Photos from Philly Poetry Day

A big thanks to Leonard, Lillian, Joey, Elizabeth, Nancy H. and everybody else who had a hand in the first #PhillyPoetryDay. Here are some photos! #215Festival @AmPoetryReview @PhillyPoetryDay

From the Brickbat Books Reading… that would not dare be canceled!!  The first batchh of photos feature Chris McCreary, Kelly McQuain, Pattie McCarthy and Jenn McCreary.

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This photo is from Charlie O’Hay:

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Around 3 pm I moseyed over to the Sketch Club where I read with Wendy Fulton Steginsky, Juditha Dowd, and Helen Mirkil,  the ladies in these photos. The Sketch Club! What a beautiful spot! The walls had eyes thanks to the small oil portraits on display.

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Last chance: VELVET RODEO is available for discount pre-order price!

PRE-ORDER TIME for VELVET RODEO!

Today is the last day to order VELVET RODEO at the discount price of $7, including shipping.

“…What if you never meet
the person you are meant to be? The future
is a cocked gun –pretty, but peacock mean–
and you are devil’s paintbrush,
a blister of orange-red and velvet need…”

from the poem “Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers”, originally published in the journal Kestrel.

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Hey, Friends–

My chapbook VELVET RODEO is available for pre-order at the discounted price of $7 from the fine folks at BLOOM, which includes free shipping if you act now. That’s less than a couple mocha grandes at Starbucks! In the coming weeks I’ll be doing some promotional readings for the chapbook in New York and Philadelphia, and if you know of any series that might want a reader in the coming months, drop me a private message. Order at: http://bloomliteraryjournal.org/shop/velvet-rodeo/

Velvet Rodeo is the recent winner of the Bloom Chapbook Prize, judged by poet C. Dale Young. The poems center on themes of travel, nature, outsider-ism and more, and are set in such places as West Virginia, the Virgin Islands, Mexico and Prague. The collection’s cover, above, features one of my recent paintings.

Here’s what the judge had to say about the collection: “‘The tongue I try to master / is a sticky one, forked and full of tricks,’ is the opening of a poem in Velvet Rodeo, and it becomes a point of return for the collection. These poems understand that to tell the truth, one must lie, play tricks, and even dare to say the unbelievable. Careful and exacting, these poems exact a price from a reader. They linger with you long after you have finished reading them.”

 

Frank Sherlock is the new Philadelphia Poet Laureate

Posted on January 31, 2014
Back in 2011, I organized a Poetry Walk with my students and some friends so we could traipse South Philly and read the poems Frank Sherlock had in newspaper boxes all along Passyunk Avenue. In the photo, you can see him holding one of the broadsides featuring his work. It was a rainy day during the Italian Market Festival. I didn’t know Frank well, knowing him from readings around town, but he was gracious enough to join us when I reached out to him. I’ve gotten to know Frank better since. He’s a fixture at Dirty Frank’s, where he works as a doorman, a place I frequented more often years ago with poet Valerie Fox, long before Frank worked there. (Valerie and I collaborated on poems at the time. I still recall the day she got an ankle tattoo and we washed away her pain over a pitcher of Yuengling as we wrote.)

Anyway, Frank’s project was part of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, an initiative to tell the stories of immigrant groups who have made the Market home. I loved how this poetry/history project was happening in my own backyard. Frank read his poems at each stop, and also hung out awhile after. Today I learned he’s the new Philadelphia Poet Laureate. Frank’s kind spirit has been rewarded more and more of late. It’s nice when good things happen to talented, kind people. Kudos! –Kelly McQuain

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20140131_Frank_Sherlock_is_Phila__s_second_poet_laureate.html

Photo by John Green

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December Update on Poetdelphia and Other News…

I’m posting a link to the salon series I run, Poetdelphia. Come join us, if you like. RYAN ECKES, SUZANNE PARKER & DAVID GROFF are reading this Friday the 13, 2013. http://poetdelphia.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/poetdelphia-dec-13-suzanne-parker-ryan-eckes-david-groff/ David Groff is a poet I met some years ago, a writer from NYC with an amazing new book called CLAY. Suzanne Parker is a poet I met during one of the happiest summers of my life, a summer I spent writing in Prague. Suzanne had won a fellowship for her poetry that year–the summer of 2001, I believe. Her new book is called VIRAL, which focuses on the bullying case of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who killed himself. Ryan Eckes is an affable local fellow whose inventive poetry often depicts working class themes. Poetdelphia attempts to break down the barriers between various writing cliques and to help audiences discover new writers.

In other writing news, it’s been a good couple of weeks with new poems picked up for two anthologies, Drawn to Marvel: Superhero Poems and The Queer South. These anthologies are due in 2014, and they come on the heels of publication of one of my poems in BETWEEN: NEW GAY POETRY, out just now from Chelsea Station Press and edited by Jameson Currier.

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POETDELPHIA kick-off a week away!

 

POETDELPHIA presents its new quarterly reading series featuring Philadelphia Inquirer editor and poet JOHN TIMPANE, Philadelphia Stories Magazine editor C.J. SPATARO and southern author JENI STEWART reading their poetry and prose!

 

Friday, Sept. 28, 6:30-8:00 pm

at Cups & Chairs Tea Cafe

701-03 S. 5th Street

(just below 5th and South)

Philadelphia, PA

 

 

 

Links:

http://www.facebook.com/events/396365407085750/

 

http://poetdelphia.wordpress.com/our-readings-events/kick-off-sept-28th-2012-john-timpane-and-c-j-spataro/

 

 

Hosted by Dawn Manning, Valerie Fox and Kelly McQuain.

POETDELPHIA kick-off a week away!

 

POETDELPHIA presents its new quarterly reading series featuring Philadelphia Inquirer editor and poet JOHN TIMPANE, Philadelphia Stories Magazine editor C.J. SPATARO and southern author JENI STEWART reading their poetry and prose!

 

Friday, Sept. 28, 6:30-8:00 pm

at Cups & Chairs Tea Cafe

701-03 S. 5th Street

(just below 5th and South)

Philadelphia, PA

 

 

 

Links:

http://www.facebook.com/events/396365407085750/

 

http://poetdelphia.wordpress.com/our-readings-events/kick-off-sept-28th-2012-john-timpane-and-c-j-spataro/

 

 

Hosted by Dawn Manning, Valerie Fox and Kelly McQuain.