Caffe Lena Poetry Stay Home Session

Caffe Lena’s poetry night will feature our regular host, Carol Graser, as well as two award-winning authors and poets from Upstate NY in Barbara Ungar and Philip Memmer.

The Caffe Lena Stay Home Sessions are performances recorded in the listening room, broadcast live for the community to enjoy during this uncertain time of physical isolation. Please prioritize your health and well-being, and use these nightly live streams as a respite from the stress of our current situation. Picking up its regular slot on the first Wednesday of the month, Caffe Lena’s poetry night will feature our regular host, Carol Graser, as well as two award-winning authors and poets from Upstate NY in Barbara Ungar and Philip Memmer.

To watch the reading, click HERE!  In lieu of an open mic, please add one of your poems in the comment section

Philip Memmer is the author of five books of poems, most recently Pantheon (Lost Horse Press 2019). His other collections include The Storehouses of the Snow and Lucifer: A Hagiography, winner of the 2009 Idaho Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in such journals as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Poetry London, in many anthologies, in the Library of Congress’ Poetry 180 project, and in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column. He is the founder and director of the YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, NY, and Associate Editor for Tiger Bark Press. www.philipmemmer.com

Barbara Ungar’s fifth book, Save Our Ship won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from Ashland Poetry Press and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2019. A limited-edition chapbook, EDGE (named for the EDGE list of Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered species), was published this March from Ethel Press. She will be reading from these two collections. https://barbaraungar.net/

Carol Graser hosts the monthly poetry series at Saratoga Spring’s legendary Caffe Lena on the first Wednesday of every month. Her work has been published in many literary journals, recently in Devilfish Review, Punch Drunk Press, Trailer Park Quarterly and Minute Magazine. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Wild Twist of Their Stems (Foothills Publishing).

About the author: Thom Francis
Thom Francis has been organizing, promoting, and hosting open mics and poetry / spoken word events in Albany such as Nitty Gritty Slam, School of Night, Albany Poets Presents..., and the Albany Word Fest for over 20 years. As a poet and performer, Thom has been featured at many of the upstate poetry and spoken word events from Saratoga to Woodstock as well as LarkFest, Art on Lark, 1st Friday, and the Albany Word Fest.
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