Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, September 13th, 2025 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Jennifer Franklin
Lucia Cherciu

Poets Jennifer Franklin and Lucia Cherciu 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, September 13th, 2025 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:

Jennifer Franklin - Jennifer Franklin is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, March 2023), finalist for the Paterson Prize in Poetry and finalist for the Julie Suk Award. Poems from her manuscript in progress, A FIRE IN HER BRAIN, have been published in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, The Common, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Poetry Northwest, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology. Her work has also been published in The Bedford Guide to Literature (Macmillan, 2024), Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Paris Review, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion and Prairie Schooner. She is the recipient of a 2024 Pushcart Prize, the Third Annual Jon Tribble Editing fellowship from Poetry by the Sea, a 2021 NYFA/City Artist Corps grant for poetry, and a 2021 Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Literature Award. She is Poetry Reviews coeditor of The Rumpus and coeditor, with Nicole Callihan & Pichchenda Bao, of the anthology Braving The Body (Harbor Editions, 2024). Jennifer has taught manuscript revision for over ten years and also teaches craft classes for 24Pearl Street/Provincetown Fine Arts Center and Manhattanville MFA.



Preparing for Residential Placement for My Disabled Daughter

My life without you—I have already
     seen it. Today, on the salt marsh.
     The red-winged blackbird perched
     in the tallest tree, sage green branches
     falling over the water. She sat there
     for a long time, doing nothing.
     As she lifted up to fly, the slender branch
     shook from the release of her weight.
     When the bird departed, it seemed
     the branch would shake forever
     in the wind, bobbing up and down.
     When it finally stopped moving,
     the branch was diminished,
     reaching out to the vast sky.

Copyright © 2023 by Jennifer Franklin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 10, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

Jennifer Franklin (she/her)
If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, 2023)
Finalist for the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize & the 2023 Julie Suk Award
Pushcart Anthology 2024
www.jenniferfranklinpoet.com

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Lucia Cherciu - Lucia Cherciu is a Professor of English at Dutchess Community College and served as the 2021-2022 Dutchess County Poet Laureate. She is the author of six books of poetry, including Immigrant Prodigal Daughter (Kelsay Books, 2023), Train Ride to Bucharest (Sheep Meadow Press, 2017), which received the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, Edible Flowers (Main Street Rag, 2016), Lalele din Paradis / Tulips in Paradise (Editura Eikon, 2017), Altoiul Râsului / Grafted Laughter (Editura Brumar, 2010), and Lepadarea de Limba / The Abandonment of Language (Editura Vinea, 2009). Her work was nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net.



Practicing the New Way

My mother would like to give me
a jar of honey in which she macerated dandelions
from our mountains in Vrancea.
I tell her a long story by way of refusal.
My brother simply says no.
Honey would be good, but dandelions
we surely have enough on our lawn.
She tells me that dandelions
are good for the heart,
for the liver, for disposition.
After twenty-eight years of carrying
across the ocean the luggage
large enough to fit myself,
I am learning not to lug
things back.

I remember thirty years ago
when I left for graduate school
in Colorado
she roasted a chicken
and pressured me to pack it.
I didn’t take it then either.

But as soon as I arrive back
in Poughkeepsie
for the first time with my luggage
half empty—
after practicing my new way
of living in the world—
the first thing I regret not accepting
is her jar of honey with dandelions.
Don’t get me wrong. I have been
missing that roasted chicken with thyme
all my life. And today
how I wish I could start
that journey again,
fearlessly preparing for that long flight
and feasting on sagacity and stories.

-Lucia Cherciu

This poem was first published in “Southern Review” in 2024.

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Developing WPS 2025 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 11th - Guy Reed; Will Nixon
02/February 8th - Alison Koffler; Dayl Wise
03/March 8th - Charlie Cody; Mike Jurkovic
04/April 12th - Poetry Month Special Event (TBA)
05/May 10th - Roberta Gould; Vivi Hlavsa
06/June 14th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
07/July 12th - Lee Slonimsky; Robert Charles Basner
08/August 9th - Matthew J. Spireng; Suzanne Cleary
09/September 13th - Jennifer Franklin; Lucia Cherciu
10/October 11th - Raphael Kosek; Raphael Moser
11/November 8th - Bruce Weber; Linda McCauley Freeman
12/December 13th - Cheryl A. Rice; Tom Bonville and Annual Business Meeting

Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry/ and why not become a 2025 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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