Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, August 9th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Matthew J. Spireng
Suzanne Cleary

Poets Matthew J. Spireng and Suzanne Cleary 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, August 9th, 2025 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:

Matthew J. Spireng - Matthew J. Spireng, known more familiarly as “Matt,” is a widely published award-winning poet. His most recent full-length poetry book Good Work won the 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize and was published in 2020 by Evening Street Press. His other full-length books are What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award from Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His published chapbooks are: Clear Cut; Young Farmer; Encounters; Inspiration Point, winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition; and Just This. Since 1990, his poems have appeared in publications across the United States including such places as North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Rattle, Blueline and Chronogram. He is a lifelong Ulster County resident. His website is www.matthewjspireng.com.



Annabelle Birdsall Kroft

If you’ve lived your whole life,
as I have, without knowing your birth mother,
only her name, disembodied, rootless,

long untraceable, and learn, at age 67,
she died 21 years ago and is buried
in a cemetery 53 miles from your home,

will you wonder, as I do, what
you will feel when you first visit
her grave, what you will say, remembering

she heard your first voice long ago,
and for the rest of her life your silence,
and will you wonder, as I do, whether she will

somehow hear you again, grown now and old,
whether she spoke to you before she gave you away,
and whether now, though long dead, she will speak again?

-Matthew J. Spireng

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Suzanne Cleary - Suzanne Cleary_bio



Suzanne Cleary_poemtitle

Suzanne Cleary_poem

-Suzanne Cleary

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Developing WPS 2025 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 11th - Guy Reed; Will Nixon
02/February 8th - Alison Koffler; Dayl Wise
03/March 8th - Charlie Cody; Mike Jurkovic
04/April 12th - Poetry Month Special Event (TBA)
05/May 10th - Roberta Gould; Vivi Hlavsa
06/June 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
07/July 12th - Lee Slonimsky; Robert Charles Basner
08/August 9th - Matthew J. Spireng; Suzanne Cleary
09/September 13th - Jennifer Franklin; Lucia Cherciu
10/October 11th - Raphael Kosek; Raphael Moser
11/November 8th - Bruce Weber; Linda McCauley Freeman
12/December 13th - Cheryl A. Rice; Tom Bonville and Annual Business Meeting

Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry/ and why not become a 2025 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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