Ray McNiece at
Sandusky's Mr. Smith's Coffeehouse
2:00 Saturday March 16th
Open-Mic to Follow
From our friends at Ohio Center for the Book:
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From our friends at Literary Cleveland:
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
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).
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Submit at https://forms.gle/1KNLbbgejYydC26L9.
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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.
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.
From our friends at Lit Youngstown:
The 7th annual Fall Literary Festival will feature Ross Gay, Jill Christman, Alison Stine, and the Craig Paulenich Endowed Lecture on Literary Community by Lit Cleveland Executive Director Matt Weinkam. This will be an incredible conference, with thanks to our sponsors the Centofanti Foundation, the Youngstown State University Center for Working-Class Studies, WYSU-FM, the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, Lake Erie Golf Cars, the Thomases Family Foundation, KO Consulting, the Grace Ruth Memorial Endowment, Ohio Humanities, the Wilkes University Master of Fine Arts, the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts, Eastern Gateway Community College, the Ohio Arts Council and the Youngstown Foundation.
Registration for daytime events is now closed. Please join us for the free evening readings! For more information including a full schedule of events, please visit https://www.lityoungstown.org/fall-literary-festival-2023.
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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.
The Ohio Poetry Day Association (OPDA) has selected Rikki Santer as its Ohio Poet of the Year for 2023. Santer was selected for her book of poems, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me (Materialist Press/Cereal Box Studio, 2023), a book-length sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.
A
resident of Columbus, Ohio, Santer has had published five full-length
poetry collections and six chapbook sequences exploring such topics as
the Hopewell earthworks of Newark, Ohio; the late Kahiki Supper Club of
Columbus, Ohio; the world of ventriloquism, the art of fashion, and the
classic television series Twilight Zone. She is a member of the
teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council, a vice president of the
Ohio Poetry Association, and a member of the poetry troupe, Concrete
Wink. Her poetry has been widely published and has received many honors
including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations as well as
a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more
at rikkisanter.com.
As an Ohio Poet of the Year, Santer joins the likes of Mary Oliver, David Baker, Kari Gunter-Seymour, and Maggie Smith. The complete list of previous Poet of the Year winners is below.
Santer will be featured at this year’s Ohio Poetry Day celebration, October 13–14. The event will feature a morning workshop, readings, and the keynote from Santer, who will read from her winning collection. See agenda details below.
Friday, October 13, 7–9 PM: Meet and greet with Santer and previous Poets of the Year, overnight poetry contest prompt.
Saturday, October 14, 10 AM–4 PM: Evan Lodge Workshop, reading by Rikki Santer, open mic featuring Ohio Poetry Day contest winners.
Where: Troy Hayner Cultural Center
301 W. Main St., Troy, Ohio 45373
troyhayner.org
[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
Mac's Backs is hosting a reading with poet David Adams and poet & publisher Larry Smith from Bottom Dog Press on Wednesday, September 13th at 7 pm. The evening will also be a tribute to the late poet Timothy Russell. Join us for this memorial and celebration of our country's best working-class poets...
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Join us as we dedicate the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Maj Ragain Poetry Park | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
When we make the poem, wood pulp paper, black spittle ink,we build a refuge for ourselves and others…It is respite, a temporary shelterwhere we may learn and listen to one another’s hearts.-Maj Ragain ’90 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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We hope you will join us to honor one of Kent State’s most beloved teachers and to celebrate his role as a cherished poet, a mentor and a distinguished alumnus and professor. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thursday, September 14 | 5 p.m.Wick Poetry Center126 S. Lincoln St., Kent, OH 44242 Free and open to all. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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As we continue to honor the gift of Maj's life, we invite you to an open poetry reading on the following day. We will gather at Last Exit Books and Coffeehouse to share a favorite poem by or about Maj. Friday, September 15 | 7 p.m.Last Exit Books and Coffeehouse124 E. Main St., Kent, OH 44242 No registration required. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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