Troy Poetry Mission, October 25

If this was a grandchild, we would say it was "13 months old."  The hosts are long-time poetry impresario R.M. Engelhardt, & editor of Hobo Camp Review James Duncan. The featured readers tonight had originally been scheduled to read at the Hudson River Coffee House in an event organized by Harvey Havel & Brian Dorn titled “A Night of Features.” However, the coffee house closed down just before the reading was was held & the organizers sought out other venues. Tonight there were 3 of the original 4 readers, but first a brief open mic.

Rob read a piece titled “In an Air of Smoke & Cinders,” what he described as his entry to a recent project to present poems about Troy as broadsides. I followed with my seasonal “Baseball in Palestine.” James Duncan read a piece about children in a hospital, “There is This Dream I Have.” Faith Green, the president of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild, made a rare appearance at an open mic to read a couple poems on a related theme, “Blind Love” & the amusing “Terms of Endearment” a litany of the clichés of love. Betty Zerbst read her self-advice “A Letter Back in Time to Myself Back in Time.” The last reader, Meg Marchin, even beat Betty to the bottom of the list, & read a piece titled “Letter from Rook Rd.," a memoir of a boyfriend with references to Bruce Springsteen songs.

Harvey Havel took over the duties to introduce the featured poets & first up was Avery Stempel who did a series of his New Age self-help-lectures-as-poems, some read, some performed from memory, with titles like “What No Longer Suits You,” “What Do You Choose,” “ & “Listen to the Trees Whisper.” He also performed from memory a piece based on the chakras “While the Wheels Turn” which was also available as an 16-page, full-color chapbook.

Shannon Shoemaker did all her poems from memory, pieces she has performed in the past, beginning with the self-assertive confrontation with mothers at school “Tongue in Cheek,” & “Poem for the Open Mic.” Then a series of sad love/sad or angry break-up poems, such as “Grown Cold,” “Night in Michigan,” “Worth Keeping,” “Columbus Day,” “Phone Booth” (imaging herself as Superman), & “Out of the Shadows,” ending with another self-assertive piece, her Slam anthem “My Name is Shannon Shoemaker.”

D. Colin is the host of the weekly poetry series in Troy, Poetic Vibe, & likes to sing as well as recite her poems. She started with poems from her 2015 collection Dreaming in Kreyol, including “Rainy Season,” “Artibonite River,” & “Unapologetic.” Then on to poems from a new collection, including a history & litany of black women heroes, “For Every Black Woman Who Has Been Called Angry,” another piece of black history, the ironically titled “When America Was Great,” then ending with an older piece, singing in Haitian, nostalgically “… dreaming in a language that sounds like home…”

This series takes place on the last Wednesday of each month, starting sometime after 7:30PM, at O’Brien’s Public House, 43 3rd St., Troy, NY.