Po3try NYC Presents Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza @ The Pomegrante Gallery – The Dawning of a New Era in Big Apple Poetry
3Po3try NYC is a ground-breaking alliance between three of New York City’s most prominent poetry influences – great weather for MEDIA: (poetry publishing, events, open mics), Poetry Teachers NYC (poetry workshops, readings, festivals) and The Inspired Word (poetry open mics, slams, showcases).
Our mission: to build like never before strong connections between the poetry performance, publishing, and educational communities; to celebrate unity, diversity, and excellence through poetry; and to revitalize the city’s poetry scene with something strikingly different.
We will produce quarterly all-star showcases (featuring a dynamic mix of NYC’s finest poetry and spoken word, spiced with original music and live art) hosted in the most gorgeous settings around New York City (galleries, gardens, and performance spaces).
Raining Words is 3Po3try NYC’s debut event and will be held on Saturday, April 12 at the Pomegranate Gallery, 137 Greene Street, Manhattan, 6pm-9pm. Doors open at 5:30.
Hosted by Aimee Herman.
General Admission: $10
Reserved Seating: $12
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FEATURED POETS/ARTISTS
Billy Cancel has recently appeared in Futures Trading, Cricket Online Review, and Counterexample Poetics, and the first two great weather for MEDIA anthologies. His latest body of work Innocent Teeth was published in January 2014 by Hidden House Press. Video poems, membership details, and other aberrations can be found at www.billycancelpoetry.com.
Born in Boston, poet Alessandra Francesca has been inspired by a range of artists, from T.S. Eliot to Humphrey Bogart, and her family feared she would run off to New York since before she could walk. She can be found mumbling poetry to herself on the L train and her work will strike you its raw honesty and lasting poignancy. She lives in Brooklyn.
Amy Leigh Cutler was born in Staten Island, raised near the Catskill Mountains, and lives and writes in New York City. She is the author of Orange Juice and Rooftops and a few chapbooks. Some of her recent work can be found in In Earnest where in 201 she served as artist in residence. Look for her in Jonathan Weiskopf’s For Some Time Now and Wooster Collective’s Graphite, and the great weather for MEDIA anthology The Understanding between Foxes and Light. She tours, facilitates workshops, and is a teaching assistant and MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The New School.
Born, raised, and still residing in Brooklyn, Graham Willner is a pre-school teacher and poet. He says he “braids together semantics and syntax” to “rhythmically, metaphorically, and meaningfully point something out.” He finds himself most influenced by the “simple complexities of being human.”
Megan DiBello founded Poetry Teachers NYC in 2010. She holds a M.F.A from Naropa University, in Writing & Poetics and a B.A. from Marymount Manhattan College. She has been published in Fact-Similie, Flanour Foundry, The Bathroom, & Monkey Puzzle Press. Megan has performed at the White Box Gallery, The Bowery Poetry Club, The HOWL Festival, The Socrates Sculpture Park, The Center of Book Arts, Columbia University, and the DUMBO Arts Festival.
John W. Snyder is a Staten Island poet. His work can be found in Ardent and in the great weather for MEDIA anthology The Understanding between Foxes and Light. When he’s not busy writing, John can be found skipping into oblivion.
The creature that humans call Julie Bentsen is a Surrealist Illustrator from the floating island of Staten. She has studied architecture, engineering, psychology, and ancient religions. She hopes to someday return to her home dimension. In the meantime, she spends her days doing Dream work, for dreams inspire most of her visual expressions. Some say she is in her 30′s, but her actual age and blood type are unknown. She works with pen, ink, oils, metal-working, jewelry design, small-scale sculpture, and nightmare tributes.
Daniel Dissinger is a New York born poet who is currently a second-year Doctoral student at Saint John’s University, where he teaches American Literature as part of his Doctoral Fellowship. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department at SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York, where he teaches a wide variety of literature and writing courses, and the creator and Editor of InStereoPress.com, an online audio zine.
Yeti is bass-driven philosophical dream-punk with cute killer harmonies. This New York-based trio reeks of feral femininity, fermenting in the forgotten woods of Staten Island. Their music fuses Sleater-Kinney sensibilities with The Cranberries’ emotional power. Yeti can be found playing at various venues throughout the New York City area, or in very cold, dark, remote caverns from which few have ever returned.
Giga Herbs formed three years ago. It was in a fluorescently lit donut shop or a YMCA sauna that Paul and Steve asked Eric, “If you could picture yourself playing any instrument, what would it be?” His answer was the bass. The band had a guitarist a drummer and a bassist but something was missing. Elsa Josephs’ signature quirky piano sounds migrated from Panama four years ago. When all four of us met and we found out that Elsa had been taught in piano, we had to ask her to play. After jamming a few times we realized we created music together in a fun and natural way. It was in our 3rd or 4th month together that we had the opportunity to rent a practice space for a fair price in the creative part of Staten Island. That’s when everything really took off.
Native New Yorker Danny Matos is a spoken word poet who began performing in the fall of 2012. Since then, he has featured and performed at various venues and schools throughout New York. In 2013, he was the winner of the $1000 Poetry Idol contest and the co-winner of The Inspired Word Poetry Slam Championship. He believes words and expression give us all a purpose bigger than ourselves, as well as foster one of humanity’s most precious needs – a sense of genuine connection to ourselves, each other, and the world at large. He released his first book of poetry late last year, Scratching the Surface.
Saroya Marsh works as a preschool teacher and youth mentor, but has always had a passion for writing. As a spoken word poet, she brings a heartfelt intensity and deep beliefs to the stage, brandishing a saber of light that will penetrate those dark pockets of prejudice, injustice, and hurt, that lay buried deep within each of us. In 2013, she was the co-winner of The Inspired Word Poetry Slam Championship, a finalist in the Poetry Idol contest, and placed runner-up in the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam finals. She has been featured at a slew of venues and college throughout New York and New Jersey, as well as in Pennsylvania and DC. Marsh hopes her poems will spark change. “If you want to leave an impact deep enough for future generations to see,” she says, “start now.
Angelo Daniel Giokas is a hybrid painter and aesthetic voyager from Queens, New York. His raw and unique style is the result of his combination of appropriation, collage, mixed media, and visual poetry. He enjoys exploring the synergistic relationships between images, prints, photographs, and magazines, and works in effort to associate artistic process with product, and insight with magical thinking. Though he graduated Cum Laude from Siena College, his artistry and theories were mostly self-taught. His experience studying intermedia art at University of London, Goldsmiths College was the most enriching and inspirational time in his young career. He is an independent artist who has never having been represented by any gallery. Found out more about his interests at www.artbyangelogiokas.com, and follow his work on Instagram @artbyangelogiokas.
Poet Shane Hanlon is a Long Islander who graduated from Queens College, then served in the Peace Corps. Home now, he’s an atheist searching. He writes in gratitude or to express conflicts as a way of understanding them better. It’s hard to be an idealist in New York City these days.
HOST: Aimee Herman is a performance artist, poet and teacher with an MFA in Creative Writing from Long Island University in Brooklyn, as well as a longtime Inspired Word host. She teaches at Bronx Community College and is a faculty member with Poetry Teachers NYC, offering affordable poetry workshops and creating spaces for other performers to lift their words off the page. She has been published in various journals and anthologies such as:Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books) and The Understanding Between Foxes and Light (great weather for MEDIA). Her full-length book of poems to go without blinking was published in 2012 by BlazeVOX books. She can be found wrapped in caution tape in Brooklyn or at aimeeherman.wordpress.com.
In this 4 week 101 course you will be taught the techniques necessary in order to create a strong poetic foundation. You will read exciting new work by some of today’s most adventurous writers, be guided through the creative writing process, and have your work discussed in a safe and lively environment.
Aimee Herman 