August 11, 2015 6-8 p.m. at Cafe Bold in West Reading for a poetry open mic

Join Berks Bards at Cafe Bold for an After Hours Open Mic Poetry Reading with Hostess Bee HiveQueen.



Bring your poems.


Bring your friends.


Bring your friend's poems.


Cafe Bold offers their full drink and menu options so bring your appetite as well.


See you there!


This free event is sponsored in part by the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts administered locally by the Berks Arts Council.

Sunday, Aug. 9th 2015 at 4:45 p.m. at First Energy Stadium to read the winning entries for the Baseball Poetry Contest

Please join Berks Bards at the ball field on Sunday, August 9th in the plaza at First Energy Stadium, 4:45 p.m. when the winners of the Fightin' Phils and Berks Bards Baseball Poetry Contest will be reading their winning entries prior to the game, which begins at 5:05 p.m.



This year's winners are:



First Place: Bottom of the 10th by Le Hinton



Second Place: Another Day at the Park by Christine Ross



Third Place: Getting it Right by Ed Romond





Children 18 years old or younger in attendance are eligible to enter a drawing at the Berks Bards table.


The entry "fee" for children is to write a poem.



The drawing prizes are baseballs autographed by winners of past and current Baseball Poetry Contests.



The winning entries in the children's poetry drawing will be selected during the Seventh Inning Stretch.



Please plan to revisit the Berks Bards table at that time to see who won.

Thursday, August 6, 2015 6-8 p.m. at the GoggleWorks featuring poet Jennifer Hetrick

Join us in welcoming JENNIFER HETRICK as our featured poet
for First Thursday Poetry at the GoggleWorks on August 6th at 6 pm.

She will be reading selections from her new project "the labors of our fingertips:
poems from manufacturing history in Berks County." 

First Floor Cafe, 201 Washington Street, Reading

Open Mic

Liz Stanley
Berks Bards

Biography

Jennifer Hetrick considers herself a language thrower of sorts. Having graduated from Clarion University with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy and a minor in English writing, she contributes to Berks County Living Magazine, The Reading Eagle, and the Copper Development Association’s Copper in the Arts and other publications. And she occasionally does farm blogging for Weaver’s Orchard and Wolff's Apple House.

 

In the past, she wrote for Bucks Life Magazine, The Merchandiser, Lancaster Farming, Berks-Mont Newspapers, the Limerick-Royersford-Spring City and Perkiomen Valley Patch sites, growindie.com, phillyecocity.com, the Boyertown Bulletin, and MidAtlantic Farm Credit's Leader.

She has also interviewed poets from Israel and Turkey as well as from different parts of the U.S.

Hetrick is currently managing a three-year poetry project called the labors of our fingertips: poems from manufacturing history in berks county. The project involves interviewing older seniors who worked in Berks County’s factories and mills, creating poems from their memories, and publishing three volumes of books with the content. Each of the books will include 25 poems. The first book will be released through Foothills Publishing in Kanona, New York in August 2015. The project is funded in part by grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Berks Arts Council.

 

 

In 2010, she started her own positive-only local news publication known as News, Not Blues, based out of Boyertown, Berks County. Throughout each year, she donates contemporary poetry books to the Boyertown Community Library through News, Not Blues, including books by Berks County poets. Invited to the first annual writers' festival at the Chautauqua Institution through a scholarship she received in 2004, she workshopped with Syracuse University's respected poet Bruce Smith. In 2011, she had a creative nonfiction essay about her mother published in the book Western Pennsylvania Reflections: Stories from the Alleghenies to Lake Erie through a call for submissions from at the University of Pennsylvania. She and good friend fellow poet Frank Wolfe of Royersford, Montgomery County used to attend and read at Otherwise Poetry, a monthly poetry reading at the Towne Book Center & Cafe in Collegeville, sponsored by The Mad Poets Society based in Media, Delaware County. She has studied under Berks County’s third poet laureate, Heather Thomas, and followed its fourth poet laureate, Craig Czury, on his Marcellus Shale poetry project in Northeastern Pennsylvania in 2012. She plans to teach poetry classes as well as river poems workshops and poetry workshops for seniors at retirement homes around the region in the future. Her blog, The Garden Harlot, easily explains her penchant for hiking and photographing scenes of plants from unexpected viewpoints. A lot of her freelance writing involves putting positives in front of people in a way which the world needs more than it will ever need or benefit from what's negative.

 

July 14, 2015 6-8 p.m. for After Hours at Cafe Bold in West Reading

Join Bee HiveQueen at Cafe Bold in West Reading for a poetry open mic on July 14th at 6 p.m.

This is a free event, open to the general public and is supported in part by a grant administered through the Berks Arts Council.

Cafe Bold's kitchen will be open!

Thursday, July 2, 2015 6-8 p.m. at the GoggleWorks for a themed open mic: Bring Your Verbal Fireworks on the theme of: "A Thousand Times"

No fireworks here, just Poets with words that sparkle and glow, shed light,
and sound like an explosion of meaning in the air.

Join the fun!

First Thursday Poetry sponsored by Berks Bards

July 2, 2015 at 6:00 pm

The GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, First Floor, Mi Casa Su Casa Cafe'
201 Washington Street, Reading, PA

Open Mic.  THEME for the event is "A Thousand Times." 

Bring poems, bring friends, bring your friends' poems.

Liz Stanley
Berks Bards
zilabets@hotmail.com

This event is free and open to the public, supported by a grant from the PA Partners
in the Arts, with additional funding from the Friends of the Berks County Public Libraries,
and generous energy from volunteers and friends of Berks Bards.

Enter the 5th Annual Fightin' Phils and Berks Bards Poetry Contest and Win a Chance to Read before Thousands!

Announcing the 5th Annual Fightin' Phils and Berks Bards Baseball Poetry Contest.

If you are 18 years old or older, write an original poem about any aspect of baseball and
email it to klimcho@msn.com on or before Sunday, July 19, 2015, with the words
"RE: Baseball Poetry Contest" in the subject line.  Include your name, address and a phone
number where you can be reached.

The top three winners will be selected by the Fightin' Phils front office and will receive
free tickets to a home game at a date to be announced.

The First Place Winner will read his or her poem from the Fightin' Phils pitcher's mound just prior
to the fireworks display.

Liz Stanley
Marilyn Klimcho
~Berks Bards

Tuesday, June 9, 2015 6-8 p.m. at Cafe Bold in West Reading, 550 Penn Ave. for a Poetry Open Mic

Join Hostess Bee HiveQueen and her fellow Berks Bards at Cafe Bold, 550 Penn Ave. in West Reading for Second Tuesday, an open mic that is free and open to the general public.



Bring your friends, bring your poems and bring your friend's poems.



Cafe Bold will offer their full menu and drink options.



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