Urban Fairy by D.L. Polonsky

Last year, D.L. Polonsky, a Stone Soup regular and author of "The Letter Bandits," created this short film. Its credits include many Stone Soup alum. There's even a quick cameo by poet and past feature Coleen Houlihan.

Stone Soup Features for July

Below is a list of features for July. More information will be added next week.

July 3rd: Celebrated local poet Richard Cambridge celebrates the Fourth of July in a less common fashion.

July 10th: Welcome poet and teacher David R. Surette.

July 17h: Ryan “Rat” Travis returns to Stone Soup.

July 24th: Sue Savoy has her first Stone Soup feature.

July 31st: Friends of Poetry member Prabakar T. Rajan also features at Stone Soup Poetry for the first time.

July 24th: Sue Savoy Features

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery (located on 106 Prospect Street in Cambridge) with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On July 24th, Stone Soup invites Sue Savoy to feature.

Sue Savoy always hated poetry and is not sure what she writes actually is poetry. She can't bring herself to refer to herself as a poet, but she's been a regular at the Cantab venue for years and has read and featured at numerous venues including the Cantab and Tapestry of Voices. She most recently featured as a competitor in the Head to Head Haiku Slam at Poetribe hosted by Samantha Jane Scolamiero.

July 17th: Ryan "Rat" Travis Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery (located on 106 Prospect Street in Cambridge) with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On the 17th, Ryan "Rat" Travis returns to Stone Soup with a "Haloween in July" show, where he will release the sequel to his Haiku of Horror chapbook.



Ryan Travis has been performing for about 9 years as a poet, actor, singer, performance artist and clown. He’s toured with 2 infamous poetry groups, The Collective and The Barnum and Buddah Circus, all over New England as well as, NYC, NJ, PA and KY. Known for his upfront and revealing style, his work ranges from children’s poetry to the outright offensive, so much so that he was once asked to leave the stage by a long distance phone call by the venue owner.

Nominated for an Irene Ryan Award for Acting Excellence and a Cambridge Poetry Award for best love poem, he’s also been published in many online and print magazines, most recently in England.

Not a love poem

This is not a love poem
by any stretch of the imagination

Even though I feel like my chest is going to explode
and an incredible sense of joy radiates from within me

This is not a love poem

Even though I think that you're the most beautiful
and phenomenal woman I've ever met
and I can't get you out of my head

This is not a love poem

and when I think about the way you look at me sometimes
and how I feel when I stare into your captivating eyes,
I feel higher than I've ever been
and my muse forces me to put pen to paper to express these feelings
compelling me to write

So just don't think of this as a love poem
cause if it was, I might just scare you away
cause love is a terrifying word
and I haven't even begun to truly know you yet
but I feel so very lucky to know who you are right now.

So lets just say this is a poem
to let you know how incredible you are
and leave it at that

cause this is not a love poem
even though it sure seems like it.

July 10th: David R. Surette Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery (located on 106 Prospect Street in Cambridge) with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On July 10th, Stone Soup welcomes Poetribe co-host David R. Surette, whose body of work covers a great range of topics, from family to personal heritage to the beauty of the American landscape and its various inhabitants.

David R. Surette's first book of poetry is Young Gentlemen's School (Koenisha, 2004). He co-hosts Poetribe, a poetry series in southeastern Massachusetts.

Click here for a sample poem by Surette.

The author's website.

Poetribe.

Reminder

Edward Carvallho reads tonight.

July 3rd: Richard Cambridge Reads 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 July 3rd, Stone Soup welcomes back poet Richard Cambridge for a special performance that recognizes the Fourth of July holiday in a less common fashion, as is indicative in the sample poem below.

Richard Cambridge's poetry and theater productions address controversial themes on the American political landscape. His poetry has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Heartland Journal, Asheville Poetry Review and others. His awards include The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize and he was a finalist for a residency at the Fine Arts Work Shop in Provincetown, MA. He is a long-time resident of Cambridge, MA where he curates the Poets’ Theater at Club Passim, and helps run Squawk! a weekly open mic coffeehouse in Harvard Square. He was a member of the Boston Slam team that won the championship in 1992, and in 1997 won the individual Master’s Slam at the National Poetry Slam. In 2003 he received the Cambridge Peace and Justice Award for the contributions of his art and activism.


After the London bombings, an NPR commentator asked the question:
Is this what the future holds? Will we have to endure this like bad weather?

Bad Weather

Our language comes from Arabic

There’s a bin-Laden
For every letter of the alphabet

The forecast today
Is Bad Weather

A cluster bomb
in Copley Square

A suicide bomber
At Downtown Crossing

What doesn’t rain from above
Can’t be protected from with an umbrella

It’s going to be a Nuclear Day
Mushrooms exploding in the corners of Everywhere

Lunch appointments completely ruined
A whole life’s work blown to bits

My parents no longer exist
In Rochester

There’s a fingernail left
Of a friend from Montana

What we need is
HOMELAND SECURITY

A T-Shirt says
Fighting Terrorism since 1492

Depicting four Native American warriors
Rifles cocked

What goes around
Becomes a tornado

Two-fifty for a coffee and donut
Two-fifty for a gallon of gas

The president grins
With a moustache of oil

Got Democracy
Wasn’t it Sadaam who took down the towers

The forecast today is Bad Weather
It’s always easier to believe a lie

--Richard Cambridge


Click here for the Squawk! website.

Click here for Club Passim's website.

June 26th: Edward J. Carvallho 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. Unable to make his scheduled feature in May due to personal obligations, Edward J. Carvalho has been rescheduled to close off June.

Edward J. Carvalho is a twice-nominated Pushcart Prize writer (2004-2005) who has been writing poetry for over 20 years. He is the author of several self-published chapbooks and unpublished full-length collections of poetry, including the latest manuscript, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, scheduled to be published later this year. His poetry - lauded by Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel and poet, Martin Espada - has appeared in various national journals around the country. Mr. Carvalho holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College with future academic plans that include the pursuit of a doctorate in literature and criticism focusing on Walt Whitman.

Click here for Edward J. Carvalho's webite.

Click here for a preview of Carvalho's recent contribution for The Heat City Review.

June 19th: David "Doc" Cote 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. Featuring tonight will be venue host and longtime friend of Jack Powers and Stone Soup, David "Doc" Cote.

Cote has been hosting multiple venues in various locations, from book stores, to his current reading located at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Downtown Nashua, which meets ever second Friday every month and includes a feature and an open mike. He also taught English for 33 years in both college in high school. For the last fifty years, he has worked on one book, A Primer for Souls, which will be released by the end of this year.

(photo not obtainable)

Click here for information on the Unitarian Universalist Church in Nashua, New Hampshire.

June 12th: Andy Levesque 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.

Since entering the open mic poetry scene in Cambridge in 1995, Andy Levesque has developed a reputation as a unique and insightful nature poet. He has featured at many poetry venues throughout the area. An update of his 1995 chapbook of poems, "Walden Vision Quest" is in the works, and a new cd of poems, "Wings of Wonder" has just been released.

For six years Andy was host of a live poetry series at Walden Pond in Concord, MA, which he founded in 1997, A graphic designer by trade, he created an online portal for poetry and the visual arts in 2000, now titled MothwingArts.com, where samples of his poetry, photography and digital art can be found, as well as the work of dozens of guest artists and poets. He has designed and published, under the Mothwing Press imprint, a number of books of poetry by outstanding local poets. He is also a composer and musician, performing classic and original material and working on a new music cd.

three robins

running through grass
each bright eye
reaching for sign
of worm or seed
bugsluggish
in the chilly dew

race forward
stop
utterly erect
exquisitely alert
senses extending
to grasp
the quiver of threat
cold menace
of hungry
intenta shifting
in the shadows

focused vigilance
fills the lungs
in each feathered breast
the heartthe wings
ever beating
with fierce courage
ready flight
instantaneous instinct
to escape

--Andy Levesque


Click here for the Mothwing Arts website.

June 5th: Stone Soup Welcomes Cervena Barva Press

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. For June 5th, Stone Stoup Poetry welcomes the writers that help make up Cervena Barve Press, which recently celebrated it's first year anniversary as a publisher of fiction, plays, and, of course, poetry.



Gloria Mindock is editor of Červená Barva Press, which publishes poetry, fiction, plays, and poetry postcards from writers all over the world. From 1984-1994, she was editor of the Boston Literary Review/BluR and ran a poetry reading series called BLuR READS. Gloria is author of two chapbooks, Oh Angel, (U Šoku Štampa 2006) and Doppelganger (S. Press 1992). Doppelganger was used as a text for a theatre piece of the same name and was reviewed in Stages. Her poetry collection, Nothing Divine Here, is forthcoming by U Šoku Štampa this year. Gloria has been published in numerous literary journals including Phoebe, Poet Lore, River Styx, Fire, Bogg, Blackbox, and UNU Revista de Cultura in Romania with translations by Flavia Cosma. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was awarded a Massachusetts Council Poetry Fellowship distributed by the Somerville Arts Council. Gloria moderates two writing groups and is part owner of one, both are based out of the UK on the internet. She has written text, music, acted, and was Co-Founder of Theatre S. (1984-1994) She has written solo performance pieces and performed them in the Boston area.


Life Mourns
El Salvador, 1983

Parents, you carry your children’s coffins well.
Along the road, see the little gifts
left for you… blood stains, teeth, shoes, and
body parts.
The clouds gather up all the tears you cry
so everyone feels them when it rains.
The military buttons up its coats.

Children, you gather the bones of your parents quickly.
Identified by a piece of cloth, a shirt, a guess.
Sometimes you find bones at the front door, but
never where you hid. You were lucky.
But even you are the already dead dying slowly from brutality.

Husband, body parts hang in the
trees. The Earth is sad today. Trees
as sacred as the lives of those whose hands,
heads, fingers, organs, eyes touch the branches with their longing…
I know Husband that you are
on the first branch.

In this procession of sadness, I stand and console life.
Life embarrassed, cries out to the Death Squad.
They do not hear.
Their ears are filled, and hearts drowning.

--Gloria Mindock





A recipient of numerous grants and awards, Mary Bonina studied with the late poets Denise Levertov and Ken Smith. Her poem, "Drift," was selected for Boston Contemporary Authors, a public art project, and it isinscribed on a granite column and permanently placed outside Green Street MBTA Station. Three of her poems were displayed last summer (2005) in the Boston CityHall exhibition "375 Views of Boston," featuring in addition to poetry, the work of Boston painters, sculptors, and photographers. She earned her M.F.A.degree in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies City River of Voices (1992) from West End Press, New Mexico, and most recently in Voices of the City (2004), a joint venture of the Rutgers University Center for Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience and Hanging Loose Press Ny, NY. She has poetry forthcoming in another anthology, Vacations: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from Tall Grass Literary Guild, Chicago, to be published by Outrider Press. "The Wanderer, 1962," an excerpt from her memoir "My Father's Eyes," was published in Gulfstreaming the online magazine at Florida International University.

Afternoon At Nahant

Only March and it’s 85 degrees in Boston.
Nahant on the North Shore beckons:
the wide strand, where all the simple joys
arrange themselves, scatter about
among snail shells, stones, sand that sparkles.

It’s rare to know where you belong
at any given moment. For doubt to take a vacation
when the air still has a chill, especially by the water,
and the sun can’t quite make up for it.

Gloria’s Sam and Noah
and my Gianni, chase each other,
circles widening, nothing in the way, so
free to run and who cares if they get wet?
Children don’t feel a cool breeze anyway,
at least not such fortunate children.

Mothers wait for days like this,
when they can honestly answer the question:
“Where are we going?”
give them an answer they can understand:
“We’re going on an adventure.”

So we are spending the afternoon at Nahant.
For this we decided to relinquish our worries.
We’ll eat oranges instead of dinner,
And go home late to our husbands.

We five race along the horizon of the water’s edge,
Push away the thought of rush hour traffic
On the Lynn Way, and stay until the sun goes down.

--Mary Bonina

Irene Koronas is a graduate of Mass College of Art, B.F.A. Currently, she is the poetry editor for Wilderness House Literary Review and writes a weekly editorial (word catcher) about the Bagel Bards weekly meetings. Her poetry leans toward the experimental, with great enthusiasm for the playful juxtaposition of images.

my youth

those dozing hours my breast so freshly spontaneous went up to men at once at once living in city escapes I flourished by wallpapering my mind still running high my former protection was liberty glued to do what I want takes years and months with no other condition than perceived freedom I found no room for improvements my old older still with ocean patterns every kind of situation was undercurrent mucking ruminations oblivious to the caravans that carried me off outsourced my frenzy for it is not any longer the play of past but manners polish my toe nails and hardens my voice insufferably left propriety mingled with reality thank God I lived frivolous as amphibians.

--Irene Kronas

May 29: Billy Barnum 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 the 29th of May, Stone Soup finishes its month long anniversary celebration of 35 years in existance with the reknowned performer, Bill Barnum.




Photos by Bill Perrault

It has been said that Bill Barnum is an eighty-one-year-old man with a hundred of years of experience. he has done theater, dance, mime, Shakespeare, vaudeville, and, of course, poetry. He is most famous for doing poetry and mime simultaneously. His poetry is of the abstract school. He names Philip Lamartia and e.e. cummings as two of his influences. He regularly makes the rounds of the Boston-Cambridge open mikes and was once a regular street performer in Harvard Square. Much of his poetry on a shoestring in the mid-eighties. He has also written four plays, one of which, City Beyond Sleep, was performed on local radio.

bio written by Raffy Woolf.

May 22nd: Dan Shanahan, Edward J. Cavalho, and Simon Schattner 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. Tonight, Stone Soup Poetry continues to celebrate it's 35th Anniversary with features Dan Shanahan, Edward J. Cavalho, and Simon Schattner.



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.



Edward J. Carvalho is a twice-nominated Pushcart Prize writer (2004-2005) who has been writing poetry for over 20 years. He is the author of several self-published chapbooks and unpublished full-length collections of poetry, including the latest manuscript, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, scheduled to be published later this year. His poetry - lauded by Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel and poet, Martin Espada - has appeared in various national journals around the country. Mr. Carvalho holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College with future academic plans that include the pursuit of a doctorate in literature and criticism focusing on Walt Whitman.



Simon Schattner is a poet, musician who incorporates both into his regular open mike performances at Stone Soup, which he is a regular participant in. Samples of both are available on his website.


Sample poem from Dan Shanahan.

Edward J. Carvalho's web site.

Simon Schattner's web site.

May 15th: Joanna Nealon and Walter Howard Feature




Photos by Bill Perrault

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 the 15th of May, Joanna Nealon and Walter Howard, Stone Soup staples and longtime friends of Jack Powers, return to continue the celebration of Stone Soup's 35th anniversary.

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.

Walter Howard is a retired history professor, English teacher, and journalist. He is a member of the Longfellow Society, Natick Writers, and the Wayland Poetry Workshop. His poems have appeared in Motive, Longfellow Journal, Ibbetson Street Press, Journal of Modern Writing, Endicott Review, and others.

Stone Soup Celebrates It’s 35th Anniversary In May, 2006

Below is an advanced look at the poets performing for Stone Soup's 35th Anniversary. Complete bio pages will appear for all the performers by the end of this week.

May 1st: Stone Soup Staple Carol Weston celebrates on the very date Stone Soup started, along with friends Nancy Dodson and Valerie Jayne.

May 8th: Marc Goldfinger reads with fellow Spare Change alum Linda Larson.

May 15th: Joanna Nealon returns as a feature and invites Walter Howard to come along.

May 22nd: The triple threat of Edward J. Carvalho, Simon Schattner, and Dan Shanahan.

May 29th: Billy Barnum provides a grand finale for Stone Soup’s 35th Anniversary Month.

May 8th: Marc D. Goldfinger and Linda Larson 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. The month long celebration of Stone Soup Poetry continues on May 8th with Marc D. Goldfinger and Linda Larson, two poets connected to the popular Spare Change News and its poetry section.

Marc D. Goldfinger has been published by the Ibbetson Street Press, The Aurorean, Pegasus, The Boston Poet, Clamor magazine, Earth First! and the Crooked River Press among others. He is currently the poetry editor of the Spare Change News, a paper put out for the benefit of homeless people. He is a counselor for people with Substance Use Disorders and some of hiswork has been used to augment courses at theUniversity of Massachusetts in Boston. He is also a member of the Highway Poets, a motorcycle club whose members have been published throughout the world.

Linda Larson was born in 1947. She began writing poetry in elementary school and published in school publications in Evanston, Illinois and at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1970 she graduated with a M. A. in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Influenced by T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Bly she continued to write for publication. At the same time she battled mental illness for over three decades. Her peripatetic lifestyle resulted in the loss of many manuscripts. From 1997 through 2002 Larson was the editor of Spare Change News, a Cambridge-based newspaper that reports on and serves people experiencing homelessness. For the last three years she has been co-leading a recovery group at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital for people like herself, diagnosed with both mental illness and substance abuse. This is her first poetry reading since the 1970's.

Sample poems are below:

The Wake-Up
for Mary Esther

One bright eye peeks
out at the world, still dark
with the shade of mourning. She
is not sure whether it is

safe to throw off her cover,
come out to dance with
the uncertainty of day.
Life is like that

sometimes, on other days
the sun is blinding through
the Easter window of the room
she now shares with the man

who loves her. He smiles at
the shadows cast by life until
they back off, grins down
the throat of hard-luck

until it coughs up sunlight
and then he kisses
her forehead, says, "It's all
right now, breakfast is ready."


--Marc D. Goldfinger



For The Love of Your Bones

The murderous
Ticking of the clock
Wants you to feel
The back of your neck
Gliding upwards
In a glissando
Of absolute elegance. . .
Time impales me
On the tip
Of my senses
As no sunset,
Nor constant star
Ever could. . .
When I die
I'm going to live
On the other side
Of your blue sky eyes.

--Linda Larson

May 1st: Carol Weston Begins the Celebration of Stone Soup's 35th Anniversary


Photo by Bill Perrault

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. Monday, May First, is the exact date Stone Soup began as a venue thirty five years ago. Carol Weston, a longtime friend of Stone Soup founder Jack Powers and a Stone Soup Poetry fixture, will read with Nancy Dodson and Valerie Jayne to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Stone Soup Poetry.

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 Chesnut 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.

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

Nancy Dodson has read her poem in the prisons and published in the Herald. She’s read her poems at Stone Soup at Out of The Blue and it's previous location at T.T. The Bear's. She has published in Greensboro Music and studed with Ottone Richio at the Boston Center.

Valerie Jayne works in watercolor and ink and has taught art and art history while studying Mandarin Chinese. She’s published poems in the Faculty Community Voice in Mass Bay Community College as well as Stone Soup.

Sample poems follow below, taken from Stone Soup Anthology 2003.


To John Wieners (April 15, 2002)

You are the shattered star.
choking on interstellar dust,
you have come through millenniums
crashed by a million
interplanetary bombs.
You leave us a calligraphy
of iron fillings
centered around
your personal magnet
and we are deciphering
those enigmatic stones.

--Carol Weston


Watching Carol Teaching The Wee Ones Science

A magnificent performance all for one
Entertainment is intellectual fun!
Perhaps humility-supremacy rolled into Carol
and never are you inadequate in life.
Dear, even with knife sayings you are kind
Blunt sayings are polite-minded
And full wisdom comes forth
with wide-eyed children
In your court
Their egos hold forth
Listen, egos have a right,
Listen, God with you
Carol, you listen!

--Nancy Dodson

About Tonight's Reading

Jack Powers is currently recovering from an illness, and he will not be able to read tonight. We hope you will be able to make tonight's readings with the remaining features, Margaret Nairn and Murray Denofsky.

April 24th: Jack Powers with Margaret Nairn and Murray Denofsky
Photos by Bil Perrault

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 the 24th, Stone Soup presents the perfect segue from National Poetry Month to Stone Soup's 35th Anniversary celebratory month with Jack Powers featuring, alongside Margaret Nairn and Murray Denofsky.



A recipient of the Ibbetson Street and Anne Bradstreet Lifetime Achievement Awards, Jack Powers is the founder of Stone Soup Poetry and the author of a number poetry books, the most recent being The Inacessibility of The Creator from Ibbetson Street Press. His work can also be found in the 2003 anthology from Stone Soup and the City of Poets anthology from Singing Bone Press. Stone Soup poetry has produced over 1,500 consecutive weeks of poetic performances. He has read in Europe, Russia, and the United States.



Margaret Nairn is a regular contributor to the Stone Soup Poetry open mike. At work on her first collection of poetry, she is also a curator of the International Community Church in Allston, where the list of featured artists whose works are displayed include Jack Powers.



Murray Denofsky was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in mathematics at MIT in 1965, and has an MA in psychology from Brandeis University. He has written feature articles for the Boston Phoenix, poetry (including 14 translations of Hermann Hesse, two of which were published in the Cumberland Poetry Review in 2004), children's stories, and plays (including the book and lyrics of a musical), several of the latter on the themes of mental illness and/or the sixties era. He also does independent research in mathematics, and in phonetic symbolism, a branch of linguistics, and is Secretary of ASLIP (The Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory).

April 17th: Four Poets Celebrat National Poetry Month

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 the 17th, we present our larges lineup for National Poetry Month with four excellent local poets, each differing in approach but similar in their drive to produce quality work and share it with an audience.



Patricia Fillingham is a celebrated regular at Stone Soup. Through her own imprint, Wart Hog Press, she has published a number of books by herself and others. Her most recent collection of poetry is Existential Blues.



Carolyn Gregory is a longtime member of the Jamaica Pond Poetry Workshop who has published poetry and clasical music criticism widely. She has also read widely, most recently as part of the Poetry In The Chapel series, a recent Hurricane Katrina benefit, and Stone Soup this past September.



Deborah Priestly is the co-curator of the Out of The blue Gallery, where Stone Soup has been meeting for years. The gallery has been in two locations and is now celebrating its ninth year in existence. In addition to her art work (her work is currenly on display at the gallery and the 1369 Coffee Shop) she is the author of The Woman Has A Voice with Ibbetson Street Press.



The hostess of the Namless Coffee House series Samantha Jane Scolamiero was a member of the 2004 Boston Cantab Slam Poetry Team attending nationals and has appeared throughout New England and at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. She is the author of a book of poetry and photography, The Nameless Collection. Her poem "Last Jazz" has been heard on the radio.

Click here for a sample poem by Carolyn Gregory.

Click here for a sample poem by Deb Priestly.

Samantha Jane Scolamiero's Nameless Coffee House series.

Samantha Jane Scolamiero's Website.