Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, November 9th, 2024 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Judy Lechner
Teresa Costa

Poets Judy Lechner and Teresa Costa will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom on Saturday, November 9th, 2024 at 2pm(eastern).

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

Woodstock Library
5 Library Lane, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845)679-2213
www.woodstock.org

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:

Judy Lechner - Judy Lechner wrote her first poem at age 10 and will, with the least encouragement, recite it for you. She has been a featured reader in many venues in Ulster County and is a longtime member of the poetry groups: Goat Hill Poets for over 20 years and has read in many of their performances, Woodstock Poetry Society, and Poets House in New York. Her poetry collection The Moon Sings Back was published in 2011 and her poems have appeared in Chronogram, Half Moon Review, ASK 25, Home Planet News, Jews, Green Heron, Liteary Gazette and in Tattoo where she won a prize for her haiku. She is a retired reading and English teacher and was an editor and writer for Macmillan and Scholastic among other publishers for 45 years.



Memory

Like a childhood bully, the question appears out of nowhere
          to drag you under the water
          to watch you flail terrified
          as you search frantically
          for the lost person, place, thing, event.
It likes to see you squirm as you claw
          the dirty water, coughing out
          bits of garbage, your heart
          almost giving out till---
          slippery skinned as fishes,
          images shimmer to the surface.
Caught on your hook, words and pictures struggle on the line
          till you grasp them firmly in hand.
          You pull the memory from the
          brownish sludge and then
                    only then
          does it gift you with its names.

-Judy Lechner

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Teresa Costa - Teresa Costa has been around the poetry scene since 1974. Has hosted poetry readings from 2001- 2020. Has read extensively thru-out the Hudson Valley. Her first book Creature Comforts was published by Post Traumatic Press in 2013. Self published 4 chapbooks. Has been published in Chronogram, Woodstock Times, Stained Sheets, Riverine-Codhill Press, CAPS anthology 2015, CAPS 2020, Home Planet News, Long Island Quarterly, amongst others. Costa is available for readings & interviews @ hotpoet391@yahoo.com



Autumn, It Is!

It's Spectacular prized
Chartreuse Oranges
candy apple reds
psychotic yellows
We tripped w/ Jack Frost
as he etched our windows
in carelessness & pain.
Laughed in
hysterics.
Cacklings.
Soundings of a worn out
maniac drawn from what is.
Within a now spirited form
made of angry icicles.

-Teresa Costa

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Developing WPS 2024 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 13th - Patrick Hammer, Jr.; Robert Langdon
02/February 10th - Lissa Kiernan; Mary K O'Melveny
03/March 9th - Ethan Sirotko; Janet Kaplan
04/April 13th - Poetry Month Special Event ("Unbroken Circle")
05/May 11th - Roger Mitchell; Steve Clorfeine
06/June 8th - Barry Wallenstein; Richard Levine
07/July 13th - Karen Schoemer; Martin Steingesser
08/August 10th - Craig Hancock; Marnie Andrews
09/September 14th - Christopher Heffernan; Jerrice J. Baptiste
10/October 12th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa
11/November 9th - Judy Lechner; Teresa Costa
12/December 14th - H.R. Webster; Ken Holland and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2024 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join, 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 meeting space rental, 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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