The Mad Poets Blog

 Otherwise - Poetry at Churchill welcomes
Joanne Leva and Deidra Greenleaf Allan as featured poets

September 13th, at 7 PM Glenn McLaughlin will host this Mad Poets Society event atChurchill, Arisan Baker and Chocolatier, featuring The Johnson Kitchen

Tel. : 484.941.5100

Joanne Leva created the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program, which she has produced for the past ten years. The competition, its related readings, and poetry event (featuring a celebrity poet with a national reputation), comes to it’s successful fruition in April, National Poetry Month.  Go to www.montcopoet.com for more information. As an active poet herself, Joanne has been writing and performing her original poetry since 1991. She has also organized poetry readings at Headhouse Squarefor Earth Day, the Seven Arts Fest on South Street , the Theater of Living Arts (TLA), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Joanne received her BFA in Graphic Design from Arcadia
University (formerly Beaver College) and is in the process of earning her MS in Biomedical writing from The University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (USP).

Deidra Greenleaf Allan’s poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Miscellany, Puerto del Sol, West Branch, Wind Magazine and other printed and online journals.  In 1997, she returned to poetry after more than 20 years of focusing on her professional career in communications.  She took a haitus from work in 2000 to attend the MFA program at Vermont College where she studied with Richard Jackson, Betsy Sholl, Bill Olsen and Roger Weingarten.  She was selected as Montgomery County Poet Laureate in 2001 by Robert Hass.  She received a Leeway emerging Artist Award and was a finalist for the Pew Fellowship in Poetry in 2002.