Slam and Happy National Poetry Month

First, Providence Poetry Slam at AS220 is a good, fun, cool thing to do the first Thursday of each month. Packed room, neat artwork, and lots and lots of poetic energy. You have to go and volunteer to be a judge, as I did, which made the whole experience.. ummm, visceral.
I am looking around as always for more poetry out loud and surprise, surprise, it is everywhere! Friday night, April 17th at Mystic Arts Cafe heard Brian Turner read from his miraculous new book,Here, Bullet, but he didn't really read so much as recite, deliver, expound, he had those poems in his head without having to read them. He calls himself, or somebody calls him a "soldier poet" as he spent a year in Iraq and wrote there about there...He was very good, his poems troubling, disturbing, making me squirm, but wanting more. Patricia Smith reads there on May 15th at 7:30 and you need to go see her, according to Brian Turner and a whole lotta other people! Rhonda Ward opened for him, she's a New London poet and while she read I got the feeling that Williams is absolutely right, all the news, the "important stuff" as Ray Carver called it, is in the poem.

You all have to go to Perks and Corks on May 4th for the Pier Poetry Project's monthly poetry bash from 6 to 8 P.M. It's in Westerly, at 45 High Street, come and listen or read, or both, and have a drink, too.