2016-2017 POETS in PLAY: Corning’s Poetry Series

Inspired Open Mic Prompt by Judith Kerman
“A book tells secret/ it’s dying to share…”
Judith Kerman has published seven collections of  poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press) and Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (CCLEH), as well as three books of translations of Cuban and Dominican women writers (White Pine Press, BOA Editions, Mayapple Press). She was a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic in 2002. She founded Earth’s Daughters magazine in Buffalo, NY (1971 to present) and runs Mayapple Press, located
in Woodstock, NY. A literary trailer of her poem, “Fragile,” and her video documentary about Dominican Carnaval, as well as clips of several readings, can be seen on YouTube on the Judith Kerman channel. Visit her website at www.judithkerman.com.

Inspired Open Mic Prompt from Liz Rosenberg
“Somewhere in the city of your heart…”
Liz Rosenberg is a poet and novelist, whose book, THE MOONLIGHT PALACE, was the number one best-selling book on Kindle, in the United states and in the UK. She has published 5 books of poems, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and elsewhere. Her books have been translated into Japanese and German, and her work for young readers has won IRA Choice Awards and has been featured on PBS’s Reading Rainbow. She lives and teaches in Binghamton NY, where she lives with her daughter Lily and their dog Sophie. She’s at work on a new novel, a book of poems, and a forthcoming biography of Louisa May Alcott.

Inspired Open Mic Prompt from Karen Alpha
“…wild fruit crushed in the mouth/breathed in it fills the body…”
Karen Alpha‘s short stories have appeared widely in, among many others, The North American Review, The North Dakota Quarterly, Redbook and Blueline. Her poems were included in both The Susquehanna Watershed and The Finger Lakes Anthologies. Recent books are two collections of poetry: All the Blue in the World (Foothills) and That Year on Blackberry Hill (Blue Mailbox Books). In addition to founding and directing The Short Story Project in Corning, she has for many years taught traditional Chinese wellness and the foundational martial art Tai Ji Quan (tai chi), as well as English as a Second Language to corporate ex-pats. Currently she is working on a collection of short stories and also the final drafts of a memoirish study into a deep city woodland in the last century.

Inspired Open Mic Prompt from Bruce Bennett
“I don’t know why the thought of that upsets me…”
Bruce Bennett is the author of nine books of poems and more than two dozen poetry chapbooks, several of which were published by FootHills. His New and Selected Poems, Navigating The Distances (Orchises Press), was cited by Booklist as “One Of The Top Ten Poetry Books Of 1999.” He was a founding editor of Field and Ploughshares and an Associate Editor at Judith Kitchen’s State Street Press. In 2012, he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. In 2014 he retired from teaching at Wells College, where he had taught English and Creative Writing and directed the Visiting Writers Series since 1973. He is now Professor Emeritus of English. In July 2015 he received the first Writing the Rockies Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Creative Writing. He is married to the Mayor of Aurora.

Inspired Open Mic Prompt from Barbara Crooker
“This was a day when nothing happened…”
Barbara Crooker‘s poems have appeared in magazines such as The Green Mountains Review, Poet Lore, The Potomac Review, The Hollins Critic, The Christian Science Monitor, Smartish Pace, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, The Denver Quarterly, The Tampa Review, Poetry International, The Christian Century, America, and anthologies such as The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Good Poems for Hard Times (Garrison Keillor, editor), and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.  She is the recipient of the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize, the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2004 Pennsylvania Center for the Book Poetry in Public Places Poster Competition, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, the 2003 “April Is the Cruelest Month” Award from Poets & Writers, the 2000 New Millenium Writing’s Y2K competition, the 1997 Karamu Poetry Award, and others, including three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, seventeen residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; a residency at the Moulin ‡ Nef, Auvillar, France; and two residencies at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland.  A forty time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and five time nominee for Best of the Net, she was nominated for the 1997 Grammy Awards for her part in the audio version of the popular anthology, Grow Old Along With Me/The Best is Yet to Be (Papier Mache Press). Her books are Radiance, which won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance (Word Press 2008), which won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; More (C&R Press 2010);  Gold (Cascade Books, a division of Wipf and Stock, in their Poeima Poetry Series, 2013); Small Rain (Purple Flag, an imprint of the Virtual Artists Collective, 2014); and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). Her poetry has been read on the BBC, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, and in Ted Kooser’s column, American Life in Poetry.  She has read her poems in the Poetry at Noon series at the Library of Congress, in Auvillar, France, at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, and in many other venues.

Inspired Open Mic Prompt from David Foreman
“It helps to be an expert at something..” 
David Foreman worked as a calligrapher and as a college psychology teacher, before returning to his early love of writing. His poetry has appeared in The Bakery, Cimarron Review, at Pittsburgh Poetry Houses, and elsewhere. In addition to poetry, he is a student of Yiddish, and has been translating his grandfather‘s books from Yiddish to English. He lives in Ithaca, NY.