Special guest include Sonia Sanchez, Leonard Gontarek, Dan Simpson and Dave Simpson, and Philly’s First Poet Laureate, Siduri Beckman and finalist Jaya Montague, both chosen by Sonia Sanchez.

Again this year, we are privileged to present some of the finest poetry venues, magazines, and series in the area, including the Asian Arts Initiative/Family Style Open Mic, Panoramic Poetry Series & Uptown Panoramic Poetry, American Poetry Review, Musehouse:A Center for the Literary Arts, Philadelphia Stories, Poetry Aloud & Alive at Big Blue Marble, Green Line Poetry Series, Moonstone Art Center, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mad Poets Society & Mad Poets Review, Monday Poets Series, Apiary Magazine, Philadelphia Poets, PoetryWITS, Philadelphia Writers Conference, Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program, and others.

Twenty organizations will present poetry performances, as well as a representative who will give information about that particular group’s projects, literary magazines, or poetry programs.

There will be an area for the circulation of program brochures, flyers and information about dozens of Philadelphia poetry and writing outlets.Bring your favorite series’ information to share!

This is the area’s most comprehensive poetry event solely dedicated to celebrating Greater Philadelphia Poetry in all of its manifestations. Be there or be square!

For further information about this event, email Philapoetryfest@comcast.net ;for details and information as plans progress,check out our blog at http://phillypoetryfest.blogspot.com/

Below is the schedule for the event

Philadelphia Poetry Festival

saturday, april 27, 2013 – 11 AM – 4:30 PM

2013 Schedule

11:00 A.M. – WELCOME !

1ST SET * Hosted by JOANNE LEVA

* Featured Guest: Leonard GontareK

* Manayunk Roxborough Art Center/ Schuylkill Valley Journal (Peter Krok / Eileen Moeller)

*Philadelphia Stories (Courtney Bambrick / Blythe Davenport)

* Farley’s Bookstore -Poetry Series (Bernadette McBride/Lorraine Henrie Lins)

* Mad Poets Society/Mad Poets Review (Eileen D’Angelo / David Kozinski)

*Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program (Ethel Rackin / Glenn McLaughlin )

*NETWORKING BREAK ! 15 MIN.*

2ND SET * Hosted by GLENN McLAUGHLIN

* Moonstone Art Center (Larry Robin / Lester Mobley)

* Philadelphia Poets (Rosemary Cappello / Mel Brake)

* Big Blue Marble /Poetry Aloud & Alive (Mike Cohen / Dave Worrell)

* Asian Arts Initiative/Family Style Open Mic (Michelle Myers)

* Making Poems that Last Workshops (Leonard Gontarek / Phyllis Mass)

*NETWORKING BREAK ! 15 MIN.*

3RD SET * Hosted by DAVE WORRELL

* Featured Guests: DAVE SIMPSON & DAN SIMPSON

* Philadelphia Writers Conference (TO BE ANNOUNCED )

*Painted Bride Quarterly (Kathleen Volk Miller)

*Musehouse: A Literary Arts Center (Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno)

* American Poetry Review (David Bonanno)

* PoetryWITS ( Cleveland Wall)

*NETWORKING BREAK ! 15 MIN.*

4th SET * Hosted by HAYDEN SAUNIER

* Kelly Writers House/Penn Campus (TENTATIVE ! Jessica Lowenthal, Director)

* Panoramic Poetry Series / and Uptown Panoramic Poetry Series (Crucial)

* Green Line Poetry Series (Leonard Gontarek / Charles Carr)

* Monday Poets Series (Kay Wisniewski/Lamont Dixon, Host )

* Apiary (Amelia Longo / Warren Longmire)

* Featured Guest: Sonia Sanchez and Philadelphia ‘s First Student Poet Laureate: SIDURI BECKMAN and Finalist: JAYA MONTAGUE

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!

Participants in the Mad Poets’ Critique Circle will stop critiquing and just read! The poets include: Joe Cillufo, Sibelan Forrester, Missy Grotz, David Kozinski, Amy Laub, Joyce Meyers, Charlie Randall, and Tim Wade. (Check out their bios below.)

Come listen as these talented, hard working poets share their work. The featured reading will be followed by an open, so bring yours or your favorite poet’s work to share.

WHEN? Wednesday, March 6th at 7p
WHERE? Community Art Center, Main Gallery
414 Plush Mill Road, Wallingford, PA 19086
610-566-1713 / www.communityartcenter.org

NEED MORE INFO? email info@madpoetssociety.com

ABOUT THE POETS

Joe Cilluffo is a practicing attorney who spends his free time writing, weeding his vegetable garden and playing with his three children. He recently was selected as a Finalist in Tiferet Journal’s 2012 Poetry Contest, and Joe’s poems have also appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Apiary, The New Purlieu Review and Adanna Literary Journal. Joe has read his work at venues across the Philadelphia area, including as a featured reader at the Moveable Beats Reading Series in Center City, the Philadelphia Poets Ethnic Voices series, and at the Manayunk-Roxborough Arts Center inaugural ekphrastic poetry exhibit.

Sibelan Forrester has published a number of poetic translations from Croatian and Russian, and she received the 2006 Heldt Prize for her translation of Dubravka Oraić-Tolić’s “American Scream” (from Croatian). She has published less of her own poetry. In her day job, she teaches Russian language and literature at Swarthmore College.

Missy Grotz is a member of the Wild Women Poets and The Round Robin Poets, and has had the pleasure of reading at many venues around the Philadelphia area. A series of children’s books known as the Aunt Missy Books, inspired by her 14 nieces and nephews, is in the works. She has a collection of cat poetry entitled Cat Chat that will be out one day soon.

David P. Kozinski was the featured poet in the Spring 2012 issue of Schuylkill Valley Journal. He won the 7th annual Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, which included publication of his chapbook, Loopholes. More than 100 of his poems have appeared in Apiary, The Broadkill Review, Confrontation, Fox Chase Review, glimmertrain.com., Mad Poets Review, and Margie, among others. Kozinski has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice.

Amy Laub has been a member of the Mad Poets Critique Circle since April 2003, and has been hosting it since Sept 2003. Her poems contain news and gossip about everyday events and the people in her life. She swims laps and works full time as a secretary for a public school district.

Joyce Meyers practiced law in Philadelphia for almost three decades. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, The Ledge, Slant, Iodine Poetry Journal, The Great American Poetry Show, and Common Ground Review, among others. She was awarded publication prizes in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and second prize in The Ledge 2011 Poetry Contest. She has two chapbooks, Wild Mushrooms (Plan B Press, 2007) and Shapes of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2010).

Charlie Randall writes of himself, “My Grandmother was a musician & piano teacher. My dad, the physics prof, & I, in geology, rankled at her left-brain perspective. Now I’m glad I inherited a few of her genes which I continue to explore.”

Timothy Wade is a lifelong resident of Upper Darby and a staff chemist at Drexel University. He has been married for 33 years to his muse who endures his unending one liners with long-suffering grace. He is also an avid but unskillful trail runner. Don’t ask him what hurts.

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.

Dear Poets wearing corduroy pants (or not, as several of you rushed to advise me),

I am cancelling Wednesday night’s MPS Critique Circle.

Today’s weather forecast says the snow will begin at 6:00 pm tomorrow, which means things could get slippery by 9:00 or 9:30 pm when we would normally wrap up.  I don’t want anyone to have an accident, or near-accident, or stress out and worry about black ice and driving in crummy weather in the dark.

Stay home.  Stay safe.  Write more poems.   Make fun of me for being a weather wimp. Throw darts at my photo.

Warm regards and whipped cream for your cocoa,

Amy

Mad Poets business meetings are on hold while we look for a permanent spot to host them. Please disregard the previously advertised monthly schedule. We will post the location & dates here on the website as soon as possible.

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 info@madpoetssociety.com.

What’s that? info@madpoetssociety.com.

Did you say info@madpoetssociety.com? Yes, yes I did.

So, can you give me that email address one more time? Sure can: info@madpoetssociety.com.

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.

Louis McKee, 1951-2011

Last November, the poetry world — the Philadelphia poetry world in particular — lost an important man: Louis McKee passed away at the age of 60. McKee was a long-time Mad Poet. Over the years, he was a featured reader, workshop leader, contest judge, and all-around friend. He is missed. He is deeply missed.

This Sunday, the Mad Poets will celebrate Lou — his life, his work, and his friendship — at the Mansion Parlor in Media Borough Hall. Close friends will share memories of Lou and read from his work. All are invited to attend and speak. Even those who may not have known Lou well, have felt his influence on poetry here in Philadelphia, and we all feel his absence. We hope that you will join us.

Here’s a little more about the featured readers.

Janet Spangler, poet

Janet Spangler grew up in Washington, DC, but later kept on the move, living in California, Connecticut, New York, Arizona, New Mexico, Turkey, and Mexico.  Along the way  she has been a reporter/photographer for the “Albuquerque News,” taught English as a Second Language in Turkey, and co-authored a fund-raising textbook.  She finally made it to Philadelphia and began writing poetry.  She has been a featured reader at Robin’s (now Moonstone Arts Center), the Tyme Gallery, Harvest Books, the Green Line series, and others.

Christine Weiser, novelist

Christine Weiser is a professional writer and editor, and co-publisher of the literary magazine Philadelphia Stories (founded in 2004). She is co-author of Ask Mr. Technology, Get Answers (Linworth 2007), and is managing editor for Tech & Learning magazine. She was the bass player for Philly girl band Mae Pang; and her current band, The Tights, can be heard in clubs in and around the Philadelphia area. Broad Street is her first novel.