Gil Fagiani: Our Competing Attentions For The Soul & Heart

An essayist, short story writer and poet, this Tuesday night’s featured speaker at Curley’s, Gil Fagiani, has filled his ouvre with accounts of the ups and downs of close to seventy years of life, shaped at different times by discipline, despair and rediscovery.

Several of his poetry collections cover his middle class upbringing in Stamford, such as Chianti in Connecticut (Bordighera Press, 2010) and Grandpa’sWine (Poets Wear Prada, 2008; a bilingual version forthcoming, translated into Italian by Professor Paul D’Agostino of Brooklyn College). Rooks (Rain Mountain Press, 2007) concerns his military college years at Weider University in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Now living in Long Island City in proximity to the streets of his time as a heroin addict in the 1960s, Gil grew into a social activist in response to the discrimination he witnessed by the police when dealing with drug users of different backgrounds and, by his forties, found poetry and fiction the most affecting forms of communicating awareness of the injustices he saw. As he says in a 2015 New York Times interview with David Gonzalez, “You don’t change people with political rhetoric.”

Following on such titles as the state hospital-situated Serfs of Psychiatry (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Gil’s latest book from his time at a South Bronx heroin treatment center, Logos (Guernica Editions, 2015), emphasizes the need for wider understanding of the complexity of an issue too often dismissed judgmentally by extending his internal struggles (including the confusing mix of hope and potent illusions of empowerment) to those of all of us in times of crisis.

En route, and instrumental to Gil’s recovery were his rekindled ties to his heritage upon learning that the Fagianis hailed from a line of dialect-specific poets in Lanciano: “These towns in Italy were their own universes,” he told Gonzales. “When I asked someone for directions to the street named after my uncle, he started reciting one of his poems.” This has culminated in his current co-curation of the Italian American Writers’ Association, based in Manhattan.

Below is his contribution with Stephen Siciliano, reading, respectively, from Stone Walls (Bordighera Press, 2014) and The Goodfather at a 2015 IAWA event held at the Cornelia Street Café; musical accompaniment by Peter Dizozza:

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Additional Reading:

Hari, Johann, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (Bloomsbury, 2016)

Hart, Carl, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society (P.S.) (Harper Perennial, 2014)

Mate, Gabor, M.D., In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (North Atlantic Books, 2010)

Because WE Are Poems: Esther Cohen At Open Mic

After two years, cultural activist, poet/novelist and teacher, Esther Cohen comes back to the Stamford area this Monday night at Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic to offer poetry writing instruction (no fair leaving your pen at home!) and share from Breakfast With Allen Ginsberg (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2016), her newest collection of fifty pieces, spanning writing, family, friends and life from the Catskills to the Big Apple.

For a preview, enjoy “Dear Everyone”, Esther’s contribution to Alimentum's Menupoems 2010 program, performed at Tout Va Bien in New York, sponsored by the online journal of gastronomical literature:

From humorous fiction, like 2006’s Book Doctor (Counterpoint) and the relatable warmth of God Is a Tree and Other Middle-Age Poems (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2008), to the dignity of her innovative photo essay book of blue collar life, unseenamerica (Regan Books, 2005), Esther demonstrates an artful thirst for melding the personal and social dimensions with a fuller appreciation of workers and what they contribute (click here to see a 2011 interview with journalist Sheryl McCarthy on CUNY TV’s One to One, where Esther talks of her work with the Bread & Roses Cultural Project, Local 1199, from where unseenamerica grew).

Her September 5 entry from her poem-a-day site (www.esthercohen.com), “Labor Days is a We Poem” captures this synthesis through a series of vignettes bearing the invisible grace and daisy chain-like interconnectedness that forms the unsung, yet indispensable contributions that at all levels make society worthwhile for everyone—as opposed to defining its value based on the actions of an over-promoted few. Lyricist/drummer Neil Peart’s “Nobody’s Hero”, performed by Rush, dramatizes the cheapening distraction of celebrity fixation at the cost of acknowledging real-world nobility to be found around every corner:

Hosted by Frank Chambers, 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 Town Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

Return Of Your Inner Yeti: Boria Sax And The Zoological Guides To Reality Tomorrow At Curley's

Boria with friends

Poet and zoological folklorist Boria Sax reads once more in the Stamford area, this time featured as part of this Tuesday's PoemAlley program (Boria previously appeared at Frank Chamber's Open Mic in the Stamford Barnes & Noble last April), He has numerous titles to his credit, translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Czech, spanning fiction, poetry, history, reference, folklore and, in particular, human/animal relations, both on the naturalistic and metaphorical levels. Choice academic library journal named two books, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust
(Continuum, 2000) and The Mythical Zoo: An Encyclopedia of Animals in Myth, Legend, and Literature (Overlook Press, 2013) among their "outstanding titles of the year".

Boria earned his doctorate in Intellectual History and German from the State University of New York, Buffalo, has served as a human rights consultant for Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch and is founder of Nature in Legend and Story, a non-profit organization fostering appreciation of the

traditional bonds between humans and the natural world. Currently he is leading his first course in creative writing at Mercy College.

His deep fascination for the metaphorical roots of our species' complex and contradictory ties to other living creatures, whether wild, domesticated, or mythic, is best articulated in the introduction to Imaginary Animals: The Monstrous, the Wondrous and the Human (Reaktion, 2013): "... all imaginary animals, to some degree all animals, are ultimately both monsters and wonders, which assist us by deflecting and absorbing our uncertainties." Depending on our hopes and fears of the moment or the age, "Men and women are not only part angel and part demon, as the old cliché goes; they are also part centaur, part werewolf, part mandrake, and part sphinx."

Below is a video from Overlook Press, publisher of 2012's City of Ravens, where Boria talks of the historical connection between the city of London and its ubiquitous bird population:

Poet's Press, 2010

Boria has received national awards for e-learning, and is a mentor in the Sloan-C Certificate program in online teaching. Currently, he teaches in the graduate literature program of Mercy College, as well as liberal arts courses at Sing Sing and Taconic prisons, where he enjoys the attention of "perhaps the most engaged, interested college students in the world."

"Our Triumphant March Toward Humility", "Animals and Cultural Diplomacy", "Why the French Army Collapsed at Waterloo" and "History and Experience: Revisiting My Childhood In an FBI File" are some of the provocative entries addressing human culture and prospects on the blog he maintains for the Huffington Post, the last addressing his father's role in nuclear espionage during the Cold War. His Stealing Fire: Memoir of a Boyhood in the Shadow of Atomic Espionage relates these confusing, turbulent years in detail.

His latest project is a cultural history of lizards. For more on his writing, visit boriasax.com.

Christina M. Rau: With Irrepressible Verse In Mind, Purses & Pockets

PoemAlley welcomes teacher and poet/poet advocate Christina M. Rau to Curley’s this Tuesday, author of the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and For The Girls, I (Dancing Girl Press, 2014).

An energetic presence in the greater public appreciation and pursuit of the craft, Christina is the founder of the Long Island reading circuit, Poets In Nassau and is editor of the Nassau Community College’s The Nassau Review (where she also teaches English).

Christina is a member of the Creative Writing Project and has overseen poetry workshops across Long Island. As monthly guest-blogger for Poetry Has Value, she helps demonstrate the practicality of how writers can track both the creative and monetary worth of their efforts and where it can be placed accordingly. Her own work has graced gallery walls in The Ekphrastic Poster Show and car magnets for The Living Poetry Project (Nicelle Davis’ Yes Men-style program to make poetry more prevalent in daily life via secreting bits of verse on slips of paper into clothing in retail settings and other cultural guerrilla tactics). More of her work can be found on Queen Mob’s Tea House and the Australasian Association of Writing Program’s Meniscus online literary magazine.

A recipient of an MFA in Creative Writing from Long Island University-Southampton and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Hofstra, Christina maintains a dynamic online presence through Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and, of course, Facebook, while also managing to post book reviews on Goodreads. Recent posts on her blog, “A Life Of We” cover personal appearances, live concerts and exercise—enthusiastically peppered with stills and videos. 

Check out everything else she does at www.christinamrau.com.

Mark Saba: Landscapes Of Tenderness And Being

Imagistic and knowing, the work of Mark Saba, tomorrow’s featured writer/artist at Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic program, reminds "us of why we are here,” says Annie Dillard, “even as (it) celebrate(s) the uncertainty of being.” Poetry infused with his Polish/Italian heritage, hometown family life in Pittsburgh and a tender awareness for where a good story lies will be read from Painting a Disappearing Canvas (Grayson Books, 2012) and his forthcoming collection, Calling The Names (David Robert Books, early 2017).

His many contributions to literary magazines and anthologies include Connecticut Review, Poetic Voices Without Borders (Gival Press), New Haven Review, The Folio Club, as well as the London-based Litro.

In addition to writing essays and stories, Mark has published several novels, including 2004’s The Landscapes of Pater from Vineyard Press, Signs and Letters From Novosibirsk (two 2014 ebooks from Smashwords). Some of his poetry is accented by beautifully scored and photographed video interpretations, such as the chiaroscuric “He Was a Poet And When He Died”:

 

A Connecticut resident for over 20 years, Mark's applied, clinical duties as a medical illustrator and graphic designer at Yale University are complemented by his vibrant oil paintings, some of which can be viewed on marksabawriter.com.

Hosted by Frank Chambers, 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 Town Center at 100 Greyrock Place), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

 

 

Contact: 203-323-1248

 

Writing Toward Sharing, Hope and Healing

Tonight’s four speakers at Curley’s Diner will relate their stories of trauma, hope and empathy, following their participation last year in a creative workshop of self-understanding and healing, guided by psychologist and poetry therapist Dr. Marianela Medrano:


Marianela Merdano



Shelly Ransom is a Darien-based speech language pathologist whose devotion to helping others find their voices has been channeled into assorted approaches beyond addressing communication disorders, including fundraising, yoga and meditation instruction.

An avid biker and reader, Shelly graduated from Sacred Heart University, where she earned the Dean’s Leadership Award.  When she isn’t glued to her computer, she likes hiking, reading, and spending time with her family.

In 2015 Bethel resident Karen Mello came to The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education as its new Director of Development and Communications from the United Way of Western Connecticut, where she oversaw funding for programs in support of low-income families.

Starting in January, Karen, working with this evening’s other guest speakers, launched Survivors Helping To Inspire New Endings (SHINE), an empathy- and solidarity-building program whose members speak on behalf of victims and survivors of sexual violence to let others know they are not alone and how anyone, of any age can be impacted.

She has served with the Statewide Victim Survivor Advisory Council, Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence and, via her work on the Connecticut K-12 Child Sexual Abuse and Assault Education Planning Team, helped implement Erin’s Law.

Cliff Benham is the Director of Design and Sales at Second Chance, a company that upcycles and restores furniture. A Stamford resident, he has been a Center board member for six years. He lives in Stamford with his wife and two daughters.

A two-time survivor as child and adult, herself, Michelle Nelson Giorno moved several times around the South over the past thirty years before ultimately settling in the Ridgefield area. She became a member of the speaker’s bureau for RAINN (Rape Assault Incest National Network) in 2009 and took on a similar role for The Center.

In addition to her public awareness-raising activities, she is working on a memoir which addresses her inspiring transition from victim to social healer. Michelle enjoys her family, nature, yoga, photography and other activities.

PoemAlley members will then respond to the guest testimonies  with work addressing their own experiences with depression, sorrow and the resultant strategies for coping, acceptance and recovery.

Originally organized by PoemAlley, this special four-session program was held at The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education in Stamford in late 2015 and supported through a CAPP grant from the City of Stamford.

Ways Of Verbal Inspiration With Jerry T. Johnson

Described by one reader as a reaffirmation of “the promise of every new day (through) eloquent, simple wisdom”, Jerry T. Johnson’s first chapbook Good Morning New Year! An Inspirational Journey is a 2015 release available on the Kindle ebook platform.  

As tonight's Open Mic reader, Jerry is a spoken-word artist with numerous appearances to his credit at a range of New York City venues and, as a new contributor to the Connecticut/New York writing community, has placed “I Be a Bad Dude” and “Ways of Peace” in Catalyst magazine and Burningword Literary Journal, respectively.

Hosted by Frank Chambers, 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 Town Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

For more information, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place, Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06906

203-323-1248

Poems For A Feverish Planet: An Evening Of Readings & Conversation With Kamala Platt

In a special PoemAlley engagement tomorrow night at Curley’s Diner, beginning at 7:30, environmental feminist, visual/performance artist, author and adjunct profesora Kamala Platt will share and discuss material from her various collections, including Weedslovers (Finishing Line 2014) and On the Line (Wings Press, 2010), as well as the “green rascuache” lifeways by which she seeks footholds of dignity, well-being and sustainability defying industrialism, militarism and other toxic -isms driving a simmering world’s accumulating crises.

While Kamala’s concern for ecology and human rights owes

its roots to a cross-cultural childhood in Orissa, India and in the Kansas Mennonite community, her knowledge has been enhanced through her work with the Esperanza Center for Peace & Justice, the Climate Reality Leadership Corps, Texas Women Farmers’ Holistic Management and other organizations.

Her creative and social activism finds expression in The Meadowlark Center, a rural venue for community arts, education, environment and social justice activities, situated on the Meadowlark Homestead in Kansas built by her grandmother in the 1950s, as well as Kamala’s complementary Eastside Barrio home in San Antonio, affording guests an all-in-one native habitat/garden, library and studio, where nopalitos, loquats and other seasonal produce are served up in equal measure with books and art.

Kamala has attained fellowships with the Feminist Research Institute at the University of New Mexico and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (Gateways) in San Antonio. Holding several degrees, including an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University, Ohio and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (University of Texas, Austin), Kamala served as compiler on Kimientos (Wordsworth, 1992) and contributor to Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism (Wayne State University Press, 2004).

Explore Kamala’s blog, ”artists vs death penalty” here; you can also click here to find out more about her.

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Further Reading:

Adams, Carol J., Ecofeminism and the Sacred (Continuum, 1993)

Diamond, Irene, Fertile Ground: Women, Earth, and the Limits of Control (Beacon Press, 1997)

“                     “, Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (Sierra Club Books, 1990)

Pandey, S, Emergence of Eco-Feminism and Reweaving the World (MD Publications, 2011)

Shiva, Vandana, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (North Atlantic Books, 2015)
 

Writing Toward Healing

Tomorrow night's guest reader, Michelle Nelson Giorno, was born to hippie parents with a zest for life and adventure. Traveling repeatedly between Florida to Arkansas, the South was home for her first thirty years. Then, twelve years ago, she began her own adventure and moved to the Northeast, where she currently resides in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Suffering sexual assault at age five and again, at 20 during a home intrusion, Michelle struggled over the next 16 years transitioning from a victim to living life as a survivor, adapting her experiences in support of others as a speaker for the Rape Assault Incest National Network (RAINN) in 2009. The following year, she extended public outreach through The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education in Stamford, which hosted a series of healing-oriented writing workshops she took part in with poetry therapist Dr. Marianela Medrano (a PoemAlley program implemented last December through a CAPP grant from the City of Stamford).

When Michelle is not engaged in her advocacy work (including as a founding member of Survivors Helping to Inspire New Endings [SHINE]), she enjoys spending time with her family, in the natural environment, reading and writing poetry. She is currently writing a memoir.

Michelle’s talk will be followed by Curley’s poets, reading material touching on depression, grief, and sorrow, as well as sharing views on how the writing craft helps them understand pain and sometimes overcome it.