A Night of Poetry with Ellen Steinbaum

Trident Books is pleased to welcome Ellen Steinbaum reading from her new book of poetry, Brightness Falls. She will be joined by local poets Wendy Mnookin and Andrew K. Peterson.

About the Speakers:

Ellen Steinbaum is the author of three poetry collections, “Afterwords,” “Container Gardening,” and “Brightness Falls.” Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is included in Garrison Keillor’s “Good Poems, American Places” and “The Widows’ Handbook.” An award-winning journalist and former literary columnist for The Boston Globe, she writes a blog, “Reading and Writing and the Occasional Recipe,” which can be seen at her web site. 

Dinner with Emerson, Wendy Mnookin’s fifth book of poetry, was published by Tiger Bark Press in March 2016. She has taught poetry at Emerson College, Boston College, Grub Street, and at various summer writing programs. Widely published in anthologies and journals, Wendy’s work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and on Poetry Daily. Additionally, She has received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and a book award from the New England Poetry Club. You can find out more about her writing at wendymnookin.com.

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Anonymous Bouquet (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2015). His chapbook bonjour meriwether and the rabid maps (Fact-Simile Press, 2010) appeared in an exhibition of poets’ maps at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center; his writing has also been featured in The Earth Archive exhibit at RISD Museum, and Emergency Index 2012, Ugly Duckling Presse’s performance-based anthology. He edits the online lit journal Summer Stock, and lives in Boston.


30th Joiner Institute Writers’ Workshop Poetry and Music Celebration

Join the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences based at UMass Boston for a night of music and poetry celebrating the 30th year of our annual Writers Workshop and its community and creative response to war.  Featuring poetry readings by Yusef Komunyakaa, Kevin Bowen, Nguyen Ba Chung, and more TBA.

Live music performed by Layth Sadiq, the UMB Jazz Trio, and more TBA.

Hosted by the Boston Public Library, this event is not ticketed.


Poet EZRA DAN FELDMAN presents Habitat of Stones

Porter Square Books welcomes poet EZRA DAN FELDMAN as he reads from his poetry collection Habitat of Stones.

FELDMAN’s poetry collection is tied together by a certain “arrogant man.”  This recurrent theme throughout the collection also bumps up against notions of the body: its finitude, its mortality and the struggles and regret of intimate relationships.

“Exposing patriarchal and capitalistic practices that often cripple society, Ezra Dan Feldman’s Habitat of Stones reveals the symptoms of living in a post-industrial and illusional, high-tech world: ‘He’s taken the world for a machine, a baby for a doll, a gun for a candy bar, which he offered to everyone…” –Mark Irwin

This event is not ticketed.

 


Porter Square Books: Late Night Poetry Lab

Join Porter Square Books at Aeronaut Brewing on the Duck Village Stage for an exploration of poetry that push boundaries of poetry and poetic performance.  The July 19 performance will be “Take This Cup from Me.”

“Take This Cup from Me” will present multiple translations, interpretations, and reactions to Cesar Vallejo’s poem of the Spanish Civil War, “Spain, Take This Cup from Me”.  Literature can both show us how we are all connected by our fundamental humanity an  the vast diversity of human expression.  This performance engages with the threads that unite us all and the menageries of expression that reveal our potential to converse with art and literature’s long struggle for justice and create of an object of our own resistance.

This event will take place at Aeronaut Brewing in Somerville.


Poet SIMONE JOHN launches collection: Testify, joined by poet KRYSTEN HILL

Porter Square Books welcomes SIMONE JOHN with local poet KRYSTEN HILL as JOHN launches her first full-length poetry collection: Testify.

JOHN’s first full-length book of poems experiments with documentary poetics to uplift stories of black people impacted by state-sanctioned violence.  Testify is ultimately a book of witness. It “burdens” its readers “with knowing.” Combined, both chapters serve as an unflinching critique of race and gender supremacy in the United States.

This event is not ticketed.

 


The Launch of City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems

Boston’s Poet Laureate DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES celebrates the release of “City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems,” with a public reading in the Courtyard of the Central Branch of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square.  Welcoming remarks by City of Boston’s Chief of Arts and Culture Julie Burros at 6 pm.

City of Notions” is a collection that salutes aspects of everyday life in Boston. Nearly sixty poets contributed to the anthology and run the spectrum from up-to-now unpublished authors to the former U.S. Poets laureate, all contributing a taste of their personal versions of Boston.

Some contributors include Robert Pinsky, Mary Oliver, Margaret Atwood, Gail Mazur, Nick Flynn, Steph Burt, and Julia Alvarez.

This event is free, but you can to register here.


Award-winning poet FRANK BIDART reads Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

Harvard Book Store welcomes Wellesley College professor and award-winning poet FRANK BIDART—author of DesireStar DustWatching the Spring Festival, and Metaphysical Dog—for a reading from his latest poetry collection, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016.

Gathered together, the poems of FRANK BIDART perform one of the most remarkable transmutations of the body into language in contemporary literature. His pages represent the human voice in all its extreme registers, whether it’s that of the child-murderer Herbert White, the obsessive anorexic Ellen West, the tormented genius Vaslav Nijinsky, or the poet’s own. And in that embodiment is a transgressive empathy, one that recognizes our wild appetites, the monsters, the misfits, the misunderstood among us and inside us.

This book will be for sale at the event for 20% off.  There will also be a signing after the event.

No tickets required for entry.


Local poets at Brookline Booksmith

Join three local poets for an evening of reading and discussion at Brookline Booksmith.

In ZVI SESLING’s Fire Tongue, the poems are precise and unsparing as they probe old questions of how and why the unspeakable enters our lives. In terse, suspenseful language and lines that are as light as their subjects they carry are heavy, indeed ominous, Sesling looks for hope, for what can redeem us. The poet finds the answer in our ability to listen, to feel, to own a conscience, and to value life.

GLORIA MINDOCK’s Whiteness of Bone pits hope and peace against oppression and death. MINDOCK gathers the eye witness accounts of the voiceless, the unheard, and crafts a voice in their stead. From El Salvador to Rwanda, Darfur to the Congo, mass graves and war crimes deafen and suffocate.  When such darkness goes ignored, the gaping maw of the abyss grows ever larger still.

LEN KRISAK’s Afterimage is a masterfully-crafted collection of poems in which we see the persistence of history into the present — the ancient market under the polish of urban architecture, the thrum of Roman crowds amid present-day Boston. Horace and Ovid exist alongside Jeopardy! and Clark Kent. Whether in a grand, public mode or quietly elegiac and personal, the poems record our contemporary life, often noting the images from such a distant and literary past strikingly alive in the present.

This event is free and open to the public.  Copies of these books are currently for sale at Brookline Booksmith.


Poetry Heat Wave! The 2017 Boston Poetry Marathon

The Boston Heat Wave Poetry Marathon is an annual weekend long poetry marathon– lasting from August 18 through August 20– at Outpost 186 in Inman Square.  Starting on Friday, poets are scheduled to read from 7pm through 10:30pm, Saturday from 12pm to 5:30pm and again from 7pm to 10:30pm, then finally Sunday from 12pm to 5:30pm. Each poet reads for 8 minutes. This event is free and open to the public.

Friday night’s line-up:

7:00 William Walsh
7:08 Jon Woodward
7:16 Christie Towers
7:24 Kenyatta JP Garcia
7:32 Jim Dunn
7:40 Jean Dany Joachim

Break

7:50 Cheryl Clark Vermeulen
7:58 Ryan DiPetta
8:06 Jess Mynes
8:14 Jessica Bozek
8:22 Randolph Pfaff
8:30 Christina Davis

Break

8:42 Stephanie Taylor
8:50 Karen Locascio
8:58 Kevin Gallagher
9:06 Judson Evans
9:14 Jordan Davis
9:22 Carla Schwartz
9:30 Alifair Skebe

Break

9:40 Paige Taggart
9:48 David Rivard
9:56 Simeon Berry
10:04 Sampson Starkweather
10:12 Darcie Denningan
10:20 Joe Elliot
10:28 David Blair

end of night

 

 


The Favorite Poem Project Reading at Boston University

Boston University invites you to join The Favorite Poem Project and the BU Arts Initiative for a reading at Boston University’s Tsai Center. This event will feature some of Boston’s leading public figures all reading poems they love. Readers include elected officials, scientists, community activists, sports and media figures, artists, and entrepreneurs.

This event is free and open to the public.