In celebration of Black History Month, Poets & Prophets Presents:

Elijah B. Pringle, III is the former on-air host of Panoramic Poetry at October Gallery.com He is the author of At the Cornerstone, Feeding the Sparrow, and Second Saturday at Serenity. His work has been in Edison Poetry Review, Fox Chase Review, The God’s Must Be Bored, and will have a Feature is The River Poets Journal.

Elijah B. Pringle, III has read at Bread and Cup, Cornerstone Coffeehouse, Gloria’s Cafe, Jose Sebourne Gallery, The Painted Bride Arts Center, and Vibes and Verses. He has been on broadcast and internet radio; Blog Radio with Lynn Blue, Po-Edify with Nia Ebo, and WRTI-FM, among others.

Elijah B. Pringle, III has a quarter of a century in the Banking and Insurance Industries, mostly in training. He estimates he has been responsible for the training and development of over 3000 associates and supervisors. He is past Editor-in-Chief of Impact, a business journal and has facilitated numerous writing workshops, both business and creative.

He has been quoted in print in Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Daily News, etc. He currently resides in Philadelphia.

An open reading follows the Feature Reading and donations are accepted.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 7pm – POETRY
Moonstone Poetry Series Presents:
A.V. CHRISTIE & TAIJE SILVERMAN

A.V. Christie’s two volumes of poetry are Nine Skies which won the 1996 National Poetry Series and The Housing which won the McGovern Prize in 2005. Her poems have appeared most recently in Poetry and The Cincinnati Review and also in AGNI, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest and Commonweal among other magazines.

Taije Silverman’s volume of poems Houses are Fields is just out from Louisiana State University Press. Her poems have been published in Ploughshares, Poetry, Shenandoah, The Antioch Review, Five Points, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Her translations from the Italian of poems by Paolo Valesio are forthcoming in Pleiades, and her work has won two first place prizes from the Academy of American Poets, including the Anaïs Nin Prize, judged by Stephen Dunn. Currently teaching at Ursinus College, she was the 2005-2007 Poetry Fellow at Emory University. She lives in Philadelphia.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 7pm – POETRY
WINTER SOLSTICE READINGS
An Open Reading Moderated by Ray Garman

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 7pm – POETRY
Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
LYNN LEVIN & ROB WRIGHT

Rob Wright has been a regular contributor to the magazine Big City Lit since 2001. He was awarded Fellowships in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 2005 and 2007. His poetry has been published by Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Headwater Press, and in the magazines Big City Lit and Siren’s Silence. He has read his poetry at the First Person Arts Festival in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Studio 34 in Philadelphia, and at Poets and Writers, the Gotham Book Mart, and the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York City.

Lynn Levin’s third collection of poems, Fair Creatures of an Hour, has just been published by Loonfeather Press. “These poems are a charm against solemnity,” says Eleanor Wilner. “So much excitement, such a rush of vitality!” says Elaine Terranova. Lynn Levin’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, 5 AM, Lilith, Mad Poets Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, and on Garrison Keillor’s show, The Writer’s Almanac. The recipient of two grants from the Leeway Foundation, Lynn Levin teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and at Drexel University where she also produces the TV show The Drexel InterViewTM.

Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
J.C. TODD & PETER E. MURPHY

J. C. Todd is author of What Space This Body (Wind Publications, 2008), Nightshade, and Entering Pisces. Poems have appeared in APR, Paris Review, and on Verse Daily. She was a finalist in the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Lyric Poetry Contest and a recipient of Leeway Awards, a PA Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship, a NJ Governor’s Award for Arts Education, and fellowships to arts colonies in Germany and Sweden. She has edited translation features for The Drunken Boat, teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College and the Graduate English and Creative Writing Programs at Rosemont College and holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson.

Peter Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a night club and drove a cab. He is the author two books of poems, Stubborn Child (2005), a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Thorough & Efficient (2008), both from Jane Street Press. His poetry and essays have appeared in The American Book Review, The Shakespeare Quarterly, World Order and hundreds of other journals. He is a consultant to many organizations including Arts Horizons, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and has been an educational advisor to Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers and other PBS poetry programs.
Peter has received fellowships for teaching and writing from The Folger Shakespeare Library, The National Endowment for the Humanities, Yaddo, the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and others. Retired from Atlantic City High School, he continues to teach advanced poetry writing to undergraduates and graduate students at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is also the founder/director of Murphy Writing Seminars which sponsors the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and other writing programs & retreats.

Moderated by Ray Garman, open reading follows feature.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 27, 7pm – POETRY
Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
JEANNE MURRAY WALKER & DAVID MOOLTEN
author of New Tracks, Night Falling ($16.00 Eerdmans)

“Anyone who can get through a newspaper,” Jeanne Murray Walker says, “will find this book a piece of cake.” Indeed, the poems in this book are strong but unpretentious pieces rich in meaning and feeling. The poems in New Tracks, Night Falling acknowledge that we are people driven and divided by fear. They talk about racism, war, loss, greed, alienation, our disregard of the earth, and our disregard of each other. Sometimes we feel like night is falling in the bright light of day. Yet we get glimpses of hope, of what could be:

In this dark time I want to make light bigger,
to toss it in the air like a pizza chef,
to stick my fists in, stretching it
till I can get both arms into radiance above the elbow
and spin it above us.

Hope continually threads its way through these poems. We hear its voice as Walker writes about choices — both those we make and those beyond our making. And we feel hope rising like bread when Walker focuses on the gifts of potential, resolution, mercy, joy — the new tracks that we can make in fresh snow, on old paths, along the roads more or less traveled. These are stays against the falling night. With a keen eye for both physical and emotional detail, Walker explores a journey that all of us are on, and she does so in a way that speaks to our deep fears and deeper joys, that engages and inspires. Tempering somber notes with more joyful ones, she reminds us of the good things, great and small, that are still possible in this world.

David Moolten is the author of Plums & Ashes, which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then, and Primitive Moood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and has just been published.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 13, 7pm – POETRY
Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
THOMAS FUCALORO, CHRISTIAN GEORGESCU, SARAH SARAI (from you say. say. – $15 Uphook Press)

Rhythm, risk, reach… A sensitivity to words that sparkle on the page and in performance spark off it…
Uphook Press is a New York City-based publisher specializing in work by poets and spoken words artists who love both the ink and the mike. you say. say. is the first of an annual anthology taken from open submission. Twenty-nine poets—from San Francisco, Dagsboro, Nashville, Denver, Long Island, elsewhere, and New York—write the gamut from Starbucks to whale walkers, chalk outlines to honeymooning, cranky operettas to the ping of a microwave signaling the end. They come from backgrounds as diverse as truck driving, opera singing, bongo-pounding, Def Jam slammin’, and jazz. Featuring: Judith Arcana, Samantha Barrow, Paul Belanger, Alex O. Bleecker, Tony Burfield, Patrick Cahill, Malaika Favorite, Thomas Fucaloro, Christian Georgescu, Thomas Gibney, Gary Hanna, Robert Harris, Suzanne Heagy, Aimee Herman, Kit Kennedy, Joan Payne Kincaid, Laura LeHew, Richard Loranger, G.L. Pettigrew, Sarah Sarai, Thandiwe Shiphrah, Michael Shorb, Mary McLaughlin Slechta, Karin Spitfire, Charles F. Thielman, Geoffrey Jason Kagan Trenchard, Joanna Valente, Stefanie Wielkopolan, Laura Madeline Wiseman.

Thomas Fucaloro was born in Brooklyn, raised in Staten Island, and now resides in Harlem. He says “This is what I want to do with my life. Mom and dad are not happy.” Thomas has read all over New York City, including a recent feature at The Cornelia Street Café.

Christian Georgescu was born in Bucharest, Romania, and raised in New York City where he has appeared on stage and in film, most recently in Pussyfoot. He has performed his poetry in a variety of venues in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

Sarah Sarai’s poems appear in The Mississippi Review, The Threepenny Review, BigCityLit, Ghoti, Fogged Clarity, The Minnesota Review and other journals. Her first collection, The Future Is Happy, was published in 2009 by BlazeVOX Press.