May 2: Happy 45th Anniversary Stone Soup Poetry with Martha Boss and Carol Weston, Dan Shanahan EARLIER START TIME

Stone Soup Poetry meets every Monday from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery, now at its new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. On May 2, at a special 6:30 start time, Stone Soup celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary with local staples Martha Boss and Carol Weston. Join us for this momentous occasion as we gear up to celebrate all month long with a gathering of old and new Stone Soup friends.

Bio: Martha Boss

martha boss says
that the only thing
better than writing
a poem is writing
the next one.

sometimes someone
will be glad i did
& publish one or two.

like ODDBALL MAG
or BAGEL BARDS
or SPARE CHANGE
or FRESH BROTH
i had a very informal
ecucation.
all poets, bards,
&slammers influence me.

&i'm still going to
the university of words.

'i credit myself
for brevity,
nativity,
& hopefully,
longevity.'

Carol Weston's history as a poet is linked to such figures as Jack Powers, John Wieners, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsburg, and Carl Solomon (to whom Allen Ginsburg's "Howl" was dedicated). Her credentials include being poetry editor of the Impressions Workshop. She was published in the Farleigh Dickinson Journal, alongside Donald Justice, Phillip Levine, and Anne Sexton. She is also the author of “What the Poet Expects of Himself,” an essay published in the Tufts Review. Married to John Galloway, science teacher at Endicott College, she taught for ten years at the Chestnut Hill School.

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. On May 1, 2011, Carol performed her poem "Peace Fire" alongside musician Jon Voight for Stone Soup Poetry's 40th anniversary celebration and tribute to Jack Powers, Stone Soup's late founder. In 2013, she was one of the panelists for "Stone Soup Poetry: A Retrospective," presented at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem, Massachusetts.

Her poetry credits include The Farleigh Literary Review, Bomb, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, Spoonful, Stone Soup Presents: Fresh Broth and the anthology dedicated to John Wieners, The Blind See Only This World. Her chapbook, Spirals, Whorls Sutures, Septa, was published by Stone Soup Poetry in 1978.

Dan Shanahan was reading and selling his poems to passers-bye on Beacon Hill in 1969 when he met Jack Powers. Jack was holding readings at the Old West Church then and soon after Jack initiated the weekly Stone Soup readings in his gallery on Cambridge Street. Dan left Boston for Alaska in 1972 where he lived for six years.

Stone Soup published The Alaska Poems, his first book of poems, in 1995, with assistance of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant. In 1997 his second collection, Crystal Lake, was published. Crystal Lake reflects on the immanent present and historical past of a mill pond owned by Giles and Martha Corey, two victims of the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century.

In 2003, Dan produced an audio book on CD entitled The Lotus Seed Poems, a suite of poems recollecting his experience of living with a meditation master whom he lived with in India. He is currently working on two new collections. The Shipyard Cantos recounts his work as a welder in the Quincy Shipyards in the late 1960s. The Ground We Stand On contemplates his early life in Holyoke, MA once known as the “paper city of world.” His work is a contemplation on where the spiritual and material converge on the landscape of character, and the character of landscape.

He is grateful for the tireless generosity of Jack Powers, whose lifetime has been dedicated to nurturing the poets and artists of Boston and beyond. 

April 25: Ron Goba Features at Stone Soup Poetry

Stone Soup Poetry meets every Monday from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery, now at its new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. On May April 25, we are happy to have a special reading with Ron Goba to close out National Poetry Month.

Ron Goba is the author of such collections as The Music Box, The Custom of Quoting Someone, and Collage As Silkscreen. For several years, he was known as the doorman for the weekly Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab. In 2011, he released Swan Song, a small collection of poems, to coincide with his reading at the Cantab on the eve of his birthday. In 2012, his work was included in Songs of Innocence and Sam Adams, a collection of poems co-authored by Prabakar T. Rajan. Since the passing of his beloved wife Susan, Ron has featured at Arts at The Armory, Stone Soup Poetry The Cantab Lounge and elsewhere performing poems specifically crafted for each feature commemorating her life and influence. The poems for April 25 will be made available to the audience.

April 18: Gale Batchelder and Judson Evans Feature at Stone Soup

Stone Soup Poetry meets every Monday from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery, now at its new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. On April 18, we feature a work of collaboration between two local poets, Gale Batchelder and Judson Evans.

Gale Batchelder lives in Cambridge. Her work has appeared in the poetry anthologies New Smoke and Triumph of Poverty, and in White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. She has been a featured reader at Stone Soup, The Poetry Salon of Boston, and at Brookline Poetry series. Gale is a co-founder of the poetry press, Off The Park, New York City.

Judson Evans is an enthusiast for bonsai and horror films, Guerilla Opera and the Japanese art of Chindogu,(or absurd inventions). He teaches a courses on utopian societies, keeps reef aquariums, and has been involved in a wide range of collaborative experiments with composers, choreographers, dancers, and most recently, video artists, as well as other poets at The Boston Conservatory where he teaches Poetry Workshops, a class on cave painting and origins of religion and philosophy, and acts as Director of Liberal Arts. He has published poetry most recently in Laurel Review, Cutbank, and Volt.

Gale and Judson will be reading from their manuscript Chalk Song (Susan Berger-Jones is the additional author). Chalk Song, an experiment in collaboration inspired by Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, traces multiple approaches of coming to terms with the provocative otherness of stunning cave art dating back 32,000 years.

April 11: Valerie Loveland Features at Stone Soup

Stone Soup Poetry meets every Monday from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery, now at its new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. On April 11, we welcome the return of Valerie Loveland, who has released two collections of poetry this year.

Valerie Loveland is the author of Female Animal, Mandible Maxilla and Reanimated Somehow. Her poems have been featured in Dzanc Book's Best of the Web and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She enjoys running, audio poetry, and silent movies. She is a Computer Science student and lives in Allston, Massachusetts.