New from A.P.D. : "To the Husband I Have Not Yet Met" by Mary Kathryn Jablonski

A.P.D. Announces the Publication of "To the Husband I Have Not Yet Met" Poems by Mary Kathryn Jablonski

A.P.D. is proud to announce the publication of "To the Husband I Have Not Yet Met," by Saratoga Springs, NY, poet Mary Kathryn Jablonski. The 28-page chapbook contains 17 poems with a woodcut by Allen Grindle illustrating the cover. Woven with threads of humor, the poems explore memory, longing and the power of imagination.
Mary Kathryn Jablonski is a visual artist and poet who is assistant director of the Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College. In past lives she has worked as a graphic artist, caterer, photo shoot stylist, barista, window display designer, and mannequin dresser, among other things. Jablonski was director of the Saratoga Poetry Zone from 2000 to 2005. She also initiated and curated a program of literary readings to complement exhibits at the Arts Center Gallery in downtown Saratoga Springs where she was gallery director from 1999-2002. She has read her poems throughout the Capital District, including at historic Caffe Lena. In 2007 she was awarded a NYSCA grant to create a new series of artworks and poems and interview artist/writers on the Internet.

A.P.D., under the direction of Albany poet and photographer Dan Wilcox, has been publishing the works of local and regional poets since 1989. Among the works published by A.P.D. are "Distant Kinships" by Anthony Bernini, "Suddenly Sapphires" by Dina Pearlman, and "Three Sides to the Looking Glass" by Rachel Zitomer.

To the Husband I Have Not Yet Met, poems by Mary Kathryn Jablonski (ISBN-13: 978-0-9714631-7-2; ISBN-10: 0-9714631-7-4) is available from local and regional booksellers, or directly from the publisher, $8.00 + $2.00 shipping cost.

For more information, please contact Dan Wilcox at 518-482-0262; email: apdbooks@earthlink.net.

Woodstock Poetry Society, July 12

Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival, as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium is sponsoring the following poetry event as part of the Woodstock "Second Saturdays" Art Events. For a full listing of "Second Saturday" events, go to: www.woodstockartsconsortium.org.

Poets Baron James Ashanti and Bertha Rogers will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Town Hall, 76 Tinker Street, on Saturday, July 12th at 2pm. Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month.  The readings will be hosted by Woodstock area poet Phillip Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

Baron James Ashanti has widely been published nationally and internationally over a 40 year career.  He is listed in:  Who's Who in The World; Who's Who in America;  Who's Who in American Education; Who's Who in America, Writer, Editors & Poets;  Who's Who in North American Poetry;  The International Who's Who in Poetry; and The International Writer and Author's Who's Who.  He has read poetry along with Allen Ginsberg; Gwen Brooks; and Amiri Baraka.  In 2004 Mr. Ashanti did a reading tour of Ireland which included Beal Feirste (Belfast), Northen Ireland and the Yeats House, Sligeah (Sligo).  For most of the last decade his work has centered on Asia and Ireland.

Bertha Rogers's poems appear in journals and anthologies. She has published four collections of poetry, and her fifth collection, Heart Turned Back, will be published in 2009 by Salmon Poetry, Ireland. Her translation of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, was published in 2000, and her translation of the riddle-poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book will be published in 2008.  Her poem “Rhomboid” won PhiloPhonema’s Lyric Recovery  Award in 2001, selected by Alfred Corn; and her poem “Truck Stand” was selected by John Ashbery for display in the Albany Airport to celebrate the Millay Colony’s 3Oth anniversary. In 2006 she was the recipient of an AE Ventures Grant for excellence in both poetry and visual art and for contributions to the field through the not-for-profit literary press and center she founded, www.brighthillpress.org.  In 2007 she was given the 2007 Teaching Artist Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field by Partners for Arts Education and the Association of Teaching Artists in New York. She also serves as program manager for the New York State Literary Web Site, www.nyslittree.org, publisher of the first Literary Map of New York State (2005), in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts.  Her web site is www.bertharogers.com.

Here's our upcoming schedule of featured readers:
8/9 - Gretchen Primack (rescheduled), Philip Pardi
9/13 - Roberta Allen, Naton Leslie
10/11 - Mary Kathryn Jablonski, Will Nixon

Also, why not become a 2008 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival?
Membership is a nominal $15 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.)  Your membership helps pay for hall 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.

Live From The Living Room with Jim Masters

Live From The Living Room, a featured reading series with an open mic afterwards is held on the second Wednesday of every month at the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center, 332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY.  The next reading is  July 9th featuring local gay poet Jim Masters. 

Jim's bio:

I  was born in Kansas City, Missouri one year before the great stock
market crash of 1929. In the public schools of Kansas City I picked up the notion that poetry consisted of writing in correctly formed iambic
pentameter or some other such rhyme/rhythm scheme. A poem I submitted for a senior yearbook, and which I labored over to get the rhyme/rhythm scheme correct, was rejected; and it was politely suggested that I stick with prose, although it was hinted that that was not much better than my poetry.

The University of Kansas granted me A. B. and M. A. degrees, and the
University of Missouri at Kansas City granted me a Ph. D. I became a
Professor of Education at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana and taught not only in the Teacher Education program but also Integrated Liberal Studies, required of all freshmen, in which I attempted to help them improve in their prose (not poetical) writing. And one year I taught American History, in which I began at the present and moved backwards in time. I thought it interesting and I learned a lot; the students seemed to think it odd.

My wife labored with some success for more than 50 years to stir up my
interest in poetry, and during the last years of her life, when she was
blind, I read her favorite poems to her every day. They became my favorite poems, too, and I remain ever thankful that we had that experience together before her death. One poem by e. e. cummings I read at her funeral--"I thank you God for most this amazing day...."

Sign up is at 7pm with 7:30 start time with host Don Levy  and $2.00 suggested donation.  For more info call (518) 462-6138.  This is a straight-friendly reading.

Poets in the Park 2008

Poets in the Park 2008 at the Robert Burns statue in Washington Park, Albany (at Henry Johnson Blvd. & Hudson Ave.) starts this Saturday at 7:00PM.

July 12: Georganna Millman and W.D. Clarke

July 19: Charlie Rossiter and Mimi Moriarty & Frank Desiderio

July 26: James Schlett and Kathryn Kelly

August 2: Susan Brennan and Philip Good

Free! & open to the public (just like the park)
Rain dates: the following Sundays, same time, same place

This event series is sponsored by the Poetry Motel Foundation & the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.  This project is made possible in part through COMMUNITY ART$GRANTS, a program funded through the State and Local Partnership Program of the New York State Council on the arts, a State agency and the Arts Center of the Capital Region.  For information call 482-0262.