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.artsinwoodstock.org

Poet Judith Saunders presenting her poetry and poet William Seaton presenting a talk ("Winged Words: Notes on the Oral Performance of Poetry") will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Town Hall, 76 Tinker Street, on Saturday, June 13th 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:

Judith Saunders - Judith Saunders, long-time resident of the Hudson Valley, is a professor of English at Marist College. Her poems, humor, and creative nonfiction have appeared in many literary journals and little magazines, regional and national, most recently in Home Planet News, Poet Lore, Chronogram, The Hudson River Valley Review, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Her chapbook collection, Check-Out Counter Suite, was a winner in the 1992 Panhandler Poetry Chapbook Competition, sponsored by the University of West Florida.

William Seaton - William Seaton is the author of Spoor of Desire: Selected Poems and Tourist Snapshots and the producer of the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series. Recipient of the Ada Louise Ballard Fellowship in the Humanities and the Helen Fairall Scholarship Award in Comparative Literature, he has published studies in learned publications such as the Iowa Journal of Literary Studies and Bruccoli Clark's Dictionary of Literary Biography series. During the last year, his reviews have appeared in Poetry Flash, Home Planet News, Chiron Review, and Chronogram. This summer he will teach a workshop series in a newly organized College of Poetry.

"Winged Words: Notes on the Oral Performance of Poetry" is an investigation of orality in poetry. The essay explores the history of the oral performance of poetry from Sappho to rap as well as distinguishing the typical generic characteristics of oral and written texts. How is poetry different for a silent reader and a listener to a live performance? Is either experience better? Are today's coffee house readers the real poetic traditionalists? Part of this lecture was presented in an earlier form at the Woodstock Library in March of 2007.

This talk is made possible by The New York Council for the Humanities for support and funding of the Speakers in the Schools program.

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