Open Mic of the Air #1

Poetry Spoken Here is an audio project on Soundcloud.com that poet Charlie Rossiter embarked on after moving from Chicago to Bennington, VT — in fact this segment is actually Episode #121 in the canon. He also runs a poetry open on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at the Tap House in Bennington, but now that we are in the Time of COVID-19 he created this open mic with more-than-appropriate social distancing (with participants ranging throughout the USA as well as Brazil, India, & Mexico).

G.E. Schwartz (r.) with Solomon's Ramada
Albany Art Gallery, February, 1990

I was a willing attendant, but unfortunately since this is an audio-only event & I was stuck in Albany & there are no photos. But I was pleased to see on the list poet G.E. Schwartz who had been a regular at poetry venues in Albany, particularly the QE2 rock club on Central Ave., & a member of the poetry/art rock group Solomon’s Ramada.

This was like any other open mic — good poems, eeh poems, & everything in between — the way community poetry is anywhere I’ve been in this most poetic country of ours, &, I suspect, throughout the world.

This Week's Readers (or one might say, the "sign-up sheet"):

2:52 Dan Wilcox, Albany, New York – “Hanging Over the Edge”
4:20 Andrew Shaw, Port Townsend, Washington – “On the Nature of Motifs”
6:38 Leonides Jongui, San Luis Potosi, Mexico – “Momnto et Pasado”
8:39 John Berry, Winchester, Virginia – “How to Teach Poetry”
10:42 Jeannie E. Roberts, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin – “The Tempo of Gratitude”
12:47 G.E. Schwartz, Henrietta, New York – “The Searchers”
16:22 Charles Castle, Eugene, Oregon – “Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus”
18:47 Ralph Carusillo, Hudson River Valley, New York – “The Last Avenue”
23:36 Vandana Parashar, Panchkula, India – “A Leap of Faith”
25:48 Sandy Rochelle, New Jersey – “To Mothers All Alone in a Sandbox”
27:26 Dottie Joslyn, Springfield, Missouri – “Virus Two”
28:34 Michael Glassman, Newburgh, New York – “Drop Zone”
31:33 Louiza Mussnich, Rio de Janiero, Brazil – “Accident (to Iris Murdoch)” and “For Sale”
33:56 Romy Maimon, Cape Cod, Massachusetts – “I Wish”

Listen to it here
 
& submit your work for future Open Mics of the Air here  & if you see a guy show up with a camera taking notes, you’re hallucinating.