For Immediate Release

Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium is sponsoring the following poetry event as part of the Woodstock "Second Saturdays" Art Events. For a full listing of "Second Saturday" events, see: www.woodstockartsconsortium.org

Poets Gretchen Primack (rescheduled from April) and Philip Pardi will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Town Hall, 76 Tinker Street, on Saturday, August 8th at 2pm. Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month.

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

Bios:

Gretchen Primack - Gretchen Primack's publication credits include The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Best New Poets 2006, and others. Her chapbook The Slow Creaking of Planets is freshly minted from Finishing Line Press. She teaches at Bard College and at two maximum-security prisons through the Bard Prison Initiative. More information and poems can be found at www.gretchenprimack.com.

Philip Pardi - Philip Pardi lives in Phoenicia, with his wife Carolyn Mow and their son Emilio, and teaches at Bard College. Phil's poems have been published in numerous journals, as well as included in Best New Poets 2006.

Philip's recently published collection of poetry, Meditations on Rising and Falling, was the winner of the 2008 Brittingham Prize in Poetry.

The poet David St. John, who selected this new volume as the winner of the Brittingham Prize, praised the collection as "testimony to faith and resistance in a world where falling is the given". Pardi's poems, he said, "explore the emotional tug-of-war that is human experience. Present at every turn are people searching for meaning and sense in the elusive world".

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