2nd Annual Women’s Poetry Open Mic
Featuring and hosted by Patricia Smith
Date/Time: Friday, November 16 @ 7pm
Place: el Mercado Café in Holyoke, MA
In addition to performing her own explosively brilliant work, Patricia Smith will host a women’s poetry open mic. Bring your poetry!
This dynamic & interactive event is open to the public (men are welcome!)
with a donation of $15.00 at the door to benefit MotherWoman, Inc.
Limited scholarships available to low income participants.
3rd Annual Mom’s Night Out at the MotherWoman Café
Featuring Patricia Smith
Saturday, November 17 @ 7pm
Union Station Restaurant, Northampton
A fabulous, women’s only, relaxing evening in an opulent setting with
desserts, coffee, cash bar & beautiful items to bid on in our silent
auction. An interactive evening of performance, conversation, creative
expression & dynamic connection. All women welcome. Prepare to be blown
away! $35 in advance/$39 at the door. Tickets at 413 253-8990 or
www.motherwoman.org. Limited scholarships available to low income
participants.
ABOUT PATRICIA SMITH
Patricia Smith’s latest poetry book, Teahouse of the Almighty, was chosen
by Edward Sanders as a 2005 National Poetry Series winner (Coffee House
Press), and was also awarded the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. She is also
the author of three previous books of poetry — Close to Death (Zoland
Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books) and Life According to Motown
(Tia Chucha). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Chautauqua
Literary Journal, TriQuarterly, and other journals, and in many
groundbreaking anthologies–most recently Gathering Ground, The Spoken
Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and Short
Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry. Her poem “The Way Pilots
Walk” received a Pushcart Prize, and will appear in Pushcart Prize XXXII:
Best of the Small Presses.
Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and
wildly popular National Poetry Slam, an energized competition where poets
are judged on the content and performance of their work. No one else has
won the title more than twice. Recognized as one of the world’s most
formidable performers, she was featured in the nationally-released film
“Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Def Poetry
Jam.” Smith has read her work at venues round the world, including the
Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, the
Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival and on tour in
Germany, Austria and Holland. In the U.S., she’s performed at Carnegie
Hall, Bumbershoot, the inaugural Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger
Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with
noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol
Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins,
Galway Kinnell and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. She has also
collaborated musically with Philip Pemberton and the blues band Bop
Thunderous, and is occasionally a vocalist with the stellar
improvisational jazz group, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble.
A selection of Smith’s poetry was produced as a one-woman play by Nobel
Prize winner Derek Walcott and performed at both Boston University
Playwrights Theater and the historic Trinidad Theater Workshop. Another
play, based on Life According to Motown, was staged by Company One Theater
in Hartford, Ct., and reviewed favorably in The New York Times.
Recordings of Patricia Smith’s work can be found on the CD “Always in the
Head” as well as in the compilations “Grand Slam,” “A Snake in the Heart”
“By Someone’s Good Graces” and “Lip.” A short film of Smith performing the
poem “Undertaker,” produced by Tied to the Tracks Films, won awards at the
Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals and earned a prestigious Cable
Ace Award as part of the Lifetime Network’s first annual Women’s Film
Festival.
As a budding voiceover artist, she was the radio voice of the Oil of Olay
Total Effects product line.
Smith is currently at work on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of
Harriet Tubman. Previously she authored Africans in America (Harcourt
Brace), a companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS history
series.
Her first children’s book, Janna and the Kings, a New Voices Award winner,
was published in 2003, and her second, Mahina, the Mad Mad Moon was just
completed. She is also writing a young adult novel, The Journey of Willie
J, as well as Blood Dazzler, a book of poetry about the human toll exacted
by Hurricane Katrina.
An accomplished and sought-after instructor of poetry, performance and
creative writing, Smith is proud to be a Cave Canem faculty member, as
well as a former Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University.
Currently she does workshops and residencies customized for all age
groups.
In October of 2006, during the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing
Conference at Chicago State University, Patricia was inducted into the
International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
Filed under: Patricia Smith, Women's Poetry Open Mic
