Sunday, October 10, 3pm – Poetry

Raymond Tyler Presents

3pm to 6pm Join Raymond Tyler for Beyond Spoken Word Part 5.

Tyler sits down and discusses poetry and personal stories of writers. This month he’ll be speaking one on one with Vizion from The Harvest and 4 other dynamic artists to be named later. There will be an open mike to follow.

Tuesday, October 5, 7pm – Poetry

Raymond Tyler Presents

7pm Raymond Tyler and The Tri-State Writers have their monthly meeting at The Moonstone Arts Center. They offer each other critiques and support in their writing. This will be the last open meeting for people who would like to join this year.

8:30pm is The Soul Connection Open Jam. Raymond Tyler hosts this open mike along with special guest this month Stephanie Duran and featured poets Ciera The Irreplacable One, Michele Mitchell, Bruce Williams and Angel Rollins.

Thursday, September 30, 7pm – Poetry

Sandy Tseng & Alicia Ostriker

Sandy Tseng author of Sediment ($15.95 Four Way Books)
In Sandy Tseng’s first collection, leaving is both what remains and the act of going to another place, a different lifestyle, an unknown afterlife. This book recounts the pleasures and terrors of transition, of being “in between languages.” We travel with Tseng, learning that the sediment of our lives–received traditions, half-recalled memories, accrued possessions–might also be fragments by which we recognize a future life, here or elsewhere. Among SANDY TSENG’S awards are the 2006 Discovery / The Nation Award, Crab Orchard Review’s 2005 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize, and scholarships from the Vira I. Heinz Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker author of The Book of Seventy ($14.95 University of Pittsburgh Press)
Alicia Ostriker seizes the opportunity to take us where too few poets have been able to take us: into a domain of what our fabulists like to call the “golden years.” as we live longer, we become inevitably curious about the actual texture of these late years, curious about what happens in the soul. Out of that curiosity is a new kind of poetry born, an elderstile that has passion and irony, wisdom, folly, clarity and tenderness. In her keen engagement with the self and the world, Ostriker offers us a voice and a perspective that explore the territory of seventy and beyond. Alicia Suskin Ostriker is the author of eleven previous poetry collections, including: The Mother/Child Papers; No Heaven; the volcano sequence; and The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award. Ostirker is Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of Drew University.

Sunday, September 19, 3pm – Poetry

Raymond Tyler Presents

Sunday August 8, 7:30pm workshop; 8:30 open mike – Poetry – $7 Suggested Donation (none turned away)

Please join us in welcoming newspaper (Philadelphia Weekly, AC Weekly), magazine (Vibe and Essence) writer, poet and radio personality Raymond Tyler to The Moonstone family.

7:30pm - a brand new monthly writing group that will meet every first Tuesday from 7:30 to 8:30. Please feel free to bring some food to share and copies of your writing to be workshopped.

8:30pm -Tyler brings his popular open mike/audience participation series The Connection to TMAC

Featured poets. Give-a-ways. And an open microphone for music, comedy, poetry or whatever else your bold enough to do on our stage. $7 Donation requested but no one turned away.

For more information you can reach Tyler at soulconnectionphilly@gmail.com and check out reviews and interviews with local artists at www.soulconnectionphilly.blog.com

Sunday August 22, From 3pm to 6pm – Beyond Spoken Word

Raymond Tyler Presents
Beyond Spoken Word 3: Ladies First
Join host Raymond Tyler and female writers from Philly, Delaware, DC, and Jersey for  special event that will look at female writers. We have several established and new writers who will read from their work and then sit down with radio/tv personality Raymond Tyler for a one on one. For more information you can reach Raymond at raymondctyler@gmail.com you can also get weekly updates at www.soulconnectionphilly.blog.com

Thursday, July 29, 7pm – Poetry
German Poets U.S. Tour
Wolf Hogekamp, Lars Ruppel, and Sebastian 23

The poets will present original work in German and English translation and speak about their work in the German pilot project of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. Representing Germany at the 21st Annual National Poetry Slam to be held in Saint Paul, Minnesota, August 3rd through 7th. Along with their work in popularizing poetry through the Poetry Slam, Hogekamp and Ruppel are working on a pilot project to expand the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP) to Germany funded by the U.S, Embassy in Berlin. The poets have worked with APP founder Gary Glazner to train over 250 German poets, students, and healthcare workers in using poetry to connect to people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia.

Wolf Hogekamp organized the first regular German Poetry Slam in 1997. As a professional video editor he has been instrumental in the creation of poetry clips and using video technology to promote poetry to a wide audience. At 25, Lars Rupple is the youngest professional Slam poet in Germany. He began touring at the age of 16. Sebastian 23 along with Rupple are in the parody boy group, “Smaat Band.”

The National Poetry Slam (NPS) is a five day spoken word performance poetry festival. The world’s largest annual Poetry Slam event is held in a different city each year, and is host to dozens of Slam teams from around the US, Canada and Europe. The main focus of the festival is the tournament, but it also involves numerous workshops, showcases, classes, open mics, and fun side competitions that are open to watch and/or perform. Events begin at 10am and continue until 2am.

THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 7pm – Poetry
TREY MOORE
BETH PHILLIPS BROWN

Trey Moore (writer/director/producer) was born in San Antonio. Performing in his hometown at art and writing events across the country including, Nuyorican Poet’s Café, Pumpkins Jazz Club (NYC), and the Great Mother Conference. He received a Puffin Foundation Grant for his work with students (4th-12th grade) at Luminaria. He teaches poetry to youth and at juvenile detention centers. Co-Founder and Director of PART an environmental arts action group with poet Laura Hope-Gill, this work was part of Split This Rock and Asheville Wordfest. His poems and stories have appeared recently in Texas Observer, Borderlands, Exquisite Corpse, Origami Condom, Santa Fe Writer’s Project, Merge and TO Topos. Winner of the Whitebird Chapbook Contest, his collection, we forget we are water, was published by Wings Press in 2006 and positively reviewed by Red Wheelbarrow (UK, 2008). His first full length book, Some Will Play The Cello, was published by St. Mary’s University’s Pecan Grove Press in January 2010.

Poet and storyteller Beth Phillips Brown carries her Welsh and Celtic ancestors’ oral traditions through two languages, English and Welsh. A fluent Welsh speaker, a teaching artist and a 2002 PCA Folk Arts Performing Traditions fellowship recipient, she aspires to the calling of cyfarwydd, the Welsh word for bard and tradition-bearer. Her most recent chapbook, Book of Enchantments, was published by Foothills Publishing in Summer 2007. As Guest Poet for the 2006 Authors & Artists of the Sea session of Whale Camp on Grand Manaan Island, she edited Small as a World, Large as Alone, available on the Whale Camp website as a PDF download. Other publications include Poiesis, It Has Come To This: Poets of the Great Mother Conference, Block Island Poetry Project website, Philadelphia Poets, Blue Sofa Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal and the Painted Bride Quarterly among others. She is a founding member of The Delco Poets’ Cooperative, the first poetry organization in Delaware County which evolved into the present Mad Poets’ Society. In addition to her poetry and storytelling work, she is a book artist as well as the editor and publisher of Gwasg Cwtsh y Bardd (The Bard’s Cupboard Press). Beth is an avid TriYoga practitioner, recently becoming certified as a Basics teacher and is currently studying for further certification. Her next beginner pursuit is surfing and stand-up paddleboarding.