Congratulations to three Mad Poets on their awards in the annual Charlotte Miller Simon Poetry Contest given by the Ardmore Library.
Joseph Dorazio won first prize and both Linda M. Fischer and Amy E. Laub received honorable mentions. The winners will be reading their poems at the awards ceremony tomorrow, Sunday, March 17, at 2:00 p.m. in the Lower Merion Township Bldg., 75 East Lancaster Ave., Ardmore.
Come one, come all!
Don’t look now — but the Holy Day is comin’ !! Everyone’s Irish on St. Paddy’s Day !
Long-time Mad Poet Linda M. Fischer has a new chapbook GLORY coming out on June 1.
Right now is the advance sales period which will determine the size of the press
run. So make your order before April 12—and save on shipping costs!
To enter Linda Fischer’s Glory is to live for a magical time among resplendent
gardens where the rhythms of the natural world reveal to us our own life-rhythms
and put us deeply in touch with our intuitive and essential selves. These are
beautifully crafted poems, sometimes elegiac, sometimes celebratory, that
enlarge our sense of connection to the earth and to each other, glorying in all that
we are, and all that we are not but might become.~Gregory Djanikian, author of So I Will Till the Ground, Years Later, and Falling
Deeply into America
__________
To order: send a check or money order directly to Finishing Line Press, P.O. Box
1626, Georgetown, KY 40324 or go online at www.finishinglinepress.com (click on
Bookstore, Preorder Forthcoming Titles link, and scroll down the list of authors).
GLORY will ship on June 1.
Here it is: [email protected]
Okay, now that the most important info is out of the way. Let us take a moment to apologize. If you’ve sent an email to the Mad Poets Society in the past few months and haven’t heard from us, we want to let you know we haven’t been ignoring you — at least not intentionally. Unfortunately, our previous comcast.net email account got so overwhelmed by messages that we can no longer even open it.
No fear. You can still reach us. You just need to update your address book. Our new email address is [email protected]
What’s that? [email protected]
Did you say [email protected]? Yes, yes I did.
So, can you give me that email address one more time? Sure can: [email protected]
And, seriously, we are *really* sorry about the messages we’ve missed. It’s been a bit of a headache to untangle, but we think we’ve got it under control. As you know, we’re all volunteers around here: working full-time jobs, raising families, participating in the community, and being the maddest Mad Poets we can be. So, please, if you’ve been trying to reach us and you’re a little (or more than a little) pissed, please, go easy on us.
Last November, the poetry world lost an important man: Louis McKee passed away at the age of 60. McKee was a long-time Mad Poet, and this Sunday, we will celebrate Lou — his life, his work, and his friendship — at the Mansion Parlor in Media Borough Hall.
Read more →Yeah yeah yeah, I know. It’s almost March… well, we’re poets over here & we don’t necessarily subscribe to you’re “calendar.” We don’t feel a need to follow linear time in order to make meaning of our lives. We prefer chaos to order…
…okay we may not prefer it, but chaos seems to prevail much of the time.
However, with hard work, dedication & support groups (we call them poetry readings) we are working through our perpetual procrastination and behind-the-eight-ball-ness.
And speaking of poetry readings (nice segue, right?), we’ve finally gotten around to updating the reading series pages on the main site. Word. There are still a lot of holes, but we’re fleshing it out. Literally, we’re lining up all the warm bodies we can find to give featured readings at the Big Blue Marble in Mt. Airy, Milkboy in Bryn Mawr, Churchill in Pottstown, and the Madness series.
Check it out. And hope to see you at a reading soon.
…Elliot Levy, senior at Harriton High School (yes, you read that right: high school), has won the open mic contest at Milkboy Acoustic Cafe in Bryn Mawr.
Elliot Levy, winner of the Milkboy open mic contest
Elliot is a senior at Harriton High School. He has been writing poetry since his Junior year and started performing at open mics during the beginning of this year. He co-founded the Harriton Poetry Club and hopes to compete in the Brave New Voices national competition this summer. Besides writing poetry, Elliot plays football and wrestles for his high school team. He has two supportive parents and a cat named Winston who inspires him daily.
Elliot will be featured in the November reading, next week, alongside Milkboy regular Joe Roarty. In the end, it was a close contest. Our runners up were Betti Kahn and, just one vote behind, Howard Lieberman. I expect we’ll be hearing more from these poets in next years open mics!
Congratulations to Elliot! And thanks to everyone who came out & read in the Milkboy open mic this year. It is because of you that this series is so awesome each and every month. I can’t wait to see everyone next week for our last reading of the year: Thursday November 11, 7pm. Be there!!
Sorry for the late notice, but the reading schedule for tonight at Churchill’s in Pottstown has been postponed until next week, October 16th. So, don’t go to Churchill’s tonight — at least not for poetry. If you’re in the area & you’re looking for some tasty pastries, Churchill’s is your place. But if you’re looking for poetry, featuring Aaren Perry and Therese Halscheid, you’ve got to come back next Saturday October 16th at 7pm. Turns out both of these poets are involved in the Dodge Poetry Festival (which is happening as I type in Newark, NJ) and we all failed to notice the conflict until earlier this week.
So, at the risk of being exceedingly redundant: that’s next Saturday, October 16th, Otherwise Poetry at Churchill, featuring the amazing poets Aaren Perry & Therese Halscheid. Not only that, this reading is the last chance to participate in the Mad Poets Open Mic Contest at Churchill.
In case you need some more convincing, here are the readers’ bios:
Aaren Perry, poet
Aaren Perry has performed his work at venues from the Nuyorican to the Kimmel Center to the World Cafe. He has taught writing workshops at schools and colleges on the East Coast and in the Midwest for over 20 years. Perry is published in local and national literary journals and has appeared on National Public Radio and on regional television broadcasts. He produced and directed a long-running cable poetry show on DUTV. Bilingual and holding an MFA from Vermont College, he received a PA Council on the Arts Grant. Aaren is an Organizational Development consultant with Team Builders Plus. His books OPEN FIRE (Whirlwind Press, 2004), POETRY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM: An Action Guide for Elementary Teachers (Pearson, 1997), as well as his spokenword CD, MERCURY CALLING (MelodyVision, 2000) are available at bookstores and by emailing ayperry [at] aol [dot] com.
Therese Halscheid, poet
Therése Halscheid is author of three poetry collections: Powertalk (1995), Without Home (Kells, 2001) and Uncommon Geography (Carpenter Gothic, 2006). Uncommon Geography received a 2007 Finalist Award from the Paterson Poetry Book Prize. She also won a chapbook award by Pudding House Publications, as part of their 2007 Greatest Hits series. Like record albums, Greatest Hits is a collection of twelve poems spanning the writing life of the poet, prefaced with a narrative that weaves the poet’s life with the body of work. She was awarded a 2003 Fellowship for poetry from NJ State Council on the Arts, and has received awards from literary journals, as well as a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center. Her writings, both poetry and prose, have appeared in numerous magazines. Since 1998, she has been a visiting writer in schools for NJ State Council on the Arts and teaches writing courses in varied settings, including Atlantic Cape Community College and Rutgers University in NJ. As well as writing experiences in the States, she has taught in England and Russia. In 1998, she led a group of women writers to South Africa to meet South African writers. 1995, she was an Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park, ME. For the past decade, the author has been house-sitting, while traveling widely to write. This mobility, along with simple living, has helped her to sustain her writing life. Many poems chronicle travels across varied terrain. She photographs her travels, and her one woman exhibition of poetry and photography, Visual Diaries, has shown in galleries. See her website: ThereseHalscheid.com to view features, reviews of her books, resume, contact information, photography, poems.
Downer of the week:
Tonight’s Mad Poets Critique Circle, facilitated by the illustrious Amy Laub, at the Coffee Club in Media, PA is cancelled. Boo!
We’ll see you next month (Wed, Oct 13th). Bring 10 copies of your poems and a supportive, creative spirit open to sharing, learning and growing as a poet.
Though we took a little blogging hiatus over the summer, the Mad Poets reading action didn’t rest. At least not at Milkboy. Though we encountered some unexpected audio challenges, we powered through them — seriously you people can project & I’m very proud of you — and we’re looking forward to another great mixed-genre reading this week.
Of course we’ve had wonderful & accomplished featured readers at Milkboy, but the real heat this summer was in our Open Mic Contest — which continues to prove that in poetry nothing is predictable!
After 6 months of readings, here’s how it stands:
In 3rd place, with 9 votes a piece, we have a tie between long-time Mad Poets and Milkboy diehards Steve Delia & Betti Kahn.
In 2nd place, with 10 votes, is Howard Lieberman, who was new to this series at the beginning of 2010, but quickly became a devoted regular.
And finally, Elliot “the kid” Levy (as he was affectionately dubbed by one of his fans last month) sits comfortably in 1st place with 15 total votes. Here’s the kicker: Elliot has amassed this substantial lead with only two appearances in our open mic. TWO. That’s it. Both times he stole the show, or at least he stole all the votes. The trouble is I don’t have a slightest idea how to find this prodigy. Not a phone number, not an email. Perhaps there’s a bat signal I can shine into the night sky. But if there is, I don’t know it. So Elliot, if you’re out there googling yourself & you’ve come across this desperate plea, please get in touch because there’s a very good chance you’ll be winning a featured reading.
Then again, as the Elliot story proves, anything can happen with a good poem and a microphone. We’ve still got 2 more months of readings before this thing is locked up. So those of you who still want your shot, persevere. Bring it. We’ll see ya Thursday.