Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Join Grant Clauser at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts August 1st, 2019


Berks Bards welcomes Grant Clauser to join us at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts to read selected poetry. Following his reading, we'll allow ANYONE to step up to the mic and read what moves them.

When: August 1st, 2019 at 6 pm

Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 238

201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read Grant Clauser's Bio below:

Grant Clauser lives in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. He is the author of the books Reckless Constellations (winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award), The Magician's Handbook, Necessary Myths (winner of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize) and The Trouble with Rivers. Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tar River Poetry and others. He writes and edits technology reviews for Wirecutter and teaches poetry workshops at Rosemont College.


Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:

Valiant
The car sat in the side yard
after a constable told my father
to get it off the street.
We mowed around its rust for years,
watched the tires sink
with spider cracks and the vinyl roof
peeled by a decade of squirrels
until a mullet head from Nazareth
pulled up in a Firebird,
gave us thirty bucks to take it away.
Said it would make a great target
at the demolition derby.
I went to watch it happen,
a hundred bucks to the driver
who could total my grandfather’s Valiant
now resurrected with bright paint,
a bull’s eye drawn on its side.
So with shouts from the bleachers
each driver sideswiped
another piece off the car.
One Malibu limped away
with a bumper caught
in the axle, then an El Camino
with eyes painted on the hood
came at it for the final finish,
and my grandfather’s ghost
straightened his back
like it was before the wheelchair,
put all his weight on the brakes
and let that prick know
he wasn't about to budge.

(published in Gulf Stream Magazine, 2018)

Learn more about Grant Clauser by visting: https://uniambic.com/

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