Our ever-popular open microphone night is back again!  Come by and see it happen or bring something in your head or hand to read, it’s a great night to get out of the house and experience something brave and new.

Sign up now by e-mailing gontarek9 at earthlink dot net for the open mic at Green Line Locust this June 21st!

Just on the first day of Summer, this will be a great way to celebrate (or cool off!).

Valerie Fox’s most recent book is The Glass Book (Texture Press). Previous books include The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books, 2006) and Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (a compilation with Arlene Ang, Texture Press, 2008).  She was a founding co-editor of 6ix magazine (1990-2000), and currently helps to edit Press 1, a journal of fiction, poetry, opinion, and photography. Her poems have appeared in Hanging Loose, Sentence, West Branch, Ping Pong, and other journals. She teaches first year writing, creative writing, American poetry, and other courses at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and young daughter.

David Mills has a master’s in creative writing from New York University and is a cum laude grad of Yale University. He is a 2010 Queens Poet Laureate Finalist. He has won NYFA, Breadloaf, Henry James, Brio, PALF (to travel to a writer’s conference in Ghana, West Africa) and Soros Fellowships to travel to Poland to write poems about the Holocaust. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Fence, Jubilat, Callaloo, Rattapallax, Aloud Poets from the Nuyorican Café, Black Renaissance Noir, Obsidian III, Brooklyn Rail and Hanging Loose Press to name a few. He has also recorded his poetry on RCA records with jazz artist Steve Coleman. His collection the Dream Detective is on the small press bestseller list. He has written book reviews for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Rolling Stone and New York Post. He also lived as writer-in-residence in Harlem Renaissance luminary Langston Hughes’ landmark Harlem home.

RSVP to gontarek9 at earthlink dot net!

The Green Line has a great slate of events this week. All events take place at our Locust Street Location, 4426 Locust Street. Click on links for complete event info. See you there!

Tuesday Oct 19

It’s the Monthly Free Poetry Series. This month features nationally-acclaimed poets Nate Pritts and Hayden Saunier.

Thursday Oct 21

Former CHUMBAWUMBA lead singer Danbert Nobacan returns to the Green Line with special guest Erik Petersen of Mischief Brew! Last time they played the Green Line it looked like this:

Friday, Oct 22

I can haz comedy? Yep! Join us for Comedy Meow-er IV!

Sunday, Oct 24

It’s the Best of Philly kid’s music program All Around This World!

Ongoing: photographs by Lorelei Narvaja

This Woman’s Work continues through October.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Nate Pritts is the author of four full-length books of poems – The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books, 2010), Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press, 2008) & Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX, 2007), & the forthcoming Big Bright Sun (BlazeVOX).

His poetry & prose have been published widely, both online & in print, in journals such as The Southern Review, Jacket, Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Octopus, & Forklift, Ohio among many others. Nate has his MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College (‘00) & his PhD in British Romanticism from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette (‘03).

Hayden Saunier‘s poetry has appeared in 5 A.M., Mad Poets Review, Margie, Nimrod, Philadelphia Stories and Rattle, among others. She was the winner of the 2005 Robert Fraser Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2007 Liam Rector First Book Prize selected by David Wojahn. An actress and voice-over artist, her film and television credits include The Sixth Sense, Philadelphia Diary and Hack. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her collection of poems, Tips For Domestic Travel, was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and was published by Black Lawrence Press in Spring 2009.

More information about the Green Line Monthly Poetry Series HERE.

THE GREEN LINE CAFE PRESENTS

KATHLEEN SHEEDER BONANNO

Poetry Reading & Interview

TUESDAY, May 18, 7 PM
Green Line Locust
HOSTED BY LEONARD GONTAREK
& LISA GRUNBERGER
This Event Is Free

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno received the Beatrice Hawley Award for
her book of poetry, Slamming Open the Door, published by
Alice James Books in April, 2009 and was one of the top-ten-
selling books of contemporary poetry in 2009. Two poems
from her book were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Slamming Open the Door is a collection of poems recounting the
true story of the murder of her daughter, Leidy Bonanno, in 2003.

Bonanno’s heartrending collection inspires both compassion for and awe of the human spirit. Of all the losses we may be asked to bear, the murder of one’s child must be the most terrible. These poems evoke that keenly, seeking justice but transcending judgment as they grieve loss, celebrate love, and find healing.

In 2007, Kathleen received the Purple Ribbon Award from the Lutheran Settlement Home for her advocacy on behalf of domestic violence issues. She is a contributing editor of The American Poetry Review and teaches English and creative writing in Montgomery County.

The poet Sharon Olds calls Slamming Open the Door “a gift of power, truth, rage and beauty.”   David Kirby in the New York Times Book Review says, “Readers will have to step outside of a familiar, comforting tradition of poetic grief while reading this book … to read this book is not to behold a completed work but to stand onstage with a writer who finds herself in the middle of a story in which she has been reluctantly cast.”

“When Emily Dickinson wrote the line ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’ I think she was referring to poems—and the occasions that make them impossible to not write—like these. Spare, unflinching, and powerful, the poems in Slamming Open the Door move me to the bone. How does one say I love this book, which I wish never had to be written? Only one way: I love this book. I wish it did not have to be written.”
—Thomas Lux

Death Barged In

In his Russian greatcoat
slamming open the door
with an unpardonable bang,
and he has been here ever since.

He changes everything,
rearranges the furniture,
his hand hovers
by the phone;
he will answer now, he says;
he will be the answer.

Tonight he sits down to dinner
at the head of the table
as we eat, mute;
later, he climbs into bed between us.

Even as I sit here,
he stands behind me
clamping two
colossal hands on my shoulders
and bends down
and whispers to my neck,
From now on,
you write about me.

Ditta Baron Hoeber

Anisa Rahim

Ditta Baron Hoeber is both a poet and an artist. Her photographs, drawings and books have been exhibited at various venues nationally over the last twenty years, most recently in the exhibition “Artist As Publisher” at the Center For Book Arts in New York. Her poetry has been published in various journals including the English journals iota and Nthposition. In Ireland it has been published in The Shop. Her manuscript, Without You was a finalist for the Four Ways Books 2006 Intro Prize.

Anisa Rahim likes to write and take photos. She has been part of Leonard Gontarek’s poetry workshops and readings since 2006. She resides simultaneously in many places including New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York, New Delhi, and her hometown in Florida.

Other Poetry News of Note:

Clear Moon, Frost by Amy Small-McKinney available from Finishing Line Press
go to: www.finishinglinepress.com

Leonard Gontarek on The Joe Milford Poetry Show (blog-talk radio),
Saturday, May 16, 3-4:30 PM, go to: http://joemilfordpoetryshow.com/

The Life of the Poet workshop at The Moonstone Arts Center,
go to: www.leafscape.org/LeonardGontarek

Painted Bride Quarterly 1st Annual Book Fair at Drexel University,
Wednesday, May 13, 10-5 PM, go to: www.drexelpublishing.org

Our monthly poetry series, hosted every third Tuesday by noted West Philly poet Leonard Gontarek, continues to garner attention. In fact, John Timpane over at the Inquirer gave us props for jumping on Philly’s poetry bandwagon and getting the community involved.  So far at our 45th and Locust location we’ve featured readings by poets including Kat Georges, Peter Carlafters,  Karen Hilderbrand, Cindy Savett and Ray Garman, as well as others from right here in the neighborhood and even amateurs reading their works for the first time.  There is an apparent groundwell of interest in poetry in the greater Philly area, and our series is now being mentioned with the likes of university poetry events at Penn, Temple, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and West Chester, along with The Painted Bride Quarterly’s readings over at Bubble House.  What it comes down to is: if you’re in the tri-state area and you’ve got a hankerin’ for the written and read word, the cozy confines of the Green Line are as good a choice as any.