Bearing Surprise And Spreading Responsibility

Beginning at 7 tonight, The Poetry Institute of New Haven presents its Fifth Annual Favorite Poem Evening, an open mic reading introduced by featured speakers Jerry Waxman, Evelyn Atreya and PoemAlley facilitator Ralph Nazareth, each sharing a selection of pieces by their particular muses.

While part of the fun is being surprised by which poet recites whose work and why, Guilford Poets Guild member Evelyn Atreya leaves a clue to some of her own inspiration through participation in an 83rd birthday celebration of Hamden native and National Medal of Art winner Donald Hall (The Back Chamber, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), where she read in homage, “Meeting Professor Hall” at the Thornton Wilder Hall of Miller Library in 2011. Find out more here. 

In Ralph’s case you can get an idea for his preferences from this series of 2009 video interviews recorded from his home in Stamford for http://BentPin.net, where he articulates the wordsmith’s calling to rattle cages of complacency and convention:

See his Ferrying Secrets and On This Crust of Earth (which he edited) under the Yuganta Press link at the bottom of the page.

As tonight’s moderator and pi-New Haven Co-Director (who sometimes feels he was brought up by bears), Mark McGuire-Schwartz sees poetry as a channel for sharing warmth and humor--and with close to thirty years’ rich experience working in state government to mine for his own inspiration, Mark has placed material in Caduceus, Fairfield Review, Connecticut River Review and the Connecticut Law Journal, among other publications, as well as in the collection Loss and Laughs, Love and Fauna (CreateSpace, 2013). His newest book is 289, a book of 17s.

An eclectic celebration of the form, The Poetry Institute’s Open Mic Poetry program meets the third Thursday of each month in the warm setting of the New Haven-based Young Men’s Institute Library reading room on the second floor, beginning at 7:00 pm (please arrive early to sign up to read). Refreshments are served. 

For more information, contact The pi-New Haven at:

The Institute Library
847 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT

Email: PoetryInstitute@gmail.com

Homepage: http://thepoetryinstitute.com