Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, February 10th, 2024 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Lissa Kiernan
Mary K O'Melveny

Poets Lissa Kiernan and Mary K O'Melveny 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, February 10th, 2024 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:

Lissa Kiernan - Founding director of The Poetry Barn, Lissa Kiernan's second poetry collection, The Whispering Wall (2023), won the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. She lives in West Hurley near the Ashokan Reservoir spillway. She volunteers for the Flying Cat Music concert series and, with her husband, Chris Abramides, is an enthusiastic herder of a fluctuating number of felines. More at lissakiernan.com.



Crow Instability

By the time I learned how to read the weather—
no, not the sky, the weather—what all
those layers mean, this one water, that one vapor,

how to forecast into the future beyond the next hour,
I knew my dream colorscape was rose,
butter, and cream, shades of never-held blooms.

I listened openly to birdcall. Understood
I was slow to forgive. Sugar skulls
taunted me, as did the raptor who arrived

like a needle on my barn’s weathervane.
Nothing but morphined shadows jabbed
each roof ’s slope, nothing but winter’s west

darkened the last sunblade. A phoebe
soffit-nesting is raising a rejected cowbird,
feeds into its beak before tending her own

brood. Could I build them a sort of cage, bars
spaced close enough to dissuade stray talons,
wide enough that fledglings might still fledge?

I assess conditions: dew point high, wind
stream low. Consider the life index:
pollen, pollution—moderate to fair. I gather

I could fashion this contraption, should I choose to,
but then I recall the “feels like” temperature,
tomorrow’s storm warning—those random squalls.

-Lissa Kiernan

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Mary K O'Melveny - Mary K O’Melveny, a Pushcart Prize nominee and award-winning poet, is the author of three poetry collections: A Woman of a Certain Age, Merging Star Hypotheses (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020) and Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum (Kelsay Books 2021). Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals, anthologies and national blog sites, including Minerva Rising, Voice of Eve, FLARE: The Flagler Review, Split Rock Review, Allegro Poetry Journal, Anthology Magazine, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Lightwood, The Poet’s Billow and The New Verse News. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Washington Prize sponsored by The Word Works. Mary is a member of The Hudson Valley Women’s Writers Group and a co-author of their anthologies An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019) and Rethinking The Ground Rules (forthcoming from Mediacs Press 2022). Her web site is www.marykomelvenypoet.com.



Murmurations

My friend and I are talking indignant politics
We are about to cross the Mid-Hudson bridge,
steel sky above, chilly water below,
when a cloud of birds twists, spins above us.

They seek every bare branch, fill them
as if they were summer leaves, then scatter
again like confetti in wind. No one in charge,
yet balance animates all.

Like scat singers, each vibrating note resounds,
rebounds. Each airborne thrum and trill,
purr and prattle sweeps the skies, harmony
clear, like a drummer’s brush technique.

Their grace is a loose coordination:
Swing. Smooth. Bebop. Hip Hop. Cool.
Aerial musicians in synchrony, each linked
to the next. We discontented humans drive on.

-Mary K O'Melveny

Previously published in Jerry Jazz Musician

Developing WPS 2024 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 13th - Patrick Hammer, Jr.; Robert Langdon
02/February 10th - Lissa Kiernan; Mary K O'Melveny
03/March 9th - Ethan Sirotko; Janet Kaplan
04/April 13th - Poetry Month Special Event ("Unbroken Circle")
05/May 11th - Roger Mitchell; Steve Clorfeine
06/June 8th - Barry Wallenstein; Richard Levine
07/July 13th - Karen Schoemer; Martin Steingesser
08/August 10th - Craig Hancock; Marnie Andrews
09/September 14th - Christopher Heffernan; Jerrice J. Baptiste
10/October 12th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa
11/November 9th - Judy Lechner; Teresa Costa
12/December 14th - H.R. Webster; Ken Holland and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2024 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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