Talking Albany, Hometowns, and Poetry on Sanctuary Radio

This January I got to chat with Thom Francis Job—one of the Albany area’s busiest champions of poets and writers—on his Sanctuary Radio program, which you can listen to RIGHT HERE! We talked about Albany, hometowns, personal growth, my books, and hitting the road to travel and accrue experiences worth writing about, and then Thom boiled it down to about 11 minutes of the best bits from our chat. He also included my reading of “Albany,” a poem I performed at The Linda in December of 2021. The poem also appears in my book, Both Ways Home. It was a pleasure to chat with Thom, who is always collaborating, networking, publishing, and hosting one thing or another to promote poetry in our area as part of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. I hope you’ll drop in and give our talk a listen, and be sure to check out the other writers he’s interviewed. It’s an excellent series that encapsulates the wide spectrum of talent across the Capital Region of New York.

Upcoming Poetry Readings / Spring & Summer

Over the next handful of months I’ll be reading my poetry at a few events in upstate New York, although I may be able to attend some others in NYC and areas beyond if the timing works out. I’m also hoping to set up a few readings on the west coast later this year, so watch this space for more announcements!

March 28, Wednesday - Noir at Troy Poetry Mission: Co-host R.m. Engelhardt had the genius thought to hold a themed reading for noir pieces, something we both love, and we’re hoping you will too. Sign-up starts at 7:30 pm at O’Brien’s Public House in Troy, NY, and the reading starts at 8 pm. Have a drink, a mean, sit back, and enjoy the noir poems and stories from local writers, including yours truly.   

April 20, Friday - Readings Against the End of the World: In mid-April, Albany, NY will celebrate a week of readings and events as part of the annual Word Fest. I will be giving a 10-minute reading as part of the Readings Against the End of the World, a 24-hour read-a-thon to benefit the South End Children’s Cafe. The event will kick off Friday, April 20 at the Husted Hall Café on the UAlbany Downtown campus, and will continue until Saturday, April 21. As always, I’ll have copies of my book We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine on hand.

May 6, Sunday - DiBiase Poetry Prize Reading: My poem "Strawberry Fields Forever" placed as an Honorable mention in the 2018 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Contest. So many great writers appeared among the winners that it's an honor to even be mentioned, not to mention the $70 check that helped pay off some medical bills (and maybe bought a whisky or two). Winners and finalists will be giving a reading of their work in a special afternoon event. This will take place on Sunday, May 6 between 1:30 and 3:30 pm at the main branch of the Albany Public Library which is located at 161 Washington Ave. in downtown Albany NY. Again, I’ll have books on hand for anyone interested.

July 19, Thursday – Albany Social Justice Center Reading: On what I can only suspect will be a hot Thursday night in upstate New York, I’ll be reading as the feature poet at Albany’s Social Justice Center at 33 Central Ave. There will be an open mic before I get up there, and I’m looking forward to seeing who shows up to read their own work. And again, I’ll have plenty of books on hand.  

More to come!

Readings Past and Yet to Come

I don’t read my work in public often (never got comfortable with it) and I recently tried to rectify that by reading at a cool little open mic where author Bud Smith revealed an excerpt from his upcoming novel, F-250. The reading took place at a bar in the Bronx called An Beal Bocht (Gaelic for “The Poor Mouth”) and it was the first time I read in front of a crowd in, what…two, three years? Something like that, so it was a fun personal challenge to shake off the rust and get up there. I was more nervous than I’d like to admit, and like every other reading I’ve ever done, I needed 6-7 beers in order to not shake like a set of wind-up chattering teeth up in front of the mic. I read two older pieces from around 2009; one, “Norway,” is about strippers named after European nations and how swimming naked in the moonlight is often the best way to put them in the past; and the second, “Darkness Within the Dark,” comes from one of my many bouts with Taoism, an on-again/off-again passion of mine. Both poems are also found in my collection Dealing With the Devil in the Middle of the Road. Thankfully it went well and I got some encouraging feedback. I'm grateful for host Erin Lynn for putting the open mic together each month, and I definitely plan to attend again. If you’re in the NYC area on August 13 around 7:30, you should swing by An Beal Bocht and listen in.

I’m also doing a reading on Saturday, October 4 at Jimmy’s No. 23 (in the back room, plenty of seating) where I’ll be featured along with a number of other authors from the Too Much anthology, which is due out this summer. The cover here looks amazing, doesn’t it? I’ll have more details about that reading soon, but I’ll probably read from my piece in the anthology, which is full of stories of alcoholic, sexual, and narcotic excess. Pretty apt topic considering I'll likely need a double dose of liquid courage to read in front of a crowd that large. Anyway, I hope you can make it!

*** Update: I may be doing a reading in the southern New Jersey / Philadelphia area in December as well to promote a new book of mine. Details TBA. ***