Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, December 14th, 2024 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

H.R. Webster
Ken Holland
and Annual Business Meeting

Poets H.R. Webster and Ken Holland will be the featured readers, along with the Annual Business Meeting, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom on Saturday, December 14th, 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:

H.R. Webster - H.R. Webster is the author of What Follows (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). Her poems can be found in Agni, Ecotone, POETRY, The Iowa Review, and Guernica. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center.



Grief for the Whale

I, too, am filled with blue entanglement.
And I, too, have lain in this bare posture—
splayed, obliterated sacrament.
The captain wouldn’t shut up. He gestured
widely at the waves. That’s where the milk is.
The babies gain 100 pounds a day.
Thick as toothpaste. I understand, now, his
insistence on our wonder. In decay,
the yearling whale has shrunk. Her puckered eye
still the size of my fist. Her baleen’s sieve
sunk in the full gutter of her lip. Why
did we make this pilgrimage? Shame. And grief.
Scientists have hewn windows in her back.
The rope to belief suddenly goes slack.

-H.R. Webster
Originally published in Agni.

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Ken Holland - Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Tulane Review, The Galway Review, Southwest Review, Catamaran, Tupelo Quarterly, and Tar River Poetry. He was awarded first place in the 2022 New Ohio Review poetry contest, judged by Kim Addonizio, and was a finalist in the 2022 Lascaux Prize in Poetry. His book length manuscript, Summer of the Gods, was a semi-finalist in the 2022 Able Muse book competition as well as Word Work’s 2022 Washington Prize. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting his website: www.kenhollandpoet.com



Poetic Toolkit

You want a line to break? I’ll give you
a line to break. Here’s a hammer
and chisel. And here’s
a line.

First, place the edge of the chisel
against the throat of the word.
And when you strike, strike hard.

There’s little pain when a head is properly severed.

And the eyes, it seems, remain alive long enough
to judge from the break what comes after.

And should there follow the white of the page
as a space unwritten, it follows that what you’ve struck
is the cleanest of breaks—

the creation of a new stanza.

-Ken Holland

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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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