Join Joseph Ross on Zoom June 4th, 2020 at 6 pm

Berks Bards welcomes Joseph Ross to join us online on Zoom!

When: June 4th, 2020 at 6 pm
Where: TinyURL.com/VirtualBard
If required, please enter the Meeting ID 759 062 6042


Read Joseph Ross' Bio below:
Joseph Ross is the author of three books of poetry: Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many places including, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, Xavier Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Drumvoices Revue. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize. He recently served as the 23rd Poet-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society in Howard County, Maryland. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. and writes regularly at www.JosephRoss.net.


Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:
Nelson Mandela Speaks to Trayvon Martin

I walk down Fox Street
in Johannesburg at dawn.

A light rain darkens my shoes,
they scrape against the small

stones. I am standing
in the doorway when I see you

across the street, on the corner,
looking at me. You wear no hood

today. You smile & walk
toward me. I smile & wait

for you. The day begins
here. Coffee & tea stands

push back their canvas
covers. A whistle sings

from the train station.
Your arms swing

at your sides like only
a teenage boy’s arms

can swing. You look
like you might open

your mouth to sing. There
is no SUV in sight.

I am not sure how
to greet you so I look

at your wet, grass-stained shoes,
then back at your seventeen

year-old face. I say:
“Come in, out of the rain.”

by Joseph Ross, from Ache (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017)

Learn more about Joseph Ross by visiting www.JosephRoss.net

Join Brandon Krieg on Zoom May 7th, 2020 at 6 pm

Brandon Krieg is the author of Magnifier, winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry chosen by Kazim Ali, as well as In the Gorge (Codhill Press), Invasives (New Rivers Press), a finalist for the 2015 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing, and a chapbook, Source to Mouth (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press). He is Assistant Professor of English at Kutztown University and lives in Kutztown, PA, with his spouse, Colleen O'Brien, and their son.


Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:


The Lover in Winter Plaineth


Machines grind wind’s fangs


to flour. Piles heap



on the outskirts. I cannot see


to the edge. I creep



again to my niche. I sleep,


fingers triggered


from touching the keys.



Alders wave the river smell


into the hangar. I kneel again to scrape


gilt from illuminations



for re-use. Piles heap


on the outskirts. The outskirts



creep. An orchard could be


in the light at the end of the open hangar.


I cannot see to the edge.



I copy what the dead sang


about the fangs of the wind


though the wind had been de-fanged.



The piles. The outskirts.


I creep. I sleep.






Learn more about Brandon Krieg by visiting https://brandonkrieg.com/


Here's how to join us & Brandon Krieg online on May 7th:

• Go to https://tinyurl.com/VirtualBard
• If required, please enter the Meeting ID 759 062 6042

We hope to see you there!


Sincerely,
Your friends at Berks Bards

Join Marian Frances Wolbers at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts November 7th, 2019

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

When: November 7th, 2019 at 6 pm

Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 420

201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read Marian Frances Wolbers' Bio below:

Marian Frances Wolbers writes poetry, short stories, novels, and drama. Her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, Remarkable Doorways, and Westview, and she was a featured poet in the 100,000 Poets for Change Project in 2011. Her novel Rider was published by St. Martin’s Press, receiving favorable reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. As the recipient of a Berks Arts Council / PA Council of the Arts grant in 2018-19, she served as facilitator and producer of reading events for three writing groups locally, focusing on Writing through Trauma as healing modality. She teaches literature and writing courses at Albright College, where she is an administrator in the School of Professional Studies, for adult learners. She holds an M.A. in English Literature from Kutztown University and a B.A. in Japanese Studies from Bucknell University.


Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:

Insomnia

'Twixt the kiss
and the coffee
I barely slept last night.
Hereafter:
You may remind me
not to drink coffee
past 7 pm.
As to the other...
Well.
Perhaps there is no easy cure.

Learn more about Marian Frances Wolbers, by visiting http://www.marianwolbers.com

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Join Eileen M. D’Angelo at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts October 3rd, 2019

Berks Bards welcomes Eileen M. D'Angelo 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: October 3rd, 2019 at 6 pm

Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 411

201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read Eileen M. D'Angelo's Bio below:

Eileen M. D’Angelo, Director of Mad Poets Society and Editor of Mad Poets Review, has coordinated over 1500 special events in the tri-state area and was the subject of a Tribute by Philadelphia’s Moonstone Arts Center in 2018.  She has been published in Rattle, Manhattan Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Drexel Online Journal,  Wild River Review, Philadelphia Stories, Philadelphia Poets and others. A judge for the Philly area open auditions for the pilot program of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, she conducted workshops and performed original songs and poetry on WXPN’s World Café Live, at St. Joseph’s University, Rutgers, Rosemont College, Main Line Art Center, Delco Community College, Manayunk Art Center, Hedgerow Theatre, Montco Writers Conference, Walt Whitman at 200 celebration at City Hall, and other venues. Former Board Secretary of Musehouse:  A Literary Arts Center in Chestnut Hill, and former six-term President of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, Eileen is an advocate for domestic abuse awareness and Founder of Arts Against Abuse. She was named the 2017 Paralegal of the Year and was also the recipient of the 23rd Annual Victim Rights Award given by the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office and the Domestic Abuse Project.


Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:

The Art of Getting Lost

It begins with an unbroken line bending out of sight. 
The road is unfamiliar, yet you pressure the pedal, 
confident you are on the right road.  No stops 
or bathroom breaks because you are making good time.

You never see it happening as you drum your fingers 
on the steering wheel to the sound of Radar Love,
leaving crowded beltways and choking smokestacks behind, 
oblivious to the subtle replacement of cities
by small towns.   Of small towns by trees.  
And you?  You are foolish enough to enjoy the ride, 
as you disappear into the wide mouth of open country.

There is no sign  Entering Nowhere - Population 1
to give you the option of turning the car around.
No warning that soon it will be only you 
and a handful of horses, the occasional silo, 
a pile of gray rocks from an old foundation.

The fields around you have never even dreamed 
of a gas station, let alone a rest stop, 
and as the car carries you into oblivion, you wonder:  
              Isn’t that the same bale of hay?  

There, in the heart of desolation, as though 
you alone survived the bomb . . .  
It is you and the sound of crickets, you
You and the surprised sound of your own voice:
              I’m in the middle of nowhere

And time slows down.

You fumble for road maps in the glove box, 
pull the car to the pebbly shoulder of the road. 
One crow on the wire above you 
throws back his head and laughs, as you spread a map
on the hood to the curious stare of cows, the car sheepish 
as if it should have known something.



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Join Michael Brown at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts June 6th, 2019

Berks Bards is excited to welcome Michael Brown! 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 what moves them.

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

Read Michael Brown's Bio below:

Michael R. Brown was born in Philadelphia, raised in Lancaster County, and went to college at the University of Scranton. He started teaching in inner-city Philly, then Bucks County, and left for the University of Michigan where he majored at the Ph.D. level in English and Education. His dissertation was a literary history of the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance directed by Robert Hayden. By then he had his own poetry published and had become expert in the teaching of writing. He left Ann Arbor to teach in East Texas, Central (Ohio) State, Western Michigan, and the University of Illinois. He taught in Chicago storefronts and community centers, then settled into Chicago State University as Director of Composition, with a two-year sojourn at Suwon University in South Korea. On his return to Chicago he became engaged in the Poetry Slam, and he and his wife Patricia Smith moved to Boston and established a slam that continues till this day. In 1992 he organized the third US National Poetry Slam, and in 1993 he led the US National Slam championship team in San Francisco. He also published travel articles, political columns, and short stories. While resident in Boston, Brown taught at the University of Rhode Island, Suffolk University, Clark University, and Mount Ida College where he became head of the Communications Program. Meanwhile, he had five books of poetry published: Falling Wallendas (Tia Chucha, 1994), The Man Who Makes Amusement Rides (Hanover Press, 2003), Susquehanna (Princeton, Ragged Sky, 2003), The Confidence Man (Princeton, Ragged Sky, 2007), and The Martin Bormann Dog Care Book (Robbinston, Maine: Resolute Bear Press, 2017). The last book is a collection of his political poems written over the past 50 years. Since 2007, he and his wife, the poet and editor Valerie Lawson, have lived in rural Down East Maine, where the edited the poetry quarterly, Off the Coast, from 2008 to 2017. They now own Resolute Bear Press, where she published the 3 Nations Anthology which won the 2017 Maine Publishers and Writers Award for the best anthology. They are currently work on bi-lingual books of Passamaquoddy tales and poetry.

Learn more about Michael by visiting: http://michael.brown.name/

Don't forget to join Michael at the Pagoda Writer's Circle the Saturday following this reading for a Ekphrastik Writing Workshop!

When: June 8th, 2019 at 1 pm
Where: 1840 Lorraine Road Reading PA 19604  
RSVP: via email ltjamesthepagoda@gmail.com  or via phone (610) 413-0373

 

Learn more about this workshop by visiting: https://pagodawriters.com

Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:
City of Night

In a strange land,
there are no cool nights in hot cities.
Light is always dusty gray, air gritty,
sounds loud and muffled, 
people warm and wary.
Love takes place among the ruins,
like trysts at the Coliseum,
sports cars left in the street,
girls in tank tops backed against stone blocks,
guys’ jeans hooked behind their knees,
cats watching from damp niches in the walls.

The most important things are said in other languages,
kisses laid on foreign tongues.
The antidote is a walk along a river to catch
a homeless artist pretending to work late
against the stone embankment by the Seine,
listen to young ghosts murmur behind Westminster,
watch the kids on holiday just off the big piazza
imitating colossal statues with dwarfed good humor.

In the morning I climb several flights of wooden steps,
sit in a straight chair under a low ceiling
at a cluttered table in a rented space,
blocking out the sound of someone else’s TV
and traffic that blows in airless rooms
filled with other people’s belongings.
I clear a notebook-sized space,
look out a window facing windows,
and write as though I’m in prison,

even though it’s just another cage with an open door.

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Join Leonard Gontarek at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts May 2nd, 2019

Berks Bards is excited to welcome Leonard Gontarek! 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 what moves them.

When: May 2nd, 2019 at 6 pm
Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 420
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read Leonard Gontarek's Bio below:

Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems, including, Take Your Hand

Out of My Pocket, Shiva (2016). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review,

Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and The Best American Poetry, among others.

He coordinates Peace/Works,  Poetry In Common, Philly Poetry Day, The Philadelphia

Poetry Festival, and hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series. He has received

Poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Mudfish Poetry

Prize, the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service Award, and was

a Literary Death Match Champion. His poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was

a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges Motion Poems project in 2015, and was the

basis for the award-winning film by Lori Ersolmaz. He is Poetry Consultant for

Whitman At 200: Art & Democracy.

Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:

Locust Trees

In my poor country, we poured sugar

on everything to not notice our hunger.

In spring, the shining coats of blackbirds

were turned gold by sunlight.

The locust trees were thick with petals,

but many had fallen to the ground.

Our neighbors lay scattered on battlefields,

some literally rose into heaven.

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Join Nathanael Tagg at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts March 7th, 2019

Berks Bards is excited to welcome Nathanael Tagg! 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 what moves them.

When: March 7th, 2019 at 6 pm
Where: GoggleWorks Center for the Arts Studio 420
201 Washington Street Reading PA 19601

Read Nathanael Tagg's Bio below:


Nathanael Tagg has an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers, where he was a Truman Capote Literary Trust fellow. He is an associate professor at Cecil College. His first book, a collection of poems entitled Animal Virtue, was published by WordTech Editions in March 2018. His writing has appeared in Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Cimarron Review, Confrontation, Pleiades, and many other magazines. It employs humor, nature imagery, poetic form, and allusions—especially the biblical or literary—to explore the challenges of living well in times of personal, spiritual, or environmental trouble. He lives with his wife and their nine-month-old daughter in Lancaster, PA.

Read a sample poem from Nathanael below:

Our Baby Deepness

Really? Yes, science proves the virgin birth

of Komodo dragons, caused by the holy spirit

of loneliness. Often, a most mammal-like lizard

—call her Mary; look in her eyes (somebody

is home)—must have swum to paradise,

an island with everything she needs, bar

a mate. Evolution—call him Evo—

couldn’t brook this (no nativity) forever

and said, “No mate? No problem. Voila:

you’re pregnant.” Science contests every miracle?

Destroys a sense of beauty and mystery? Really?

No spirituality without dualism and theology?  

To awe me, Jane, yours needn’t be a virgin birth

and won’t be, which your mom and I can confirm.

To the miraculous process, I’m peripheral.

Never mind another miracle: walking on water.

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle walked the ocean floor,

wore a pressurized suit, was reborn as Our Lady

Deepness, who says, “Kids don’t start out killing;

they start out wondering.” Jane, you’ll

be curious (in both senses) like Jane Goodall

and become yourself by living among us—

among animals. Like you, like fetuses, in wetness

Earle lives, learns, grows. Mirroring the odyssey

of your mom, every woman with child, all expectant

parents (me too!), Earle, while pregnant,

descended in a submersible to explore the depths.

Learn more about Nathanael by visiting his website: http://www.nathanaeltagg.com

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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