2017-2018 POETS in PLAY

Prompt: Anything relating to Sexuality

In March 2016, The ARTS Council held a gallery show themed around sexuality called, The Sexuality Show. Artists created pieces that dealt with questions of sexuality including, gender identity, body empowerment, love, loneliness, desire, consent, pride, and so much more. Poet, Michael Czarnecki, led two poetry workshops in The ARTS Council gallery where several local poets chose pieces in The Sexuality Show that inspired them to create poetry. These poems are being made into a chapbook and the results will debut at Poets in Play this evening.

Prompt: What does the world need to hear from you? Why? What affect do you want your words to have?

Join us for some powerful performance poetry by the Roc Bottom Slam Team at Corning Community College’s Kelly Lounge. The team’s performances range from ranting to rapping, narratives, story-telling to singing, with all of that sometimes beautifully overlapping while addressing harsh realities and crucial creative pursuits.
Founded in January 2013, the Roc Bottom Slam Poetry Team is Rochester’s first adult slam poetry team. Program director Lu Highsmith of LuCreations Productions leads the team, which consists of Aceyon (team captain), A.O.R, Michael Dreitlein, Marvelous Marvin, Ladii Love, Chi The Realist, K-T, and Poetically Undefined. Roc Bottom has represented Rochester in various Slam Poetry Competitions, including the Albany Wordfest Invitational, Toronto International Poetry Slam, Buffalo International Slam, the Empire State Slam. The team has also featured in various cities, including Hartford,CT, Washington, DC, Syracuse and Buffalo.

Prompt: “I have come to this place of asking” or “I know that none of this can last.”

Judith Sornberger’s newest poetry book, Practicing the World without You is forthcoming from Cavan Kerry Press. She is the author of one full-length poetry collection Open Heart (Calyx Books) and five chapbooks, most recently Wal-Mart Orchid, winner of the 2012 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize (Evening Street Press).  Her prose memoir The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany was published by Shanti Arts Press in 2015. Her poems and essays have appeared in such journals as Chautauqua, Prairie Schooner, Calyx, Image, The Comstock Review, The Cimarron Review, The Women’s Review of Books, and Ekphrasis, and in anthologies such as Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press), Out of Line (Longmire) and Breaking Free: Women of Spirit at Midlife and Beyond (Beacon Press). A Nebraska native, Sornberger has taught in many venues–prisons, colleges and universities, and community classes–around the country. At Mansfield University of Pennsylvania she taught creative writing and created the Women’s Studies Program. She lives outside Wellsboro, PA, on the side of a mountain with her Maltese puppy Birdie and her bear-chasing cat Billy Bob.

Prompt: “I listen to you breathe while you are reading…”

Craig Czury (M.F.A. creative writing Wilkes University) has spent three decades conducting poetry, life-writing, and writing as healing workshops in schools, universities, community centers, juvenile detention centers, homeless shelters, and mental hospitals. A lecturer at Albright University, an editor, publisher, and tireless arts advocate, Craig is the author of over 20 books of poetry, most recently THUMB NOTES ALMANAC: HITCHHIKING THE MARCELLUS SHALE, a poetry documentary woven from his hitchhiking interviews and observations taken while hitchhiking through the heart of “fracking” in his home region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He is the co-host and artistic director of The Old School Poetry Series at The Springville Schoolhouse Art Studios, where he lives, works and plays bocce.

Prompt: “How long have I dreamt of you distinct”

Mộng-Lan, writer, former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fulbright Scholar, has published six books of poetry & artwork, two chapbooks, has won prizes such as the Juniper Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards, among others. Frequently anthologized to include in Best American Poetry Anthology, she has finished a novel, with an excerpt in the North American Review. A former college professor with a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona, she left her native Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon. Also a musician and composer, she has released nine albums of jazz piano and tangos, which showcase her poetry. As a visual artist, her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and in museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art and in public exhibitions in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Bali and Buenos Aires. Mộng-Lan as a dancer has studied ballet, jazz and flamenco, and has specialized as a tango dancer, performer, and teacher, having twenty years of tango dance experience, in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, New York City, Tokyo, Bangkok, Hanoi, and elsewhere.  Mộng-Lan’s new solo show, “Ocean of Senses: Dream Songs & Tangos,” blends original poetry, jazz piano, guitar, dance, story and song.  Visit:  www.monglan.com

Prompt: “Beets: now there’s a subject.”

Katharyn Howd Machan, Professor of Writing at Ithaca College, has authored 33 published collections. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and textbooks, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature. In 2018 her Selected Poems will appear from FutureCycle Press.