Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue, Albany. 7 p.m. sign-up; 7:30 p.m. start. Featured poet John Roche (as part of the Black Mountain North series) with an open mic for community poets before and after the feature. $3 donation suggested; more if you got it, less if you can’t.

John Roche is an Associate Professor of English at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he advises the campus literary magazine, “Signatures,” and teaches a variety of literature and creative writing classes.  His full-length poetry collections, “Topicalities” (2008) and “On Conesus” (2005) are available from Foothills Publishing (Kanona, NY). 

A reading by a local or regional poet is held each Third Thursday at the Social Justice Center, and includes an open mic for audience members to read. Sign-up starts at 7:00, with readings beginning at 7:30. Host is Albany poet and photographer Dan Wilcox. Suggested donation is $3.00, which helps support this and other poetry programs of the Poetry Motel Foundation, and the work of the Social Justice Center. For more information contact Wilcox at 518-482-0262; e-mail: dwlcx@earthlink.net.

see poster here 

The Adirondack Center for Writing presents author and historian Colin Wells as the final speaker in their annual Reading Series. The series hosts writers and poets from the North Country at local venues to share their recent work. Wells’ talk is titled “Potty Humor and History” and will explore Nicolo Machiavelli’s friendship with the “first modern historian.” He will speak on September 16^th at 7PM at The Grange Hall in Whallonsburg, NY. The event is FREE and open to the public. 

Colin Wells has been interested in history and its formation since his undergraduate days at UCLA, and has published widely, from Sailing to Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Changed the World, to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Saudi Arabia. His most recent book is called A Brief History of History: Great Historians and the Epic Quest to Explain the Past. The book brings together evocative sketches of the great historians with concise summaries of their most important works. Wells demonstrates how brilliant minds have changed our understanding of history, how history itself moved forward over time as a way of approaching the past, and why "history" is a startlingly fluid concept, with an evolutionary course--a story--all its own. The American Library Association’s Booklist said, “Wells brings vividly to life this history of a long-lost era and its opulent heritage.”

            In addition to historical commentary, Wells has published a children’s mystery titled Stick Like Glue and is working on a new book titled The Longest War: The Epic Clash of Faith and Reason, from Abraham to Zygotes. He lives with his two Samoyeds and a crew of cats in Westport, where he writes for the local paper.

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            Jay Rogoff is the author of several collections of poetry, including his most recent work, The Long Fault, released in 2008. The Long Fault “explores sacred and secular history, including wars as ancient as Troy and as contemporary as Iraq… Like Hamlet staring into the eyes of Death, The Long Fault resists the encroaching dark with the imaginative sympathy, strong lyricism, and strange humor that powerful poetry can provide.” The collection launches with an invocation of Cain – “from the good book hurled / out to beget the world” – and continues to introduce literary and historical figures from Tristan & Isolde to Einstein to “The Guy Who Passed Me Doing 90 MPH and Playing the Trumpet.” 

            The Long Fault has been called “dazzling, soaring, inspiring poetry,” by Andrew Hudgins, while essayist Rachel Hadas said, “Rogoff is a wise and seasoned observer who misses almost nothing; we readers are in his debt.” From poet Lucia Perillo -- “Like the guy he spies playing the trumpet while speeding down the freeway, Rogoff takes us zephyring through history, playing his music while sitting behind the wheel.”

            Jay Rogoff is the also the author of the poetry collections The Cutoff, which won the Washington Prize, and How We Came to Stand on That Shore, a series of poems about immigrant history and family history. His verse has appeared in Agni, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, The Progressive, Southern Review, and many other journals. His is a lecturer in English at Skidmore College, and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Mark Your Calendar For Our Third Season! Dan Wilcox will be the featured poet September 26 at 3 pm, Old Songs Community Arts Center, Voorheesville. He will read from his BOUNDLESS ABODES OF ALBANY as well as a selection of new poems.

SUNDAY FOUR POETRY OPEN MIC (three poems per person)
Old Songs Community Arts Center, 37 South Main, Voorheesville, NY

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY, 3 PM

FOR POETS, STRIVING TO-BE POETS,
LOVERS OF LANGUAGE!

HOSTS: Dennis Sullivan, Edie Abrams, Michael Burke,
Contact: dsullivan6@nycap.rr.com