extended hiatus

Due to expanded commitments to my small press, I've been forced to cut down on some other projects. I would be delighted if someone else came forward to carry on this blog. Meanwhile, I hope some of the links and contacts herein are of some use.

-RM

8/1/07

River Poets Planning Mtg: Bloomsburg: 8/28/07

The River Poets will hold their planning meeting at Panera on Tuesday, August 28 (dinner at 6:30, meeting at 7).

Butterfly Poetry Festival: Hazleton: 8/26/07

The 2007 Butterfly Poetry Festival will be held on Sunday, August 26 at the Hazleton Campus of Penn State University. This year's Festival is being sponsored by the Northeast Pennsylvania Alliance Against Homelessness.

The poetry festival will explore "portraits in visual and verbal forms." The event will consist of two sessions, one at 1:00 PM and the second at 3:00 PM, with an intermission and informal gathering between the two sessions. Poets are invited to share their "portrait poems" in the first session. The poets and audience will explore the concept of portraits as represented in words. There will be an open reading of "portrait poems" which will be limited only by time. Poets interested in participating are asked to contact Salvadore DeFazio, the festival's organizer, at 570-455-3963 before the event.

The second session will be introduced by Gary F. Clark, director of the Alliance Against Homelessness. Mr. Clark, a former professor of Art and Art History at Bloomsburg University, has focused his energies on photographing homeless people over the past few years. Since a recent interview by National Public Radio's Jennifer Ludden, Clark's Web page has had nearly one million visits. Viewers from around the world have responded and posted dozens of
comments concerning the photos. A presentation of photographs will be presented by Mr. Clark followed by a forum about the homeless. Insight into aspects of homelessness will be presented by a few experts in the field. The forum will then consider the amalgamation of poetry and photographs, the verbal and visual, to create a more comprehensive representation and understanding of the homeless. Gary Clark and Salvadore DeFazio will discuss their collaboration, and the hopes of expanding that collaboration among Pennsylvania's most influential poets.

Common Wealth Reading: DC: 8/6/07

Café Muse presents Barbara DeCesare, Joanne Growney, Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple.

The Word Works, in collaboration with Friendship Heights Village, presents at Café Muse on Monday, August 6, poets Barbara DeCesare, JoAnne Growney, Marjorie Maddox, and Jerry Wemple in a publications reading for COMMON WEALTH: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. Friendship Heights Village Center is located at 4433 South Park Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland. All Café Muse programs are free to the public and handicapped accessible. Café Muse opens at 7pm with refreshments and classical guitar music by Michael Davis; readings begin at 7:30.

BARBARA DECESARE is a 2003 Pushcart Prize nominee.
JOANNE GROWNEY’s chapbook, My Dance is Mathematics, was published in 2006 by Paper Kite Press.
MARJORIE MADDOX’s short story collection, What She Was Saying, was a finalist for the 2005 Katherine Anne Porter Book Award.
JERRY WEMPLE, co-editor of the Common Wealth anthology, is an associate professor of English at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Attending poets are invited to participate in an open reading that concludes the Café Muse program. A sign-up sheet will be available at 7:00 pm. The Word Works is a nonprofit literary organization publishing contemporary poetry in artistic editions and sponsoring public programs for more than 30 years.