Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, June 13th, 2026 at 1pm (new time)
Woodstock Library

Judith Kerman
William Seaton

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Poets Judith Kerman and William Seaton will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and streamed via Zoom (and www.facebook.com/phillip.levine/) on Saturday, June 13th, 2026 at 2pm(eastern).

WPS meetings are now held the 2nd Saturday (1pm) of every month. New time.

Woodstock Library
10 Dixon Ave, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845)679-2213
www.woodstock.org

The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend virtually: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending via Zoom, 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:

Judith Kerman - Judith Kerman is a poet and multi-artist (singer, performer, and crafter). She has published eleven books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently Definitions (Fomite Press, 2021), along with three books of translations. Committed to publishing and literary communitybuilding, she founded Earth’s Daughters magazine in 1971 and went on to establish Mayapple Press in 1978, which she continues to run today. Kerman earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Buffalo. As a Fulbright Scholar to the Dominican Republic in 2000, she translated the poetry and fiction of Dominican women and designed a website for the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, expanding access to underrepresented voices and histories. After a career in university teaching and administration, she retired to Woodstock, NY, where she remains an active force in the literary world by overseeing Mayapple Press, coordinating online poetry workshops, and leading annual writers’ retreats. Find her online at judithkerman.com.



Trying to Sleep

All night,
beeps of
call bells. Never quite dark in the halls,
doors wide open.
Everyone's asleep, I think, but me. I toss,
flail, rearrange my sheets,
grimace as the woman across the hall calls out,
“Help me get up!” again and again.
I grope for earplugs
jam them in,
know this will go on
like last night, until she
manifests in her doorway, a wobbling apparition in her
nightgown. The floor nurse takes her to bed again—through
open doors, I hear their voices. Then,
peace. She’s
quiet a while. I try to
rest, hope to sleep, but know
soon she’ll start again.
Ten minutes, fifteen. Did I sleep?
Up the hall at the nursing station,
voices, low for awhile, then louder.
When will someone bring her
Xanax? My feet itch from
yellow hospital socks. Where is
Zen mind when I need it?

-Judith Kerman

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William Seaton - William Seaton is a poet, translator, and critic, author of Spoor of Desire, Planetary Motions, and Dada Poetry: An Introduction. He maintains a mostly literary blog at williamseaton.blogspot.com which includes over six hundred critical and scholarly essays as well as a miscellany of other content, but little poetry.



Like light from a door all but shut
at the far end of a dark hall,
a hint of what’s around the bend:
the fine-set gems, the husky breath,
body’s warm scent, a lightning flash,
a sudden silence.
The past day’s enigmatic as the next,
not to mention now: a random walk,
diorama of found objects, accumulating
meaning like dust of bookshelves
in the back archive of the cerebellum’s
castle keep.

-William Seaton

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WPS 2026 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 10th - Ethan Sirotko; Janet Kaplan
02/February 14th - Tina Barry; Zelda aka Judith Z. Miller
03/March 14th - Michael Cohen; Rhonda Rosenheck note: new time 1pm
04/April 11th - Poetry Month Special Event - "Poetry as Resistance" note: new time 1pm
05/May 9th - Marianna Boncek; Richard Parisio note: new time 1pm
06/June 13th - Judith Kerman; William Seaton note: new time 1pm
07/July 11th - Allen Shadow; Carol Graser note: new time 1pm
08/August 8th - Cheryl Rice; Leslie Gerber note: new time 1pm
09/September 12th - Philip Pardi; Wendy Kagan note: new time 1pm
10/October 10th - Arden Levine; Raphael Moser note: new time 1pm
11/November 14th - Denise La Neve; Robyn Hager note: new time 1pm
12/December 12th - Kemp Battle; Marnie Andrews and Annual Business Meeting note: new time 1pm

Follow the WPS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry and why not become a 2026 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is a tax deductible $20 a year. (To join, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Please include your email address. 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. Note that WPS is a registered 501c3 (and NYS Charity).

One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website. Numerous bios, poems, and pictures of past and present WPS members are available here: www.woodstockpoetry.com/members.html and here: www.woodstockpoetry.com/poems.html.

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