Hudson Valley Writers Guild Presents, August 5

Throughout the year the Hudson Valley Writers Guild holds these readings at The Linda Auditorium, on Central Ave. in Albany, NY. This event showcased writers from the online zines, Trailer Park Quarterly & the Hobo Camp Review. Mary Panza the vice-president of the Guild was the host.

First reader was Rebecca Schumejda, whose work I’ve admired since I first encountered her poems years ago; she is the co-editor with Dan Crocker of Trailer Park Quarterly. Her recent book is Sentenced (NYQ Books, 2023), a tender, sensitive, moving family story of death, incarceration, & how life moves on thru family & Time. The poems are built of everyday details, with the story enfolding more like the way birds emerge from eggs, or how are lives are pieced together after a tragedy, one moment at time, rather than a straight-line narrative. She has a relaxed, clear reading style, letting the poems speak their own power.

The next reader was a stark contrast in manner & content. During Schumejda’s reading Kenning JP Garcia spent the time with a handful of Garcia's books, flipping thru pages, arranging Garcia's poems. When it was time to read it was with Garcia's “nose in a book,” as my mother would say, with little to no engagement with the audience. I guess that’s what Garcia means by “Anti-Poet” on Garcia's website. I’m not sure which of the many books Garcia has published that Garcia read from since Garcia didn’t share that with the “dear audience,” as Garcia put it at one point. As for what was read, although it was described as a “diary,” the text was more like notes to Garcia about Garcia, no images other than the words in Garcia's head.

Alina Pleskova read from her recent collection titled Toska (Deep Vellum, 2023). She was born in Moscow & currently lives in Philadelphia. The title of the book derives from “the Russian word which denotes a melancholic longing without a singular cause, longing for a better world than the late-stage capitalist hell we live in,” per the blurb on the publisher’s website. She is clearly the center of her poems, but in the sense of a person surrounded by images in the world, as opposed to some self-absorbed philosophical ponderings; an example would be her poem “I Forgot What I Returned For” about being in an airport on her birthday. I particularly liked this line from one of her poems “I want the class war to start but everyone is too tired;” I guess that’s toska.

Erren Geraud Kelly was another out-of-towner, based in Lynn, MA, according to the HVWG promo. He read a series of memoir poems grouped together under the title “8-Track Tape Reminders.” He read a poem about Tyre Nichols, “Blues for Tyre,” murdered by cops in Memphis this past January, another about Bessie Coleman (1982 - 1926), an early American aviator who was the first African-American woman & first Native American to hold a pilot license. Other poems were about women who caught his eye, such as a patrol officer in a homeless shelter, another about a woman in a Starbucks; in fact he seems to have a string of such poems because one about a woman veteran with a prosthetic leg is titled “Coffeehouse Poem #282” (published in Trailer Park Quarterly).

The final poet was Albany poet, scholar & activist Victorio Reyes Asili, who served as the executive director of the Albany Social Justice Center for 11 years. He read from a series of chapbooks under the title Crown Me: an American Mixtape. The pieces were a mix of sonnets inspired by Hip Hop, & prose poem memories of growing up, some using current poetic forms, such as erasures mixing metrical lines with Hip Hop, such as the pieces titled “2000 After Big L,” & “After Biggy Small 1994.” It makes me want to read his PhD dissertation completed at the University at Albany, Mic Check - Finding Hip Hop’s Place in the Literary Milieu. One of the many futures for current American poetry to follow.

It was a stunning event, one in a series that the folks at the Hudson Valley Writers Guild plan about 3 or 4 times a year, showcasing the variety of poetry & spoken word in this word-rich region. Visit the Guild website for more information.