Brushes & Pens, January 3

This is a new reading series (started last month) run by folks from Hell Yeah Lit & held at Stacks Espresso Bar in Troy. It was billed as “a mixed media word showcase” due to an informal group of musicians who jammed after the poets were done reading. The MC/host was apparently named Eric.

Poet Anna Boughtwood was first to read; I’d seen her read last year at the Word Fest Open Mic held at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts. She started with “Have You Tried Yoga?” (a poem of pain), “Hunger,” “Good Veins” (having one), a love poem “The Press of the Compass,” then a couple about real estate, one a dream of house as a hell house for revenge. I liked her edgy, quirky poems.

The second reader was introduced by simply the letter “L” who said she had not read any of these poems out before tonight, beginning with one on procrastination. Her poem “Chunky” was about a character in the video game Minecraft (she said); then a memory of a meeting in a dive bar years ago; one titled “Life & Death by Popcorn;” the short poem in rhyme “Canine Dreaming;” & one about her complicated love of Winter.

In contrast to L, the next poet, Michelle Améliore Polacinski, had the longest name on the program, which was too much for the host who introduced her just by her first name. She read her poems from her phone, said many were “unhinged,” beginning with “Somebody Loves the Culligan Water Man,” then to a love poem of sorts, “Follow Me on Social.” “Poem About My Neighbor” was about a well-known Troy street cat; “Climate in September” was in the category of eco-poems. Set in the Mall “100 Fucking Dollars” was a commentary on consumerism, then she ended with what she said was her most “unhinged” poem, the ironic “Everything is Fine.” 

The last 2 readers, Ian Ross Singleton & Natalya Sukhonos, were actually given top-billing on the program so I guess one could say that they were the "featured readers." 

Ian read from his translation-in-progress from a novel by an early 20th Century Ukrainian poet & novelist, Yuri Ivanovych Yanovksy (1914 - 1961), about the sea & hanging out in Odessa. Ian is hoping to have the novel translated & published in English in 2026. Ian’s published novel, Two Big Differences (2021) is also set in Odessa (as well as in Detroit), a gritty, urban, “punk” tale set against the Maidan uprising in 2014 in Ukraine. It’s a work I’ve enjoyed very tremendously, as much about language as it is about the main characters, Valentine from Detroit & Zina, an Odessitka. Tonight he read the roiling section from the end of the novel where Zina drowns in the Black Sea (which is very much a character as well). 

I have heard Natalya read her fine poetry a few times in recent years, including when we read together at the behest of the NYS Writers Institute during last year's solar eclipse. She is author of A Stranger Home (Moon Pie Press, 2020). This night she read unpublished poems, starting with one titled “Ars Poetica with Spider & Keychain” the prefatory poem to a new collection she is working on, then a poem about her great grandmother from Odessa, a dream of apples; on to a piece from a translation project of stories/testimony by Ukrainians. “The Beast” was a poem for her mother, the “beast” is cancer; then a poem about migrants dying in the desert trying to get to a safer, better place, “Over the Border & Then Nowhere.” Her next poem, “Ode to Guatemala” was a happier piece, from a family trip; she ended with a seasonal poem, a reaction to the Winter, “Dear January.”

Although the flyer had advertised “The Musical Stylings of The Freedom Jazz Dancers,” the musicians that were individually introduced were a more informal group that provided an eclectic backdrop to the scattered discussions about the poems we had heard.

All in all, a stimulating variety of poets & poems, in a pleasant cafe setting, not just coffee, but also local & New York State spirits; Stacks Espresso Bar in Troy is at 13 3rd St.