Monday October 21, 2013 at 6 p.m. at Reading Area Community College featuring poets Valerie Fox and Lynn Levin

Please join Berks Bards for the Bruce Stanley Memorial Poetry Reading in room 118 of the Schmidt Tech Center featuring Valerie Fox and Lynn Levin.

Valerie Fox's books include The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books) and The Glass Book (Texture Press). She recently published Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press), which was co-written with Lynn Levin. Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon is a compilation written with Arlene Ang (Texture Press). She currently teaches writing at Drexel University and previously taught at Sophia University (Tokyo) and Peirce College (Philadelphia). She was a founding co-editor of 6ix magazine and Press 1. She has published work in Ping Pong, Hanging Loose, West Branch, Hamilton Stone Review, and many other journals.

LIST OF BOOKS

1. Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013, $22, ISBN 978-0-615-78283-6)

2. The Glass Book (Texture Press, 2010, $15,  ISBN 978-0-9797573-8-9)

3.  The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books, 2006, $12, ISBN 0-9773786-4-0)

4. Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008, $15, ISBN978-0-9797573-1-0)
(a compilation with Arlene Ang)

LYNN LEVIN is the author of four collections of poems: Miss Plastique (Ragged Sky Press, 2013); Fair Creatures of an Hour (Loonfeather Press, 2009), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium (Loonfeather Press, 2005), a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award; and A Few Questions about Paradise (Loonfeather Press, 2000). She is, with Valerie Fox, the author of a craft-of-poetry book, Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013). Lynn Levin’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, Washington Square Review, Verse Daily, and on Garrison Keillor’s radio show The Writer’s Almanac. She is currently involved in translating the work of Odi Gonzales, a Peruvian Andean poet. Lynn Levin teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Lynn Levin: List of Books

I will bring a supply of these books to the RACC event.

1. Miss Plastique (Ragged Sky Press, 2013, $15, ISBN 978-1-933974-12-5)

2. Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013, $22, ISBN 978-0-615-78283-6)

3.  Fair Creatures of an Hour (Loonfeather Press, 2009, $12.95, ISBN 978-0-926147-28-7)

4. Imaginarium (Loonfeather Press, 2005, $12.95, ISBN 0-926147-18-8)

Berks Bards is supported in part by grants from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts as administered through the Berks Arts Council.

Thursday, September 5, 2013, 6 p.m. at the GoggleWorks, first floor, with poets Brian Fanelli and Dawn Leas

Join Berks Bards in welcoming Dawn Leas and Brian Fanelli to First Thursday at the GoggleWorks.

Dawn Leas holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. In past lives she has worked as a copywriter, freelancer, director of admissions at an independent school, and middle-school English teacher. Currently, she is the associate director of the Wilkes University M.A./M.F.A. Creative Writing Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Literary Mama, Willows Wept Review, Poetry in Transit, Connecticut River Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, I Know When to Keep Quiet, is available from Finishing Line Press.

Brian Fanelli's poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared or is forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Spillway, World Literature Today, Portland Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, and other magazines and journals. He is the author of one chapbook, Front Man (Big Table Publishing), and the full-length collection All That Remains, out this fall through Unbound Content. Brian has an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and is a Ph.D. student at SUNY Binghamton. He is currently a full-time English instructor at Lackawanna College.

An open mic follows the reading. This event is free and open to the general public.

August 22, 2013 at First Energy Stadium hear the reading of the Baseball Poetry Contest Winners for 2013

Join the Fightin' Phils and Berks Bards for a reading of the 2013 Fightin' Phils/Berks Bards Baseball Poetry Contest winning entries.

The reading follows the baseball game which begins at 7:05 p.m. and precedes the fireworks display following the game.

Also, new this year, kids 13 and under can write a poem at the Berks Bards table, set up in the concourse, and thereby enter a drawing to win a baseball!

Winners to be announce by ticket numbers from the field just before the reading following the game.

Thursday August 1, 2013 at 6 p.m. on the first floor of the GoggleWorks featuring Turkish poet Tuğrul Tanyol

Join Berks Bards in welcoming Turkish poet Tuğrul Tanyol!

Tuğrul Tanyol is a well-known poet, critic and essayist in Turkey. He was born in 1953 in Istanbul and educated at the Catholic Lycée of St Joseph and the University of the Bosphorus. In 1985 he won the Necatıgıl Prize for poetry. To date he has published six books of poetry and written many reviews and critical essays. He teaches social sciences at the University of Marmara. His poetry is lyrical but controlled by a classical clarity. It has been said of him that 'he is a poet alive to the pitfalls of blind ideological allegiances'. He has been translated into Spanish, French and English and was the first Turkish poet to take part in the Trois Rivières poetry festival in Quebec.
-from Ruth Christie's introduction in MPT Series 3/8 Getting it Across 

This event is free and open to the public
 

July 11, 2013 at 6 p.m. first floor of the GoggleWorks, just past the gift shop featuring a Poet's Picnic of Good Words and Good Food

Come one, come all.

Bring your poetry and a picnic snack to share, drinks and service for a Poet's Picnic on the 11th of July.

We'll be meeting at the same location, the site of the former La Cucina Cafe on the first floor of the GoggleWorks.

Come hungry.

Open mic, good food and good friends.

Who could ask for more?

Announcing the Berks Bards & Fightin' Phils Baseball Poetry Contest for 2013

Come one, come all, come play:

Berks Bards and Fightin' Phils Baseball
         Poetry Contest for 2013

The top three poets will read their winning poem
before a packed stadium
on the field after the game
on August 22nd just prior to the fireworks display.

The game begins at 7:05 p.m.

Contest entries must be submitted via email to klimcho@msn.com.
Please put RE: Baseball Poetry Contest 2013 in the comment line.
The contest opens July 8th. Contest entries must be received no later than July 26th.

Winners will be notified on or before August 8, 2013.

Winners will be selected by the Fightin' Phils staff from among the top six finalists. 

For further information please contact Marilyn Klimcho at klimcho@msn.com.
Please do not submit poems previously entered in this contest.
All entries must be the original work of the submitting author.

SAVE THE DATE!

Our regularly scheduled First Thursday is shuffling to Thursday, July 11th, 2013 at 6 p.m. in the GoggleWorks.

Poet to Be Announced at a later date.