The Year in Review, 2022, December 17

The first Year in Review took place here at The Linda in 2021, now one one can safely (& appropriately) say that this was the 2nd annual The Year in Review. This night's program included 6 local writers in a variety of styles, genres & skills; all of them have been involved in one degree or another in the busy local poetry scene. Mary Panza served as the MC/Ring Mistress for the night.

The first poet to the mic was Alyssa Michelle who read from her 3 poetry collections, starting with one titled The Awakening, including one very moving “Widow Mother” about raising her child after the death from an overdose of the baby’s father. Her 2022 book Blooming Season is available from Amazon from which she read 3 poems, including the stunning performance piece “My Melanin” which I’ve heard her read at Invocation of the Muse . From her 1st chapbook, Growing Pains (2019), also available on Amazon, she also read 3 poems, “Solitude Thoughts,” “Don’t Give up on Love,” & “Humble.” Her poems are like discussions of self-help advice, using her experience to guide others.

The next reader couldn’t have been more different in nearly every aspect. Bret Peterson, the author of The Parasite from Proto Space & Other Stories (Clash Books, 2020) likes to dress up as, what I call, the Pepto-Bismo Bunny when he gives a reading. He read a story (much like those in the afore-mentioned collection) titled “The Spirit Conjuring Workshop.” It was was like a menage of old black & white horror movies mixed with images of Nazi-era color home movies. The story had something to do with an attempt to bring his grandfather back from the dead with an incantation to the god Ammon in order to get himself a girl friend. Fortunately he sees through the phoniness of the process — & wakes from a dream. Or something like that.

Carol Durant has 4 books up on Amazon, published between 2017 & 2021, & she read a mix of poems from them, with some recent work mixed in, such as “Mississippi” on the water crises there (or was that Flint, Michigan). She amped up the performance level a bit over the previous readers, even including a (dreaded) audience participation piece titled “The Year in Review.” The content of her poems depended heavily on social commentary, such as the one titled “Hey Cellphone,” & one about plastic Santa titled “Fake Sentiment.”

Elizabeth Gordon, otherwise known on the Slam circuit as Elizag, not surprisingly brought the performance level up a few more notches with her pieces of radical social engagement, such as her opening piece beginning “It was the Summer tuna cost less than cat food…” & a meditation on shopping with her younger self. She too had a poem about her cellphone, & another an “Ode to My Painting Pants,” followed by the linking alliteration of a poem on Putin. She ended with a poem from memory in her best Slam performance style, “A Hiding Place,” on the shooting at a gay bar in Orlando.

I had recently seen Thom Francis as a featured poet at this month’s Invocation of the Muse at Lark Hall. While he read half a dozen of the same poems her had done that night, it’s always good to hear good poems again, the poems go by so fast it is easy to miss details, specifics — & if you go to a Rolling Stones concert you are bound to hear “Satisfaction,” & are glad of it no matter how many times you’ve heard it before. The poems were very personal, about the alcoholism in his family & in his own life, but also on grief, & the quiet joy of being in love. Thom has been an ongoing force in the poetry scene, running AlbanyPoets, serving on the board of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild, & organizing events such as this one tonight, & last year’s Poetic License - Albany. 

Another poetic force in the community, D. Colin, was the last featured reader of the night, bringing us on home in a grand fashion, while the video behind her showed the streets of the Village in NYC around NYU. This past year she was an artist in residence at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy where she composed the piece “When Blackbirds Came to Roost.” Another piece was about violence against women, on abortion & anger at the father(s), & similarly an excerpt from “The Chronicles of a Pastor’s Kid” (for Robert, from the early days of their relationship). An eco-poem, on losing our contact with the Earth, was inspired by walking a trail in the Berkshires. And she ended with a piece for her mother, fulfilling the dreams her mother had.

It was a night of all kinds of different writing reflecting some of the diversity in the vibrant poetry/spoken word scene here in Albany. If you want to see/here/experience it for yourself, check out the calendar of events on www.hvwg.org I’m sure you can find something, somewhere that will fit your schedule, you location, & if it’s an open mic, bring a few of your own poems to read. I hope to see you there.