Join David Nazario at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts February 7th, 2019

Berks Bards is excited to welcome David Nazario! Join us at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts to hear selected poetry. Following his reading, we'll allow ANYONE to step up to the mic and read anything that moves them.

When: February 7th, 2019 at 6 pm
Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 238
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read David Nazario's Bio below:

David Nazario’s career as an author, speaker, and educator gives him the opportunity to do what he loves and call it work. In addition to speaking at high schools and colleges throughout the Tristate region, David contributes to Here In My City and Reading Eagle newspaper, and works part-time as a college adviser and adjunct professor at Reading Area Community College. He released his first book, 'Make Love Your Religion: How To Put Love First & Succeed at Doing What You Love' (SDJ Press) in April 2018. David earned his B.A. in Literature with a minor in Journalism from West Chest

Read a sample poem from David below:

Coffee Breaks In Cuba

Coffee breaks in Cuba provide welcomed albeit unnecessary shelter from the rain
Cool drops splash against a tattered window pane
Horns blair and the drum beats
The viejo with silk in his tone sings, not too sweet
Oh so strong
The perfect combination
The perfect song
Across the way palm trees sway transforming the pleasant into bliss
Coffee breaks in Cuba are heaven with each sip

Join Larew & Czarnecki at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts December 6th, 2018

Berks Bards is excited to welcome Hiram Larew and Michael Czarnecki! Join us at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts to hear selected poetry. Following their reading, we'll allow ANYONE to step up to the mic and read anything that moves them.

When: December 6th, 2018 at 6 pm

Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 420

201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read Hiram Larew's Bio below: 

Larew's work has appeared most recently in Little Patuxent Review, Contemporary American Voices, FORTH, vox poetica, Poetry Super Highway, Poets & Artists, Every Day Poems, Lunaris Review (Nigeria), Amsterdam Quarterly, and The Wild Word.  His fourth collection is due out this year from Foothills Publishing House.  He’s been nominated for four Pushcarts, is a member of the Shakespeare Folger Library’s poetry board, and organizes several events in Prince George’s County, MD and beyond including Poetry X Hunger and The Poetry Poster Project. He is a global hunger specialist, and lives in Upper Marlboro, MD … and he’s very, very short.  On Facebook at Hiram Larew, Poet.

Read a sample poem from Hiram Larew below:

ACHILL SOUND

When the roads curve like sound

And dip as if lifting to bow

Whenever all thoughts round or cluster

Or when hearts call down

Is Ireland

And as rich when poor was

Or as wise as bare heads in snow seemed

And as twigs so frail broke into song

Ans as true as any blight could be

Was Ireland

So when sand laps the senses

Or salt drips the edges as dreams

Whenever hope streams through such heavens

And moss comes home

Or hearts beam down

Is Ireland.

- Hiram Larew

https://www.facebook.com/hiramlarewpoet/

Read Michael Czarnecki's Bio below:

Michael Czarnecki is a poet, oral memoirist and small press publisher originally from Buffalo, NY. He founded FootHills Publishing in 1986 and since then FootHills has released over 400 chapbooks and books of poetry. In 1994 Michael gave up other work to devote his time and life to poetry. Since then he has made his living solely through the creative word. In the last 25 years he has given hundreds of featured readings throughout the country. His Poems Across America Tour in 2013, a 14-week journey, featured a reading in each of the 48 contiguous states.

Michael has published 17 books, the two most recent being YOU and Ten Days in Huntington Wildlife Forest. When not out on the poetic road Michael lives on a 50-acre homestead in the northwest portion of the Susquehanna Watershed in NY.
More information about Michael can be found on his website: www.foothillspublishing.com/poetguy/index.html

He also posts a new photograph and new spontaneous poem everyday on his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/michael.czarnecki.35

Read a sample poem from Michael Czarnecki below:

What’s Next

next step

             just follows

last step

            it can't be

                            otherwise

step with gratitude

               step with light

                              step with love

in doing so

             next step

                        will be exactly

                                             right step

- Michael Czarnecki

www.foothillspublishing.com/poetguy/index.html

Join Heather H. Thomas at the GoggleWorks June 7 th 2018!

Berks Bards is excited to welcome Heather H. Thomas! Join us at the GoggleWorks to hear her poetry. Following their reading, we'll allow ANYONE to step up to the mic and read anything that moves them. Learn more about Ms. Thomas before our event by reading more below:

Heather H. Thomas is the author of Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018) and six other poetry collections. Her honors include a Rita Dove Poetry Prize for a poem in the collection. Vortex Street spirals from the poet’s riverside home across the globe, trailing patterns “behind a poet who stands bluntly amid the fluid of life.” The book has been praised as “an astonishment of language and image . . . brilliance and imaginative power in a compassionate and intimate voice.” The collection includes poems translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and Italian. Thomas teaches poetry at Cedar Crest College and lives in Reading along the Schuylkill River with her cat, Mina Loy.

Visit www.HeatherHThomas.com for more info.

Read a sample poem from Heather H. Thomas below:

Slit Silence

The shooting range marked Danger, No Trespassing, 

has a target made of old plates.

Shots disturb the birds, ricochet off the ridge,

separating the air I run through.

In Sarajevo, she timed her run across the bridge

—fifteen seconds between shots—

the leaves tender on trees not yet burned for fuel.

Snipers ringing the hills eyed her, eyed 

anyone walking home from work or buying bread. 

She counted the seconds on her watch before 

running through slit silence, plate of the sun the only 

unbroken thing until she reached the other side.

Heather H. Thomas, from Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018)

When: June 7th, 2018 at 6pm 
Where: The GoggleWorks
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

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1st Thursday Poetry featuring G Emil Ruetter and Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

Berks Bards is excited to welcome G Emil Ruetter and Diane Sahms-Guarnieri! Join us at the GoggleWorks to hear their poetry. Following their reading, we'll allow ANYONE to step up to the mic and read anything that moves them. Learn more about these poets before our event by reading more below:

G Emil Ruetter: A writer of poems and stories, g emil reutter was born in Bristol, PA, raised in Levittown, PA and has lived most of his life in of Philadelphia, PA. His work has been widely published in the small and electronic press and nine volumes of his collections have been published. He has read his poetry at venues in New England, Mid-Atlantic, and the Southwest. He published The Fox Chase Review (2008 – 2015) and coordinated The Fox Chase Reading Series ( 2007-2015). He is currently a contributing editor at North of Oxford. Visit him at: https://gereutter.wordpress.com

Read a sample poem from G Emil Reutter below:

I am Born of Nobility

I am born of nobility, of noble parents, of the streets of Highbridge

aged in the tract homes of Levittown. I am their son, they could have

done better. I am of the nobility of kitchens and car washes, of factories

and mills, of railroads. My hands have felt the heat of furnaces, dirt

packed under nails, scars on hands and knees, small burn mark on the

face. I have known great courage and great fear, great success and great

failure. I am born of noble parents.


I am born of nobility. I have worked in hot water, hot weather, and cold

weather that chilled bones. I have worked with scrub brushes, bricks

shovels and jack hammers, with badges and cuffs and at times with muscle.

I have been loved and have loved, hated and have hated, rose to the top of

the mountain and fell into the valleys. I have rejoiced and grieved, know the

great beauty and ugliness of humankind. I am born of noble parents.


I am born of nobility, of good and gracious parents, not the nobility of

aristocracy but of true noblemen and women of the working and middle

class who have felt the dirt of the earth in their hands, built homes and cities

worked the long hours. Of the noble people of the Reutters, Halpins,

Smiths and Loudens. Of truck drivers, transit workers, paper cutters,

house cleaners, cops, railway workers, soldiers, sailors,  politicians

lovers of literature, lovers of life. I am born of the nobility of the working

and middle class.

I am born of nobility, I am their son; I have done the best I can. Imprint of

the past upon me, I leave the past behind me, jettison the baggage and hold

the love and good near. I honor those in my lineage, know from where I have

come. I am born of noble parents, I am a writer of poems and stories.  


Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, a native Philadelphian poet, is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Images of Being (StoneGarden.net Publishing, 2011); Light’s Battered Edge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2015); and Night Sweat (Red Dashboard, LLC, 2016). She has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Many Mountains Moving, Blue Heron Review, JONAH Magazine, and 34th Parallel, among others. Poems are forthcoming from Canary, The A3 Review, & The Ibis Head Review. Currently she serves as poetry editor at North of Oxford. Diane has performed her poetry at venues along the east coast of the United States. Visit her at: www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com

Read a sample poem from Diane Sahms-Guarnieri below:

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh like a pen that lost its ink. A pervasive loneliness in-
vades your propped up body.  Three rivers. Bridges connecting
the disconnect.  Time to cross over and not look back at who you
once were.  Bridges crossed; never to be crossed over again.  Learn
what you can, move forward, parts of you will surely be left behind
like the city of steel that has died.
Once its mighty furnaces built this nation; now ghosts sing the lost
lives of those no longer here. Time has passed; it moves on into the
future.  Enlightened Emerson says to forgot regret, forget memory, the
soul must soar toward everlasting, yet China builds steel empires to
our forgotten Gods – disturbing as smoke billowing atomic clouds out
of nuclear power plants.  
June’s Alleghenies thick forest green; brown creeks wash our state’s
wounded feet; unemployment deep as a dug out quarry, rough and
quick as rapids, stagnant as a tree dead pond; muddy rivers running
wild and hungry; and rhythmic as a train rocking its sway from side
to side, the hunch back clouds walk the top ridge with slow motion
urgency, sun beating on their backs like a chain gang.
Philadelphia via rail - Paoli, Lancaster, Elizabethtown, Harrisburg,
Lewistown, Huntingdon, Tyrone, Altoona, Johnstown, Latrobe,
Greensburg, Pittsburgh.  This is the homeland I know, I know none
better.  Generations of families have lived here in every root reaching
foothold, in rich soil of timelessness, of sun. I bless this land.  An en-
gine pulls its many cars along rails blasted through mountain, wind-
ing way through forest, where every shadow has a story, each tree’s
testament – its wisdom and leafy green prayers to June-proud rays,
prevalence of green; all these waterways like veins running secretly
through time’s hidden mountains and valleys, coal cars still packed
with black dust.
O loved ones, ancestors to us all, how in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh
I have sung hard-hearted battle hymns, your bones laid at strangers’
feet.  They ran away from your tombs of shadow, clothes soaked in
blood, whose sweat sang our state alive, whose raised ashes scattered
beat death’s strung-out songs, filling the winds chattering teeth, the
buried banging of your deaths’ toll, church bell tongues now silenced
into the reading room space of a little room in a grand library, 300
miles from home.  I sang your elegies and after reading your life songs,
cried as if I had come from each of your funerals.
I am ashamed of myself. I cannot bury the ashes of your smoldering,
days gone by.  How can one drink each night from Lethe and rise the
next day forgetting the previous day?  I have failed to forget you; turn
to rust and ash like the steel mills and the rail yards of Altoona and
Johnstown.  I release your ashes to the wind of time, but they circle
back blinding my eyes in acidic tears; they burn through forgetfulness;
all of you rise in front of me and I see and hear you, and I tear my gar-
ments from my body, swim in cloudy waters of chlorinated sky where
clouds surrender to you, where I see your faces reflected in the lakes,
rivers, and mountains, whose silence screams from pinnacles.  I swim
away from the other side of Lethe, and I wake to your sleeping faces
in the shapes of clouds, until they lose their fluffy resemblances and
become skeletons, skulls - where I see the blue sky in holes that once
were your steel eyes. 

1st Thursday Poetry featuring Missi McLaren Ritter

Berks Bards is excited to welcome Missi McLaren Ritter! Join us at the GoggleWorks to hear from her poetry. Following her reading, we'll allow ANYONE to step up to the mic and read anything that moves them. Learn more about Missi McLaren Ritter before our event by reading more below:

Missi McLaren Ritter is a York poet and painter. Her poetry collections include Chronicles of the Amazing Broken Girl (Sunbury Press, 2010), Bi-the-Way (MMR Books 2012) and Pocket-Seized Low Fat Love Poems (Poem Sugar Press, 2015). Her poems have also been featured in the first collection of Below the Belt (Poem Sugar Press 2012) authors and in Reclaiming Our Voices (Poem Sugar Press 2013).

She is also a visual artist and a member of the King’s Courtyard Artists’ Collective at 124 E. King Street in downtown York, PA.

To meet the Missi McLaren Ritter, learn more about her work, or to simply hear all the readers at this event...come meet us there!

When: December 7th, 2017 at 6 pm 
Where: The GoggleWorks
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Find us on Facebook and Twitter or join our Mailing List for more information

1st Thursday Poetry featuring Jennifer Hetrick

Meet us at the GoggleWorks for friends, poetry, love, and laughter! Our August featured poet is near and dear to our hearts! The one and only, Jennifer Hetrick will read selected works from her upcoming book, The Labors of our Fingertips. We'll allow anyone to step up to the mic for a short open mic reading. 

Jennifer Hetrick's third and final book from her project called the labors of our fingertips: poems from manufacturing history of berks county will be released late this summer. It is funded in part by grants from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Berks Arts Council. She'll be introducing some of the 25 poems from this upcoming volume during the first part of the night. The poems are written from interviews with older seniors in Berks County who worked in mostly long gone factories and mills. Hetrick also teaches a traveling poetry class and takes her workshops into schools and state parks. 

Learn more about Jennifer Hetrick by checking out her website and social media page below: 
https://poetrywithjenniferhetrick.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/The-Labors-of-Our-Fingertips-Poems-1498233847098613/

When: August 3rd, 2017 at 6 pm 
Where: The Goggle Works
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

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1st Thursday Poetry featuring Dr. Claire McQuerry

Meet us at the GoggleWorks for friends, poetry, love, and laughter! Our July featured poet is Dr. Claire McQuerry, join us in welcoming this award winning poet! During the event, she will share selected works and then we'll allow anyone to step up to the mic for a short open mic reading. Learn more about Dr. McQuerry by reading her biography below:

Dr. Claire McQuerry is an Assistant Professor at Kutztown University. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The American Literary Review, Fugue, Mid-American Review, The Los Angeles Review, Western Humanities Review, Creative Nonfiction, and other journals. Her poetry collection, Lacemakers (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), was winner of the Crab Orchard Series First Book Prize.

Learn more about Dr. McQuerry's work on her website: https://www.clairemcquerry.com/

When: July 6th, 2017 at 6 pm 
Where: The Goggle Works
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

1st Thursday Poetry Featuring Margaux Griffith & Jenna Bazzell

Meet us at the Goggle Works for friends, poetry, love, and laughter! Our June featured poets are Margaux Griffith and Jenna Bazzell, join us in welcoming these wonderful women! The poets will share selected works and then we'll allow anyone to step up to the mic for a short open mic reading. Learn more about each poet by reading their biographies below:

Margaux Griffith earned her an MFA in Poetry at Oklahoma State University. She won the 2012 Anderbo Poetry Prize for her poem “Apple Galette” as well as the 2015 Blue Bonnet Poetry Prize for her poem "Routine." Margaux was also the 2012 Honorable Mention for the Academy of American Poets Prize. She has publications in The Boiler Journal, The Citron Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Rathalla Review, The Cossack, and Hot Metal Bridge.

Jenna Bazzell received her MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and her undergraduate degree in English from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. She was a semi-Finalist for the 2017 Phillip Levine Poetry Prize from Anhinga Press and a semi-finalist for the Miller Williams poetry book contest at the University of Arkansas Press. Jenna won the 2015 Everett Southwest Literary Award and has received two honorable mentions from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in Passages North, Cream City Review, Fifth Wednesday, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Madrid, Naugatuck River Review, Southern Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Sou’wester. Jenna is an adjunct instructor at Harrisburg Area Community College, Reading Area Community College in Pennsylvania and East Stroudsburg University.

When: June 1st, 2017 at 6 pm 
Where: The Goggle Works
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Join Barbara Strasko & Daina Savage at the GoggleWorks on April 6th!

Please join us for 1st Thursday Poetry and Open Mic with our Featured Poets Barbara Strasko and Daina Savage!

Barbara Buckman Strasko is the author of two collections of poetry: Graffiti in Braille (Word Press, 2012) and  On the Edge of Delicate Day (Pudding House Press, 2008). She lives along the Conestoga River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her poem “Bricks and Mortar” was chosen to be engraved in granite in Lancaster’s main square. She was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Lancaster County by the Lancaster Literary Guild.

Strasko’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Rhino, Poet Lore, Brilliant Corners, Ninth Letter , Nimrod and Borderlands. She was a finalist for the 2012 New Letters Poetry Award, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

Strasko was the 2009 Teacher of the Year for River of Words, an international environmental youth poetry and art contest. Strasko was a counselor, reading specialist and literacy coach for the School District of Lancaster . Strasko currently serves as the Poet in the Schools for Poetry Paths and founded  Right to Write, a writing program for youth in the city of Lancaster.

Learn more about Barbara and her amazing works by visiting her website BarbaraBuckmanStrasko.com

Daina Savage, Lancaster County’s second poet laureate, works as a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers in the Mid-Atlantic region, with more than 3,000 published stories. She is a co-founder and co-director of the Spoken Word Festival in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As the director of the Lancaster Poetry Continuum, she organized numerous poetry reading series in Lancaster museums, bookstores, and coffee shops. 

She is the co-founder of the Lancaster County Young Writers Workshop. Her poetry has been published in numerous regional journals and has garnered many writing awards. She is the 2013 recipient of the R.E. Foundation Award for Outstanding Poetry and her work has been nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. Her debut collection of poetry, Traces, was published in 2013 by Iris G. Press.

Visit Daina's website for more information: IrisgPress.org/Daina-Savage

When: April 6th, 2017 at 6pm
Where: The GoggleWorks
201 Washington St, Reading, PA 19601
What to bring: Bring your friends, bring your poems, bring your friend's poems!

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Join Heath Brougher & Lexi Spino February 2nd at the GoggleWorks!

Please join us for 1st Thursday Poetry and Open Mic with our Featured Poets Heath Brougher and Lexi Spino.

Heath Brougher attended Temple University. He is the poetry editor of Five 2 One Magazine. He has published two chapbooks, “A Curmudgeon Is Born” (Yellow Chair Press 2016) and “Digging for Fire” (Stay Weird and Keep Writing Publishing Co. 2016), with another one titled “Your Noisy Eyes” due out in 2017. He is a Best of the Net Nominee and his work has been translated into Albanian and been published in over 25 countries. He was the judge of Into the Void Magazine’s 2016 Poetry Competition and edited the anthology “Luminous Echoes,” the sales of which will be donated to help with suicide prevention. His work has appeared or is due to be published in Of/with, Chiron Review, SLAB, Main Street Rag, Crack the Spine, Cruel Garters, MiPOesias, Third Wednesday, Lehigh Valley Vanguard, Gloom Cupboard, X-Peri, Gold Dust, and elsewhere. When not writing, he helps with the charity Paws Soup Kitchen which gives out free dog/cat food to low-income families with pets.

Lexi Spino is a 25-year-old poet from York, PA. She has a chapbook called "I'm A Wanderer, Not A Runaway" and a spoken word EP called "Suicidal Since Birth". She is very heavy into the art scene around York and has recently become one of the two administrators of the poetry program at The Parliment. When she isn't writing or being an active member of the art society she is running around like a five-year-old with her daughter. The year of 2017 will bring her next poetry book titled "This Is Not For You" as well as another music/spoken work collaboration.

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