Hello, everyone! I know it's been a minute since I last posted. Losing my sweet baby James took quite a bit of juice out of me, and I still miss him like crazy. I always will.
The folks at Speak of the Devil cocktail bar have been incredibly supportive of me through all of this. Kurt, one of the owners of SotD, has been nagging me to do a poetry performance show there ever since the first one titled "We're No Angels" five years ago, which featured Dave Lucas, Ohio Poet Laureate (2018-2019), John Burroughs, U.S. Beat Poet Laureate (2022-2023), and me. It was well-received, and the poster for that show is framed and hanging in one of the restrooms at SotD.
I'm very stoked to announce that I will be presenting and emceeing a new poetry performance show at Speak of the Devil in October! It's called "In the Company of Angels" and will feature three outstanding and amazing poet-performers who will knock your socks off!
(Many thanks to the photographers whose photos I've used for these performers. If you send me your names, I'll happily and gratefully credit you for them.)
Featured are:
Christine Howey, author of and performer in Exact Change (A true story of boy meets girl. Inside one person.) and I Have a Poem About That (Crisis Chronicles, 2022)
Christine is a performance poet, actor, award-winning theater critic (named the Best Critic in Ohio by the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists), playwright, and journalist. She has earned numerous awards for writing humorous radio and tv spots. She served as Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate from 2016 to 2018. Her one-person show about her transgender journey, Exact Change, had its world premiere at Cleveland Public Theater in 2014, and has since been performed at Playhouse Square in Cleveland and at the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival, among other venues. There is now a movie version. Her performances are absolutely delightful, as she is very expressive and often uses humor in her poetry. (Bio credit - some of this was taken from Literary Cleveland's website.)
Marcel Fable Price, author of New American Monarch (New Michigan Press, 2024) This is his first full-length collection.
Marcel, who served as Grand Rapids, Michigan Poet Laureate (2017-2020), is a multi-hyphenate, self-directed, intuitive creative whose primary medium resides somewhere between oratory expression and creative writing. He "truly believes that the mortar to our humanity is shared experience, and without intentionally searching for ways to connect, our individual gospels will only remain surface hymns." Fable's brand-new book (releases October 8), New American Monarch, is a delightfully immersive experience, one to be slowly taken in, not consumed all at once. In this collection, he addresses growing up with a loving, supportive mother and an absent father, what it means to be masculine, urban culture, issues of racism and his own ongoing metamorphosis. (Bio credit - some of this was taken from a biography provided by Price.)
Ray McNiece, author of the soon-to-be-published Bone Key Sutra (Sea Story Press), Breath Burns Away (Red Giant Books, 2019), and Poem for Cleveland (Red Giant Books, 2023)
Ray has earned a national reputation as a poet and performer for almost two decades through his solo theater pieces, his poetry and music shows, his captaining of two National Poetry Slam Championship teams, and his yearly countrywide tours of performance poems, stories, and songs. He fronts the blues rock band Tongue-in-Groove. McNiece embodies the Beat poetry experience, and has toured twice with Beat poet legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The Orlando Sentinel called him "a modern day descendent of Woody Guthrie." Bone Key Sutra is an intriguing and richly satisfying mixture of memoir, essay, poetry, song lyrics and a mighty profusion of haiku that bring into sharp focus the everyday and every-moment of McNiece's continuing journey. (Bio credit - some of this was taken from McNiece's website.)
In the Company of Angels, indeed!
This show is FREE FREE FREE!
When
Wednesday, October 23 at 7 p.m.
(real time, not poet's time, so don't be late!)
Where
The venue is the magnificent, the renowned, Speak of the Devil cocktail bar:
201 W. 5th Street, Lorain, Ohio.
This is downtown, very near the Palace Theater.
There's free street parking, plus there's a free parking lot in the back of SotD, accessible off W. 6th Street.
Why
Because we can!
I hope you'll join us for this very special, one-time-only evening of poetry performance, fabulous cocktails, friendship, and fun!
