A Night of Poetry Hosted by Pine Hills Review, April 6

This event was also sponsored by the Albany Public Library (which is how I found out about it), apparently for “National Poetry Month” (but, as we say in Albany, “In Albany, Everyday is National Poetry Month”). The MC was College of St. Rose professor Daniel Nester, looking more hipster-ish in a knit cap than a professor in a tweed coat. It was on Zoom with the guy poets in Nester’s office, the female poets from elsewhere.

The first reader was Troy poet Edward Rinaldi who began with a long poem written in a Troy Park, automatic writing in a pot-addled state, with embedded hip-hop rhymes. There were other poems of the same ilk, & a couple of stoner prose pieces about “living with Mum.” Once upon a time Ed would read at open mics in Albany in addition to in Troy, perhaps he’s been riding out the pandemic in a cloud of smoke.

Lisa Mottolo read poems from a forth-coming debut collection from Unsolicited Press. The poem “The New Yorker” was made up of random ponderings of why she submitted poems to that magazine, “I must like pain” she said. Another piece combined her experience at Schenectady County Community College with lip gloss, then 2 poems about her deceased mother, one with titled “All Death Leads to a Yard Sale,” the other “How to Write About Trauma.” As with some of the other readers you can find a sample of her work in the Pine Hills Review online journal/website.

Brenda Nicholas was originally from the Albany-area. She read from her chapbook Hari Om, Hurry Home (Finishing Line Press 2021), poems on yoga, including “Shivasana” thinking of her father’s death. Then on to poems from a recent  full length collection Adrift a Fourth Wave (Kelsay Books, 2022), including one titled “How Long Can a Butterfly Live?” from a series of poems about Farrah Fawcett (anyone remember who she was?). She ended with 2 pieces from a forth-coming new collection of ekphrastic poems.

We ended as we began with a Trojan poet, Christian Ortega, publisher of the small press recto y verso Editions & proprietor of the recto y verso Editions art gallery at 883 Broadway, Suite 102, Albany, NY. He began with a piece titled “Lost Song,” then on to mostly short poems from I know What You Did in the 80s on the AIDS epidemic, on death. Then a selection from Red Poems (Hispanic Paradox Press, 2014), “Memorial,” “The Box,” “Double Click,” & “Miami.” & ended with recent poems, both list poems (as one poet famously said, “the refuge for not knowing what to write”), “Things People Say to Me,” & “One Day I Will Forget.” 

Check out The Pine Hills Review online (you can’t buy it anywhere), & see their somewhat fussy submission guidelines. &, of course, support your local library https://www.albanypubliclibrary.org