Reading in Pittsford Thursday

I am pleased to be reading from my chapbook Language You Refuse to Learn (Bright Hill Press, 2014) and new work along with H.B. Dill who will be reading from his recently published collection Supernal Andantes (Lulu, 2015). The reading is Thursday, March 12 at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. We will begin at 7:00 p. m. An open mic will follow. This reading is a part of the Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic. Anita Augesen will host. I hope to see you there! http://www.amazon.com/Language-Refuse-Learn-Claudia-Stanek/dp/1892471779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426018405&sr=1-1&keywords=Language+You+Refuse+to+Learn

News This Week

There are several poetry readings this week featuring local poets. Tonight, Karla Linn Merrifield and Catherine Faurot (a fellow Bennington alum) will be reading at Writers & Books for the Genesee Reading Series, 7:30 pm.

Thursday, Just Poets will hold a reading from their annual anthology, Le Mot Juste, at the Pittsford Library (second floor) at 7:00 pm. An open mic will follow.

Saturday, Patricia Roth Schwartz will be reading at Books, Etc. in Macedon at 2:00 pm. Pat has asked a few of her friends (I am among them) to read a couple of poems as well.

I'd also like to point you to a list of the top 25 writers of faith compiled by the editors of Image. Here's a link http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/the-iimagei-top-25-contemporary-writers-of-faith-list. Post a comment if you agree/disagree with their selections.

Fall is here and I'm back...

It's good to be back at my desk after a couple of weeks of medical leave. Thanks to all for your prayers and well wishes.

It's the height of the fall reading period and if you are already in my queue, you will definitely have your submissions in hand well before the deadlines begin. If you did not queue up, many journals and presses will be reading through spring and there are always those that read year-round.

On a humerous note, it seems our military has decided that my web site is considered "entertainment" and therefore is not accessible to our troops overseas. I'm not certain I would catagorize poetry submission preparation along with Hulu or Netflix...

My poem "A Walking Tour of Central Europe on American Soil" appears in the I-90 Manifesto edition of Redactions: Poetry and Poetics, guest-edited by Sean Thomas Dougherty. http://www.redactions.com/

Poet Michael Meyerhofer will be in Rochester next week courtesy of Palettes & Quills, Poetic Effect, the Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College and Just Poets. If you're in the area, he will be reading at the Golisano Gateway on Fisher's campus Thursday, October 13 at 7:30 pm. Meyerhofer's books include Blue Collar Eulogies and Pure Elysium, which won the Palettes & Quills Chapbook Contest judged by Dorianne Laux. I hope to see you there. http://palettesnquills.com/

Ophelia's Flowers

I hope to see you at this special performance.

Ophelia’s Flowers: Mythic Women and Love
Song Cycle for Piano and Voice to be followed by a Poetry Reading

Libretto and poems by E. Louise Beach; Jennifer Bellor, composer.

Thursday, March 24, 7:00 pm
Wilson Formal Lounge
St. John Fisher College
3690 East Ave.
Rochester, NY 14618

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow the performance.

*Please note this is not an open mic event.

Sponsored by Just Poets and St. John Fisher College’s Arts Minor Program
Additional support by Poetic Effect

E. Louise Beach is a lyric poet, critic, translator, and librettist. Recently, she has been published in Barrow Street, Many Mountains Moving, Rosebud, The Bitter Oleander and TriQuarterly Online, among others. Finishing Line Press has published her two chapbooks: Blue Skies (2006) and Sine Nomine, (2011). She was recently named a finalist in the May Swenson Poetry Book Award. Seven of her poem cycles have been set to music by composers Jen Bellor, Gerald Coleman, Bryan Page, and Robert Pound. In 2011, Ms. Beach received a grant to create a libretto for August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death.


Jennifer Bellor is currently a Ph.D student in music composition at the Eastman School of Music. She holds an M.M. in composition at Syracuse University where she was the recipient of The Brian Israel Award in Composition in 2007. She was a participant in the Buffalo Philharmonic Young Composers' Readings in 2007 for her orchestral work, "Chimera." She has been commissioned by The Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY, Society for New Music, Reuben Blundell and the Millersville University orchestra, The Women in Music Festival at Eastman, and Peachtree United Methodist Church in Atlanta, GA with organist Nicole Marane and brass members from the Atlanta Symphony. Her piece, "Stars," for soprano and marimba was performed on the 2009 Eastman China Tour in May.

Just Poets Reading Series

Nancy Chalker-Tennant will be the featured reader Thursday, October 14 for the Just Poets Reading Series. The reading starts at 7:00 pm and will be followed by an open mic.

A bit about Nancy: Nancy Chalker-Tennant is both a poet and visual artist who teaches in both disciplines in the Rochester, NY area where she lives. While she is concentrating on poetry, her work has included painting, printmaking and small editions of hand made “artists’ books” some of which are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Library, and The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry. Nancy is the recipient of several grants including a Mid-Atlantic National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and New York State Council on the Arts grants, among others. Her poetry has been anthologized in Le Mot Juste.

March Update

Spring has arrived early in western New York. Crocuses bloom through melting snow just as many literary journals have ended their winter reading and many Poetic Effect clients will soon be seeing their responses in the mail/email. Currently, more than 250 print journals are considering poetry submissions. Many of these will close to submissions when the tulips and lilacs are in full color here in May. Full-length book manuscript contests are at their peak with 35+ reading right now. More than 20 chapbook contests are running as well. If you would like to get into the Poetic Effect spring queue, get in touch soon info@poeticeffect.com.

Congratulations to Poetic Effect clients who have recently had work accepted by Southern Indiana Review, Pearl, Inkwell, Chaffin Journal, Roanoke Review, Worcester Review, Blueline, River Oak Review, Soundings Review, Eureka Literary Review, Avocet, South Dakota Review, Clackamas, Yalobusha Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Coe Review, and others.

AWP, the largest conference for writers and writing programs, will be held in Denver next month. I will be blogging about various panels and other writing-related news. I hope to see some of you there.

The Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic will be featuring James Cook (tonight), Sue Ann Wells (April), Suzanne Slack (May), and contributors to Le Mot Juste 2010 (June). The reading series is held at 7:00 pm the second Thursday of every month (except December) at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford.

Reading at Yesterday's Muse

Kathy Van Schaick will be the featured reader at Yesterday's Muse in the village of Webster, NY, Friday, March 5 at 7:00 pm. Bring your own work for the open mike that follows her reading.

Kathy is a board member of Just Poets in Rochester, NY and serves as the Managing Editor of Le Mot Juste, the annual Just Poets anthology. She also volunteers at a local hospice as well as public radio.

Cynthia Iannaccone to Read for Just Poets

Cynthia Iannaccone will be the featured reader Thursday, October 8 for the monthly Just Poets reading series and open mic. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

Just Poets Retreat

I will be leading a workshop on How Does a Poem Mean at the Just Poets Retreat at the Gell Center of the Finger Lakes tomorrow. Thirty Just Poets members are attending this first ever event. Additional workshops will be led by Ron Bailey, Karla Linn Merrifield, and Dwain Wilder.

August Just Poets Reading

Dee Hogan will be the featured reader Thursday, August 13 for the Just Poets Reading Series and Open Mic. The reading begins at 7:00 pm in the Community Room. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

Le Mot Juste Reading

The premier reading of Le Mot Juste 2009 is Thursday, June 11 at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford, 7:00pm in the Community Room. Le Mot Juste is the annual anthology of Just Poets which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. An open mic will follow. For information on Just Poets visit www.justpoets.org.

Donna M. Marbach to Read Thursday

Poet and editor Donna M. Marbach will be reading from her work Thursday, June 4 at Writers & Books, 7:00pm. Marbach, who will be reading with chapbook contest winner Kathryn Howd Machan, is the owner and manager of Palettes & Quills (http://www.palettesnquills.com/), a small press based in Rochester, NY.

Marbach is a founding member and past president of Just Poets (http://www.justpoets.org/) and is the current editor of the organization's newsletter, Poet Talk. When not writing, editing or publishing, she paints and markets textbooks.

Iris Miller to Read for Just Poets

Iris Miller will be the featured reader Thursday, May 14 at the monthly Just Poets Reading Series at Barnes & Noble Pittsford. Join us at 7:00pm in the Community Room and bring your own work to read at the open mic which follows.

Iris Miller believes strongly in the power of the image to teach and to heal. After retiring from teaching art in the Rochester City School District, she became a certified art therapist, a trained shamanic practitioner, and a writer of poetry. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Nimrod, The South Carolina Review, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, as well as various anthologies. Her chapbook, Angels Flying Backwards, will be available in 2010.

Dwain Wilder Reading Thursday

Dwain Wilder will be the featured reader this Thursday, April 9 at the montlhy Just Poets reading series and open mic. Join us in the Community Room at the Pittsford location at 7:00pm and bring your own work to read during the open mic that follows.

Dwain's bio: Dwain, a native of a small town outside Dallas, has lived in Rochester, NY since 1970 and now lives with his wife and niece, and dogs, in a quaint, untidy old farmhouse. He makes his livelihood as a luthier (a builder of stringed musical instruments). Dwain’s Appalachian dulcimers are held in high regard, both here and abroad, where he regularly receives commissions from Europe, Great Britain and the Far East. Dwain also teaches dulcimer building classes at the Northeast Dulcimer Symposium in Blue Mountain Lake in the Adirondacks, as well as in his studio.

Dwain also writes poetry and essays on Zen. He has published poems in various small poetry periodicals and collections but not extensively -- due to having no taste for rejection slips and a lack of industry. He has published a chapbook, “Under the Only Moon,” under the Kinko/FedEx imprimatur. And he also composes and inscribes a short dedicatory verse in each dulcimer he sells (which, one might say, makes him the world’s highest paid poet, on a per line basis).

Charlie Cote Reading for Just Poets

Poet Charlie Cote will be the featured reader for the Just Poets Reading series and open mic Thursday, March 12 at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. Join us at 7pm in the Community Room. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance by emailing claudiastanek@gmail.com.

In the late 90s, Charlie Coté was a faithful church attendee but found himself sitting more and more in the doubter’s pew. As weekly sermons were often, shall we say, less than inspiring, he took to doodling phrases scraps of paper. These morphed into the beginnings of early poems. From there, he found the most accomplished, devout agnostic poet he could find to help him complete these heresies. Said poet will remain unnamed but let’s say his name rhymed with bored, appropriately enough. When Charlie gets dry, he can still count on the doubter’s pew to be his triggering town...

Publication credits include: The Cortland Review, Upstreet, Boston Literary Magazine, ByLine, Connecticut River Review, and a recent chapbook, Flying for the Window (Finishing Line Press, 2008), elegies about his son’s illness and death.

Charlie is a clinical social worker in private practice and lives with his wife and two sons in Brighton.

Remembering Faces Reading

Join guest host Donna Marbach (publisher/editor) for a reading by the poets from the anthology Remembering Faces (Palettes & Quills, 2008) sponsored by Just Poets. The reading is at 7:00 pm Thursday, February 12 at Barnes & Noble Pittsford in the Community Room. An open mic will follow. Just Poets members in good standing may sign up in advance via email: claudiastanek@yahoo.com.

Adam Wilcox Discusses the Poetry of Alan Dugan

Adam Wilcox will be discussing the poetry of Alan Dugan at the next Just Poets meeting, Saturday, February 7 at St. John Fisher College.

Adam is the president of WritWilcox, LLC. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Colorado Review, Folio, Cairn, and Blueline, among others. He has been a featured reader for the Genesee Readers Series. For eight years, he wrote the "Gut Instincts" food column for Rochester City Newspaper. H.e plays in two original bands in addition to playing jazz as a volunteer with the ARC of Monroe County. He lives in Rochester, NY with his choreographer wife, Anne Harris Wilcox and their three homeschooled children.

Wynne McClure to Read

Please join me at Barnes & Noble Pittsford this Thursday, December 11 for this month's Just Poets Reading Series. Poet Wynne McClure will be the featured reader. An open mic will follow the 7 pm reading.

Wynne McClure has written 3 books of poetry: My Lonely Luxury (Foothills, 2008), Torn For Peace (with Paul Bither, Foothills, 2005), and The Hidden Self (Foothills, 2004). Other work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Soundings Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Hazmat Review, ByLine, Listening to Water: The Susquehanna Watershed Anthology, and Summer Songs as well as elsewhere.

Anne Coon Reading Thursday

Poet Anne Coon will be the featured reader for this month's edition of the Just Poets Reading Series Thursday, October 9 at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. Join us in the Community Room at 7:00 pm. Read Anne's brief bio below:

Anne Coon is the author of four books: Henry James Sat Here (The Old School Press, Bath, UK, 2006); Via del Paradiso (FootHills Publishing, 2006); Daedalus’ Daughter (FootHills Publishing, 2004); and her newest book, co-authored with Marcia Birken, Discovering Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry (Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2008). Her poems appear in several journals. She recently retired after 28 years at RIT and is now writing full-time, working on a novel and a new poetry manuscript.

M.J. Iuppa Reading for Just Poets

Poet and prose writer M.J. Iuppa will be featured Thursday, September 11, 2008 for the next Just Poets reading at Barnes & Noble, Pittsford. Join us at 7:00pm upstairs, in the community room. An open mic will follow.

M.J. is a much beloved figure in the Rochester area literary scene. She teaches at both SUNY Brockport and St. John Fisher College and is involved in bringing creative writing into public schools as well as many community oriented creative writing projects. Her work explores nature--both that of the world around us and that of the world within each of us. Her most recent book of poetry, Night Traveler, was published by Foothills Publishing.