Author: Editorial Staff

April 28 – Celebrate National Poetry Month! In April we feature a reading by participants of the peer-driven writers workshop of the Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle, which meets on the second Wednesday of each month. Selections of their work will be read by Joseph Kelty, David Jibson, Edward Morin, Loraine Lamey, Lissa Perrin, Gregory Mahr, Dana Dever, Helen Weingarten and others.

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM EDST  •  Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Lissa Perrin.

Carolyne Wright, a Seattle native, authored ten books of poetry and translated five volumes of poetry translations from Spanish and Bengali. The title poem of This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems received a Pushcart Prize and was included in The Best American Poetry 2009. She co-edited the anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace.

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM EDST  •  Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Rainey Lissa Perrin.

Kelly Fordon, an award-winning writer and teacher from the Detroit metro area, explores personal and class conflicts in city and suburb. Her two recent story collections from Wayne State University Press are I Have the Answer and Garden for the Blind. Her poetry includes one book, Goodbye Toothless House, and three chapbooks. http://www.kellyfordon.com

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM EDST •  Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Rainey Lissa Perrin.

William Trowbridge’s eighth poetry book is Oldguy: Superhero—The Complete Collection, Red Hen Press, 2019. His ninth, Call Me Fool, is forthcoming from Red Hen in 2022. He is a poetry mentor in the University of Nebraska Omaha Low-residency MFA in Writing Program and was Poet Laureate of Missouri from 2012 to 2016.

 

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM EDST •  Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Lissa Perrin.

Ken Meisel, is a psychotherapist and author of eight books of poetry. With tender, grave empathy, Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit traces the conflicted searches for hope, sense of connection to place, and material and social problems embedded in the landscape of his deindustrialized city.

Jeff Vande Zande has published four novels including American Poet, which won a Michigan Notable Book Award from the Library of Michigan. His story collections are Emergency Stopping, Threatened Species, and The Neighborhood Division. He is also a film maker, teaches at Delta College, and has a blog at www.authorjeffvandezande.blogspot.com.

Watch a recording of this event:

Links to the books of tonight’s readers (click the cover illustrations):

Of this compilation, Meisel writes, “…you’ll find me holding out a tender, if grave empathy for the denizens and the grand buildings and the overall, variable reputation of Detroit that, while always so very large in historical grandeur, fails, somehow, to be held up in protection, tenderness, significance and priority by those who have historically held power to do so. Many of the poems – culled from seven books dating from 2002 through 2018 – are heart-burned elegies for the destroyed, disenfranchised, de-industrialized individuals caught up in the crazed socio-cultural psychology that gripped Detroit by the shirt collar (through racism, through political greed and hubris and a hyper-masculine ethos) and then, leveled it. Some of these poems are grave and severe, some more emotive lamentations, some are spliced with slang to get the message across and some of the poems are just prayerful incantations meant to assuage the pain and heal the wounds so prevalent here…Empty landscapes, forgotten factories, burned hotels, mattress communities, torched houses and bulldozed churches…

Jeff Vande Zande’s latest story collection travels down the shady lanes of the American neighborhood. From kids egging windows to lost joggers and insomniacs to basement prisoners and Orwellian gated communities, these stories grow ever more surreal, holding a darkened mirror up to that which we are—and may become.

Patricia Hooper is author of Separate Flights and Wild Persistence—the most recent of her five books of poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, and Kenyon Review, and have won six major awards. She is a U. of Michigan alumna and now lives in Gastonia, North Carolina.

Dannye Romine Powell, newspaper editor and author of In the Sunroom with Raymond Carver and four other poetry collections, often depicts troubles with close relatives. She has published in Ploughshares, Paris Review, and Poetry. She once occupied the former bedroom of Sylvia Plath during a residency at the Yaddo Foundation’s mansion.

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM  •  Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Rainey Lamey.

January 27 – Hedy Habra is a polyglot essayist and artist whose third book of poems, The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Award. Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was finalist for the International Book Award. She has lived in Egypt, Lebanon, Greece, Brussels, and now Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her website is hedyhabra.com

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM  •  Wednesday, January 27, 2020
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Rainey Lamey.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the bestselling novel, Once Upon a River, and the story collection American Salvage—a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent story collection is entitled Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. She has received a Pushcart Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM  •  Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are welcome to to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Your hosts: Ed Morin, David Jibson and Rainey Lamey.

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American whose five books of poems address themes of war, exile, and loss. She has received Guggenheim and Kresge fellowships, the Arab American Book Award, and the U.N. Human Rights Award. She currently teaches Arabic language and literature at Oakland University. Her reading will be bilingual.

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM  •  Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic.
Participants are invited to read a poem of their own or a favorite.

Donovan Hohn is the author of Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, a New York Times Notable Book and runner-up for two major awards. His essays appear in Harper’s, Lapham’s Quarterly, and Best Creative Nonfiction. He will read from The Inner Coast: Essays, published last June.

Natalie Bakopoulos is the author of two novels: The Green Shore and the recently published Scorpionfish. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and O. Henry Prize Stories. She’s an assistant professor at Wayne State University and faculty member of the summer program, Writing Workshops in Greece.

7:00 PM – 8:45 PM  •  Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Email cwpoetrycircle@gmail.com for Zoom link.
The link will be sent via email the day of the event.

The reading will be followed by an open mic. Participants are invited to read a poem of their own or a favorite.