Poets Speak Loud, January 28

The annual Poets Speak Loud Tom Nattell Memorial Open Mic and Beret Toss will take place on Monday, January 28 (the Last Monday of the month) at Tess' Lark Tavern, Madison Ave., Albany, NY starting at 7:30PM.  The guest host will be Dan Wilcox, the host of the monthly Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center.  The event includes an open mic for community poets and a post-reading parade to the Robert Burns statue in Washington Park to place a beret on the head of Robert Burns in honor of poet and environmental activist Tom Nattell who left us in January 2005 to join that Great Open Mic in the Sky.  The reading is free, but donations to support the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize are appreciated.

Albany Poets sponsors "Poets Speak Loud", a poetry reading and open mic, on the last Monday of every month at the Lark Tavern at 7:30PM.  Tom Nattell was the host and organizer of the annual Readings Against the End of the World, Poets in the Park, and the open mic at the QE2 held on the last Monday of the month, among many achievements.  He had been scheduled to read at the first Poets Speak Loud! in January 2005, but died that morning.