Ann E. Michael is Featured Poet for First Thursday Poetry May 4th

Thursday, May 4th
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry Open Mic 
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
 Meeting Place: GoggleWorks Cafe 
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

 May's Featured Poet is Ann E. Michael 

Ann E. Michael is the author of six chapbooks of poetry and one full-length collection, Water-Rites. Her next collection, The Red Queen Hypothesis, won the Prairie State Poetry Prize and will be published later in 2023. She lives in Emmaus, PA. Her website is www.annemichael.blog.

  

Excerpt from “Surveying”

 

…

I love the kingbirds, compact, elegant,

their dark heads poised. They don’t

tussle in cornstalks like finches,

shake the barley, rend the blossoms.

 

Their pale chests shine on rainy

summer days when the world tightens

every brilliant nerve in my spine

and won’t release. Kingbird alights—

 

where’s the terror in letting go?

 

Image: Cover photo of the collection Strange Ladies, a chapbook by Ann E. Michael, published by Moonstone Poetry Aug. 2022.

Open Mic to follow the poetry reading.

Featured Poet: Vernita Hall April 6th at the GoggleWorks

April's Featured Poet is Vernita Hall 

Vernita Hall is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color, winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize and of the Robert Creeley Prize from Marsh Hawk Press; and The Hitchhiking Robot Learns About Philadelphians, winner of the Moonstone Press Chapbook Contest. She has been a finalist in the Salem College Rita Dove Poetry Award, Paumanok Poetry Award, New Letters Patricia Cleary Miller Award, Bellingham Review 49^th Parallel Award, Witness Literary Award, Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and Arts & Letters Rumi Prize. 

Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Barrow Street, Solstice, The Common, River Styx, The Hopkins Review, Arts & Letters, and Obsidian, as well as other journals and anthologies. 

With fellowships from Ucross and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Hall holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Rosemont College, a B.A. from La Salle University, and serves on the poetry review board of Philadelphia Stories. 

Chauvet Cave: Divination 

If God is the skull of a bear 

on a rockpile altar 

then you can be Buddha 

in half a million years 

for evolution charts in mortality 

the path of least resilience 

for the slow learner. 

Ask the auroch (an erstwhile steer), 

the mammoth, the woolly rhino, 

ask the cave bear Godhead 

the secret of longevity. 

Their laughing scattered bones here 

echoing to dust will whisper: 

Brevity 

Vernita Hall
The Common Online
April 2021


Open Mic to follow the reading.

 

Now Accepting One-Minute Poem Submissions!

 Berks Bards is welcoming submissions for One Minute Poems that will air on BCTV during National Poetry Month in April.

There are three options for recording a one-minute poem:
1. Zoom
2. Submitting a self-produced video
3. Recording a poem in-person at Berks Community Television's studio, 401 Penn Street Reading, PA 19601 on Wednesday afternoons, March 1 or 8, 2023. (Validated parking is available at the Chiarelli Plaza Garage at 3rd and Washington.)

Whichever option you choose, please schedule with Marilyn Klimcho at:
klimcho@msn.com

First Thursday Poetry Reading with Brandon Krieg

 

Join us Thursday, March 2nd
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry 
    at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
 Meeting Place: GoggleWorks Cafe   
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

We welcome Featured Poet Brandon Krieg and Kutztown University student writers for First Thursday Poetry on Thursday, March 2nd. 

The Featured Poet for March is
Brandon Krieg with KU Students

Brandon Krieg's most recent collection of poems is Magnifier, winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry, chosen by Kazim Ali, and a finalist for the 2022 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Kutztown, PA, and teaches at Kutztown University. 

- Sieve -

Stolen selahs and orchard  

steeps, hourless flowers  

of our grafted speech, this rest  

before the branch becomes  

instrument is infinite  

decimals to reach one reached  

in one nakedness, is the you not yours  

to give you give  

as hail-dimpled sand  

vanishes through a starry sieve  

Open Mic to follow the Poetry Reading!

February's First Thursday Poetry Open Mic!

 

Join us Thursday, February 2nd
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry Open Mic 
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
 Meeting Place: GoggleWorks Cafe |  Masks optional.  
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: February's First Thursday Poetry Open Mic

You are invited to First Thursday Poetry Open Mic hosted by Berks Bards on Thursday, February 2nd. We'll meet in the Café area at the GoggleWorks to share space as a poetry community. Prep your poems and bring a friend!

Please note: February's Featured Poet, Lisa Alletson, will be rescheduled for another date. Stay tuned!

. . . 

Dana Kinsey is Featured Poet for January 2023

 

Join us Thursday, January 5th
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry 
  at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
 Meeting Place: GoggleWorks Cafe|  Masks optional.  

berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

January's Featured Poet is Dana Kinsey

Dana Kinsey is an actor and teacher published in Fledgling Rag, Drunk Monkeys, ONE ART, On the Seawall, Porcupine Literary, West Trestle Review, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Dana's play, WaterRise, was produced at the Gene Frankel Theatre. Her chapbook, Mixtape Venus, is published by I. Giraffe Press. Visit wordsbyDK.com  

- Des(s)erted-

Apron pressed to granite,  

she calls Siri for a song,  

and Ella moves her  
to rolling pin, pie pan,  

stained card in an old hand.  

Heavy cloth bag of green apples. 

Humming “How About Me?” she skims  

the polished wooden floor, 

gathers spoons and spices. 

Reaches through the window, 

pulls shutters tight  

as lightning cracks. 

Dana Kinsey

Open Mic to follow the Poetry Reading!

First Thursday Poetry Reading Features Bill Wunder Dec. 1st

 

Join us Thursday, December 1st
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry 
  at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
 Meeting Place: GoggleWorks Room 238 |  Masks optional.  

berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

December's Featured Poet is Bill Wunder

Bill Wunder is the Co-Winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. His fourth book, Welcome to Paradise, New and Selected Poems, includes his winning poem, and is now available from Amazon.com or from the author. Previous books are Pointing at the Moon, 2008, Hands Turning the Earth, 2014, all three from WordTech editions. Kingdom of Heaven, 2015 is from Kelsay Books. All are available from Amazon or the author. 

- What the Coronavirus Taught Me -

That the stars know nothing

of social-distancing

and are still pinned

to their assigned places.

That the moon, made heavy

by sadnesses,

still rises.

And Venus, that diva,

still glimmers

low on the horizon.

That you only have to look

at the crocus, the daffodil

to draw strength

from their courage.

That you must first listen

to the wood thrush,

the nightingale

if you wish to sing.

Bill Wunder   

Open Mic to follow the Poetry Reading!