Poets in 350 cities representing 70 countries are currently organizing the largest poetry reading in history with over 400 individual events scheduled to take place simultaneously on September 24th to promote environmental, social, and political change.

Poets, writers, artists, and humanitarians will create, perform, educate and demonstrate, in their individual communities, and decide their own specific area of focus for change within the overall framework of peace and sustainability, which founder Michael Rothenberg stated, “…is a major concern worldwide and the guiding principle for this global event.”

Bob Holman and Margery Snyder, in a recent article on About.com said, “the beauty of the concept of 100 Thousand Poets for Change is that it is completely decentralized and completely inclusive.”

The events range from a poetry and peace gathering in strife-torn Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to poets in Nogales, Mexico and Nogales, Arizona reading poems to each other across the border fence. There are 13 events in Mexico City alone, 24 events planned in India and 7 in Nigeria. Poetry demonstrations are also being organized in political hotspots such as Cairo, Egypt and Madison, Wisconsin. Along the Platte River near Omaha, Nebraska poets will be demonstrating against TransCanada’s planned Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

More examples of events can be easily accessed on the home page of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change website at www.100TPC.org.
All those involved are hoping, through their actions and events, to seize and redirect the political and social dialogue of the day and turn the narrative of civilization towards peace and sustainability.

Each city organizer and their community has an individual Event Location blog page on the main website for posting written material, poetry, artwork, photos, and video to document this global mega-event across national borders.

Immediately following September 24th all documentation on the 100TPC.org website will be preserved by Stanford University in California, which has recognized 100 Thousand Poets for Change as an historical event, the largest poetry reading in history. They will archive the complete contents of the website, 100TPC.org, as part of their digital archiving program LOCKSS.

Founder Michael Rothenberg is a widely known poet, songwriter, editor of the online literary maonline literary magazine Bigbridge.org and an environmental activist based in Northern California.

Local event coordinator Maggie Cleveland is a poet living in Fairhaven, MA. She is the director of the New Bedford-based poetry series Whaling City Review LIVE. Contact her at whalingcityreview@gmail.co​m.

For more information, visit http://www.100TPC.org/

Aalfs, who was the poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts (2003-2005), weaves poetry and martial arts dance in performing, teaching, and social justice activism locally, nationally and internationally.

Collections of her poems are Bird of a Thousand Eyes (Levellers Press, 2010); Reach (Perugia Press, 1999); Full Open (Orogeny Press, 1996); Of Angels and Survivors (Two Herons Press, 1992); Lubec Tides, which was a finalist in the 2007 Bright Hill Literary Center Chapbook Contest; Red (2001) as well as several other self-published chapbooks.

Her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Comstock Review; Monthly Review; The Mindfulness Bell; Onion River Review; Passager; Sinister Wisdom; Common Lives/ Lesbian Lives; A Fierce Brightness: 25 Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books); Crossing Paths (Mad River Press); Martial Arts Teachers on Teaching (North Atlantic Books). She won first prize in poetry contests of the Boston Herald and Peregrine Journal, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Recipient of an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, Aalfs has been a Dodge Festival Poet, New Jersey; a featured performer and instructor at the Power of Words conference, Goddard College; a panelist and workshop facilitator at Split This Rock poetry festival, Washington DC; and a featured performer at Po’Jazz, Hudson Valley Writers Center. In 2009 she traveled to South Africa as a member of a diverse performing artists teaching exchange, and to Japan and China in 2008 to assist Grandmaster Wen Mei Yu, her tai chi teacher.

Director of Valley Women’s Martial Arts: Institute for Healing and Violence-Prevention Strategies since 1982, Aalfs is a 7th degree black belt in Okinawan Karate, a 5th degree black belt in Modern Arnis Filipino stick arts, and a Jian Mei internal arts teacher. She is a founding member of the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation, NWMAF’s self-defense instructor certification program, and the Anti-Racism Council (ARC). Aalfs has taught at schools, conferences, and community centers throughout the U.S, and in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and South Africa.

An Open Mic for anyone in the community who wants to share their poetry or short prose will precede the reading. Come early to sign up, or email whalingcityreview@gmail.com.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.

Chris Souza earned her Master’s in Creative Writing at Boston University where she studied under Robert Pinsky, Derek Walcott, and Rosanna Warren. Her work has appeared in fine journals nationwide including American Literary Review, New York Quarterly, West Branch, Salt Hill, New Delta Review, Gulf Coast, and Connecticut Review. She has twice received the Nevin Prize for Poetry. Her work has also been feature on Verse Daily. She lives and works in Massachusetts.

An Open Mic for anyone in the community who wants to share their poetry or short prose will precede the reading. Come early to sign up, or email whalingcityreview@gmail.com.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.

Considered by critics and peers alike to be one of the true modern masters of the oral tradition, Mwalim (Morgan James Peters) is a multifaceted, Black Wampanoag spoken-word artist, musician, singer, composer, writer, filmmaker and educator. He is a keeper of both the New World Griot and Ahanaeenun/ Sacred Clown traditions. He first emerged in the early 1990’s in the New England spoken-word, storytelling and theater scene and gradually came to national attention, appearing in theaters, lounges, colleges, festivals, jails, museums, libraries, coffeehouses, and various performance venues throughout the USA. He is the published author of one book, A Mixed Medicine Bag (2007, Taking Drum Press), as well as a contributor to numerous edited volumes.

In theatre, he has distinguished himself as a playwright, director, actor and teacher. Receiving his formal training from New African Company in Boston, Mwalim is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Oversoul Theatre Collective, a professional Black and Native American arts and education organization formed in 1994 on Cape Cod. Mwalim’s work has and continues to be presented throughout the United States and Canada. His 2010 CD “The Liberation Sessions” earned him the Best Male Jazz Vocalist spot in the 2010 Urban Music Awards and top nominee slots for Best Pop and Best World Music Recordings in the 2010 Native American Music Awards. He is a tenured Associate Professor of English and African/ African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

An Open Mic for anyone in the community who wants to share their poetry or short prose will precede the reading. Signup for the Open Mic begins at 6:15 PM.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.

Marybeth has had work published in Measure, The Raintown Review, Newport Review, Whale Sound, The Flea, The Worcester Review and many other online and print publications. Her work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has also been a finalist for the Philbrick Award and a semi-finalist for the “Discovery/The Nation” poetry contest.

Marybeth credits the Feminist Women Writers Workshop on Seneca Lake in Ithaca, NY with taking her seriously as a writer and encouraging her work. She then went on to lead their poetry intensive workshops, and currently teaches composition, ESL and basic skills courses at Bristol Community College in Fall River.

An Open Mic for anyone in the community who wants to share their poetry or short prose will precede the reading. Signup for the Open Mic begins at 6:15 PM.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.

Just wanted to remind you that poet Caroline Knox will be reading from her new book, Nine Worthies, at Baker Books this Saturday at 7:00 PM. It should be a great reading – hope to see you there!

UPDATE – Also, due to Baker Books’ new winter schedule (closing a little earlier), there will NOT be an open mic following the reading.

Thanks,
Maggie

Author photo credit: John Landry

Whaling City Review LIVE poetry series and Baker Books are very pleased to welcome Caroline Knox to the Bean and Leaf Café (at Baker Books) for a poetry reading. Knox will be reading from her seventh collection, Nine Worthies, which appeared in 2010 from Wave Books. The reading will take place on the evening of Saturday, January 22nd , at 7:00 PM.

Caroline Knox’s earlier collection of poetry, Quaker Guns (Wave 2008), received a Recommended Reading Award 2009 from the Massachusetts Center for the Book. He Paves the Road with Iron Bars (Verse 2004) won the Maurice English Award 2005 for a book by a poet over 50. A Beaker: New and Selected Poems appeared from Verse in 2002. Her previous books are The House Party and To Newfoundland (Georgia 1984, 1989) and Sleepers Wake (Timken 1994).

She describes her newest book as follows: “Nine Worthies, a work of prose and poetry operating as a sort of historical novella, deals with the life and times of Nathaniel Smibert (1734-1756), portrait painter and son of America’s first portraitist, John Smibert (1688-1751).”

Caroline Knox’s work has appeared in American Scholar, A Public Space, Boston Review, Fulcrum, Harvard, Massachusetts Review, New Republic, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry ( whose Bess Hokin Prize she has won), Providence Sunday Journal, Times Literary Supplement, TriQuarterly, and Yale Review. Her poems have been in Best American Poetry 1988 and 1994, and on Poetry Daily.

She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center (Lannan Senior Fellowship), the Massachusetts Cultural Council (1996, 2006), The Fund for Poetry, and the Yale/Mellon Visiting Faculty Program. She was the judge for the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America in Spring 2003, and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard in 2002-2003. In 2007, she was a juror for the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; in 2008, a Poetry Reviewer for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships Program.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.
#

Joanie DiMartino has work published in many literary journals and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection, “Strange Girls,” was published in 2010 with Little Red Tree Publishing. Her chapbook “Licking the Spoon” was published by Finishing Line Press. She is a past winner of the Betty Gabehart Award for poetry from the Women Writers Conference, Kentucky, and was a finalist in the Cultural Center of Cape Cod poetry competition.

Her poems have been featured in several art exhibits in Lexington, Kentucky, and has had several poems presented by the East Haddam Plays & Players. She is currently at work on several projects, including a collection of poems about the 19th-century whaling industry, a collection of persona poems from the perspective of militant suffragist Alice Paul, and collaborative works with visual artists.

DiMartino holds an MA in public history from Rutgers University. She worked in the history museum field for over fifteen years, and her poetry often addresses historical topics with a feminist perspective.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.

Eve Rifkah will be reading from her latest collection of poetry, OUTCASTS: THE PENIKESE LEPER HOSPITAL 1905-1921, which was published this summer by Little Pear Press. OUTCASTS is a collection of persona poems based on the actual patients and directors of the Penikese Island Leper Hospital, which was located in the Elizabeth Islands off of Cape Cod until it closed in 1921. Patients came from countries around the world including China, Japan, The Azores, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Latvia, India, Cape Verde, Trinidad, Barbados, Syria, Italy and the US, and had all been living in the Boston area at the time they were diagnosed with leprosy.

Eve Rifkah is also the author of DEAR SUZANNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MODEL/ARTIST SUZANNE VALADON 1865-1938. More information can be found on her webiste at www.everifkahwriter.com.

Laurie Robertson-Lorant is the author of THE MAN WHO LIVED AMONG THE CANNIBALS: POEMS IN THE VOICE OF HERMAN MELVILLE (2005) and MELVILLE: A BIOGRAPHY (1996). Her poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Black Buzzard Review, Earth’s Daughters, Igitur, Intuitions, Leviathan, Oxalis, Radcliffe Quarterly, Sandscript, Scripsit, Sing, Heavenly Muse, Southcoast Poetry Journal, The American Voice, The North American Review, The Rockhurst Review, The Worcester Review and two books: OCTOBER MOUNTAIN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF BERKSHIRE WRITERS, and WE SPEAK FOR PEACE.

A graduate of Radcliffe College (Harvard University), Dr. Lorant has an M. A. and Ph. D. from New York University. She has taught at Berkshire Community College, St. Mark’s School in Southborough, MA, School Year Abroad in France, MIT and UMass Dartmouth. She is currently teaching English part-time at Bridgewater State University.

Baker Books is an independent bookstore located at 69 State Rd. in North Dartmouth. For more information, visit www.bakerbooks.net or call (508) 997-6700. Baker Books is wheelchair accessible.