Coral in The Diaspora by Jerrice J. Baptiste is a collection that captures the lives of the Haitian people as they embrace the goodness in their community. It celebrates the wisdom of the elders as leaders who are cherished for their commitment to help the island thrive. Each member of the island's community is welcomed and valued for their special gifts and the joy they each create by being unique souls. Coral in The Diaspora creates a visceral experience for its readers through its colorful imagery and beautiful language by giving voice to the island of Haiti.

Learn more and/or preorder the book at Adobe Press.

About the Author

Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet born in Haiti. She has educated different ages through her seven multicultural children’s books with the whimsical talented artist April Matula, and also by her full-length poetry book titled Wintry Mix. As an author she has presented her books in hundreds of public & private schools since 2013. She is also the founder of Authentic Poetry workshops in The Hudson Valley, NY for the past 20 years. She has been a recurring teaching artist/poet at The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Jerrice was a recipient of a CREATE Grant for poetry performance & Teaching in Prattsville, NY in 2022, and also a recipient of a residency for the Women’s Leadership Program at The Omega Institute in 2019. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Jerry Jazz Musician for 2024 and as Best of The Net by Blue Stem for 2022. Jerrice has been the featured poet on Planet Poet: Words in Space in Roxbury, NY, The Woodstock Poetry Society, and The International Women’s Writing Guild. Her poetry has been published and is forthcoming in Urthona: Buddhism & Art, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & The Arts, Artemis Journal, The Yale Review, Mantis, Poetica Review, The Minetta Review, The Banyan Review, Kosmos Journal, The Caribbean Writer, Big Wing Review and hundreds of others. Jerrice enjoys doing humanitarian work for others in Haiti. Her poetry and collaborative songwriting are featured on the Grammy award nominated album, Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti.

The Bay Area’s long-running Porchlight Storytelling series comes to the Poetry Barn with tales of movin’ on. Featuring Michael Shaieb, Doug Stoley, Kristina Mercer, Katie Von Schleicher, and Paul Boocock. Hosted by Beth Lisick. Music by Eli Crews. Doors at 7 pm, show at 7:30 pm. By Donation.

Michael Shaieb is an author, composer, and arranger. Stage: book/music/lyrics for the choral oratorios "Through A Glass, Darkly", "Alexander's House", and "Out Of My Range (and Other Age-Related Performance Issues)" and music/lyrics for "Go-Go Beach". Film scores: “Decay”, "Last Days of Left Eye" (VH1 Rock Docs), and "Come Back Anytime”. Selected choral: “The Kushner Trilogy” and "Quiet No More", commissioned for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. Upcoming: debut novel “The Green Barn” and a stage adaptation of “Go Ask Alice” with collaborator John Wimbs. Michael was born in Detroit and graduated from NYU Tisch with an MFA in Graduate Musical Theatre Writing. fatlab.com/michael

Doug Stoley is a musician, director and goofy actor originally from Villa Park, Il, a half hour west of Chicago.  Stoley has been a mass-market morning radio DJ on Q101 in Chicago, an RCA Records recording artist with music featured on the Dumb and Dumber Soundtrack, a regular performer on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, a featured improviser with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre, an artist and animator with work featured on At Home with Amy Sedaris on Tru Tv, and a director of creative audio for TV, live productions, and numerous award-winning advertising campaigns. He also loves cats.

Boocock was in the original cast of several Elevator Repair Service shows, is a New York Innovative Theatre award-nominated monologist and was half of cult comedy-duo PREMIUM BOB. He has been in plays written by Christina Masciotti and directed by Jim Simpson, David Herskovits, Kristin Marting and Ben Williams. Film & TV work include: Hal Hartley's 'Henry Fool Trilogy', SYFY's 'Arachnoquake' and ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent.’ He co-founded writers collective Verbal Supply Company and is a contributing writer to Krautkrämer's MeatWater™ Manifesto. Boocock is the voice of Jonas Venture Sr. and others on Adult Swim’s ‘Venture Bros.’

Kristina Mercer is a Catskills-based screenwriter and compulsive joke yapper. She also assists in both script coverage and project marketing where needed, and is sometimes a student-teacher for various Zoom writers' groups. Hopefully one day AI will commandeer all of the above, so she can fully commit to petting dogs. In the meantime, she is bringing shame back to the internet and hosting Night Mic, a standup mic at Nightswim Kingston. She has never taken a leap in her life. 

Katie von Schleicher is a musician, engineer & producer living in Brooklyn, NY. About her latest record, “A Little Touch of Schleicher In The Night” Pitchfork said, “…she makes being a loser sound lush, teetering between cheeky, aggressively charming pop and dreamy balladry.” As an engineer and producer, she has worked with a number of bands and solo artists including Cassandra Jenkins, Moon Mullins, Lady Lamb, and the band she currently plays in, Frankie Cosmos. Katie interviewed the late producer Steve Albini for Talkhouse and provided commentary on the audio tour for the Paul McCartney photo exhibit “Eyes of the Storm’ at the Brooklyn Museum. Top obsessions include Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and her parakeet Ursula. 

RSVP Kindly Requested (but not required)

Join local poet Linda McCauley Freeman as she reads from her second book THE MARRIAGE MANUAL

The Marriage Manual is an intense poetic journey through two marriages, and the lessons the narrator learns about the myth of happily ever after. Relying on both narrative and lyrical sequences, as well as haiku-like explorations, the book takes the reader through the emotional geography of married love and the ever-repeating cycle of romantic love, hope, disappointment, despair, fear, joy and, finally, mature love. 

“Read The Marriage Manual and enter love in all its incarnations.”
–Darcy Smith, author of River Skin 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of the full-length poetry collections The Marriage Manual (BWP, 2024) and The Family Plot: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2022) and has been widely published in international journals, including in a Chinese translation. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been the featured U.S. poet in The Poet Magazine and won Grand Prize in StoriArts’ Maya Angelou poetry contest. Lines from her poem Made in America were selected by Kwame Alexander to use in his Civil Community Poem and are on display at the Civil Rights Memorial Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an MFA from Bennington College and is the former poet-in-residence of the Putnam Arts Council. She lives in Marlboro, NY, where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor. Follow her at www.LindaMcCauleyFreeman.com, Facebook@LindaMcCauleyFreeman and Twitter@LindaMccFreeman

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ONLINE SALES HAVE ENDED. IF INTERESTED IN ATTENDING, PLEASE CONTACT celticnametz@gmail.com

Come enter the magic of ancient and contemporary Irish Gaelic music with Jeanne Nametz, Sean Nos singer and Steve Stanne, guitarist with musical friends Julie Last, Ned Leavitt, Lynn Margileth, and Sarah Underhill. The Ceol Na H-Aite, Music of the Place sings the soul's journey with ancient Gaelic songs and sung Irish poetry, inspired and composed from walking the sacred sites of Ireland.

About Jeanne Nametz & Steve Stanne

This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Ira Walzer is an author/illustrator of young children’s picture books including “Harold Won’t Fly!: An Awakening Tale” and “Mozzarella Cheese, Please!” He will read and share illustrations from the books. The event will including a coloring and musical activity, too.

RSVP kindly requested, but not required.

About the Books

Join us Sunday, April 28, from 4-6 PM, to celebrate the opening of Restless Forms, artwork by Lynn Palumbo. Using a limited palette, these multi-media artworks, including several inspired by poems, employ a visual vocabulary of recurring shapes, patterns and textures abstracted from daily observation.

The opening will include a silent auction, a raffle including one of the artist’s works, and a poetry reading featuring Tina Barry, Darcy Smith, Matthew Spireng, Sharon Israel & Bobbi Esmark.

Light refreshments. RSVP requested.

The exhibition includes three works inspired by poetry. Palumbo says “I am not a poet but have often turned to poetry as a source of connection and sustenance. I think of both painting and poetry as art forms of synthesis, extracting fragments of everyday life and re-ordering them.”

Facts of Life (above) was inspired by a poem by Eamon Grennan. In the opening line, the narrator states a desire to simply observe, dispassionately. Then follows a list, rather like thumbnail sketches done quickly in a sketchbook. Using cyanotypes and acrylics, Ms. Palumbo captures the immersive quality of such an ordinary/extraordinary moment, accompanied by her hand-lettered version of the poem:

This free public performance will begin with Page-to-Stage poets reading one work each and culiminate with Mr. Gonzalez reading a few selections from his inaugural collection of poetry, Soundings (Poetry Box, 2023).

Page-to-Stage Poets

Anique Taylor, Catherine Arra, Darcy Smith, David Budd, Julia Indichova, Mary Ladany, Natasha Williams, Margaret Reynolds, Tina Barry, Theresa Daniel, Tom Caplan, Valerie Linet, Wendy Kagan, Susan Coronel, Nova*Darkstar

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.

This project is conceived of and administered by AIM Higher.

Seats are all taken as of 11 AM.

Scottish-born Donegal musician Ian Smith performs Wednesday, November 15th at  7pm. Ian’s music has received three Album of the Year nominations from “Irish Music Magazine”. Clannad’s Moya Brennan says Ian "really brings out the Donegal influence in his writing and performance. He embraces the nature of the place with passion.”

Ian will be joined by his friend and musical collaborator Rob Stein, guitarist extraordinaire. Rob brings an artistic passion to Irish and other traditional music from across the pond. He recently returned from a 10 year residency in Ireland: performing and recording and appearing on Ian’s ‘The Woodstock Sessions’ as player, arranger and producer.

Here is Ian performing “Upon Culloden`s Moor” (with Peter Kerlin):

Note: This event is hosted by Jeanne Nametz. Prepay $20 to reserve a seat by November 11th.  Seating is limited. Contact Jeanne Nametz to prepay and reserve a spot at : celticnametz@gmail.com.

Lauren Camp

New Mexico Poet Laureate Lauren Camp is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023) and Worn Smooth Between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023).

She was awarded a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Other honors include a Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award and the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry. In 2022, she was Astronomer in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Lauren is the recipient of fellowships from Denver Botanic Gardens, The Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities and Black Earth Institute. She was a visiting writer at the Mayo Clinic, and artist in residence at Lowell Observatory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Missouri Review, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day.

Her work has been translated into Turkish, Mandarin, Serbian, Arabic, French and Spanish. She teaches for Poetry Out Loud-New Mexico and leads her own community workshops.

Kasey Jueds

Kasey Jueds is a poet living in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Cave Wall, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Provincetown Arts, River Styx, Salamander, The Southampton Review, Tinderbox, and Waxwing. Keeper, her first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in fall, 2013. Her second book, The Thicket, was published by Pitt in November, 2021.

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Join us in community for another fourth Friday open mic ~ Halloween edition! Bring your poems/songs/stories about alter-egos and shadow-sides, costume-optional!

Sign-up starts at 6 PM, with performances to begin at 6:30 PM. Each performer will have 5-10 minutes. (Length of time will depend on turnout). Hope to see and/or hear you there!

• Coffee, tea, sparkling water and conversation.

• RSVP requested. not required.

• Potluck/BYOB optional.

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Join us in celebrating the launch of Mary K O'Melveny’s new book of poetry Flight Patterns!

About the Book:

“[These] poems are fierce and tender, political and melodious all at the same time. Like a prayer, they use hidden rhyme for incantation and hypnosis….They will guide you gently if you forgot how to be patient and kind. They will inspire you if you forgot how to have faith….Above all, they will inspire you to be mindful of the earth, generous with nature, caring to birds.”

-Dr. Lucia Cherciu, Professor, English Department, SUNY/Dutchess; Poet Laureate, Dutchess County, NY 2020-2022

“This beautiful, courageous, truthful book makes for delightful reading. Flight Patterns begins with memories rich in the physical joy of nature. Through these contemplative, imaginative and image-filled poems, we experience the poet’s love of birds and her concern for losses in our natural environment.”

-Rhina P. Espaillat, Poet, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Translator, Teacher, Author

“Mary K O’Melveny’s poetry is atmospheric and magical, tender and humorous, revealing and smart.... Highly recommended!”

-Joe Maita, Editor/Publisher, Jerry Jazz Musician

About the Author

Flight Patterns is Mary K O’Melveny’s fourth book of poetry. Mary, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives near Woodstock, New York with her wife Susan. She has been published in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and national blog sites. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mary has also won or  been a finalist in several poetry competitions and received award recognition in national and international contests. Her other poetry volumes are A Woman of a Certain Age, Merging Star Hypotheses and Dispatches From The Memory Care Museum. Mary is also a member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her work appears in their anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking the Ground Rules. Mary is a co-presenter of writing workshops at Lifespring Saugerties. Her website is: https://www.marykomelvenypoet.com  

Free with registration. Please RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited to 35 guests.

Making a mark with brush & ink awakens the world. Held by the ancient principles of heaven, earth & human, we will engage in a simple ritual to create large spontaneous brushstrokes on paper. Join us for this enlivening and interactive gathering.

Teaching Artist

Barbara Bash has been exploring the mixing of  Asian sensibility with Western art forms for many years.  She guides group experiences of creative aliveness  with brush, ink and natural ceremony. Barbara is a Shambhala meditation instructor and has collaborated with musicians, storytellers, and dancers in fresh forms of visual learning. 

For more information about her work visit - barbarabash.com

Open mic sign-up starts at 6 PM, with performances to begin at 6:30 PM. Each performer will have 5-10 minutes. (Length of time will depend on turnout).

Free with RSVP, below. Hope to see & hear you there!

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Join us in celebrating the launch of Lissa Kiernan’s new book of poetry The Whispering Wall!
Free with registration. Celebration to follow.

About the Book:

“Besotted with, weighted with Beauty, The Whispering Wall constructs delicious sonic tangles and brutally candid testimonies. Seductions and menacing of drink, of violence, shadow the speaker’s journey. Guiding all is the gorgeous dreaminess in Kiernan’s voice, pouring into us its alchemies: art itself is the elixir that distracts from, or miraculously surpasses, illusion or myth. A witchy and sardonic wit’s at work, too, in these poems, singing with Stevie Smith, and with Plath. What a great gift of solace and heart this book is.”

– Judith Vollmer, author of THE SOUND BOAT: New and Selected Poems

“Fueled by precise, textured diction, Lissa Kiernan’s compelling collection The Whispering Wall stares down its ghosts. These poems possess a raven wildness. These are poems of vision and verve.”

—Sally Rosen Kindred, author of Where the Wolf

"Elegiac and alive with all five senses, plus whatever sixth sense allows us to perceive the metaphysical mysteries of life and death, Lissa Kiernan's The Whispering Wall limns the mists of grief and memory and delineates the lucidity of having a body." 

– Kathleen Rooney, author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

“The poems in Lissa Kiernan’s The Whispering Wall walk a tightrope between worlds—grief and praise, beauty and ruin, revelation and secrets, the sacred and the profane, dark humor and wonder—and, in that daringly exhilarating and very tricky journey create another world that merges opposites, that accepts both the willingness and unwillingness to embrace all the different dimensions of a life intensely lived.”

—Christien Gholson, author, All the Beautiful Dead

About the Author

Founding director of The Poetry Barn and AIM Higher, Lissa Kiernan's second poetry collection, The Whispering Wall (2023), won the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. In 2018, her first book of prose, Glass Needles & Goose Quills, won the Nautilus Gold for lyric prose. Her first poetry collection, Two Faint Lines in the Violet, was short-listed for the 2015 Foreword Indies and the Julie Suk Award. She lives in West Hurley with her husband, Chris, and a fluctuating number of felines. More at http://lissakiernan.com

Please RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited to 30 guests.

Come hear how this poet weaves words into spells! Annie Finch is one of our most vital and important American poets and performers. She is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Spells: New and Selected Poems. Her other works include influential essays, books, and anthologies on poetics, feminism, and women’s earth-based spirituality. She is widely recognized for her mesmerizing poetry performances and mastery of poetic craft. 

Annie’s poetry has appeared in the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Paris Review, and the Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, and has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Malayalam, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. 

Educated at Yale and Stanford University, where she earned her Ph.D, she has lectured at universities including Berkeley, Harvard, and Oxford and performed her poetry across the United States and in India, Mexico, Africa, and throughout Europe.

Suggested Donation: $10
Light refreshments
Limited to 30 guests

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This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Join us in celebrating the launch of Catherine Arra’s new book of poetry “Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues.“ Free with registration. Light refreshments. An open mic will follow.

About the Book:

Like a third eye, the poems in Catherine Arra's Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues reach beyond mere physical sight to the enlightened realm of the spiritual. Finding solace in nature and ancient wisdom, Arra traverses such worldly challenges as Covid-19, a deadly deer virus, and profound relationship disappointments. Her deft lyric poems-including a pantoum-and spirited persona poems act as an intimate portal through which New York's Catskill Mountains and tarot's Major Arcana archetypes spring to life. From "the desert of quarantine" to the dislocation of a broken marriage, Arra's magical collection ushers readers on an illuminating inner journey across "the bridge between seen and unseen," offering the sagacious "reminder to look up. Beyond."
-Jo Pitkin, author of Rendering and Village: Recession

In pared-down pandemic life, a time for walking, reflecting, and days sustained by nature and a woman's fortitude, Catherine Arra finds "Second Seasons." She writes, "In distilled grace, let us plant a garden for / regret, sorrow, forgiveness, tend the past in beginnings." By turns folksy, lyrical, caustic, and determined, her poems speak with a toughened wisdom that won't suffer fools but knows the truth of love. Her tarot poems offer a master class in persona poetry. Each speaks with a spiky personality to deliver truths that are entertaining, painful, but never wrong. A smart and heartful book.
-Will Nixon, author of My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse and The Pocket Guide to Woodstock

About the Author

Catherine Arra is a former English and writing teacher. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary journals online and in print, and in several anthologies. She is the author of Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues, (Kelsay Books, 2022), Deer Love (Dos Madres Press, 2021), Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein, (Finishing Line Press, 2020), (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos Madres Press, 2018) and three chapbooks. A Pushcart nominee, she lives in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time, and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com.

Please RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited to 30 guests.

Join us in celebrating the Spring Equinox and the release of Cory Nakasue’s new chapbook “The Cosmic Event of the Body.“ Cory’s reading will be followed by a Q&A and Open Mic!

In the event of inclement weather, the date will be changed to April 16.

About the book:

The Cosmic Event of the Body is a collection of poems and other writing that are meant to be felt or performed. They come from bodily situations that include dance, therapy sessions, and attempts to connect the body to narratives, structures, and environments. Cory situates a cosmic dramaturgy as a dismantling tool that can activate dynamic, erotic experience; a way to prepare a body for the penetration of metaphors that catalyze movement. The contents are multivalent in their usage. The poems can inform choreographic scores, somatic rituals, dramaturgical processes, or embodied horoscopes. They can also be enjoyed as poems.

About the Author

Cory Nakasue is a theatre artist and poet whose work includes choreography, dramaturgy, and video. Her original dance and theater pieces have been presented internationally. Her poetry has been published in Aligned Magazine, Summer Stock Journal, The Poetry Distillery, and Gathering Space among others. She is currently the astrologer-in-residence at AIM HIgher, Chronogram, and Opus 40. You can hear her on The Cosmic Dispatch, a weekly live radio show/podcast describing stories from the cosmos.

Cory holds an MA in Choreography and Performance Studies from Middlesex University, London, and did additional graduate work in theatre at California Institute of the Arts. She has maintained a movement education and therapy practice for 20 years called Body Intelligence. She lives in Kingston, New York.

Free with registration. Light refreshments.

Please RSVP to reserve your seat

Join us in celebrating the release of Cash on Cash: Interviews and Encounters with Johnny Cash by local writer, performer, teacher and musician Robert Burke Warren.

From Chicago Review Press:

Cash on Cash offers unprecedented insight into one of the most significant American cultural figures of the twentieth century. Throughout a decades-long career, as Cash took risks, embracing new technologies, formats, and attitudes, he cleaved to a simple, core message of unvarnished truth. From hardscrabble Arkansas poor boy to rockabilly roustabout; international fame to drug addiction and disgrace; born again Christian to gimlet-eyed chronicler of spiritual darkness; TV and movie star to Nashville reject; redemption to loss and back again, several times. Cash’s story shines unfiltered light on a journey of archetypal proportions that resonates still.

For more information or to order the book, click here.

About the Author

Robert Burke Warren is a writer, performer, teacher, and musician, author of novel Perfectly Broken and one-man show Redheaded Friend and editor of Cash on Cash: Interviews & Encounters with Johnny Cash. His work appears in Longreads, Salon, Texas Music, Brooklyn Parent, The Woodstock Times, Paste, The Rumpus, The Bitter Southerner, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, among others. You can find his music on albums by RuPaul, Rosanne Cash, and rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson; The Roots used his tune "The Elephant In the Room" as John McCain's entrance theme on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. In the 90s, he performed the lead in the West End musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Prior to that he was a globetrotting bass player. He lives in Phoenicia, NY.

Free with registration. Light refreshments. Limited to 30 vaccinated guests.