Thom Francis is the president of Albany Poets and 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 15 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.
In the midst of the weekend of parades, Mall sales, & backyard cookouts poets showed up to read their work & listen to others & then … but I’ll leave that for the end. So Mike Burke served as MC then Edie Abrams took over introducing the…
Another great night for poetry and spoken word at Valentine’s on Tuesday, May 15 as we huddled together for the 18th edition of Nitty Gritty Slam. We had a few
We have a lot of poetry events coming up next week. For a third week in a row, there are seven full days of open mics and readings going on
It was a mighty crowd at Professor Java’s this past Monday night for the May edition of the Wide Open Mic. Kevin Peterson began the evening by reminding us that it was,
Dustin Walker readingThom Francis, el presidente, was a busy man tonight, hosting the open mic, keeping score & slamming. The open mic offered a great variety of poems & poets, starting with Leslie Michelle doing a poem by someone else, then D…
Some people love them. Some people don’t care for them. Some folks don’t like the idea of poetry as competition. Some performers thrive on the rush of being on stage. Anyway
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…
The 2012 edition of Albany WordFest is a week-long heart attack of events, starting with this night’s reading by Albany poets who were there at the beginning: Thom Francis, R.M. Engelhardt, Mary Panza, Don Levy, Marcus Anderson, A.C. Everson, Mojavi, &…
We kicked off the 2012 Albany Word Fest in grand style yesterday with Pitchapalooza at St. Rose in the afternoon and then we headed down to McGeary’s for the Founders
I have been the only girl in lots of situations. For years, I have preferred the friendships of men over women. It was just easier dealing with men. They are
This was a night of pseudonyms as there were more folks on stage with alternate names than their given names. Actually there were a couple of poets who had a
The 2008 Albany Word Fest followed a similar format to the 2007 event, but without the midday performances on Saturday. We gathered at the UAG Gallery on a beautiful spring Friday night
