Poet's Moon Cafe
Open Mike Poetry at 80 Border Street
Every Third Thursday of the month at 6:00 pm, join us at 80 Border Street for Poet's Moon Cafe Open Mic Poetry Night. Center opens at 6:00, open mic starts at 7:00 pm and feature is at 8:00. All are welcome. $5 suggested donation to help support this start up non profit and show the feature a little love. We now have a regular music segment to our Poet's Moon Cafe poetry nights. Acoustical jazz guitarist and singer, Steve Koretz, will lead us into a positive groove with a performance starting a little after 6:00.
Our next Open Mic night will be held on Thursday, May 15th. Our guest feature poets will be a duo reading by husband/wife poets, Mark Pawlak and Mary Bonina.
Mark Pawlak was born and raised in Buffalo and has lived in the Boston area for most of the past 40 years. He is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, Official Versions(2006). His work has been translated into German, Polish, and Spanish. His poetry and prose has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006 (Billy Collins, ed.), New American Writing, Exquisite Corpse, Mother Jones, The Saint Ann‚s Review, Terra Incognito and The World, among other places. In addition, he is editor of four anthologies, most recently, Present/Tense: Poets in the World, an anthology of contemporary American political poetry. He also co-edited Shooting the Rat: Outstanding Poems and Stories by High School Writers, the third in a series of anthologies drawn from the celebrated high school section of Hanging Loose magazine, of which he has been an editor since 1980. He has been the recipient of two Massachusetts Artist Fellowship awards. He lives in Cambridge with his wife, writer Mary Bonina, and his teenage son. Pawlak is Director of Academic Support Programs at UMass Boston, where he teaches mathematics.
Mary Bonina is a recipient of numerous grants and awards for her writing. She studied with the late poets Denise Levertov and Ken Smith. Her chapbook, Living Proof, was published in 2007 (Cervena Barva Press). Her poem "Drift, was selected for Boston Contemporary Authors, a public art project, and it is inscribed on a granite column, permanently placed outside Green Street MBTA Station in Jamaica Plain. Three of her poems were included in the summer 2005 Boston City Hall exhibition 375 Views of Boston, which also featured the work of painters, photographers, and sculptors. She earned her MFA degree in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where her mentors were some of the best known and appreciated American contemporary prose writers and poets. Bonina has also studied with memoirist Richard Hoffman (Half the House) and is the author of My Father's Eyes, a memoir excerpted in Gulfstream magazine at Florida International University and in the 40th Anniversary issue of Hanging Loose magazine. Her poems are included in the anthologies City River of Voices (1992), from West End Press, New Mexico, in Voices of the City, a joint venture of the Rutgers University Center for Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience and Hanging Loose Press (2004) and in Vacations: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Outrider Press, Chicago, 20007). Bonina's work has also appeared in many other publications including Red Brick Review, English Journal, and Off the Coast. Bonina also writes fiction and her story, "March" was published in the December 2007 issue of Istanbul Literature Review. She has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and, since 2002, at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Our June Open Mike night will be held on Thursday, June 19th. Our guest feature poet will be Lisa Beatman, reading from and inscribing her new book "Manufacturing America", published by Ibbetson Street Press. A very appropo reading to take place in the one time great Atlantic Works ship part manufacturing building, now turned artist studio and cultural building.
What will happen when
nothing is Made in America anymore? What will happen to all that machinery:
the machines themselves, the operators that drove them, and the old walls
and roofs that housed manufacturing villages churning out blue jeans and
paychecks to a vanishing middleclass?
Award-winning author Lisa Beatman answers these questions and more in
Manufacturing America (ISBN 978-0-6151-8124-0, Ibbetson Street Press,
$14.95), a collection of poetry and prose. Beatman won first prize at
the 2000 Lucidity poetry conference, and Honorable Mention for the 2004
Miriam Lindberg International Poetry Peace Prize. She was also awarded
a Fellowship to Sacatar Foundation in Brazil, and a Massachusetts Cultural
Council Grant.
Norm Davis, editor of the HazMat Review, says, " Beatman?s poetry
is very alive and full of feeling and pictures. The working people she
writes about are not simply ?victims? at the hands of exploiters. They
are fighters, too. Her poem, Good Bones, portrays the magnitude and the
utter tragedy of what has happened to the working class.
In Manufacturing America, Beatman conducts a chorus of immigrant factory
workers. The collection moves through the life cycle of manufacturing
from its roots in the Lowell, MA textile mills, through downsizing, to
the artist lofts mined from the old buildings as manufacturing moves overseas.
It documents the swan song of a formerly vital sector that historically
provided a leg up to many American workers. The book is true-to-life,
based on her job at a manufacturing plant near Boston, MA.
Susan Eisenberg, author of Blind Spot, says, "Manufacturing America
bears witness to the lyrical life of a factory and the individuals who
inhabit it at the start-up of the 21st-century. Lisa Beatman adds the
stories of immigrant workers, heard through the ear of a poet on site
to teach literacy skills, to the growing literature of work poetry."
Lisa Beatman currently manages adult education programs at the Harriet
Tubman House in Boston, MA. She studied international public administration
at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Her poems and stories
have appeared in Lonely Planet, Lilith Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review,
Powhatan Review, Rhino, Manzanita, and Pemmican. Her first book, Ladies
Night at the Blue Hill Spa, was published by Bear House Publishing.
Doug Holder, Editor of Ibbetson Street Press, says, "Lisa Beatman's poetry reminds me of another Mass. Cultural Council Award winner, Charles Coe. Both Cole and Beatman's work is accessible but layered with meaning. Their poetry has an ample dose of levity, and at the same time, it is wise and knowing. Beatman has a gimlet reporter's eye and a poet's heart."
Our July Poet's Moon Cafe Open Mike Night will be held on Thursday, July 17th and will feature poet, David Sirois.
David Sirois was born
in Edmundston, New Brunswick, and grew up across the border in Madawaska,
Maine, the northernmost town on the East Coast. He attended Bennington
College in Bennington, Vermont, majoring in Literature and Languages.
He has served as a staff writer for The Better Drink: A Sparkling Wine
and Living Magazine, contributing poetry, essays, fiction and film reviews.
His poems have also appeared in journals including Silo, Poesy, Ibbetson
Street, and Echoes, and his work was anthologized in Becoming Fire: Spiritual
Writing from Rising Generations. David sees writing as a spiritual practice,
and is now finishing his first book of poems, Silver Shiver.
Our August Poet's Moon Cafe Open Mike will be held on Thursday, August 21st. We are pleased to announce a joint feature of two of Boston's poetry greats, Doug Holder and Harris Gardner.
Doug
Holder is the
founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA. He is
Currently the director of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, the arts/editor
of The Somerville News, Book Review editor of the Wilderness House Literary
Review, co-founder of the "Bagel Bards" and co-founder of The
Somerville News Writers Festival. In 2007 he was nominated for two Pushcart
Prizes for his poetry. His poetry and prose have appeared in The Boston
Globe, Rattle, Quercus Review, Poetica, Café Review, the new renaissance,
Istanbul Literary Review, Voices Israel, Pegasus, the Aurorean, South
Boston Literary Review, Fenway News and many others. Holder's most recent
poetry collections are "Of All the Meals I Had Before" (Cervena
Barva Press), " No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain" (Sunnyoutside),
and "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" (Cervena Barva
Press). He holds an M.A. in English and American Literature and Language
from Harvard University.
Harris Gardner is a force-of-nature on the local poetry scene. He is the founder of the poetry organization "Tapestry of Voices", that consists of multiple poetry reading venues including Borders Books in downtown Boston, the "Chapel Series" in Jamaica Plain, "The Mad Poets Café" at the Warwick Art Museum (Warwick, RI), and the visiting poet series at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. Gardner, a real estate broker on Beacon Hill, has also been published in any number of literary journals and co-authored a collection of poetry with his partner, Lainie Senechal, "Chalice of Eros", (Stone Soup Poets) and a collection released by the Ibbetson Street Press, "Lest They Become". But Gardner's prolific reach does not halt there. His prized brainchild is the "Boston National Poetry Marathon Festival" held every April at the main branch of the Boston Public Library.
