photo by Alexander Khantaev (Yara Arts Group)
Woodstock
Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, January 9th, 2016 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
Christina Lilian
Turczyn
Thom Francis
Poets Christina Lilian Turczyn and Thom Francis
will be the featured readers, along with the WPS Annual Business Meeting and
an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at Golden
Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, January 9th, 2016
at 2pm.
Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month at Golden Notebook (Upstairs).
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
29 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.goldennotebook.com
845-679-8000
The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are
free, open to the public, and include an open mike.
*
Features:
Christina Lilian Turczyn- Christina Lilian Turczyn, Fulbright
Scholar, received her B. A. in English from Cornell, and her Ph.D. in English/Creative
Writing from Binghamton University. She has taught critical and creative writing
at William Paterson University, at SUNY--New Paltz, and at Dutchess Community
College, among other institutions.
Currently a freelance writer and visual artist, Christina has, in the past five
years, contributed watercolors to twenty exhibits. Those include ArtPride New
Jersey's "Facebook Friends Gallery," the Cornell Club of New York's
"Cornell Has Talent," as well as the regional juried competition sponsored
by the Ridgewood Art Institute. In 2011, Christina attended the College Art
Association's National Professional Development Workshop for Artists in Trenton,
NJ.
Her writing honors include an Intro Award in Poetry from the Associated Writing
Programs, first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (noted in The
New York Times) and first prize in Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley.
She received honorable mention in the Rita Dove National Poetry Awards (Salem
College Center for Women Writers) and was a "Poet among Us" at the
2002 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, with Richard Blanco, Ken Waldman, and
Shayla Hawkins.
The Yara Arts Group, a resident company at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre,
has performed her poetry in New York City over the years at the Fletcher-Sinclair
Mansion of the Metropolitan Museum Historic District. A most recent festival
titled "Re-Imagine Ourselves" received outstanding reviews from New
York Arts: The International Guide to the Art World. Interdisciplinary
work was featured in a faculty exhibit at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in
New Paltz, NY. Christina was also awarded several writing residencies to the
Vermont Studio Center.
Scholarly work appears in Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner, and New
Methods of College Teaching, ed. Clyde Coreil, in the publications of Dutchess
Community College, and in the Paterson Literary Review. Conference
presentations include the Conference on College Composition and Communication
(2006) and the "Innovative Methods of Teaching in Higher Education Conference"
at New Jersey City University (2001) designated as a "national leadership
conference." Just this November, Christina led a roundtable at the Fulbright
Association’s Pathways to Peace: Global Peace, Health, and Education Conference
in Atlanta.
Christina was also a recipient of NJSCA and Dodge Foundation Fellowships to
attend the Artist/Teacher Institute of New Jersey in 1998 and in 2000, where
she had the privilege of meeting dedicated artists in education. While at Dutchess
Community College, she twice received the Educational Opportunity Program's
"Above and Beyond" Certificate for outstanding dedication to the program.
photo by Alexander Khantaev (Yara Arts Group)
Art Institute
For Yewande
The final party took place outdoors:
Here, the jitterbug;
farther off, the poets doing break dance. The dancers in ballet
lifted us up as though we were helium girls.
We were weightless, then—our mistakes
much lighter than our joy.
It was not about forgetting,
but about sparks
leaving the body, like scars.
It was about fury; it was about tattoos,
about blows carving the body’s tree,
about history.
We all danced harder and harder.
We laughed, carving banks into stone.
Who knew then, that you would die this year,
calling us Igbo poems,
while in the fourth dimension of sorrow,
unafraid, and powerful as water,
you caught words.
-Christina Lilian Turczyn
*
Thom Francis- Thom Francis is the president of Albany Poets
(www.albanypoets.com) and has been
organizing, promoting, and hosting open mics and poetry / spoken word events
in Albany, NY such as Nitty Gritty Slam, School of Night, Albany Poets Presents,
and the Albany Word Fest for over 15 years. As a poet and performer, Thom has
been featured at many the upstate poetry and spoken word events from Saratoga
to Woodstock as well as community events – 1st Friday, Art on Lark, and
LarkFest.
Listerine
The smell of listerine on my fathers breath meant
he was heading off to work for the day
That same smell of mouth wash on my mothers breath meant
dad was on his way and it was time to hide the evidence.
She wore perfume to mask what
she was up to while he was gone
He chain smoked with the windows up in his car
to hide another woman's scent
He showers before and after all his appointments
and he is never clear as to where he's been
you can only golf so many days a week
without being on the PGA tour
She scrubs her flesh under scalding water
trying to get to the clean parts and reclaim that fresh innocence
each time she strays away
physically or not
She never wants this to end
this is what she has been told is right and true
she is meant to be here waiting for him, hoping for more
He never wants this to end
this is what he's been telling her is right and true
he is destined for greatness and she must be ready for the ride
-Thom Francis
*
Developing WPS 2016 Schedule - all readings at Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
01/January 9th – Christina Lilian Turczyn; Thom
Francis
02/February 13th – Annie Christain; Melody Davis
03/March 12th – J. Camp Brown; Raphael Kosek
04/April 9th – Mary Leonard; Robert Milby
05/May 14th – Barbara Adams; Philip Fried
06/June 11th – Jeffrey Davis; Philip Pardi
07/July 9th – Anne Gorrick; George Wallace
08/August 13th – Christi Shannon Kline; Jane Ormerod
09/September 10th – Dennis & Justin Bressack;
Judith Saunders
10/October 8th – Katherine Burger; Rebecca Daniels
11/November 12th – Marilyn McCabe; Teresa Costa
12/December 10th – Sharon Israel Cucinotta; TBA
and Annual Business Meeting
Also, why not become a 2016 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society &
Festival?
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.