Past and Upcoming Features for Bards Reading

Hello, everyone! It's your ever-magnificent blogger, Marc Rosen, recently-elected treasurer of the Bards Initiative and host of Bards Reading From Page One, with updates from the reading series! Now, for those of you who haven't been coming to the reading series, you've really been missing out on a great time!

First, on May 25, we featured Antonio Bellia, widely known throughout the Long Island community as Madly Loved (and yes, he IS Madly Loved by all of us, as is his poetry!). Patch did come and cover that reading, and we had a record turnout, constantly pushing back the bamboo screen till we filled up around half the main dining room! While it's not the greatest (because they didn't include any complete poems *grumbles*), there should be a teaser clip of video footage from that reading if you dig around in the arts and entertainment archives.

After that, on June 8, we featured a few poets from the recently-released Voice of the Bards anthology of fantasy-themed poetry for a new age.  I'm privileged to have hosted this reading, and heard so many new poems, including the creation of new folklore and myth, right in our own time.  The sheer variety that can be found in this book means you all really missed out...

On June 25, we had Lorraine Conlin, co-hostess of the Performance Poets Association's readings at the Wyld Chyld Tattoo Cafe and Poets In Nassau's Tuesdays with Poetry at the Bellmore Library feature for us. It was a wonderful and intimate reading, the first one to be held in the back room we've intended to have all of them in, and the first to have poems recorded for the Bards Initiative's youtube channel (linked at the end of the article, please do subscribe if you'd like to hear/see us perform and you can't make it to the readings). After that one, I'm still eager for what's coming next!

Our next feature, on Wednesday, July 13, will be George Wallace, former Suffolk County Poet Laureate. His work has been critically acclaimed across the country, and truly captures not just the American dream, but the American controversy, pulling no punches in his expressions of past, present, and future, all rolled into an amazing experience that can only be truly appreciated in person.

That means COME TO OUR READING!  It's not like we're making you pay!

At the end of the month, on July 27, we'll be featuring Russ Green and Kelly Powell, both of whom are well known in the Long Island school of poetry.  Kelly has hosted and continues to host readings throughout the island, and has been well-received for her work.  Russ is not only famous in Long Island poetry circles, but also gets around in the New York City poetry scene, and acquires NYC talent for Wyld Chyld on the first Tuesdays of each month, as well as hosting a reading series alongside Kempton Von Hoff called Boone's Green Revolution.

With all of that coming up this month, there's no reason not to come to our readings!  We've got great poets, an open reading after every feature, and Chef Jeanine offers a $5 menu!  What's not to like?

For more tempting poetry, and incentives to come, check out our youtube channel at www.youtube.com/bardsinitiative