Hailing originally from the Helderberg Mountains Avery has been in and out of the poetry scene for over a decade. His college days saw him venture deeply into the wilds of poetry and he has been lost there ever since, escaping from time to time to perform in front of audiences and then vanishing back into the nether realms of run on sentences, flowery metaphors and convoluted analogies.
If you were not at Valentine’s last Tuesday night for Nitty Gritty Slam #27, you missed out on an incredible night of poetry and spoken word. The room was packed
at McGeary’s Tavern on Clinton Square, especially when we are roasting el presidente of AlbanyPoets.com, Thom Francis, we are not only LOUD but out-fucking-rageous. Of course, led on by our host Mary Panza. But first she had to clear out the room o…
at the Social Justice Center. A lovely summer evening with poets & audience gathering early for the open mic & eventual arrival of the featured poet, Mojavi. But to start us off I invoked the Muse of the late poet/activist/fiction writer Grac…
There has been a recent change in the rules here, allowing poets to read in both the open mic & the Slam, of which no one took advantage tonight. Avery began the open mic with his piece in praise of dance then sat down; open mic host Mojavi brough…
In what was billed as the “Blood Sport” edition of the Nitty Gritty Slam in order to fill the open spots on Team Nitty Gritty, the poets who came out
&, man, did we ever have to this night, out in the dining area of McGeary’s rather than in our clubhouse backroom. We also shared the stage with the wonderful Ramblin’ Jug-Stompers, but that was a good thing. They are a blue-grass, old-time, blue…
A lovely evening, so nice that thousands of people were running through the streets of Albany in their underwear — actually, the annual Corporate Run. Our featured poet, Elizabeth Thomas, came all the way over from Connecticut, with another CT poet, …
Tonight at the recently refurbished Pride Center there were some folding chairs for the poets, but still no comfy couches — still better than sitting on the radiator, as some did last month.Waiting for the feature to arrive, our host Don Levy started …
So the center tables in the back room of McGeary’s has become the place where AlbanyPoets (or Albany poets) gather with our drinks & food as we wait for the open mic to begin. There is lots of room & even if you are a poetry virgin, if there i…
It’s all over except the shenanigans (or as we used to say, the “PsychoClusterFuck”). Karaoke + Poetry = Fun was held upstairs at Valentines. Lila ran the music machine & in order to sing you had to first read a poem. There was a great variety o…
WASABI!!! An ode to a finely ground root my chopstick slices down through the perfectly squeezed flower of electric lime green goo severing just enough of that finely ground root
So we gathered once again, this time on the Ides of March, at the Social Justice Center not to stab Caesar but to read poetry. It looked like a short night but as the evening progressed more readers showed up. Tonight when I invoked the Muse it was …
