Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, August 14th, 2021 at 2pm

via Zoom

Irene Sipos
Perry S. Nicholas

Poets Irene Sipos and Perry S. Nicholas will be the featured readers, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets virtually via Zoom on Saturday, August 14th, 2021 at 2pm.

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike. Thank you.

The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

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Features:

Irene Sipos - Irene Sipos earned her Master of Arts in the legendary 1970s English Department of SUNY University at Buffalo. She recently retired from SUNY Buffalo State where she taught in the English Department and the College Writing Program and was a co-founder of Buffalo State's Rooftop Poetry Club.

Her work has appeared in Lilith Magazine, The Comstock Review, Earth's Daughters, Buffalo Poets Against War, Burchfield Penney Newsletter, The Jewish Journal of Western New York, Artvoice,The Owl Light News, Buffalo News, as a Park Street Press broadside and in the anthology, A Celebration of Western New York Poets. Her chapette, Poem... and other Poems, is No.12 in the Buffalo Ochre Papers. She was a finalist in the 2004 Comstock Review Awards Issue and the 2015 Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest. Recently Irene published a book of poems titled Stones.

Currently, Irene works at the Writing Center at Buffalo State and is a freelance editor and tutor.



Tired

Sitting across the aisle
on the B train
I look at the row of weary faces

various shapes, sizes, colors, ages,
a horizontal explication of what it means
to have woken many mornings

to brave routine, to leave concerns at home
along with scattered laundry and unwashed
dishes to head for same/same at work.

I picture each of you, one at a time. I try to
observe without you knowing and suddenly I
see round, soft faces, no creases in foreheads,

no wrinkles like parentheses around eyes, no down
turned mouths, no slumped shoulders. I see the plump
babies you once were. And with that, a rush of hoping

that you were affectionately held on generous laps, that
you were sung tender songs, that you were offered
a bowl of blueberries as initiation to the messy pleasures

of this world. I hope that occasionally you reach back,
even if only briefly to recall your beginning self as a
visitor new to the planet, unencumbered and dear.

-Irene Sipos

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Perry S. Nicholas - Perry S. Nicholas is an English Professor at SUNY at Erie North in Buffalo, N.Y. He has published one textbook of poetry prompts, three full-length and five chapbooks of original poetry, and two CDs of poetry. He has hosted four poetry venues in the WNY area. You can see his work at perrynicholas.com.

Perry has judged the Just Buffalo poetry contest, the national Poetry Out Loud competition, the Wordworth fiction contest, and has been guest lecturer at Villa Maria College, Niagara Community College, Buffalo State College, Medaille College, Daemen College, and New York College in Athens, Greece.



What We Call Fall-Spring

We change, and then again,
through a strange period of exhaustion.

Long ago, age didn’t matter,
and we loved more than we felt

possible through the wide gap of winter.
We scanned a book, cover to cover,

100 Things to See in the Night Sky,
and all the planets shown clear,

stars shaped into something wider
than two shifting seasons of love.

-Perry S. Nicholas

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Developing WPS 2021 Schedule - all readings held via Zoom
All of 2021 Events: Events

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike following the featured readers. Thank you.

01/January 9th - Canceled
02/February 13th - Canceled
03/March 13th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan via Zoom
04/April 10th - Judith Kerman; Leslie Gerber via Zoom
05/May 8th - Judith Saunders; Raphael Kosek via Zoom
06/June 12th - Elizabethanne Spiotta; William Seaton via Zoom
07/July 10th - Barbara Ungar; Lucia Cherciu via Zoom
08/August 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas via Zoom
09/September 11th - Nine-Eleven 20 years later via Zoom
                             To present during this event - email: phillip@woodstockpoetry.com
10/October 9th - Jacqueline Ahl; Philip Pardi via Zoom
11/November 13th - Elizabeth Cohen; Mary Leonard via Zoom
12/December 11th - Amy Ouzoonian; Anique Taylor and Annual Business Meeting via Zoom

Also, why not become a 2021 Member or donate to the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join or donate, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as well as your mailing address and phone number. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html). Your membership helps pay for our upgraded Zoom account, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website.

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