Poets in the Park is celebrating over 20 years of bringing poetry in July to the Robert Burns statue in Washington Park, Albany, NY. The series was started in 1989 by the late Tom Nattell and is now run by Albany poet & photographer Dan Wilcox. This year the readings will be on Saturdays July 11, 18 and 25; the readings start at 7:00 PM and are free & open to the public; donations are accepted. The series is co-sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild; for more information about the Guild visit the website www.hvwg.org.
The 2015 readers are:
- July 11: The Nitty Gritty Slam Team, with guest host Thom Francis
- July 18: Paul Pines and Karen Schoemer
- July 25: Alison Koffler and Dayl Wise
The 2015 Nitty Gritty Slam Team consists of Poetyc Visionz, Amani, Elizag, and Daniel Summerhill. The poets had competed at the Nitty Gritty Slams held at The Low Beat twice a month, & had garnered the most points to represent Albany at the Slam Nationals in Oakland, CA in August. The guest host for July 11 will be Thom Francis, President of Albany Poets.
Paul Pines is the author of two novels, The Tin Angel and Redemption, and a memoir My Brother’s Madness. He has published twelve collections of poetry, including Reflections in a Smoking Mirror, New Orleans Variations & Paris Ouroboros, and Fishing On The Pole Star, the Adirondack Center for Writers’ best book of poetry 2014. His recent collection is Message From the Memoirist. Pines is a psychotherapist and hosts the Lake George Jazz Weekend.
Karen Schoemer is a poet, author, performer and bookseller in Columbia County. Her poems have been published in Chronogram, Up the River, Zephyrs, and Red Barn; her book Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair With ’50s Pop Music was published by Free Press in 2006. As the vocalist for the Schoemer Formation, a “spoken-psych” rock trio, she has been described as “Patti Smith without the piety.”
Alison Koffler’s poems often branch from those spaces where the human and natural world connect. She was the recipient of the Poetry Teacher of the Year award in 2003, the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Award for poetry in 1993, 2000 and 2006, and the Green Heron Poetry Contest in 2011. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Iris: a Journal for Women, Heliotrope, andHome Planet News. She works as a teacher consultant for the NYC Writing Project at Lehman College.
Dayl Wise was raised in the Hudson River Valley. He was drafted into the US Army in 1969 with service in Viet Nam and Cambodia, and returned to Viet Nam in 1993 in the form of reconciliation delivering medical supplies. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, and is the author of Poems and other stuff(PTP, 2004) and Basic Load (PTP, 2009).
Dayl and Alison are the co-founders of Post Traumatic Press, a small, independent press in Woodstock, New York. Currently they live in The Bronx and Woodstock with Molly, a pit bull-lab mix and Cole, a border-collie mix.
The Robert Burns statue is located near where Henry Johnson Blvd. passes through Washington Park and crosses Hudson Ave. Please bring your own chairs or blankets to sit on. Rain site for each event is the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany.
For more information contact Dan Wilcox, at dwlcx@earthlink.net; 518-482-0262.
