June 20th, 2014: ERNEST HILBERT & NATE KOSTAR, featuring JUSTIN “J-BOOGIE” HATCHER.

POETDELPHIA PRESENTS: ERNEST HILBERT & NATE KOSTAR, featuring JUSTIN  “J-BOOGIE” HATCHER.

Celebrating Music and Meter in Poetry! Friday, June 20, 2014 at the PHILADELPHIA SKETCH CLUB, 235 South Camac St., Philadelphia, PA 19107. 5:00 – 7:00 pm. (Upstairs on the second floor.) Doors open at 5:00 for a meet and greet, with the reading to begin at 5:30. About this special event: From spoken word to libretti, from structured sonnets to free-styling, join poets who find innovative ways of infusing their work with ideas old and new. How does form and innovation shape their work? Music and poetry combine in this lively performance and Q & A. Join us in a new space, the lovely surrounds of the Philadelphia Sketch Club (this month, an art show that benefits Philadanco will be on display). Browse the art, hear good poems (and a little music) and peruse our journal swap (trade a literary journal or poetry book for another from our stash). The arts are alive and well and inspiring each other in Philly!

ERNEST HILBERT is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets (2009) and All of You on the Good Earth (2013), as well as the spoken word album Elegies & Laments (Pub Can Records, 2013). He supplies libretti and song texts for contemporary composers Stella Sung, Daniel Felsenfeld, and Christopher LaRosa, as well as scripts for the post-punk conceptual band Mercury Radio Theater. He works as an antiquarian and first edition bookseller for Bauman Rare Books and teaches a summer graduate course on the art of the opera libretto at Western State University of Colorado Master of Fine Arts in Poetry program.

NATHANIEL KOSTAR FEATURING JUSTIN “J-BOOGIE” HATCHER: Originally from New Jersey, Nathaniel Kostar now lives in New Orleans where he fronts a local hip-hop blues band and is an MFA candidate at The University of New Orleans. His work has appeared in The Legendary, Haggard & Halloo, Burlesque Press, The Litro and Buried Letter Press. A travel junky, Nathaniel has roamed to Argentina, South Korea, Thailand, Edinburgh, France, Italy, and Costa Rica. He is writing a book that details his journey to six different countries to study a different skill at each stop—an idea expected of Italian Renaissance Men. So far the project has taken him to Italy for Poetry, Thailand for Muay Thai, Paris for Art, New Orleans for Music, and Puerto Rico and Mexico for Salsa.

JUSTIN HATCHER hails from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He currently lives in New Orleans where he sings, plays guitar, bass, congas, and orcarina in the hip-hop blues band Tha Neighbors. According to Tha Neighbor’s frontman, “If a songbird and angel had a love child, his name would be Justin Hatcher.”

 

Leonard Gontarek Spotlights Philly Poets at Apiary

Friend of Poetdelphia, Leonard Gontarek, launches a new spotlight column on Philadelphia poets at Apiary. Check it out at http://apiarymagazine.com/philly-poetry-picks-leonard-gontarek/

Talking Ideas

Reason to hang out at the Poetdelphia salon #63: The pre- and post-reading conversations. This time around, there was talk about war poet Wilfred Owen with John Gery, director of the Ezra Pound seminar in Brunnenberg, Italy, and discussions about the Internet and the Dark Web with the Inky’s social media editor, John Timpane. Plus free whiskey!

March 2014

Poetdelphia: Terranova, Levin, Gery. March 14, 2014

We’re happy to announce Poetdelphia’s March 14th Reading and Salon line-up:

JOHN GERY, LYNN LEVIN & ELAINE TERRANOVA!

Time and Place: Friday, March 14th, 2014 6:30 – 8:00 pm at Cups &Chairs Tea Cafe, 701-03 S. 5th Street (just below 5th and South)

Books by the authors will be available for sale.
*********************************************

JOHN GERY is the author of seven volumes of poetry, as well as a wide range of criticism and translation. His latest collection, Have at You Now!, is available from CW Books (http://www.readcwbooks.com/gery.html). His previous books of poetry are Charlemagne: A Song of Gestures, The Enemies of Leisure, American Ghost: Selected Poems, Davenport’s Version, A Gallery of Ghosts, and Lure, as well as two chapbooks. His poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast Review, The Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, New South, Paris Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Southwest Review, West Branch, and elsewhere, as well as in Canada and Europe. Among his accolades are an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a Fullbright Fellowship. He has been translated into seven languages. A Research Professor of English and Seraphia D. Leyda Teaching Fellow at the University of New Orleans, he directs the Ezra Pound Center for Literature, Brunnenburg, Italy. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, poet Biljana Obradović, and their son, Petar Gery.

LYNN LEVIN is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Miss Plastique (http://www.raggedsky.com/miss-plastique), which has garnered rave reviews from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Rain Taxi, Rattle, The Rumpus, Cleaver, and other places. She is, with Valerie Fox, co-author of the craft-of-poetry textbook Poems for theWriting: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013) and translator from the Spanish of Birds on the Kiswar Tree (2Leaf Press, 2014), a collection of poems by the Peruvian poet Odi Gonzales. Lynn Levin teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Her poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Boulevard, Ploughshares, Hopkins Review, Cleaver, and Per Contra.

ELAINE TERRANOVA is the author of six collections of poems, most recently, Dollhouse, which won the Off the Grid Press 2013 poetry award, and Dames Rocket (http://www.penstrokepress.com/dames_rocket.php). Her work has appeared in a number of literary magazines including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, Per Contra, and Boulevard, and in anthologies such as Blood to Remember, Riffing on Strings, and A Cadence of Horses. Her translation of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis is part of the Penn Greek Drama Series. She has received the Walt Whitman Award, an NEA, a Pew Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize.

Here’s a link to one of Elaine’s poems: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20925

Groff, Parker, and Eckes on December 13th

We’re happy to announce Poetdelphia’s December 13th Reading and Salon line-up:

DAVID GROFF, RYAN ECKES & SUZANNE PARKER!

Time and Place:
Friday, December 13, 2013
6:30 – 8:00 pm
at Cups & Chairs Tea Cafe
701-03 S. 5th Street
(just below 5th and South)

DAVID GROFF is a poet, writer, independent book editor, literary scout, and teacher. His book of poems, Clay (Trio House Press, 2013) was chosen by Michael Waters as winner of the Louise Bogan Award. His previous collection, Theory of Devolution (University of Illinois Press, 2002) was selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle awards. He has co-edited two anthologies, Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, and Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS. He completed the book The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood for its author, the late Robin. David has received residencies from the Anderson Center, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Ragdale, the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. A graduate of Princeton and the Iowa Writers Workshop, he teaches in the M.F.A. creative writing program of the City College of New York.

RYAN ECKES lives in South Philadelphia. He’s the author of Old News (Furniture Press, 2011), Valu-Plus (forthcoming, Furniture Press, 2014), and other books. Recent work has appeared in The Rumpus,OnandOnScreen, GlitterPony, COYDUP, and Jupiter 88. He works as an adjunct at Temple University and Community College of Philadelphia. (Here’s Eckes’ recent poem in The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2012/03/into-a-film-a-rumpus-original-poem-by-ryan-eckes/)

SUZANNE PARKER is a winner of the Kinereth Gensler Book Award; her collection of poetry, Viral, was published by Alice James Books in Sept. 2013. Her poetry has appeared in Drunken Boat, Hunger Mountain, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Rattapallax, and numerous other journals, and she is a winner of the Alice M. Sellars Award from the Academy of American Poets and was a Poetry Fellow at the Prague Summer Seminars. Of Viral, poet Carol Muske-Dukes writes, “These are relentlessly tender, impossibly empathetic poems— which echo and clarify the body of grief— ‘…the need to pass/through the impassable and land/in a space I fill, exactly.’ The emotional tension is unbearable, but sustained, just as the human heart goes on, after unimaginable loss.”

Poetdelphia presents ROSEMURGY, LISICKY & LONG on Sept. 20, 2013!

Poetdelphia presents ROSEMURGY, LISICKY & LONG on Sept. 20, 2013!

Friday, September 20th, 2013

6:00 – 7:30 pm
Poetdelphia Reading & Salon
at Cups & Chairs Tea Cafe
701-03 S. 5th Street
(just below 5th and South)

Poetdelphia is an ongoing salon/quarterly reading series run by Valerie Fox, Dawn Manning & Kelly McQuain.  Poetdelphia provide a time and space for hearing great literature and fostering salon-style conversations.  Writers and readers tend to adjourn to New Wave Cafe afterward for a beer and more conversation.

CATIE ROSEMURGY’s most recent book, The Stranger Manual, was published by Graywolf Press. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Boston Review, American Poetry Review, and the Gettysburg Review.  Her awards include a Pew Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at The College of New Jersey.  Read some of Catie’s poems through the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

PAUL LISICKY’s books include Lawnboy, Famous Builder, The Burning House, and Unbuilt Projects. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Ploughshares, Tin House, Unstuck and other publications. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James/Michener Copernicus Society, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He teaches writing in the MFA Program at Rutgers-Camden and in the low residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College. A memoir, The Narrow Door, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.  Visit him at  paullisicky.com.

 

ALEXANDER LONG’s third book of poems, Still Life, won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 2011. His first two books are Vigil (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2006) and Light Here, Light There (C & R Press, 2009). With Christopher Buckley, Long is co-editor of A Condition of the Spirit: the Life & Work of Larry Levis (Eastern Washington University Press, 2004). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in, among others, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Callaloo, The Southern Review, and Third Coast. Long has received grants and fellowships from The Prague Summer Seminars, The Vermont Studio Center, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the City University of New York.  Currently an associate professor of English at John Jay College of the City University of New York, Long also plays bass and writes with the band Big Terrible.  Reviews of Still Life can be read at Philadelphia Stories and The Offending Adam

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays from Poetdelphia! Thank you to all our readers and attendees, and please join us again in the New Year. Look for news on our Facebook page (and please “like” us) and at http://www.Poetdelphia.wordpress.com.

December 2012 Poetdelphia Reading/Salon

Last night’s Poetdelphia Salon, featuring Mike Ingram, Kathleen Volk MIller, and Leonard Gontarek, was a fun mix of prose and poetry with a lively Q & A afterwards. Thanks to all our writer for joining us, and to the friends who came, many of whom kept the night going at the New Wave Cafe afterward. Here are some pics! –Kelly McQuain

Our first Poetdelphia poem by John Timpane!

Here is a preview from one of our readers at the upcoming inaugural POETDELPHIA reading. We hope you can make it! Details are on our Facebook page and under our main Poetdelphia page.

“Autumnals” by John Timpane

Autumnals

I

autumn bereaving

rainswept thrusts time in broken

sequence glittering

passages fall like whispers

destiny space dense beyond

(beyond dense space des

tiny whispers like fall pas

sages glittering

sequence broken in time thrusts

rainswept bereaving autumn)

II

October’s inner

weathers turn changes exchange

sufferings bright suf

ferings exchange changes turn

weathers inner Octobers

III

taste after summer

concentrate soilsalts rainsweets

tang tomatolin

gus tangsweets rainsalts soil con

centrate summer aftertaste

Introducing POETDELPHIA!

Introducing POETDELPHIA, a new community of writers that hosts quarterly readings near where Passyunk Avenue meets South Street. We have a blog at https://poetdelphia.wordpress.com/about/ . We are sponsoring our first reading this September. You can also learn more at http://www.facebook.com/Poetdelphia .   Poetdelphia is not just about poetry; it’s also about poetic prose! Check us out and welcome us to the Philadelphia writing world by clicking “Like”!