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Join the Ohio Poetry Association on November 15th from 10 to 4:30 at the Cuyahoga County Public Library's South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch for an absolutely free Ohio Poetry Publishing Conference. Registration and more details at https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/13881294.
Get Sharp! will include an Ohio small press book fair and fab workshop presentations by Dianne Borsenik, Geoff Anderson, Michael Salinger, and Susan Grimm.
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See poets Dianne Borsenik, Jeremy Jusek and Alissa Sammarco on Saturday the 13th, 2 p.m. at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library.
Register at https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/10323147.
About the authors:
Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern and mid-Ohio poetry communities. Recent work has appeared in I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, Songs of Wild Ohio , and Poem for Cleveland. Raga for What Comes Next, a full-length collection of Borsenik’s poems, was studied as part of the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry course at Muskingum University. Flight of Honey, another full-length collection, was published in May, 2023. Actor Jonathan Frid used three of her poems in his one-man tour Genesis of Evil, Speak of the Devil (Lorain, Ohio) named a cocktail after her, and Lit Youngstown printed her poem “Disco” on their t-shirts, all of which makes her feel like a rock star. Borsenik lives in Elyria, Ohio. Find her on Facebook and at www.dianneborsenik.com.
Once when I was little and very frightened, I was handed a jar of
honey and a spoon. I closed my eyes and tasted beams of sun. Dianne
Borsenik’s Flight of Honey reveals the bitter
sweetness we discover in dark moments and closes its eyes to taste the
moments of love we return to comfort in. There’s a new discovery in each
taste from this collection. From the stark “Up the Mountain” through
the inquisitive romp of the title poem to the introspection of “Knotted
Together,” Borsenik sets us on a beeline path through her gracious mind
with all of the wry humor and thoughtfulness we expect from this poetic
trailblazer. In life, “blood doesn’t always call to blood” but this
collection, like honey, beads warm amber and asks you simply to slow and
savor.
—Jonie McIntire, Lucas County Poet Laureate, author of Semidomesticated (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), winner of Red Flag Poetry’s 2020 Chapbook Contest
Jeremy Jusek 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, The Less-Traveled Street, and The Details Will Be Gone Soon. 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.
The Details Will Be Gone Soon is a close investigation of the primordial underpinnings behind Alzheimer’s disease and the emotional wreckage left in its wake. This poetry collection follows the speaker and his grandmother, Nana, and the various memories shared between the two. At times, the collection seeks to illustrate the loose word associations, frustrations, and existential cloud cover that darkens dementia’s horizons. Other poems steer toward youth and hope, extolling love, lessons learned, and shared experiences. This dichotomy allows the collection to successfully walk that critical line that families of Alzheimer’s patients often experience: one that straddles between the unfairly diminished, barely-present caricature versus the vibrant, vigor-filled past-selves that close friends and family spent a lifetime loving.
Alissa Sammarco uses cinematic imagery to freeze those moments in time and evoke the feeling of revisiting them. She examines the common in life and relationships to find the extraordinary. Her work has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Black Moon Magazine, Change Seven, Quiet Diamonds, The Main Street Rag, Stone Canoe, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, Rat’s Ass Review, the 2021 and 2022 Lexington Poetry Month Anthologies, and elsewhere. She is the author of two chapbooks, Beyond the Dawn and I See Them Now. Alissa lives and practices law in Cincinnati, Ohio. www.AlissaSammarco.com.
Moon Landing Day navigates the trajectories of relationships blasted off course by miscalculations, unmet expectations, abuse, and addiction. In cinematic imagery, these poems reveal the difficult truths of a young woman, the harm that is passed from generation to generation, and the painful journey of acceptance to forgiveness. From the total loss of control to the emergent spark of self-awareness, this young woman grapples to break the pattern. She unravels her life and knits it back together in these poems. They will hold you in their grip and bring you in for a safe landing.
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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
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.
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Join us for a panel discussion, reception and Q&A with accomplished local poets, and spoken word performances.
Building on the successful "Let's Talk Art" panel session on race, culture and art in March 2023, Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL), the Museum of Creative Human Art (MOCHA), and Assembly for the Arts invite you to join us for a celebration of spoken word. Learn from the experiences and perspectives of our panelists - Honey Bell-Bey, Jennifer Coleman, Siaara Freeman, Calil Gage, Wesley (Wallstreet Wes) Robinson - in an engaging dialogue moderated by Deidre McPherson, Chief Community Officer for the Assembly for the Arts. Brief reception and spoken word performance immediately following.
Jennifer Coleman
Coleman is the Foundation’s program director for Creative Culture and Arts. Prior to joining the Foundation, Coleman, an architect, was president of her own design firm, Jennifer Coleman Creative. Earlier in her career, she practiced architecture at several local architecture firms. She also founded CityProwl.com, a company that produced audio walking tours of Cleveland that highlight the distinctive history and architecture of Cleveland. Among her many civic endeavors, Jennifer has served as chair of the Cleveland Landmarks Commission, the Downtown/Flats Design Review Committee and the Group Plan Commission. She also has been a member of the board of trustees of many local arts and cultural organizations. Coleman received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University.
Honey Bell-Bey holds a BA in Broadcast Production Technology from Bethune-Cookman University. A motivational poet, writer, educator and community advocate, Bell-Bey is an Ohio Certified Prevention Specialist and the founder and director for The International, Distinguished Gentlemen of Spoken Word, a character based performance troupe for adolescent males who perform on topics of disparities and social injustices. She has performed, directed, and choreographed Spoken Word performances internationally and has received numerous awards and accommodations for her service and activism utilizing poetry as a tool to unite communities around issues in social justice and equity. She was appointed the poet laureate of Cuyahoga County in January 2020, the first poet in sixteen years to hold the position.
Siaara Freeman
Siaara
is a 2023 Room in the House fellow with Karmau Theater and a 2022
Catapult fellow with Cleveland Public Theater. She is a 2021 Premier
Playwright fellow recipient withCleveland Public theater. She is a 2020
WateringHole Manuscript fellow, 2018 Poetry Foundation incubator fellow
and a four time nominee for the pushcart prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Josephine Quarterly, Cleveland Magazine
and elsewhere. She has had multiple poems go viral and has toured both
nationally and internationally. Her first full length manuscript Urbanshee
is available with Button Poetry and is a 2023 finalist for the Audre
Lorde Award as well as a 2023 Silver Award winner for the Benjamin
Franklin IPBA award for Poetry.
Calil Gage
Calil
“JUST C.O.S.” Cage is a poet, speaker, educator, and two-time author.
He is the founder of and currently serves as the Executive Director of
The Sparrow’s Fortune. Born in Chicago, and raised in Columbus, OH,
Calil currently resides in Cleveland, OH. He gained his Bachelor of
Science degree in Human Development and Family Studies at Kent State
University. Recently, he was awarded the Helping Hands Award by the
Cuyahoga County ADAMHS Board, because of the communal nature of his work
in the poetry world. His poetry and spoken word most often highlight
the Black community, trauma resilience, hope, healing, spiritual
principles, and more. “C.O.S.”, pronounced “cause”, stands for
Collection of Seeds. He sees his words as “just a collection of seeds”
planted into the hearts of those who listen. He hopes to continue
honoring this moniker and planting seeds of impact in every community he
visits.
Wesley (Wallstreet Wes) Robinson
Wesley Robinson was given the moniker, “Wallstreet” because of how he genuinely invests in the lives of others. At the age of 21 years old Wallstreet he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for two counts of aggravated robbery. A crime Wallstreet has taken full accountability for.
During his tenure in prison, Wes was often mentored by men serving life or more years than a man can live, who encouraged him to embrace his prison experience as a life lesson. With this knowledge, at the age of 24 years old Wallstreet began to pour that same wisdom onto the other young males who were serving long stints like him. After awhile the administration of the prison threatened to place Wes in solitary confinement if he kept on impacting the population in a positive way. These threats only encouraged him and led him to informally form an organization called “Digging Diamonds from Dirt”, where he educated himself and others on black history and poetry so that they could express themselves to elders who only judged them as wild and young instead of youth in need of guidance.
In 2012, Wallstreet Wes was transferred to a minimum level security prison where he was able to truly find himself creatively.
Deidre McPherson, Chief Community Officer at the Assembly for the Arts, is a creative producer and entrepreneurial strategist dedicated to bridging the gap between artists, communities, and institutions. Her passion for recognizing the creative talent in her community and connecting artists to the public through cultural events and opportunities has been at the core of her work. Her advocacy for Black and Brown and LGBTQ+ creatives enables her to be a prominent force in the collective shift towards equity in Northeast Ohio.
Over the years, Deidre has held leadership roles at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa). At both institutions, she was responsible for curating and managing events designed to make the museum a vibrant, socially relevant, and welcoming destination. Similarly, as Director of Artistic and Community Initiatives for FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, she introduced community engagement practices that focused on amplifying Black and Brown creatives. Through her consulting practice, she has worked on projects for clients including the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF), Studio West 117, Karamu House, Dance Cleveland and the Saint Luke’s Foundation. Deidre earned a Bachelor's degree from Miami University (with minors in Violin Performance and Arts Administration) and an MBA from the University of Maryland.
[Shared from the Literary Cleveland newsletter:]
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Thrity Umrigar & Karan Mahajan
Wednesday, October 4 at 7pm at CCPL Parma-Snow
Spoken Word: Poetry Open Mic Nights
Thursday, October 5 at 7pm at Kaiser Gallery
Saturday, October 7 at 4:30pm virtual with Ashland University
Sunday, October 8 at 10pm at Dunlaps Corner Bar
Indigenous People's Celebration
Monday, October 9 at 8pm virtual with Ashland University
Poetry ~ Cathy Barber & EF Schraeder
Wednesday, October 11 at 7pm at Macs Backs-Books on Coventry
Broadsides & Ephemera featuring Judith Mansour
Thursday, October 12 at 7pm at Loganberry Books
Saturday, October 14 at 7pm at Macs Backs-Books on Coventry
Please register here: https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/7644203.
Post your poem in the comments, and read what others post.
How to sign up for the daily poetry emails:
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Registered participants will also have the option of attending in-person at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch to watch the event on a large screen.
Please register here to attend.
Daily poetry delivered to you | |
In
celebration of National Poetry Month in April, we're bringing you READ +
WRITE: 30 Days of Poetry. Each day, we'll present the works of Ohio's
best poets, highlight poetry books and give you fun writing prompts to
spark your own inner poet! Subscribe to get READ + WRITE: 30 Days of
Poetry delivered to your inbox daily in April. | |
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The following is from our friends at the Cuyahoga County Public Library. For more information, visit https://case.edu/maltzcenter/upcoming-events/william-n-skirball-writers-center-stage.
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