Welcome to PoemAlley, Stamford, Connecticut's eclectic venue for poets, poetry reading and discussion! Open to anyone living in Fairfield County and the surrounding area, we meet Tuesday nights at 7:30 pm at Curley's Diner on 62 Park Place (behind Target) . Come contribute, get something to eat, or simply listen!
Prolific digital artist and speculative
writer Robert Zwillig will be filling in for Frank Chambers and Ralph Nazareth as guest host of tonight's Open Mic poetry
program at Barnes & Noble in Stamford, where all are invited to have a listen, or to bring something to read, either of their own creation, or by a beloved writer.
Following up on his November featured reading, where he shared material from last June's Modern Primitive Poetry 36 Illustrated Titles With Out The Words
and other titles, Robert is a familiar, active member of Tuesday Night At
Curley's/PoemAlley and is known for his satirical genre-bending/blending approach to the associations between the environmental, the
technological and the socio/economic—not only in terms of where such associations find us at
the moment and may be taking us, but even where they might have taken us, too, as described
in the 2018 three-part short story, Steam Age Fighter.
Founded by Frank Chambers, Barnes
& Noble’s Open Mic Poetry meets the second Monday of each month in the
Music/Movies section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the
Stamford Town Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.
Opening with Kaaren Whitney reading tomorrow evening at 7:15 at Barnes & Noble's Open Mic program in the Stamford Town Center, this week features two consecutive events recognizing seasonal and foundational members of the local poetry community.
Following on two prior autumnal appearances to the area (click here and here), Kaaren, a UK resident originally from Connecticut, practices homeopathy and is active in the English contemporary universalist community. She will be reading selections from The Turning Of the Year: A Book for 8 Seasons (Solstice-Equinox Press, 2016), a chapbook collaboration with Jim Nind of forty-four new pieces, accompanied by full-color photographs.
Among her credits as part of a body of work honoring the natural world, the environment and the urgency of our better stewardship of it, Kaaren has contributed to Voicing Visions, a 2009 DVD/booklet release featuring assorted artists and poets, England's 2006 National Poetry Anthology and Moonwise Diary (2007 through 2009).
Kaaren has also appeared at the Halesworth Fringe Festival and open mic programs in England, the United States and Australia. Below is her reading from Aldeburgh Beach in UK’s Suffolk County of “The Coming of Light” by the late Mark Strand as part of the 2015 National Poetry Day:
Hosted by Frank Chambers, Barnes & Noble Open Mic meets the second Monday, each month in the cooking section on the main floor of the Stamford bookstore. For more information and directions, contact:
A retired professor of literature and peace activist at Nassau Community College, Ralph Nazareth has generously extended his academic chops as moderator/facilitator and creative nurturer to PoemAlley's eclectic assortment of poets and other artists for well over ten years, now, consistently introducing members to new expressive perspectives spanning art, foreign affairs, family, travel,
illness and other topics through his energetic organizing of special
public readings and frequent appearances of guest readers and performers
at Curley's Diner.
In appreciation, the Tuesdays At Curley's group has decided to return the favor by asking Ralph to be this week's featured poet, reading work from his new collection Between Us The Long Road (Owlfeather Collective, 2017).
Ralph is managing editor of of Stamford-based Yuganta Press and president of Grace Works International, a charitable foundation involved in outreach in the developing world (proceeds from the sales of Between Us will be donated to GWI). Ralph has participated in poetry festivals in India, the Middle East, and in Latin America and has placed work in numerous books and magazines both in the United States and abroad, including Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010) and Multilingual Anthology: The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2014. His collection Glass: Selected Poems, was published by El Quirófano Ediciones in Ecuador in 2015.
He uses the title poem from the latter to examine the multi-layered role of metaphor in this clip from a 2009 discussion for the Bent Pin (http://BentPin.net):
All are welcome to hear this patient, inquisitive and dedicated advocate for the importance of engaging in, and being engaged by, the written and spoken word in upholding the human in human affairs.
As this evening’s featured reader at Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic in Stamford, John Sakson, past editor for Salt Hill, has taught writing at various colleges and universities throughout the New York region and has frequently shared pieces in his distinctively leisurely-paced and absorbing style at Curley’s over the years.
The following piece is nicely representative of the simultaneously relaxed, yet thorough, focus on setting, texture, mood and implication characteristic of his work from his page on the website of the Ploughshares Literary Boroughs Series:
Daylight Savings
In the drunk’s elevator, late,
on the wall next to the floor panel:
a note reminding us to advance our clocks.
And near the top, near the pretentious
hotel letterhead: the red-hot imprint of lips.
Someone (probably a woman, and probably not
the person who drafted the message) pressed
herself to the paper, drafted her own
message, an intimate seal of approval.
Maybe she was just very grateful
for the reminder. Maybe there was no
tissue to be found and this served
as an impromptu blotter. Perhaps
she told her blind date, when he tried to mix
his whiskey breath with hers: Charlie,
I’d rather kiss this damn paper, and then did.
Not likely. And better anyway to imagine her
silent with her own unknowable thoughts
at the moment, and now in her sleep, deeper
somehow, after what she really must have done:
kiss away in peace an hour lost, let the doors close
without looking back at the compartment that now
had held us both in turns
as it descended or rose.
A graduate of Syracuse
University’s MFA program, he has contributed poetry to many literary magazines,
including Rattle, Pearl, The Marlboro Review, The Worcester Review and Sierra Nevada College’s The Sierra Nevada Review. Most notably, he has also placed work in Poet Lore, which, now in its
125th year of publication, is the oldest poetry magazine in the
United States.
John currently resides
and teaches in Connecticut.
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.
With the
recent announcement of the impending closure of Barnes and Noble bookstores in
Norwalk
and elsewhere in Fairfield County, the return tomorrow evening of the Open Mic poetry program held
in the chain’s largest regional bookstore in Stamford is welcome news.Facilitated
by founder Frank Chambers, prior to going on hiatus, the monthly program was
previously co-hosted by PoemAlley’s own Nick Miele, who left his position last summer as
president of the PA Committee to pursue teaching in South America.
Nick Miele
All are
welcome to share their own or a favorite poet’s work, or to simply come and
listen. Refreshments are available from the nearby in-store café.
The Barnes &
Noble 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), now beginning at 7:15 p.m.
