March 19th: Patrick Shaughnessy 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 March 12th, we have Patrick Shaughnessy returning to feature.

Patrick Shaughnessy was born. He attended where he majored. He began reading. He became. He regularly reads. He has been awarded. Patrick's writing is influenced.

Reminder

Everyone welcome Janet Marks tonight.

March 12th: Bill Perrault and Friends 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 March 12th, Stone Soup welcomes back friend Bill Perrault, who will be celebrating his birthday featuring alongside friends Joanna Nealon and Carol Weston.



Photo by Chad Parenteau

Bill Perrault was born and lived in Biddeford ME until he finished college for which he had paid by working as a weaver in the textilemills. From 1958 to 1960, the U S Army sent him to Germany as a medic andEducational Counselor. He took the opportunity to tour Europe at that time. When his tour of duty was over, he came home and six weeks later,he married his wife, Lorraine. In 1964, the first of their four children was born an...d, to date, they are now the proud grandparents of seven. After he and Lorraine married, he began his career teaching high school French and Latin in Maine and upper New York State. He did graduate studies at University of Maine and wrote his masters thesis on Guillaume Apollinaire. In 1973, he moved to Massachusetts to work for Polaroid. Bill now lives in Lowell. Throughout his life, he has enjoyed poetry andphotography. Bill was always the one with a notebook with him to write and a camera to take a picture. He never knew when he might be inspired or find a picture that just needed to be taken. In his retirement, the free time allows him to take these passions to a new level. If it’s joining the Poets in Boston for the Stone Soup Poets or producing local TV programs in Cambridge and Lowell, he is enjoying his creative life. Bill Has been published in the Stone Soup Anthology 2003, Out of the Blue Writers Unite Anthology, and various web pages, and if you are lucky enoughto be on his e-mail list, the poetry is Hot Off The Presses! Bill has featured, performed and sometimes hosted at open mikes all over NewEngland--including: COOL COFFEE in Biddeford, ME, Bestseller’s Cafe inMedford, MA his Walden Pond Series and, of course, Out Of the BlueGallery. Bill is a staple figure at the Gallery in Cambridge, MA and has faithfully supported the events they hold there every day/night of the week-- Stone Soup Poets, WordBeat, Open Bark and all.



Photo by Bill Perrault

Joanna Nealon is a Fullbright Scholar who has published five books. In addition to Stone Soup, she has read for various venues such as Tapestry of Voices, Ibbetson Street Press, Walden Pond Poetry and the Newton and Brockton Library series. She has been published in The Aurorean, Ibbetson Street Review, the Stone Soup anthologies, Cosmic Trend, Bitteroot, Northeast Corridor, and Poesis.



Photo by Bill Perrault

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.

March 5th: Al Gundy Features




Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On March 5th, Stone Soup welcomes back the popular open miker Al Gundy. Hosted by Michael F. Gill. There will be an open mic featuring live jazz piano by Michael Monroe. $3 suggested donation to help cover our rent at the Out of the Blue Art gallery.

Al Gundy was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he co-wrote his first novel in second grade. Since then, he has written adventure novels and created award-winning computer games. At the age of nine, he fell in love with rhyming poetry. Today, Al performs his narrative verse regularly at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, as well as other venues around Boston. Al is the author of a long-running web comic, “Elo & Anson,” which can be seen at www.eloandanson.com. He is excited to be sharing his work at Stone Soup.

February 27th: Zeke Russell Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On February 27th, we are treated to the return of past feature and new resident of the Boston area from Lowell, Zeke Russell.

Zeke Russell grew up in an artist’s community in Central Maine surrounded by poets playwrights and lumberjacks. He has been writing poetry since the age of 8. He is the co-host and slam master of the Untitled at Brew’d open mic and slam in Lowell MA, on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. He is the reigning grand slam champion of that venue and a member of its 2011 national poetry slam competition team. He lives in Jamaica Plain with PJ the wonder pug, drinks too much coffee and usually needs a haircut.

February 20th: Janet Marks Features



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

Janet Marks was born in in a small town called Brady in Central West Texas. Her parents were immigrants from Lithuania and Poland. Growing up in Houston during The Depression, she was unable to attend college. After High School, she worked as a secretary and bookkeeper, married, raised three wonderful children, and found time to attend the University of Houston part-time as they were growing up. She had started writing bad poetry in Junior High School, which was published in the school paper. One summer she attended a Writer’s Conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder, which whetted her appetite for poetry. She started writing poetry seriously and published poems in her college journals and in many little magazines. In 1972, at 52 years of age, she finally earned a BA with honors in English.

As an undergraduate among so many young people, she had the feeling of living a second childhood! After a divorce when her children were mostly grown, she moved to California, earning an MA in Creative Writing and English from San Francisco State University. As a teacher of English, she worked at Paine College, Augusta, Georgia; the University of Houston; and the University of San Francisco, also teaching ESL for the Marin Community College and the San Francisco Community College District.

As runner-up for the Frances Shaw Fellowship For Older Women Writers, she was in residence at Ragdale, an arts colony, for a month, won several awards for poems on the Jewish experience from the Rosenberg Awards, sponsored by the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkeley. Some of her poems have been published in New England Review, Mississippi Review, Forum, Latitudes, South and West, Mediphors, Passager, and in the following anthologies: Bittersweet Legacy, Creative Responses to the Holocaust, Travois, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, and Poets on Parnassus, San Francisco.

Visit the Stone Soup website for information on future features and more http://stonesouppoetry.blogspot.com/

February 13th: David Miller Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On February 13th, we continue featuring new talent with the debut feature of David Miller.

David P. Miller began writing poetry at 52, in 2007. This leaves aside the political doggerel he composed in high school. His work has been seen in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and his booklet, Caution: Many People Walking is available from the Origami Poems Project. He was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group of Boston for 25 years. He is a librarian at Curry College, in Milton, Mass., and is active in the Curry faculty creative writing group.

Tonight

Michael F. Gill presents Laura Brown-Lavoie & Antonia Lassar at Stone Soup.