Featuring

FAITH VICINANZA

Founder and Executive Director of the Wednesday Night Poetry Series, Poet,Educator, Visiting Artist, Editor, Publisher, Nature Photographer, Information Technologies Consultant, I.T. Management Consultant, and Web Site Developer.

We will have the opportunity for a short Q&A with Faith following her
reading.

PLUS: OPEN MIC

Tuesday, October 3rd at 7.30pm

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And mark down these First Tuesday dates:
November 7th, featuring: Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Dec. 5th, featuring: James Joseph with Scarlett Antonia

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The First Tuesday group meets every month at Borders Bookstore

Please come and listen to local poets, bring a favorite poem, read your own poems too.

We offer a mix of guest poets, featured regular readers, Open Mic and
Occasional Workshop sessions.

Borders Books 14 Danbury Road Wilton CT 06987
Just past the Norwalk Wilton line on Route 7
203.834.0600

Dear friends,

Even during the heat and humidity we had good turn outs at Curley’s, and of course, good poetry :-) We gave the youngest member of the group, Kirsten Crowley, a lovely send off to NYU. We’ll miss her a lot. She promised to pay us some visits!

New anthology is making good progress. About thirty poets have submitted their work. The book should be completed in December before the holidays.

I’ll keep you posted.

Eva-Maria and
PoemAlley at Curley’s friends

Mark down these First Tuesday dates:

• October 3rd, featuring Faith Vicinanza


• November 7th, featuring Mark McGuire-Schwartz

The First Tuesday group meets every month at Borders Bookstore in Wilton. Please come and listen to local poets. Bring a favorite poem, read your own poems. We offer a mix of guest poets, featured regular readers, Open Mic and Occasional Workshop sessions.

Borders Books 14 Danbury Road Wilton CT 06987
Just past the Norwalk Wilton line on Route 7
203.834.0600

If you are connected with the PoemAlley or Curley's Diner poetry community, please consider submitting your poetry to this anthology. Ralph's letter follows:

August 18, 2006

Dear Poets,

This is the third and last call for poems for our new anthology.

Those of you who haven’t sent them in, please do so by August 30th.

Please send me three or four poems. (ralphnazareth@mac.com or Ralph Nazareth, 6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford, CT 06905.)

The editors will select two of them (not to exceed four pages in all,) but they will be mindful of your preferences.

We hope to publish this anthology by the first week of December so that people in our circles have a meaningful gift to give during the so-called Holiday Season. All the poets in the anthology will get a complimentary copy and share in the joyful challenge of selling the book to family, friends and aliens. The proceeds, as always, will go to PoemAlley which sponsors and funds our project.

Please submit ideas for a title for the anthology. Eating Our Hearts Out, as title, was universally appreciated and admired. It seemed to encapsulate our group’s experience: meetings at Curley’s, the urgency of the times etc. We hope we can come up with something equally striking and expressive this time around.

Beyond the Fence, our chapbook, published after Eating Our Hearts Out, emerged specifically from an anti-war stance and as an act of resistance to the powers moving against Curley’s. It had a political purpose. Our new anthology, however, does not have a fixed theme or ideological orientation. It is as open and inclusive as our group has striven and continues to be.

Eating Our Hearts Out had prefaces by Hugh Seidman, my co-editor Ann Yarmal, and myself. Beyond the Fence, which followed a workshop with Karen Swenson, carried a preface by me. This time around, I’d like to suggest that we have brief statements (between 100 and 150 words) by poets in the anthology, briefly describing their connection to writing, poetry, PoemAlley, Curley’s, Stamford, and the cosmos! We’d like these statements to be substantive--theoretically probing, politically engaged and spiritually reflective-- rather than sentimental. A revealing anecdote from our life together as poets would also be welcome. If you wish to have your statement considered for inclusion, please send it to me by August 30th.

Best wishes to all,

Ralph

All poets would like to thank the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford for their invitation to read at the Summer Sunday Service on August 13, 2006.

The participants were:

Eleni Begetis Anastos
Pamela Passaretta
Gus Stepp
Marjolijn de Jager
Eva-Maria Palevich
Cindi Siddiqui
Jim Janke
Rona Schenkerman
Herb Davison
Pramila Venkateswaran
Rolf Maurer
Catherine Ednie
Richard Duffee
Robert Sanders
Ralph Nazareth
Dale Shaw

The reading was a wonderful experience for all.

Eva-Maria and
PoemAlley at Curley’s friends

Please come and support Poetry Open Mic on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 in
the Ferguson Library, main branch in downtown Stamford, at 7:00 pm.

Enjoy an evening of poetry. For teens and adults.

Location: Main Library Third Floor Auditorium

http://calendar.fergusonlibrary.org/calendar/index.html

PoemAlley 's merger with Curley’s diner poets went smoothly. Just a few more chairs were added, more tea, bran muffins etc. etc. ordered and, of course, more poetry is being read!

Preparation for the Sunday, August 13, reading at UUSIS is under way.

On July 12, Ralph Nazareth read from his book Ferrying Secrets at the Molten Java in Bethel.

Ralph asked me to include this exciting news:

Following the successful run of our anthology Eating Our Hearts Out, PoemAlley announces a new collection of poems edited by Ralph Nazareth & Catherine Ednie. All those who have attended PoemAlley and Curley's poetry meetings are invited to submit poems. Two poems (not to exceed four pages.) Please send them to Ralph at ralphnazareth@mac.com or 6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford, CT 06905 by August 15, 2006.

I would like to conclude July PoemAlley news with one of Ann Yarmal's poems:

The Path Divides

A blue umbrella on a porch
Beyond the cabin a slate path
and a wider one of gravel
a log facing the bridge
I sit to watch beneath its wooden rail
rain fall like pinstripes into circles
multiply in the pond
Bubbles that do not burst
Spider legs of grass
stride among wild purple violets
Sheltered by my broken umbrella
I lift it high to follow the vision of twinned trees to the sky
at their divide, lichen, moss & an abandoned birdhouse
Parting from the chatter of birds
among greening buds
The stature of hemlock rises beyond a stone wall
Nearer my path
a newly painted red wooden bench
and a young maple
wait for me
in a field of yellow blossoms

If not before, some of us will see you on Sunday, August 13, at UUSIS.

Eva-Maria and PoemAlley Friends at Curley's

As I announced in the May update, Thursday, June 8 was PoemAlley’s last gathering at 20 Forest Street.

I would like to thank everyone who ever attended PoemAlley. A special thanks to all who came for the last meeting: Marjolijn de Jager, Ralph Nazareth, Jim Janke, Richard Duffee and last, but certainly not least, a big thank you to Rev. Ron Sala for attending and reading.

Starting immediately, PoemAlley will meet at Curley’s Diner every Wednesday at 7:30, hence “PoemAlley at Curley’s.” Please come and visit us. It’s fun!

Eva-Maria and
PoemAlley friends

       

June 8th will be the last PoemAlley meeting at UUSIS. From then on PoemAlley will meet weekly every Wednesday at Curley's as "PoemAlley at Curley's." Ralph Nazareth and I will be the coordinators. I will still do the newsletters.

Eva-Maria
and PoemAlley friends