room A+B+C (120)

Join us to celebrate the publication of Poem for Cleveland, a new anthology written by over 100 youth and elder poets. Poets will be reading their poems from this second edition of the book.

The Poem for Cleveland project was a year-long series of workshops led by Ray McNiece, former Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate and Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award winner. The project culminated in the publication of the anthology by local publisher, Red Giant Press. Poem for Cleveland was made possible by the Academy of American Poets with funds from the Mellon Foundation.

McNiece worked with youth poets to present writing workshops for elder poets at various community venues, including the William N. Skirball Writers’ Center at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch. Each workshop included poetry prompts about Cleveland, including favorite places, people, family memories, and growing up a Clevelander.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.