Thursday, January 31, 2008

Welcome to the Berks Bards blog!

If you love poetry, and the sound of the spoken word, and you are reading this blog post, then I want to welcome you to the First Berks Bards Blog. Thanks to the rare spirit and enthusiasm of one BB, we are launched into a new phase. Muchas gracias, Awilda! for opening this blog.

Liz Stanley
Berks Bards

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Poet of First Thursday in February 2008: Thomas Bierowski

What? First Thursday in February poetry reading

When? Feb 7th, 6-8 pm,

Where? At the Bravo Cafe', GoggleWorks.

Featured poet:

Thomas Bierowski

Tom Bierowski was born in Mt. Carmel, PA (1962), where he attended Holy Spirit grade school, rode his bicycle and served Mass on Sundays. He went to high school at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional, in Shamokin, PA where he was a student council rep and National Honor Society member until he joined the marching band and was kicked off both. After high school, he joined the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (‘The Franciscans’) where he wore a black habit and heavily contemplated the mysteries before returning to the secular world three years later.

25 years of various jobs and academic degrees have intervened between then and his appearance at the Goggleworks: B.A. in English from St. Joseph’s University, pack out man for Canada Dry, pool builder, maintenance man, software tech writer, M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University, house painter, free lance writer, gardener, aerospace technical writer, teaching fellow, PhD in English Literature from Lehigh University… and now he’s an Assistant Professor of English at Alvernia College.

Never once has he called himself a scholar, poet, novelist, artist, or musician— although he has spent much of his adulthood doing any/all of those things because life is too short not to. He has organized writers’ series at Lehigh and Alvernia and digs the vibe of live performance because he’s convinced that communication is THE rush of being human. His credits include The Pennsyltucky Lullaby (a novel, 1994), Talking Book (a multimedia hootenanny, 2002), The Rocket Power’d Cross (a graphic novel/live performance, 2006), Eaten by Horses (and Other Earthly Oddities) (spoken word presentation of fiction and personal essay, 2007), The Vile Lunacy of Time (spoken word presentation of original memoir, 2007), and The Double-Wide Dream (multimedia happening/rock opera, 2007).


The event is open to the public, sponsored by Berks Bards.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Berks Bards present Bill Wunder and Dan Maguire

Poetry at 6

Shake off those January blues and come to RACC January 23rd, 6:00 pm, to welcome poets Bill Wunder and Dan Maguire.

Berks-Penn Rooms, Reading Area Community College
10 South Second Street, Reading, PA, 610-372-4721

This event is free and open to the general public, as well as students and staff at RACC.

Open mic to follow the featured readers.

Sponsored by the Foundation for RACC, with support from Berks Bards, "Poetry at 6" is an annual series of poetry readings at Reading Area Community College, honoring the memory of Bruce H. Stanley, professor of Humanities, 1972-1997.

BIO

Bill Wunder’s poems have twice been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and in
2004 he was named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His poems
have been a finalist in The Robert Fraser Poetry Competition, The Mad Poet’s
Society Competition twice, and The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards three times.
Recently, his work has appeared in The Manhattan Review, Lips, The Paterson
Literary Review, Mad Poet’s Review, Drexel University On-Line Journal, Wild
River Review, and others. He has read or lectured in many venues, including
local schools, James A. Michener Museum, Bucks County Community College, The
Poetry Project at The Montgomery Theater and The Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry
Series sponsored by the National Park Service. Via Dolorosa Press in
Cleveland, Ohio published Bill’s chapbook titled A Season Of Storms. His
book Pointing At the Moon is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications.

Dan Maguire's poems have appeared in many local and national journals but
most recently in The Patterson Review and the Comstock Review. Among his
many honors and awards, which includes an invitation to read at the Library
of Congress, are several Best Poet selections at the Philadelphia Writers
Conference. A native of Philadelphia who has lived in all US time zones, he
finds that he keeps returning to the shore and currently resides in New
Jersey.

Liz Stanley
~Berks Bards