Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, April 9, 2022 at 2pm (eastern)

via Zoom

The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group
(Eileen Howard, Jan Zlotnik Schmidt,
Kappa Waugh, Mary K O'Melveny, Tana Miller)

Poets from The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group (Eileen Howard, Jan Zlotnik Schmidt, Kappa Waugh, Mary K O'Melveny, Tana Miller) will be the featured readers, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets virtually via Zoom on Saturday, April 9, 2022 at 2pm (eastern).

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
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:

The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group



Colleen Geraghty, Kit Goldpaugh, Eileen Howard, Tana Miller, Mary K O’Melveny, Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and Kappa Waugh are seven older women from diverse backgrounds: acdemics, a social worker, a psychiatric nurse, a teacher and a lawyer. Some of us are retired, some are still working. We are writers, poets, musicians. All of us are volunteers, activists and artists. We write from the collective perspective of being women-of-a-certain-age in a culture that tends to render older women invisible, irrelevant. Sharing our unique perspectives on such universal themes as memory, joy, resistance, resilience, aging, transformation, visibility we hope to engage readers of all ages and backgrounds. www.hudsonvalleywomenswritinggroup.com

https://lightwoodpress.com/2021/03/19/lw-spotlights-the-hudson-valley-womens-writing-group-by-laurence-carr

They will be reading from their new anthology of poetry and prose: Rethinking the Ground Rules: Works by the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group.

Eileen Howard - Eileen Howard enjoyed a California - Oklahoma childhood camping with family, hopping freight trains, reading & playing the flute. Educated at Scripps College and the great out of doors, and later ended up in psychiatric nursing after more schooling to become an RN. Hawaii, Switzerland, two children, much writing, and even more photographs, she now lives in Western MA.

Her works appear in Apple in Her Hand, The Grain, In a Woman’s Voice, and Global Poemic



Swaying in the Web

I want to write
In spider ink.
Weave silken webs
into sylvan fantasy.
All will unfurl
as the web catches
one idea, then
adheres to the next.
A glistening web
that weaves beauty
into wisdom.

I want to post
sticky webs to stars,
dark hidden worlds,
mysterious spheres.
As I briefly adhere:
Absorb. Absorb.
Turn, turn again
from orb to orb.

I want to write
in black spider ink.
From my bright colored gut
weave deep truths.
Link universes.
Grapple with galaxies
to guide me back home

-Eileen Howard

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Jan Zlotnik Schmidt - A SUNY Distinguished Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz, Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many literary journals, such as Alaska Quarterly Review and Kansas Quarterly, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize Series.

Jan has authored two poetry volumes published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She Had This Memory, 2000). She co-edited, with Laurence Carr, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley. Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time, was published by Word Temple Press.



Dream: An Angler at Hundred

If my father were a fisherman, he would dig his crooked toes into the sand at the shore to make them disappear, a thick tangle of green and brown seaweed twisting around his ankles, And shards of purple mussels and waves of indigo and brown clam shells would scrape against his shins, as the tides rolled in. Then after gazing at the thin white line of the horizon, he would chisel the fishing pole into a mound of sand, flick the line with a twitch of his wrist, angle it beyond the waves, a thin curve of black wire gone into the sea. He’d hold it steady in a high arch, and occasionally wriggle it a bit to test the waters, to see if fish would snap at the bait.

But this is all a dream. My Brooklyn father never ventured to the sea in this way, never watched the glint of sunlight on the waves, never was satisfied with the infinitesimal arc of the line stretching into the sea.

Instead in the nursing home, I held a conch shell against his ear and then mine. We listened to the barely audible ebb and flow of tides. The whorl of the shell against the whorl of his ear. Never uttering a word, he nodded in time with the tides.

And if I imagined him looking at the sea, gazing into its brightness, he would be thinking about his own being. As fragile as the skeletal bones of a fish gnawed at by voracious time. Or maybe he’d be thinking about his soul—an invisible line into the ocean. Absorbed into some infinite blue or a path of silver light.

-Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

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Kappa Waugh - Born into a family in which everyone – grandparents, parents, siblings – wrote, Kappa grew up assuming that writing was something all people did. She sent off a manuscript to Harcourt Brace when she was 11. Rejected. Kappa’s poetry was published in school and college literary journals and, during her twenties, in “BlackRock.” More recently, Kappa’s writing has appeared in three issues of Legacies, in a poetry anthology, A Slant of Light, and “The Episcopal New Yorker.” Her work has also appeared on the poetry blog “Writing in a Woman’s Voice.”

Kappa also co-authored An Apple In Her Hand: An Anthology from The Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group, The collection includes a number of her stories and poems.

Her other hats are cartoonist and jewelry maker. Kappa retired after more than 20 happy years as Reference Librarian for Vassar College.



Another Coronavirus Victim

The pandemic let you hide
your swift descent. Your
tidy bungalow, spotless
kitchen, alphabetic stocked
pantry, bedroom drawers
with every color cashmere
sweater, pastel thongs,
your mink in silken bag.

Those teak floors now a mat:
papers, spoiled takeout,
soiled underwear, broken
glass. On top are bottles
by the hundreds, each a
message flung from
Covid Island. “Help!
I’m shipwrecked, dying.

What passing sailors
will find you lying in the
flotsam of your rooms?
Social worker, the in-laws
that you hate, a friend, an
EMT? And how much
farther can you fall in
this undoing of your self?

-Kappa Waugh

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Mary K O'Melveny - A retired labor rights lawyer, Mary lives with her wife Susan in Woodstock, NY and in Washington DC.

Mary's poetry has appeared in many print and on-line journals and anthologies, including Allegro Poetry Journal, Split Rock Review, Voice of Eve, The New Reader, FLARE: The Flagler Review, Slippery Elm Journal, Songs of Eretz, Into the Void, The Offbeat, The Voices Project and West Texas Review.

Mary's poetry has also been featured on national blog sites, including The New Verse News and Writing In A Woman's Voice. Her work has received award recognition in national and international poetry contests and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Author of A Woman of a Certain Age and Merging Star Hypotheses (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020) she is also a co-author of An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019). Mary's newest collection Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum will be published in 2021 by Kelsay Books.

Mary's poetry awards include First Place in the 2017 Raynes Poetry Competition, First Place in the 2019 Slippery Elm Journal Poetry Competition, First Place in the 2020 City Limits Publishing Political Poetry Competition and Finalist or Honorable Mentions in the 2017 Pangaea Prize sponsored by The Poets Billow, 2018 and 2019 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Competition and the 87th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition (Non-Rhyming Poetry). Her book Merging Star Hypotheses was a Finalist for the Washington Prize sponsored by The Word Works.

Mary's web site is www.marykomelvenypoet.com



Love Nest

As spring’s heart flutters toward summer,
I have fallen hopelessly for two bald eagles
who sit atop tall dead pine trees
scanning our reservoir’s dinner menu
for their nesting babes. They calculate
the weight of prey while the hour darkens.
My schoolgirl crush extends to their nest
which fits just so below the crown
of the tallest white pine marking
the far line of our property.
Their cone-shaped aerie looks delicate
only to visitors stranded on ground.

I am a fool for once unruly branches
now woven and knotted like an heirloom
crazy quilt, innards softened by moss
and grass and cornstalks, embraced
by fallen feathers and stray down.
I am in awe of the way the pair
have built this together, bonding like
decorators over each stick, string and twig.
I am awed by each year’s remodeling,
how it displays a visual scrapbook
of each chick who hatched here,
fledged, branched and launched.

I adore how each parent warms the egg,
shares the hunt, tears apart the food,
protects the brood, teaches wind drift,
starscapes, flight patterns.
Most of all, I am mad for their passion –
how they return each season, faithful
and filled with ardor, how they plunge,
dive, swoop, cartwheeling
erotica as new now as in their
earliest days, as if they did not know
the dangers winter portends.
As if happy endings are routine.

…From An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019)

-Mary K O'Melveny

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Tana Miller - During a thirty-year career as a teacher, Tana Miller authored language curriculum guides for her school district, co-founded and facilitated a grade 5–8 annual literary magazine, presented award-winning Whole Language workshops in Hudson Valley public schools and at the New York State Reading Conference.

Her work has been published in several feminist journals and in A Slant of Light (Codhill Press).

Tana was a selected reader at the Newark Public Library and has been a featured reader at local gatherings, libraries, and book stores.

A founder member of the The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group, she is a Co-Author of its recent Writing and Poetry Anthology: An Apple in Her Hand (Codhill Press 2018).



Audrey Hepburn Approached Me At The Rosendale Library

did you notice how slim I am? she asked
stood straight   shoulders down so I could observe her fully
why yes I did I replied   I don’t lie    well sometimes I lie
Audrey Hepburn certainly had a slim figure    very slim
she stood there in her teeny black capris  black ballet slippers
a silk scarf tied over her head.    raised her pert chin
looked me over with her enormous brown eyes   frowned
up   down   twice    again    her arched eyebrows high
would you like to know my secret?
I nodded  she pulled me into the deserted classic’s aisle
my heart pounded     I was desperate to know
it’s so simple she insisted   just swallow five shiny pennies every day
I thanked her   she patted my arm   walked away
for one week I attempted to swallow pennies morning noon & night
pennies are hard to get down    they’re round   flat   have a tart copper bite
or is it the tale we were all told about the naughty child
who heed-lessly /need-lessly swallowed pennies and    of course    died that night

I choked
I gagged
I made a spewing scraping gurgling sound
I gave up before I lost one pound

but no matter    I ‘ve decided I’d look terrible in a headscarf
& these days absolutely no one past the age of fifteen wears ballet flats

-Tana Miller

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WPS 2022 Schedule - all readings are now HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
All of 2022 Events: Events

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
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 following the featured readers. Thank you.

01/January 8th - Bruce Weber; Jerrice J. Baptiste via Zoom
02/February 12th - Leigh Ann Christain; Mike Jurkovic via Zoom
03/March 12th - Alison Koffler; Ken Holland via Zoom
04/April 9th - The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group via Zoom
05/May 14th - Roger Hecht; Saida Agostini via Zoom
06/June 11th - James Reitter; Jessica Cuello via Zoom
07/July 9th - Alison Woods; Matthew Burns via Zoom
08/August 13th - Arden Levine; Marjorie Maddox via Zoom
09/September 10th - Dennis Rush; Robert Charles Basner HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
10/October 8th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
11/November 12th - Cheryl Rice; Teresa Costa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
12/December 10th - Anique Sara Taylor; Cate McNider and Annual Business Meeting HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom

Also, why not become a 2022 Member or donate to the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join or donate, 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 our upgraded Zoom account, 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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