Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, October 11th, 2025 at 2pm
SPECIAL LOCATION: Woodstock Mothership
6 Sgt Richard Quinn Drive/6 Hillcrest Ave
Woodstock, NY 12498

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Raphael Kosek
Tristan Geary

Poets Raphael Kosek and Tristan Geary 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, October 11th, 2025 at 2pm(eastern). Please note: this month again we will be meeting at the Woodstock Mothership; 6 Sgt Richard Quinn Drive/6 Hillcrest Ave; Woodstock, NY 12498

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

Special Location:
Woodstock Mothership
6 Sgt Richard Quinn Drive/6 Hillcrest Ave
Woodstock, NY 12498

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:

Raphael Kosek - Raphael Kosek is the author of American Mythology (Brick Road Poetry Press) and two prize-winning chapbooks, Harmless Encounters (2022) and Rough Grace (2014). Her worked received 4 Pushcart nominations and was featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She has a new chapbook in the works. She served as the 2019-2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate where she teaches at Dutchess Community College. www.raphaelkosek.com



A Calm Madness
       “ . . . I sought wisdom . . . in poems and also a certain calm madness.”
        -Adam Zagajewski

Mozart surely felt it and tried to annihilate
that stolid fervor in his Requiem

and the birds churn it when dawn’s pallor
sieves the trees. It’s there when enlightenment

baptizes the confused brow of the seeker.
If you weep at the wood thrush’s song,

you are stung by it. And it simmers in
the horse’s eye, though the breath is soft

with sun and hay. For some it is the blue of far
mountains and the sea’s restless grieving.

Caravaggio found it in the violent
light emboldening human flesh for all

to behold. For such beauty, you have
to be mad. Or it would kill you.

-Raphael Kosek

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Tristan Geary - Tristan Geary is a writer living in Hudson. He's self-published two chapbooks (meaning printed them himself and handed them out to his friends), and has had his poetry published in Chronogram. He's a journalist by day, often covering arts and culture. He's written for The New York Times, Times Union, The New Pine Plains Herald, Chronogram, and many other outlets. Born and raised in London, Tristan has been living in the US since 2013, and graduated from Bard College in 2020. He sends his creative writing out to the world through his blog tristangeary.substack.com



my laptop life

this is an experiment in deep focus.
welcome rotters, escape artists, and to everyone
dimmed and dulled.

thinking about doing, begets not doing,
begets thinking about doing, begets nothing.

why is it in olden times people would catch a train
leave their job, start another job
join the army, write a letter,
lean up against a post
watch their imprint dry on a warm rock by the quarry in july,
but i think about why i’m not a miner?

what might i do,
what i certainly never will do,
what i could be doing,
for example, not this.

now that an hour has gone by
i can tell myself “job done.”
you’ll never see me at this link again.

-Tristan Geary

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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-"Remembering Poets Passed"
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 - Alice Graves; Lucia Cherciu (Special Location: Woodstock Mothership)
10/October 11th - Raphael Kosek; Tristan Geary (Special Location: Woodstock Mothership)
11/November 8th - Cheryl A. Rice; Linda McCauley Freeman
12/December 13th - Bruce Weber; 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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