Poetry + Prose Open Mic -- 2nd Sunday @ 2, January 13

Back at the Arts Center in Troy for the first of the year, minus my co-host Nancy Klepsch, with an eclectic mix of writers to read.

First up was George Guarino with hypnotic instructions to enjoy the reading -- good advice. Kate Laity read a funny list of advice, "How to Succeed in Academia," that has been accepted for an anthology.

Harvey Havel read an excerpt from a collection of short fiction, Two Tickets to Memphis (Publish America 2012), the excerpt about a down-&-our politician after a scandal. I followed, beginning with a poem from 2006 about school shootings, "Secrecy Guards Oldest Pine As Town Mourns School Killings Family Urges Kindness," then 2 recent, related poems, "Reading Kant in China" & "Sunday Morning." Howard Kogan's poem "Faces" played on the word, becoming a meditation in the mirror, then a poem on Death, "The Announcement," & then a poem about what people were saying "After Newtown."

David Wolcott read another section from his on-going memoir, "Gulf Stream Crossing," about a harrowing storm at sea in a sailboat. Ron Drummond began with a long, dense sentence from his proposed Constitutional Amendment on rights, then excerpts from his (revised) "First Woman on Mars," about to be published in Taiwan & translated into Chinese.

Tim Verhaegen had us in stitches with his mostly inappropriate encounter in a male strip club in Montreal, "The Dwarf & I." Elizabeth Gordon recited a piece "for the Newtown children that they may not have died in vain." Julie Lomoe read an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, this a scene at the filming of a TV soap-opera.

This open mic for both prose & poetry takes place on the 2nd Sunday of each month at 2PM at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy -- free!