Enjoy the Literary Landscape

Uptown: Friday, June 1st, 7:30pm, The Gist Street Reading Series. Pittsburgh poet Deb Bogen's collection, Landscape with Silos, has been called “naked and necessary, unadorned and political, intelligent and generous” (Carol Frost). She’ll be reading tomorrow night along with Scott Hightower coming in from New York, and Francisco Aragón, from San Francisco by way of Indiana.

This monthly reading series, around since 2001, is so popular that our weekly City Paper won’t even list it anymore. “I’d just get angry calls the next day from people who couldn’t get in,” one editor complained. So, if you’re going to go, go early (although I’m told that June is actually not as crazy-crowded as the academic months). Reading starts at 8:00pm, hobnobbing starts at 7:30pm, doors open at 7:15.

Friday, June 1st, 7:30pm
Gist Street Reading Series
James Simon’s sculpture studio
305 Gist Street, 3rd Floor
Uptown, Pittsburgh
$5 bucks admission
BYOB
www.giststreet.org

Summer Reading Series Includes Open Mic

I was really happy to find out that summer Tuesdays, Hemingway's "Cafe" and Jim Cvetic will host poetry readings by various Pittsburgh poetry ensembles, with open mic afterwards. They'll be at 8:00pm, with Free admission, in the Back Room of this Oakland bar. Personally, I've always wished that there were more non-University events going on in Oakland, which seems centrally located and bus-served enough to warrant it. But it seems a lot of the best hangout places were driven out of business, or just out of Oakland, before I got here.

Tonight's reading will feature writers from the SQUIRREL HILL POETRY WORKSHOP: Marilyn Bates, Nancy Esther James, Marc Jampole,Pam O'Brien, Rosaly DeMaios Roffman, Joanne Samraney "and maybe more."

Next Tuesday, May 29th, Jan Beatty's infamous MADWOMEN IN THE ATTIC will read--Beatty plus several other women writers TBA. Beatty, pictured above, is an amazing poet, a native of the Burgh, the host of a local poetry radio show, and has a strong following here—no doubt in part because she does readings with frequency. Many of us, myself included, would like to get recognition without leaving our attic, but alas. It helps to put the body out there.

See Pittsburgh poetry listings (and more info on Jan Beatty's radio show) here: www.tpqonline.org

Tuesdays through July 31st
Various Poetry Readings with Open Mic
Hemingway’s Café
3911 Forbes Avenue
Oakland/Pittsburgh
8:00pm, Free
412.431.POEM

The Poetry of Homestead

You may have heard of John Edgar Wideman's trio of experimental novels, The Homewood Trilogy. Now comes the third in poet Robert Gibb's Homestead Trilogy. The Homestead native and former (third-generation) millworker reads and signs tonight from his latest poetry volume, World Over Water.
>>>>Thursday, April 19th, 7:00pm, Joseph-Beth Booksellers. 2705 E Carson Street, Southside. Free.
>>>>Read Bill O'Driscoll's write up here.