Poetry Night with Andy Clausen, Sarah Giragosian, and Jordan Smith

The first Wednesday of every month is Poetry Night at Caffe Lena. Tonight’s featured poets are Andy Clausen, Sarah Giragosian, and Jordan Smith. Our monthly poetry night is hosted and curated by Carol Graser.

ANDY CLAUSEN has read his poetry all over North America and the world. (New York, California, Alaska, Texas, Prague, Kathmandu, Amsterdam) He was co-editor of Poems for the Nation with Allen Ginsberg and Eliot Katz (Seven Stories Press) and an editor at Long Shot  Magazine. He is the author of 40^th Century Man and Home of the Blues, among other books of poetry. Andy has written about his adventures with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Ray Bremser, Janine Pommy Vega, Peter Orlovsky, and many others  in his latest book, Beat: The Latter Days of the Beat Generation, a First Hand Account (Autonomedia 2018). He is currently working on a book about his backpacking travels around Asia and Europe as well as a new volume of poetry. woodstockbeatpoet.com

SARAH GIRAGOSIAN is the author of the poetry collection Queer Fish, a winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize (Dream Horse Press, 2017) and The Death Spiral (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). The craft anthology, Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems, which is co-edited by Sarah and Virginia Konchan, is forthcoming from The University of Akron Press. Sarah’s writing has appeared in such journals as Orion, Ecotone, Tin House, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She teaches at the University at Albany-SUNY.

JORDAN SMITH is the author of eight full-length books of poems, most recently Little Black Train, winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Prize, Clare’s Empire, a fantasia on the life and work of John Clare from The Hydroelectric Press, and The Light in the Film from the University of Tampa Press. He has also worked on several collaborations with artist, Walter Hatke, including What Came Home and Hat & Key. The recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, he lives with his wife, Malie, in upstate New York, where he plays fiddle and is the Edward Everett Hale Jr., Professor of English at Union College.