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!
This Thursday, the Mad Poets is delighted — dare I say giddy! — to host the Round Robin poets at Milkboy in Bryn Mawr. The group, which include Mike Cohen, Steve Delia, Missy Grotz, and Barbara Wagner, will offer a dynamic, coordinated reading, featuring works that the poets have helped each other craft and refine throughout their 10 years together.
But this isn’t just a rare reading from the Round Robin poets. This is a farewell party for one of the group’s members: long-time Mad Poet, Byrn Mawr regular, and all around spunky poet, Barbara Wagner, who will soon be moving to sunny Florida. If you’ve heard Barbara read before, then you know why it’s important to catch one last reading before she goes. If you haven’t, you’ll be glad you got to meet her before the chance is gone.
The reading will begin PROMPTLY at 7pm, followed by an open mic.
Here’s a little bit more about Barbara Wagner & the other Round Robin poets:
The Round Robin Poets (l-r): Mike Cohen, Barbara Wagner, Steve Delia, and Missy Grotz
The Round Robin began over a decade ago, when a young Steve Delia suggested that some of the poets might help each other with new poems or revising old ones by critiquing works in progress, by mail. Â His idea was to have each member critique the poems that others had sent and then add a new poem to be critiqued on each round. The group began with five people, each would critique four poems, add his/her own, and eventually get their poem from the previous round and the 4 critiques of it. Â Of course with the proliferation of electronic communication, the temptation to succumb to the efficiencies of email was great, but thanks to Steve’s leadership the poets were able to resist, and maintain the Round Robin in its pristine, snail-mail state. Â Says Mike Cohen: “There is something about receiving a packet in the mail and having actual pages, to curl up and spend happy hours with those pages of thoughts from thoughtful, inspiring friends.” The fact that the Round Robin has been sustained for so long is testament to the pertinacity of the participants and to the reliability of the postal service. Â In all this time, they’ve not had an incident of anything “lost in the mail”; Â Postal workers may occasionally go on shooting rampages, but overall they do a very good job. The poets have also done a good job, and they have had no incidents of any of the members going on a shooting rampage… yet.
Those members are…
Mike Cohen: A person who appreciates poetry, art, and other dreams, Mike enjoys sharing perspectives on matters that matter and matters that don’t and how remarkably interchangeable the two types of matters are. Mike’s poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Fox Chase Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and the Philadelphia Daily News. His poetic presentations have been featured in programs at various schools, bookstores, coffee shops, and libraries. His poems have been aired on SKN radio. Mike has served as a judge in the Montgomery County Poet Laureate competition. Currently, Mike hosts Poetry Aloud and Alive, a popular monthly poetry program in its fifth year at Mt. Airy’s Big Blue Marble Book Store. He takes part in guiding tours at Woodmere Art Museum.  His articles on Philadelphia sculpture appear in the Schuylkill Valley Journal in which he is a contributing editor.
Steve Delia has been crumpling balls of paper for 33 years. The ones he keeps he calls poetry. His first love was music but he had zero musical talent. He tried writing song lyrics and gradually drifted into poetry. He has 5 chapbooks: Revisited, Revised and Retyped Volumes 1 and 2, 1622 Church Street, Haiku And Other Imagining and Zoo Poetry. He enjoys collecting cd’s, eating scrapple by candlelight, and playing naked twister.He dislikes heights, shoveling snow, being diabetic, and all feet including his own.
Missy Grotz has followed a gypsy’s jaunt, including education at Penn State and a myriad of careers.  Her poetry has been published in the Mad Poets Review and Dining and Entertainment Weekly. Missy 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.
Barbara Wagner has performed her poetry and fiction throughout the Philadelphia and New Jersey area, including the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and the televised Café Improv program in Princeton, NJ.  Her work has appeared in several literary publications as well as on the internet, most recently Poets for Living Waters, created in response to the Gulf oil spill. Her children’s story The Giggling Ghost is featured on Smories.com. Her poetry awards include the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference.  In addition to poetry, she writes fiction and has recently completed her second novel.
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As always, the featured reading will be followed by a mixed-genre open mic. We’re just halfway through our annual open mic contest — which means there’s still plenty of time to snag enough votes to win a featured reading slot in December. So come on out! Bring your open ears, your open mind & your best poems!
Thursday! Thursday! Thursday! Join the Mad Poets for some sweet mixed genre action at Milkboy Acoustic Cafe in Bryn Mawr. This month we’ve got two poets & a novelist/essayist. Of course, we’ve also got our always exciting open mic, including the ongoing open mic contest where you can for a featured spot on this year’s schedule.
The really big news, however, concerns all of you (like me) who operate on poet time: We will be starting ON TIME. That’s right. Our schedule says 7pm, and we plan to have that ball a-rolling by 7:05p… okay, maybe 7:07p if that line for lattes is extra long. And here’s why. Our gracious hosts at Milkboy are holding steadfast to a 9pm closing time, and we as their grateful guests must abide. So, get there early. If you’re worried about dinner, don’t. Milkboy has some good grub — sandwiches, snacks, sweets, etc. Besides, you won’t want to miss a minute of this reading!
J.R. Bouchard is originally from upstate New York. After living in both Portland, Oregon and Philadelphia for academics, she is re-locating to Dallas, Texas and hopes to have a life long affair with academia. She just completed her MFA at Rosemont College, and is shopping around her thesis project, a full length collection of poems, called “The Body’s Discourse, Etc.” Â Her work can be found in journals: Camroc Review, The Foundling Review, Mad Poets Review, The Promethean, Adirondack Review, Melee Live, WordRiot, and pieces forthcoming with Cantalonian Review.
Writer & teacher, Matt Jordan
Matthew Jordan teaches English and Writing at Holy Ghost Preparatory School and Montgomery County Community College. When grading doesn’t demand too much of his time, he writes essays, short stories and poems, and is currently working on a novel. Some of his essays have been published by Philadelphia Stories, where he also serves as an editor. He lives in East Falls.
Sarah Spath, poet
Sarah Spath (who was originally slated to read for us in March, but had to reschedule thanks to a yucky flu) is a poet and educator who is relatively new to Philadelphia. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University–Los Angeles and is a graduate of the Transition to Teaching program at Indiana University. Currently, she works as the Tutorial Coordinator at Philadelphia University.
This Thursday, we’re gonna do it big at Milkboy. Not only are we celebrating National Poetry Month, we’re also celebrating my birthday (that’s Autumn Konopka, your effervescent hostess with the mostess)! To make sure we do it up right, we’re bringing in 4 of our newest voices to light up the stage: Christine Chiosi, Lola Georg, Howard Lieberman, and Susan H. Robbins.
Retiring early from the practice of medicine, Christine Chiosi now spends her time writing poetry and short fiction. Her poetry can be found in Carpe Articulum, and she anticipates June publications in Cloudbank and the Sierra Nevada Review. She has been favorably reviewed in NewPages.com, an on-line source for literary journals. Christine has recently returned to the Philadelphia area after living and teaching in central Chile, where she completed a collection of bilingual poems. Most recently (last week!) she was just selected by NPR to read her tweet of a poem (140 characters or less!) on air, for their National Poetry Month feature, which selects one tweeted poem per day, during the month of April. She is currently looking for a job to sustain her first love, which is drifting, thoughtfully, through the mine-fields of memory.
Lola Georg
Lola Georg works professionally in Business and Finance, with 25 years of management experience, predominantly in the non-profit sector. She volunteers as a counselor at Daemion Counseling Center in Berwyn, where she works with people who can not afford traditional therapy fees. Poet-wise, she has written poetry over the years because it is therapeutic, and she spends a lot of time thinking in metaphor. For fun, she likes to ski, hike, bike, and spend time outdoors.
Howard Lieberman started out as a neurosurgeon, but has been writing for years. His work has been published in about 10 journals, and even in the NY Times. Now, he primarily writes every day as his main hobby (others include: an obsessive chess playing mania along with a mania for collecting things: etchings, coins, pottery, antique books, anything that doesn’t run fast enough). He adds on endlessly to my poetry web site, artpoetry.com , where along with many poems, are poems combined with pictures (not his), notes on whatever is obscure, and a history of the last 100 years of poetry.
Susan H. Robbins
Susan H. Robbins, Ph.D., only recently discovered her ‘poetic voice’ after more than 25 years as a research professional evaluating education and health and human service programs. She received two awards for her poetry at the 2010 Philadelphia Writers Conference. Two of her poems were published in the most recent volume of the Mad Poets Review. Susan has also performed her poetry at Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey and at the Mad Poets Society 2009 and 2010 Festivals. She truly hopes you enjoy her poetry.
Of course, we’ll round out the evening with the poetic stylings of our always eclectic open mic gang. That could include you, if you show up & bring some poems. Oh yeah, and we’re running our 2011 open mic contest, which means if you do read in the open mic, you just might get yourself a feature slot in December! So be there:
Mad Poets Mixed-Genre Reading & Open Mic
Milkboy Acoustic Cafe
824 West Lancaster Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Reading starts at 7pm, open mic follows.
This Thursday, at 7p.m., please join the Mad Poets mixed-genre reading series at Milkboy Acoustic Cafe in Bryn Mawr as we celebrate National Women’s History Month with three phenomenal women writers and performers. We’ll bring together a poet, a travel writer, and a performance artist in one eclectic and energizing event. Of course, we’ll follow it all up with our open mic contest! So come for the fabulous reading & bring out your own stuff to share!
First, meet the lovely ladies we’ll be listening to:
Jennifer J. Beaumont, Travel Writer
Jennifer J. Beaumont is a travel writer who was born in Jamaica and has spent her life exploring different places. An educator by profession, and a writer by avocation, she learns about life through travel. With an adventurous spirit, she is constantly in search of those things, large and small, spoken and unspoken, actualized and yet to be conceived, that evoke an “A-HAâ€, eyes full of wonder, smiles of unexpected delight, laughs of unmitigated pleasure, the seemingly incongruous linking of facts. She is unafraid of trying new things. Her newest project is a documentary – The Miracle Team – about Trinidad and Tobago’s men’s 4 x400 relay team that earned a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan and then set a world record in 1966 at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. You can read her work on her blog: http://jenniferjbeaumont.com/.
Gabrielle De Burke, aka Plum Dragoness
A native of West Philadelphia, Gabrielle de Burke (a.k.a. Plum Dragoness) is a multi-talented thespian, dancer & poetess who has been involved with theater since childhood. Throughout her early years, she studied various visual & performing arts media to cultivate her expressive theatrical personality while earning her BA in Theater from Temple University, with an exploratory concentration in African/Modern Dance, World Music, Jazz Voice & Anthropology. Gabrielle has had a profound interest in the performing arts that involved her in cross-cultural ventures that bridge the gaps between traditional sacred/secular dance, theatre and present day urban expressions of life. Her background in costume production, dance, voice, stage/film acting, poetry as performance & martial/internal arts techniques make a significant contribution to her creation of innovative performance art.
She is well-known for her performances & choreographic style throughout the Philadelphia area & abroad. Her work has been featured in local venues such as the Philly Fringe Fest, Painted Bride Art Center, World Café Live, the Rotunda, LadyFest Philly, the Kimmel & the Annenberg Centers for the Performing Arts. She has performed nationally at the Times Square Performing Arts Center in NYC, the Whittaker Center in Harrisburg, PA & the Kennedy Center in Washington. D.C., as well as festivals that include Ultraworld, Gaian Mind & Philadelphia EXperiment in Baltimore & Fredrick, MD, the Earthdance Festival in Laytonville, CA & the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, NV. In addition, she has presented on international stages like Om Festivals in Northern Ontario, the Global Roots festival & the Grand Theater in Toronto, Canada, the Rossport Gathering (as part of the Rossport Solidarity Shell to Sea Campaign) in County Mayo, Ireland & the Montezuma Gathering in Montezuma, Costa Rica.
In addition to her solo work, Gabrielle was a founding member and core performer from 2001 to 2006 in the black light mask theater troupe ArcheDream. As a core member of the company, she performed, choreographed, created costumes & acted as Assistant Artistic Director.
Gabrielle continues her commitment to the west Philadelphia community by organizing a free ongoing performance series going into its 10th season at the Rotunda for Foundation Arts called “Poet-tree en Motion.†She also formed the musical group known as “Plum Dragoness & the Elements,†who just released an album of spoken word/poetry accompanied by world music compositions called “Renaissance of a Poetess.â€
Sarah Spath, poet
Sarah Spath is a poet and educator who is relatively new to Philadelphia. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University–Los Angeles and is a graduate of the Transition to Teaching program at Indiana University. Currently, she works as the Tutorial Coordinator at Philadelphia University.
…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!!
Tomorrow night, the Delaware County Institute of Science will host Bill Wunder, Tracy MacNish, and special guest, open mic contest winner, Margaret Robinson. The featured reading, which is hosted by Brian Sammond, starts at 7pm and is followed by an open mic!
Poet Bill Wunder
Bill Wunder is the author of Pointing at the Moon (WordTech Editions, 2008) and a chapbook, A Season of Storms (Via Dolorosa Press, 2002.) In 2004, he was named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His poems have been widely published, and he has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry. Bill has been a finalist numerous times in The T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He has read and lectured in local schools, colleges, festivals, book stores, libraries, and on public television. Bill serves as Poetry Editor of The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and lives with his two black labs in Bucks County.
Novelist Tracy MacNish
Tracy MacNish has published four historical novels for Kensington Publishing, has written short, experimental fiction, and is working on a contemporary novel as well as another historical novel.
Finally, we are delighted to present Margaret A. Robinson as the Institute’s open mic contest winner. Robinson earned her reading by impressing audiences at the Science Institute time and again with powerful open mic performances. Robinson’s work has appeared recently in Prairie Schooner, and she is the author of several volumes of poetry including Sparks (Pudding House Press). She is an adjunct professor of Creative Writing at Widener University.
Margaret Robinson is the first of three audience-chosen readers the Mad Poets will feature this fall. Votes are still being tallied for the series at Churchill in Pottstown and Milkboy in Bryn Mawr. Stay tuned.
This Thursday the fun continues at Milkboy with an evening of poetry, spoken word, and general shenanigans from Philadelphia artists Stephanie Durann & St. Skribbly Lacroix. Expect to be inspired, agitated, amused, bemused, and befuddled… you name it. Here’s why:
Stephanie Durann, poet
Stephanie Durann is a writer from Philadelphia, PA who has performed under various reading series, festivals and cabarets in the city including Poets and Prophets, LadyFest Philly, Univers-all Voices, Black Women’s Arts Festival, the Sedgwick Theater, and several reading series at Moonstone Arts Center (fka Robin’s Bookstore).  She won Honorable Mention for her poetry in Byline Magazine in 2001 and was one of four winners of the Power99fm/Def Poetry Jam Contest in 2002. Her work was also featured in several publications including Hinge Online and The Worcester Review.  She was also a participant in the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp in 2004.  She produced her first chapbook, The Rites of Individual Passage in 2003. Recently, she co-hosted for and read for the Light of Unity Reading Series and the Soul Connection, Philly Alternative Soul.  Currently, her main goal is to permanently leave the cubicle farm.
Genre-bender St. Skribbly Lacroix
Defying the genre-”nazis” as writer, performer, comedic sketch artist, actor, singer, songwriter,model and photographer, Skribbly LaCroix blends all of his talents and skills in a cutting edge  matrimony between performance art and pop-culture. LaCroix is the host of the immensely popular music performance series ROCKERS! He is a founding member of the performance collective known as the Unf*ckwittables. Forever developing new ways to push creative manifestation to new levels, LaCroix not only tests new waters every time he steps on stage but the patience and gag reflex of (and nowhere near exclusive to) Christians, moralists, feminists, puppy lovers and poets everywhere. His first book The Pen Is Mightier Than the Lord is set to release early 2011.
…And if that’s not enough, we’ve got some edge-of-your-seat action in the open mic contest. Here are the standings. Above all things, this reading promises good times. Be there: Thursday, Oct 14th, 7pm.
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.