WordFest 2019 — 2nd Sunday @ 2, April 14

While the Readings Against the End of the World have ended the WordFest 2019 continues. The genius of this event is to fold in the already ongoing events that fit into this week, filling in the unique events as needed.

Nancy Klepsch & I have have been hosting the 2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose Open Mic at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy for 8 (!) years. This day we were the next event on the grand WordFest schedule, 8 readers on the sign-up list. & I was first, so read my new poems from the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, “The Listening Festival” & “The Red Bud” an Oklahoma tree.

Michelle Arthur took us into a completely different direction with an apocalyptic autobiography of a monk who died in 1125. Bob Sharkey always has his poems literally in his pocket, not just in National Poetry Month, read “Made Marvel by Jazz” an erasure from the novel by Michael Ondaatje Coming Through Slaughter, & his cento from lines of poems submitted to the Stephan A. Dibiase Poetry Contest "Jail by the Squeaky Laughter."

My co-host Nancy Klepsch read 2 related pieces, “Onion Soup” was about the death of her cousin’s step-son, a Marine who was among the 3 killed in Afghanistan on April 8, & a piece titled “Home From the War.

Sally Rhoades who had also attended the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival read her Oklahoma poems, “Red Bud” & “We’re All Sitting with You Rilla” responding to Rilla Askew’s reading of an account of her being kidnapped & raped as a young woman. Kate Gillespie ended the afternoon reading from her ongoing series of science poems a work-in-progress “Molecular Molecules.”

The 2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose takes place at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy each month (except July & August), & WordFest continued the rest of this week — stay tuned.