A SLIVER OF OUR POETRY WEEKEND

I don’t know if I’ll have it in me to attend anything this weekend, but dang the venue hosts are making it tough! 

Today (Friday) Linda Trott Dickman and the NorthportArts Coalition are serving up JulianMatthews on a silver platter for you. Actually, that platter has to be platinum! Now, this ain’t no finger food we’re talking about here, this is some stick-to-your-bones-and-you-don’t-even-need-dessert kinda offering. If carrots and celery with some dip is your preference, you might want to just come for open mic, because Julian combines an uncommon mind with innovative word weaving to deliver a rich multicourse experience. If you don’t believe me, check this out.

If you aren’t totally wrung out or couldn’t make the above, E. Lynn Alexander and Collapse Press are presenting the virtual book launch of Lynn’s FIND ME IN THE IRIS tonight as well. I was fortunate enough to stumble across Lynn’s and Cleveland Wall’s wordsmithing at a recent SpoFest event and four other word artists (Karen Lillis, K.R. Morrison, Chansonette Buck, and Taneesh Kaur) will be sharing the mic. Sounds promising to me!  

If you didn’t get enough richness with Julian and the Collapse crew, Poetry Streeton the Road  is going international tomorrow with Zimbabwe’s Takudzwa “VaChikepethe Poet” Chikepe and Trinidad & Tobago’s Marsha M. Nelson. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of homegrown cheeba for you with ChipWilliford, Maggie Bloomfield and the open mic participants who usually scorch Poetry Street’s asphalt. If you haven’t strolled down this broad thoroughfare yet, you might want to take a detour from your usual travels. Your voice to share and your ears to absorb poetic fare is the only toll. And if you’d like a sample platter of that poetic fare, there are videos of past events for you to nibble on if you scroll down on the homepage.

And on Sunday (12pm PDT) CultivatingVoices Live with hosts SandyYannone, Kim Ports Parsons, and Don Krieger are presenting their 3^rd Annual Pride Poetry Parade with a plethora of featured poets along with open mic.

There’s plenty coming up next week as well, but I wanna get this posted.