Copyright Eric Estenzo, Detainee 337

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 8pm – READING – $5 Suggested Donation
WARRIOR WRITERS: When They Come Home
Presented by The Warrior Writers Project
Supported by: Studio 34 *Yoga * Healing *Arts and Robin’s Books & Moonstone Arts

The Writer Warrior Project’s mission is to create a culture that articulates veterans’ experiences. We aim to provide the opportunity for a creative community for artistic expression among veterans. We provide witness to the lived experiences of warriors.
For more info contact: warriorwriters@gmail.com

Featuring:
RACHEL ZOLF (Poet; New York City)
SUZANNE HEYD (Poet; Philadelphia)
SIMONE WHITE (Poet; New York City)

RACHEL ZOLF is a Canadian poet and editor presently living in New York. Her fourth full-length book, Neighbour Procedure, is just out from Coach House Books. Previous collections include Human Resources (Coach House), which won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Shoot & Weep (Nomados), from Human Resources (Belladonna books), Masque (The Mercury Press) and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks). Zolf has published and performed her work throughout North America, and her poetry is included in such anthologies as Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics (Coach House) and a forthcoming anthology of conceptual writing from Les Figues Press. She is presently engaged in a collaborative MFA in Creative Writing.

SUZANNE HEYD is the author of the chapbooks Fascicles (Finishing Line, 2009) and Crawl Space (Phylum, 2007). Recent poetry appears in Ploughshares, AGNI, jubliat, Gulf Stream, Washington Square, Interim, and other journals. She is also an interdisciplinary artist and a freelance writer. She has been awarded an Artists Fellowship from the State of Connecticut, and residencies at Djerassi, The Land/an art site, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

SIMONE WHITE is from Philadelphia. She is the author of House Envy of All the World (Factory School) and the limited edition collaborative chapbook Dolly (Q Ave Press, with painter Kim Thomas). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Tuesday; An Art Project, The Poetry Project Newsletter and the exhibition catalog for The Studio Museum’s Flow. Currently a doctoral student in English at CUNY Graduate Center, she teaches at Hunter College.

The goal of Moles Not Molar is to put writers and artists pursuing exciting, innovative and experimental textual projects into contact and dialogue with each other and their diverse audiences, creating exposure and engagement across regional and generic lines.

Please look out for more Moles Not Molar events upcoming in March, and April. For more information, contact us at molesnotmolar@gmail.com.

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.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 5:30pm – WORKSHOP
LIFE OF A POET WORKSHOP with LEONARD GONTAREK
4 sessions for $50. Contact: Leonard Gontarek at gontarek9@earthlink.net

SUNDAY, JANUARY 17, 11am – Political Discussion
The Nation magazine Discussion Group

TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 7pm – POETRY
Poets & Prophets Presents
JOE ROARTY

MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 7pm – POETRY
Moonstone and Art Sanctuary Present:
SONIA SANCHEZ
Reading from her new book Morning Haiku ($19.95 Beacon Press)

This new volume by the much-loved poet Sonia Sanchez, her first in over a decade, is music to the ears: a collection of haiku that celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism. In her verses, we hear the sounds of Max Roach “exploding in the universe,” the “blue hallelujahs” of the Philadelphia Murals, and the voice of Odetta “thundering out of the earth.” Sanchez sings the praises of contemporaries whose poetic alchemy turns “words into gems”: Maya Angelou, Richard Long, and Toni Morrison. And she pays homage to peace workers and civil rights activists from Rosa Parks and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to Brother Damu, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. Often arranged in strings of twelve or more, the haiku flow one into the other in a steady song of commemoration. Sometimes deceptively simple, her lyrics hold a very powerful load of emotion and meaning. There are intimate verses here for family and friends, verses of profound loss and silence, of courage and resilience. Sanchez is innovative, composing haiku in new forms, including a section of moving two-line poems that reflect on the long wake of 9/11. In a brief and personal opening essay, the poet explains her deep appreciation for haiku as an art form. With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez’s freshest, most poignant work.

Sonia Sanchez—poet, activist, scholar—was the Laura Carnell professor of English and women’s studies at Temple University. She is the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books, including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, and Shake Loose My Skin.

“Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature’s forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.” —Maya Angelou

“Only a poet with an innocent heart can exorcise so much pain with so much beauty.”—Isabel Allende

“The poetry of Sonia Sanchez is full of power and yet always clean and uncluttered. It makes you wish you had thought those thoughts, felt those emotions, and, above all, expressed them so effortlessly and so well.” —Chinua Achebe

“Her songs of destruction and loss scrape the heart; her praise songs thunder and revitalize. We need these songs for our journey together into the next century.” —Joy Harjo

MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 8pm – Moonstone Members Only

A Reception with Sonia Sanchez at Time Restaurant, 1316 Sansom Street, cash bar
Spend an informal hour with Sonia Sanchez after her reading, have a drink, your book autographed, and conversation with others who love poetry and Sonia. If you are not a member you can join at our website: www.moonstoneartscenter.org or on site.

Autographed books can be ordered for home delivery by calling 215-735-9600

Help spread the word! Download this PDF flyer and share it with anyone and everyone who might be interested in attending.
Sonia Sanchez

(28 November, 1924 – 26 December, 2009)

Our good friend Dennis Brutus died on December 26. He will be missed.

Dennis was an amazing fellow, always positive and looking to the future. During the Bush years when most of us were wandering around depressed, Dennis returned from the first World Social Forum, and said: ”I bring good news. Wonderful thing are happening in the south.” Who else but Dennis could attack our depression with a view to the future? With the challenge to continue the fight.

Dennis was on stage with William Safford at the Dodge Poetry Festival discussing poetry and commented about corporate control of the university and the arts. Safford said that these were the people who paid their (poets) wages. Dennis’s comment was: “I will bite the hand that feeds me.”

Come share and hear Dennis Brutus’s poetry and stories of his life by his friends and admirers. You can tell a story, read your favorite Dennis Brutus poem, or read something you want to dedicate to Dennis. This will be a pot luck affair, so please bring something good to eat.

We hope you can join us.

Larry Robin, Robin’s Book Store and Moonstone
Kassahun Checole, Africa World Press and Red Sea Press
Lamont Steptoe, Whirlwind Press

Please see this statement from Patrick Bond, a friend of Dennis’s from South Africa: www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/brutus261209.html Patrick Bond, “Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009″ World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. …

Help spread the word! Download this PDF flyer and share it with anyone and everyone who might be interested in attending.
DennisBrutus

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

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 7pm – POETRY
Moonstone Poetry Series Presents:
LAMONT STEPTOE

Lamont B. Steptoe is a poet / photographer / publisher born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is author of eight books of poetry including In the Kitchens of the Master, Mad Minute, Uncle’s South Sea China Blue Nightmare, Cat Fish and Neckbone Jazz, Dusty Road, Common Salt and Trinkets and Beads. Steptoe is a father, Vietnam veteran, and founder of Whirlwind Press. “Thinking back on it, I was really exposed to black poetry through the church. Because, as the late write Henri Dumas said, ‘every black poet is a preacher and every black preacher is a poet.’ My work is influenced by the fire and brimstone that black preachers generally exhibit in the context of the church on Sunday mornings. Rev. Augustus C. Sumter from South Carolina was the first person to call me a poet. I had written a poem about the fact that they were going to be tearing down our church and I read it and word got back to him and he announced to the congregation one Sunday, ‘We have a poet in our midst!’ And it was like a revelation. Like a little light went on.” He has read his work at the Library of Congress, the National Library of Nicaragua, the Geralding R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, the Knitting Factory, the Schomberg Center for Black Culture, and colleges and universities throughout the United States. Steptoe is also an activist in human rights, environmental issues, and gay/bisexual issues.
Followed by an open reading, moderated by Ray Garman

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 7pm – POETRY
Poets & Prophets Presents
BOB SMALL

Bob Small will debut his newest Poetry Chapbook, Swarthmore, Nov 28th, 2008, a series of interlocking Poems about Thanksgiving Eve of that year, with illustrations by both local and New York City Artists, etc.

Bob Small has presented Feature Readings at the following Philadelphia locations; Bacchanal, Barnes & Noble, Borders, The Clark Park Festivals, Highwire Gallery, The Middle East Restaurant, Nexus Gallery, The Philadelphia Ethical Society, The Painted Bride Arts Center, Robin’s Bookstore, and The University of Pennsylvania, among many.

He has read in Pennsylvania, including The Booksource (Swarthmore) GodFreydaniels (Bethlehem), Harvest Bookstore (Media), The Jumping Cow (Swarthmore) and The Mad Poets Food Festival Readings (Media). He has also read in New Jersey, New York City, Washington, DC.

He is the author of many multi-Poem Broadsides, The Thanksgiving 11-27-08 Series being the most recent (now collected in a Chapbook). His previous chapbooks include El Otro Lado (with Maralyn Lois Polak), On Watching America Die, Small Steps and Toes (with Lamont B. Steptoe), and The Unapoet.

He has been published in The Bucks County Writer, Dot Dot Dot, Heat Magazine, Philadelphia Poets Magazine, among many. He is a Founder and President of Poets and Prophets,(www.poetsandprophets.com) a 26-year old Poetry Organization which presents Poetry Readings in Delco and Philadelphia. He currently lives in a semi-retired state in Swarthmore, Pa., with his wife and their canine and feline significants.