Breaking The Silence

Join members of PoemAlley tomorrow morning for the annual summer poetry service held in the Sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford, located downtown directly across from the Avon Theatre on Bedford Street.

   Breaking the Silence, this year’s theme, includes Agnes Roberts, Ralph Nazareth, Richard Duffee and several other PA members exercising the imperative of the poet to speak out against suffering or run the risk of being complicit with the forces of oppression, whatever they may be. While poetry has many faces and serves various needs, in this reading it will mostly present itself as an instrument for living meaningfully in these dark times.

Refreshments will be served in the Social Room following the service. Housed in a 142-year-old church, the UUSIS is the parent organization of PoemAlley. You can learn more about it under "Associated Links" to the left.

When:

Sunday, August 25, 2012

10-11am

Where:

20 Forest Street,

Stamford, CT 06901

(free parking available in the municipal lot across the Forest Street entrance)

Phone/Email:

203-348-0708

admin@uusis.org

Learning To Fly When Time Has Wings

In a first-time collaboration, Franklin Street Works and PoemAlley will present tomorrow evening "Nine Works Of Art, A Dozen Poets, A Dozen Poems", a cross-disciplinary presentation where poets from Curley's will offer interpretations of pieces comprising the non-profit contemporary art space's current exhibit, These Transitional Spaces.

 Rainbow Painter, Dana Hoey

Curated by Seth Kelly, Spaces features compelling pieces employing photography, painting, free-standing sculpture, audio and video-projected construction to represent particular collective and subjective ideas of time and space, while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of fully capturing such fleeting experiences.

"Untitled",  Adam Putnam

Matthew Buckierin, Dana Hoey, Adam Putnam, Karsten Krejcarek and Aura Rosenberg are among the nine artists contributing to the program, which began June 30 and will conclude August 26. For an advance peek of this and upcoming shows--as well as the elegant environment housing them, go to www.franklinstreetworks.org.

PA members reading include Ralph Nazareth, Veronica Jones, Caroline Holme, Jim Janke, Rolf Maurer, Rona Schenkerman, Cora Santaguida, Catherine Ednie (PoemAlley co-founder), Eleni P. Begetis Anastos (co-owner of Curley's Diner), Richard Duffee, Eva-Maria Palevich and PoemAlley Advisory Committee Chair Bill Buschel. Copies of a complimentary 'zine containing their work will be available both in the two-floor gallery and cafe areas.

Situated in an old row house near the UCONN campus, Franklin Street Works is less than one hour from New York City via Metro North and about one mile (a 15 minute walk) from the Stamford train station. On-street parking is available on Franklin Street (metered until 6 pm except on Sunday), and paid parking is available nearby in a lot on Franklin Street and in the Summer Street Garage (100 Summer Street), behind Target.

When:

Thursday, August 23, 2012

5-7 PM

Where:

Franklin Street Works

41 Franklin Street

Stamford, CT 06901

Phone/e-mail:
203-595-5211

info@franklinstreetworks.org

The poets of PoemAlley would like to thank the management and staff of Franklin Street Works for their generosity of spirit and for the opportunity to read in their wonderful space!

The Song Of The Written Word

Sharing selections from her Illusian Sequence, a series of genre-hopping speculative novels, tonight’s PoemAlley guest reader, C.A. Rodriguez, has been writing poetry, fiction and plays for numerous years and has translated two Golden Age Spanish plays considered major analogues of "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Duchess of Malfi". After a quarter of a century, both translations, along with her ground-breaking comparative analyses, are still in print.

While sharing a common thematic thread, each of Rodriguez’s books can be read independently and are shaped by the different concentrations in the author’s studies in English and Comparative Literature, for which she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. 

For fans of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, or the currently popular Wicked Years series by Gregory Maguire, Rashingor (2007), the first Illusian entry, is of particular appeal, as it involves three sisters in a fairytale setting, in a plot described as a feminist challenge to Cinderella.

Besides her scholarship in Renaissance/Baroque drama and the epic/romance tradition,  Rodriguez’s studies in the nineteenth century novel also find expression in Volume II, St. Peter’s Wood (2007), which  combines a more subtle magic realism with the mood and character struggles of the British rural novel of the same century.

An accomplished artist as
well as writer, Rodriguez also
designs many of the covers
of her novels

As with her other fiction, her most recent effort, 2011's The Street of Secrets, is published through her own imprint, March House Press (carodriguez.com). You can contact Dr. Rodriguez at cynthia@carodriguez.com. Click on the titles below to look further into her acclaimed translations of Lope de Vega’s Renaissance plays “Castelvins andMonteses” and “The Duchess of Amalfi’s Steward”.

Kindling Reader Interest: A.J. O’Connell At Tonight’s Open Mic At Barnes & Noble

An adjunct professor at Norwalk Community College and a journalist with ten years’ experience, tonight’s guest reader, A.J. O’Connell is a graduate of Fairfield University’s MFA program and has contributed articles and fiction to the Boston Herald, Citizen Culture magazine,  The Battered Suitcase, The Wheel and other anthologies.

Beware the Hawk (Vagabondage Press, 2012), published last January, is a noir thriller, set in the Boston underworld and featuring a savvy, sharp-tongued, courier who manages to go through the entire story without revealing her identity (a reader contest to name her is posted on The Garret, A.J. O’Connell’s blog). 

Penned as an original e-novella, with Nook, Kindle and other electronic book readers in mind, in other ways, A.J.’s latest project embodies effectively how the writing/publishing process has had to grow with the simultaneous opportunities and demands of the Internet. In contrast to her account of her husband’s reluctance to join Facebook found on The Garret, A.J. created a line of t-shirts to promote Hawk through Zazzle.com, one of numerous do-it-yourself resources indispensable to sustaining one’s work in today’s crowded online/mobile media climate.

Hosted by Frank Chambers and PoemAlley's Nick Miele, the Barnes & Noble's Open Mic Poetry program meets the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Down Center), beginning at 7:30 p.m.

For more information, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06901

203-323-1248