Albany Poets returns to McGeary’s on Monday, November 24 for the pre-Thanksgiving edition of Poets Speak Loud. This month we are very happy to welcome four incredible poets, under the name “Pilot Light”, from Western Massachusetts as our featured readers – Eliza Ryan, Gabriel Squailia, Melissa Quirk, and Stan Spencer.
Eliza Ryan has been blogging and writing poetry for several years. She has competed in the WordXWord Poetry Slam and WordXWord Story Slam as well as many other spoken word events in her native Berkshires. Her favorite animal is the squid, closely seconded by the river otter. She gets really annoyed when her friends don’t understand her awesome lowbrow pop-culture references and she prefers hugs over handshakes.
Gabriel Squailia is an author, DJ, and nap enthusiast from Pittsfield, MA. His first novel, Dead Boys, a fantastic adventure set in the underworld, will be released in March 2015 from Talos Press.
Melissa Quirk is a poet, actor, director, and teacher in Berkshire County. She has performed her poetry as a feature artist as a part of InWords/OutWords in Housatonic, MA, and as a feature at Outspoken!, the 10X10 Poetry series, and the Greenfield Word Festival, and appeared on Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s Indiefeed Performance Poetry podcast “Live from the Amy Clampitt House.” In addition, Melissa has competed in several poetry slams across Berkshire County including the WordxWord Poetry Slam and the Western Mass. Championships. She can frequently be found on the Tuesday Night Project stage at Y Bar as a poet, storyteller, or emcee. Melissa’s work has been published in The Mind’s Eye and Rogue Particles. Melissa graduated from Mount Holyoke College, earned her Masters degree at Lesley University, and is an alumna corps member of Teach for America. She currently teaches English at Drury High School in North Adams, MA, where she lives with her husband and two cats, Atticus and Boo.
Stan Spencer is a native of Berkshire County and is a retired administrator who has worked in public education in five different decades. He was traumatized as a pre-adolescent in a Little League parade wearing a purple and gray baseball uniform left over from the defunct Moose Club while his teammates all wore brand new red and white uniforms emblazoned with Hayden Oil across the front. He did get to wear a bright red hat. During his growth spurt, he had trouble chewing gum and walking at the same time. He decided early on that he could talk a better game than he could play. He’s been making up shit ever since.
Poets Speak Loud is Albany Poets’ long-running monthly open mic for poetry and spoken word with a featured poet hosted by local poet Mary Panza at McGeary’s (4 Clinton Square) in downtown Albany on the last Monday of each and every month.
Sign-up for the open mic is 7:00pm, we start around 8pm.
[location post_id=”10748″]
#_LOCATIONNAME
#_LOCATIONADDRESS
#_LOCATIONTOWN, #_LOCATIONSTATE #_LOCATIONPOSTCODE
[/location]
Comments are closed.