5/29/13

June 24th: CA Conrad Features


Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On June 24th, CA Conrad kicks off a three day tour of the Boston and north shore area, featuring at Stone Soup first before moving onto the Zig Zag Poetry Open Mic in Salem on Tuesday and Speak UP: Spoken Word in Lynn on Wednesday.

CA Conrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He has five full-length poetry collections the most recent is A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Wave Books, 2012). The Book of Frank (Wave Books) has been translated into German, Spanish, and most recently Swedish. He is a 2011 PEW Fellow, a 2013 BANFF Fellow, and a 2012 and 2013 visiting faculty member for the Summer Writing Program of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. You can find his poems at CAConrad.blogspot.com

June 24th: Pre-Stone Soup Poetry Writing Workshop


I will be leading a workshop today on June 24th, to take place before Stone Soup Poetry from 6:00 PM to just before 8:00 PM at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery.

Please bring a poem of any form and style no more than 1-2 pages. Bring up to 10 copies of your poem to share with the group, and be prepared to share your thoughts on each others work. If you have trouble printing your work, you can email it to me before 5:00 Monday at chadpoetforhire@yahoo.com

Those unable to attend that are interested in future dates please email me.

5/15/13

June 17th: Jamaica Pond Poets Feature




Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On June 17th, Michael F. Gill hosts a feature by the Jamaica Pond Poets.

Dorothy Derifield's work has received an editor's award from Plainsongs, and has appeared in the Radcliffe Quarterly and Harvard Magazine, among others. She is the director of the long-running literary series Chapter and Verse in Jamaica Plain and is a member of the Jamaica Pond Poets. She is the author of the chapbook, The River and the Lakes. She lives in Roslindale and has taught poetry groups at Sherrill House, a nursing home in Jamaica Plain.

Carolyn Gregory’s poems have been published in American Poetry Review, Off the Coast, Main Street Review, Bellowing Ark, Art Times, and Seattle Review. She is a classical music and theatre writer for Stylus. A book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009.

In 2011, Susanna Kittredge returned to the Jamaica Pond Poets after several years on the west coast where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from San Francisco State University. Her poems have been published in many print and on-line literary journals, including Salamander, 580 Split, Parthenon West Review, 14 Hills, and Shampoo. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies Sidebrow (Sidebrow, 2008) and Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006), as well as the upcoming Shadowed: Unheard Voices, edited by Meg Withers and Joell Hallowell. By day, she is a special education teacher for students with mild-to-moderate disabilities.

Sandra Storey's first full-length collection, Every State Has Its Own Light, will be published by Word Press imprint of WordTech Communications in 2014. Her poems have been published in various literary magazines, including the New York Quarterly, Friction (UK) and New Millennium Writings. Storey was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and lived in Southeast Asia from 1968 to 1972. Formerly editor and publisher of two neighborhood newspapers she is now a newspaper columnist. She wrote poetry from 1980 to 1988 and resumed in 2004. She has been a featured reader at many Boston-area venues.

Gary Whited is a poet, philosopher and psychotherapist. He grew up on the plains of eastern Montana, and a strong sense of place pervades his poems, whether that place is the prairie, the city or the inner spaces we inhabit. His poems have appeared in Salamander, The Aurorean, Bellowing Ark, Red Owl Magazine, and in Diamond Dust, an on-line publication. He received an International Merit Award in 2003 for a poem published in Atlanta Review, and in Spring, 2007, he won an Editor’s Prize in Plainsongs.He is a contributing author to the first anthology of the Jamaica Pond Poets titled This Great Gift, collected poems of grief and healing, and to a collection of essays in honor of his philosophy teacher, Henry Bugbee, titled Wilderness and the Heart, Henry Bugbee’s Philosophy of Place, Presence, and Memory. Gary is currently working on a poetry manuscript titled Having Listened, and on a prose manuscript titled Parmenides, Poetry and Psychotherapy. He has participated in many poetry readings and open mikes in the Boston area.

5/14/13

June 10th: Frank and Erin Reardon at Stone Soup

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On June 10th, we have the return of the Reardons, Erin and Frank.


Frank Reardon was born in 1974 in Boston, Massachusetts and spent his first 28 years living there. Since then, he has lived all over the country, in places such as Alabama, Kansas City and Rhode Island. He currently lives in the Badlands of North Dakota, still looking for a way to get out. Frank has been published in various reviews, journals and online zines. His first book, Interstate Chokehold, was published by NeoPoiesis Press in 2009. His newest collection is Nivrana Haymaker from NeoPoesis Press.

 

Erin Reardon is a sometimes poet who lives in the bowels of Massachusetts. She has been published in various litzines and was a feature at the first ever Zygote in My Fez event in Toledo, OH, thanks to the folks at Zygote in My Coffee and Red Fez. She has been out of the poetry loop a while but is hoping to come back with a vengeance. She likes cowboy hats, beer and Patrick Duffy.



June 3rd: Pre-Stone Soup Poetry Writing Workshop


I will be leading a workshop today on June 3rd, to take place before Stone Soup Poetry from 6:00 PM to just before 8:00 PM at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery.

Please bring a poem of any form and style no more than 1-2 pages. Bring up to 10 copies of your poem to share with the group, and be prepared to share your thoughts on each others work. If you have trouble printing your work, you can email it to me before 5:00 Monday at chadpoetforhire@yahoo.com

Those unable to attend that are interested in future dates please email me.

June 3rd: Alexis Ivy Features

 
 
Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On June 3rd, we welcome debuting author Alexis Ivy.

Alexis Ivy is a student of Literature at Harvard University's Extension School and works at the family wallpaper business in the bookmaking department located on the South Shore. She's a bad pool player, a good coffee drinker and hasn't won a single dollar on a scratch ticket in over a month. Her recent work has appeared in Spare Change News, The Dos Passos Review, Tar River Poetry, Licking River Review, J Journal, among others. Her first book entitled Romance with Small-Time Crooks has just been published by BlazeVox Books and is literally hot off the press. 

May 27th: Pre-Stone Soup Poetry Writing Workshop



I will be leading a workshop today on May 27th, to take place before Stone Soup Poetry from 6:00 PM to just before 8:00 PM at the Au Bon Pain in Central Square, 684 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge.

Please bring a poem of any form and style no more than 1-2 pages. Bring up to 10 copies of your poem to share with the group, and be prepared to share your thoughts on each others work. If you have trouble printing your work, you can email it to me before 5:00 Monday at chadpoetforhire@yahoo.com

Those unable to attend that are interested in future dates please email me.

May 27: Cheryl Perreault, Carol Weston and Sanghi Feature



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On May 27th, Carol Weston helps to close out Stone Soup's 42nd anniversary month with her handpicked co-features, Cheryl Perreault and Sanghi


Cheryl Perreault is a spoken word artist of poetry and story, often performing to the guitar music of visionary singer-songwriter/composer Steve Rapson. They have two cd recordings of guitar and spoken word, the most recent titled Roar.
 

With a background in psychology, Cheryl honors the art of sharing our life-stories with one another... in life review work with hospice patients, in providing programming for local storytelling and in her work as host and coproducer of the Meet Your Neighbor show at HCAM-TV. She is also founder/host and co-producer of a monthly Saturday morning program known as "Wake up and Smell the Poetry" at HCAM-TV Studios in Hopkinton which offers monthly programs of “awakening” to the art of poetry, story and song for community.


Carol Weston has featured many times with Stone Soup. She read alongside Jack Powers and Allen Ginsberg in 1973 in the former Charles Street Universalist Church. In the Winter of 1983, she was asked by Powers to feature in Boston's City Hall along with John Wieners. Her poetry has been published in The Farleigh Literary Review, Bomb, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, Spoonful and The Blind See Only This World.


Sanghi is an artist at heart, student of life, MIndFu - evaluating life through making sense of life experience and connecting the dots in life between art science and religion.
Sanghi is a walker wanderer poet painter gardener of words and flowers and she was so poor, grew up without tasting soda or coffee but now she sips coffee and catches thought. She is interested in all arts that influence and shape life.
She believes all humans are life artists whether we are aware or not. She says artists and poets, we are the scientists in nature. We discover and distill our living wisdom by living it, feeling it and practicing it.

Born and raised in South Korea, she came to America as an young adult without English or money but with a big dream and loving freedom. 12 years ago, she got lost in fear and tumbled down to the shadow of fear and almost lost her abilities to even walk, taking the prescription drug she did not believe but to make doctors and others happy. Under the influence of prescription drug she lived almost two years as a human guinea pig life and she dropped the prescription drug as Cold Turkey way against her doctor’s advice ten years ago. Since then she started to walk to reclaim and regain health and still on foot. When tender age, she walked across Seoul Korea, heard unspoken heart shattering words from thin air. Now she walks to wash off the dented outdated heart shattering words and to clean mind and heart. Through walking she finds her voice, the life and freedom loving voice. She walked in two marathons ten years and she still walks to Boston from her home in West Natick on Marathon day to celebrate life.  She is a naturalized U.S. citizen and currently lives in West Natick, MA.




 

5/13/13

Tonight

Michael F. Gill hosts The Light Brigade.

May 20th: Elizabeth Gordon McKim Features at Stone Soup


Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On May 20th, we welcome the return of Elizabeth Gordon McKim.

Elizabeth Gordon McKim is an artist who celebrates in her poetry and in her daily life the oral tradition of sound,movement,story and chant; she practices her poetry locally in Lynn Massachusetts where she lives and is known as the Jazz Poet of Lynn, in parts of the United States and abroad, in such places as Canada, Sweden , Italy, France, Israel, Germany, Switzerland, India, and Bali Indonesia. In her innovative and sustaining teaching over decades, McKim has worked with teachers and students throughout Massachusetts and across the United States, guiding her students to exercise their imaginations in the spirit of serious play and through the many dimensions of language.

McKim has published five books of original poetry, and is included in many anthologies and reviews and journals. Her latest collection is Red Thread from Leapfrog Press.  She is the Poetry Editor of POIESIS (Toronto) and is included in a forthcoming book by Ring of Bone Press called The Wild Women of Lynn.

She is honored to be doing this Reading for Stone Soup and Out of the Blue Gallery, hosted by Chad Parenteau and she remembers with delight the decades of participating in Stone Soup Poetry when Jack Powers was with us. McKim is considered to be a master teacher, poet, and performer; and she demonstrates in all aspects of her life how poetry can be interwoven with community, culture and the arts; and how the spoken poem is an essential bridge toward reading, writing, and articulating one's life and time.


5/6/13

May 6th: Pre-Stone Soup Poetry Writing Workshop



I will be leading a workshop today on May 6th, to take place before Stone Soup Poetry from 6:00 PM to just before 8:00 PM at the Au Bon Pain in Central Square, 684 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge.

Please bring a poem of any form and style no more than 1-2 pages. Bring up to 10 copies of your poem to share with the group, and be prepared to share your thoughts on each others work. If you have trouble printing your work, you can email it to me before 5:00 Monday at chadpoetforhire@yahoo.com

Those unable to attend that are interested in future dates please email me.

5/3/13

Today, May 3rd: Stone Soup Poetry: A Retrospective, 3:45 PM

Stone Soup Poetry: A Retrospective

 
3:45 - 4:45pm on Friday, May 3 in Hawthorne Hotel, Pickman Room

Join us for a retrospective on Stone Soup Poetry, a venue started in the Boston area over 40 years ago by the late Jack Powers which featured local and nationally known poets such as John Wieners, Allen Ginsburg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Highlights include speakers from Stone Soup's past and,early scenes from Stone Soup's existence.
 
 Directions:
 
Take Exit 45, left toward 128 North toward Gloucester.
Take Exit 26, Lowell Street East/Peabody Square, Salem.
Follow Lowell Street one mile to the center of Peabody.
Peabody Square is denoted by a tall monument in the Square; go straight through the Square for one additional mile staying in the left lane through several traffic lights while passing from Salem into Peabody.
At the end of a mile you will take a left at the lights onto Route 107 North/ Bridge Street.
Follow Bridge Street 3/4 of a mile to the traffic lights on the overpass and stay in the right lane.
Stay straight through the lights, staying on Bridge Street and take the first right onto St. Peter Street.
At the end of St. Peter Street, take a left on Brown Street.
At the end of Brown Street, you will be facing the Salem Common.
Take a right and the hotel is on your left.
Pass the hotel and make a left at the lights and the parking lot will be directly behind the hotel.

5/1/13

May 13th: Stone Soup Presents The Light Brigade

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.  On May 13th, co-host Michael F. Gill presents the return of the performance grou pthe Light Brigade, featuring Barb Crane, A.M. Juster, Joan Kimball, and Amy Woods.

Barbara Lydecker Crane, who founded the Light Brigade in 2007, enjoys writing both serious and comic work. Her poems have been included in Light Quarterly, Measure, and 14 by 14, and many others. In 2011 she won the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Award. In 2012 White Violet Press published her first book, Zero Gravitas, and this year Daffydowndilly Books will publish her children’s collection, Alphabetricks.

Mike Juster, poetically known as A.M. Juster, is the author of four books of translation and poetry; his translation of Tibullus’ Elegies was published last year by Oxford University Press. He is a winner of the Richard Wilbur Award and the only three-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award sponsored by The Formalist. He has published in The Paris Review, The New Criterion, Southwest Review and many other journals, and he has been a featured poet in Light and The Barefoot Muse.

Joan Alice Wood Kimball joined a poetry workshop group in Wayland in 2002 and started sending pieces out. Since then she's published over forty poems in journals and has put them in a blog on the internet. Six of her poems have been finalists in contests. She has one book, This River Hill, published in 2009, and two manuscripts in the works. She belongs to three poetry study groups, and continues to try new techniques.

In retirement Amy Woods devotes her considerable energy to writing poetry. Her subject matter is human foibles, which include her own. In 2011 she published her “epic” poem, “The Discovery of Mummy,” a fictitious account of the upheaval caused in “The American Museum of Natural History” by the mysterious appearance of an Egyptian mummy partially unwrapped, then haphazardly stuffed into a Zabar’s bag which the Assistant Director trips over upon entering the Museum’s incinerator closet. It was performed as a play in Cambridge.

4/28/13

May 6th: Lee Litif and Mark Hänser Feature at Stone Soup



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.  On May 6th, rescheduled in the wake of April 15th, we welcome back Stone Soup's most controversial feature ever Lee Litif with his new opening feature, Mark Hänser.

The most infamous open miker at the venue. Lee Litif has been a regular contribution to the Stone Soup open mike since 1991. He's the author of several chapbooks, including Unpatriotic Flags and Abominating White Houses, Reckless Paella and Defecating Republicans, and Ultrasonic Amplifiers and Marshall Amps/Genital Wart Puking Rednecks. He's been described as "The love child of Gallagher and Larry Fischer with G.G. Allin as midwife" by Chad Parenteau and "the orgasm that never quite made it," by Walter Howard.

Mark Hänser may have come from Neptune. Or more likely, he was a changeling left by celluloid fairies in a basket filled with orange blooms beneath a starry Southern California sky. Then later to be reared beneath barren maple trees underneath a Berkshire sky of Maxfield Parrish blue. The bastard love child of judy Garland and Dr. Seuss, Mark Hänser – as a painter and poet and a performer — draws his inspiration from pop culture, the tragically romantic, the romantically tragic, and the absurd. In his performing guise as the Whore of Babylon, Mark was a well-known presence in the Boston poetry scene. But the Babylonian had to be slain as the millenium came, and Mark fled to Neptune. But now he's back, with tales from the ether!



4/24/13

April 29th: Scott Jacobs Features at Stone Soup


Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.  On April 29th, we close out Stone Soup's celebration of National Poetry Month with a feature by Scott Jacobs, one of the organizers of the popular Zig Zag open mic in Salem.

Scott Jacobs lives in Salem MA. He has been published in Word Riot & ZigZagFolios. He is a bricklayer.


4/21/13

April 22nd: The Pentimenti Women's Writing Group Features at Stone Soup


Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.  On April 22d, we welcome an extended storytelling session with the Pentimenti women's Writing Group.


Four years ago a group of women in Dorchester began meeting on Saturday mornings at 450 Washington to write their stories. Some were working on poetry, others memoirs, novels, essays, or short fiction, but they all committed to finding their voices and telling their stories – and to helping one another to do that as well. That’s why they called our first collection of writing, “Can You Hear Our Voices?”

Over the years, the members of the group have changed, some women have moved on and new people have joined us, but the core commitment to honesty and self-expression – and to a caring, nurturing community – has remained steadfast.

Several years ago we took the name “Pentimenti,” which refers to “an underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, part of a painting, or original draft, that shows through, usually when the top layer of paint has become transparent with age.” The name reflects the process we are exploring, uncovering our histories, our stories, and our selves.


JENNIE P. BARNETT: Jennie lives in Dorchester and works full time as an Administrative Assistant. An avid gardener, she is without a garden right now but is making up for it by focusing on growing her writing and learning to "hear" her voice.

CAROL D. CARTER: Carol was born in Boston and lives in Dorchester. She received her BFA from Mass College of Art with a degree in Painting and Art Education. She also studied music at the University of Mass, Boston, and worked as a professional singer and musician. She has won awards in painting and wrote an art program, “Splashes of Color,” for children and adults. She is now writing her memoirs and a novel about a sailor/fishermen. She started writing when she was a young child but always hid her writings because she was afraid of being called a “storyteller.” In her young mind, that meant she was a terrible liar.

CAROL DOWD-DICKERSON: Carol has been a word-weaver and storyteller since she was very young. An educator with Boston Public Schools she has introduced new people, places, and things to her students by teaching them to read, as well as, how to perform the written word. Her current group of fourth and fifth graders, “The Joseph Lee Poet Posse,” have performed their own poetry. Carol’s poetry is as varied as her taste in great writers that range from Dorothy West, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, and William Butler Yeats. Her poems are being published in the WriteOnTheDot Vol II collection. She is currently writing a novel and has the beginnings of a play taking form.

HEIDI LEWIS IVEY: Heidi is a revivalist, teacher and writer. Her writing has been influenced by Nikki Giovanni, Zora Neal-Hurston and Gwendolyn Brooks. Heidi's autobiography in poetic expression is scheduled to be released later this year. She hosts the In My Fathers House radio broadcast on Boston Praise Radio and lives in Dorchester.

4/15/13

4/15/13 Stone Soup Cancelled!

Friends:

In the wake of the Boston Marathon tragedy, I am cancelling tonight's Stone Soup feature with Lee Litif and Mark Hanser.  This is the best move to guarantee everyone's safety in this stressful time.


4/11/13

April 15th: Lee Litif and Mark Hänser Feature at Stone Soup



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.  On April 15th, we welcome back Stone Soup's most controversial feature ever Lee Litif with his new opening feature, Mark Hänser.

The most infamous open miker at the venue. Lee Litif has been a regular contribution to the Stone Soup open mike since 1991. He's the author of several chapbooks, including Unpatriotic Flags and Abominating White Houses, Reckless Paella and Defecating Republicans, and Ultrasonic Amplifiers and Marshall Amps/Genital Wart Puking Rednecks. He's been described as "The love child of Gallagher and Larry Fischer with G.G. Allin as midwife" by Chad Parenteau and "the orgasm that never quite made it," by Walter Howard.

Mark Hänser may have come from Neptune. Or more likely, he was a changeling left by celluloid fairies in a basket filled with orange blooms beneath a starry Southern California sky. Then later to be reared beneath barren maple trees underneath a Berkshire sky of Maxfield Parrish blue. The bastard love child of judy Garland and Dr. Seuss, Mark Hänser – as a painter and poet and a performer — draws his inspiration from pop culture, the tragically romantic, the romantically tragic, and the absurd. In his performing guise as the Whore of Babylon, Mark was a well-known presence in the Boston poetry scene. But the Babylonian had to be slain as the millenium came, and Mark fled to Neptune. But now he's back, with tales from the ether!



4/4/13

13th annual Boston National Poetry Month Festival-April 5-7 at BPL


The 13th annual Boston National Poetry Month Festival welcomes you to a three day regional event Friday, April 5 through Sunday, April 7, 2013. This on-growing tradition is a partnership with Tapestry of Voices, the Boston Public Library, and the Kaji Aso Studio.

This major literary program includes over 60 poets,five highly talented high school students- Boston Latin and Boston Arts Academy, and one Harvard student- two open mics and a workshop  facilitated by noted poet Tom Daley.

Festival Hours: Friday, Noon-4:00 P.M.; Sat. 10:00-4:40P.M., Sunday: 1:00P.M.-4:40 P.M. The go to address  for full description and schedule is bostonnationalpoetry.wix.com/poetry. Hope to see YOU there !!

Friday's program will be Noon-4:00P.M. in the Commonwealth Salon Room at the BPL

Ten keynote poets will start this year's poetry festival: David Ferry, winner of the 100,000 Ruth Lilly Prize (2011) and more recently, The National Book Award for poetry, Afaa M. Weaver, one of the foremost African-American Poets writing today- 12 collections and two plays published and produced; Dan Tobin, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA Award with six collections published, X.J. Kennedy, eight collections and twenty childrens' books; George Kalogerisn noted poet and nationally  recognized translator, Rhina P. Espaillat national prize-winning poet with thirteen collections and translations and two short story collections, Richard Hoffman, four collections, plus a memoir  and a collection of short stories; Kathleen Spivack, thirteen collections,plus one short story collection and her current memoir,"With Robert Lowell and his Circle";Judith Steinbergh, Brookline Poet Laureate, three collections,  and Christine Casson whos newest collection was published last year.

Saturday and Sunday's program moves to the Library's Rabb Auditorium There will be five highly talented Boston High School Students plus one Harvard Student; Sam Cornish, Boston's Poet Laureate will begin the popular "Poetry Marathon" followed by 55  major and emerging poets, two Open Mikes, and one workshop.

April 8th: Stone Soup Presents The Head-to-Head Haiku

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.  Please consider this a call for participation as Stone Soup plans its second annual Head-to-Head Haiku in celebration of National Poetry Month on April 8th.

Stone Soup is looking for a minimum of 8 poets to participate in his friendly competition. Interested persons should email Stone Soup at stonesouppoetry@yahoo.com or post on this Facebook event page.

Hosted by Michael F. Gill and Chad Parenteau, with possible surprise guest hosts. $3-$5 donation to help pay our rent/support the Out of the Blue Art Gallery.

Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry form consisting of 17 syllables, commonly with syllable line counts 5-7-5 and normally includes a reference to nature. These pithy poems can be witty, whimsical, and wise. Head to Head Haiku is a performance poetry competition featuring standard and "modern American" haiku. The form was originated by Daniel Ferri (heard often as a commentator on NPR) at the National Poetry Slam in the 1990s as a demonstration event. The tradition has been continued by devotees of the Haiku form. Winning Poets must get the best 3 of 5, 5 of 9 and 9 of 17 in the series of rounds.

Sudden death matches are commonly used as tie breakers or if more than 8 want to compete. The whole show can be quite humorous at times and there is no strict rule other than the poems must be 17 syllables. Purists should rest assured that traditional Haiku often outscore the sarcastic slapstick, but like any slam it depends on the judges and it's more about entertainment and providing a unique environment for the work be heard.