After a three-year hiatus (yes, really. Three years!) Yellow Chair Poetry returns to our living room on Friday, March 10. We are extremely excited to have people and live poetry in our house again.
To celebrate, we will be hosting a BYFP (Bring Your Favorite Poem) night. Bring a poem with you to read aloud to the group. Does it have to be your most favorite poem of all time in the entire world? No! Should it be a poem you enjoy that you want to read aloud? Yes!
We’ll gather in Jon & Hannah’s living room at 7:30 p.m. for drinks, snacks, and poetry. Please RSVP using the form at the bottom of this post, and we will get you location information and directions.
Postponed until it’s prudent to gather again. For one virtual source of poetry, we recommend the Poetry Unbound podcast—brief, beautiful poems read and unpacked by the Irish poet and peace-organizer Pádraig Ó Tuama.
We’re pleased to welcome two Michigan writers to our living room for the March edition of our poetry series. Join us on March 27 to hear from Holland poet and essayist Susanna Childress and New Buffalo poet Marci Rae Johnson.
We’ll gather in Jon & Hannah’s living room at 7:30 p.m. for drinks, snacks, and poetry. Please RSVP using the form at the bottom of this post, and we will get you location information and directions.
Susanna Childress lives in Holland, Michigan. After publishing two collections of poetry, Jagged with Love and Entering the House of Awe, she is at work on a book of essays titled “Extremely Yours,” under contract with Awst Press. Recent work can be found or forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, Iron Horse Literary Press, Relief, Rhino, and Oakland Review.
Marci Rae Johnson is a freelance writer and editor, and the poetry editor for The Cresset and for WordFarm press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Image, The Christian Century, Main Street Rag, The Collagist, Rhino, Quiddity, Hobart, Redivider, Redactions, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, and 32 Poems, among others. Her most recent book, Basic Disaster Supplies Kit, was published by Steel Toe Books in 2016.
We’re pleased to welcome two West Michigan writers to our living room for the first in our series. Join us on February 28 to hear from fellow Eastown resident Lew Klatt and Holland poet (and Jon’s uncle!) Mark Hiskes.
We’ll gather in Jon & Hannah’s living room at 7:30 p.m. for drinks, snacks, and poetry. Please RSVP using the form at the bottom of this post, and we will get you location information and directions.
L.S. Klatt (left) and Mark Hiskes (right)
L.S. Klatt has served as the poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He teaches literature and creative writing at Calvin University, where he recently received the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching. His poems have appeared widely, including such places as Harvard Review, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Poetry Daily, The Believer, Best American Poetry, Image,and The Common. His first book, Interloper, won the Juniper Prize, awarded by the University of Massachusetts Press. His second, Cloud of Ink, garnered the Iowa Poetry Prize from the University of Iowa Press. He is the author of two other collections, Sunshine Wound (Parlor Press, 2014) and The Wilderness After Which (Otis Books, 2017).
MarkHiskes is the author of Standing with Alyosha (Dos Madres Press, 2019), a collection of poems. He grew up in Chicago, the seventh of eight kids lucky enough to be raised by Harold and Everdean. He has been blessed to be an English teacher for 35 years. When he’s not grading papers, he loves to walk, read, write, hang out in classrooms with students, and refurbish old furniture with Cindy for her antique business. On good days, he manages to do a little of all five. He and Cindy have proudly raised two children, Peter and Mary, who are off on family adventures of their own. Mark and Cindy live near the foxes in Holland, Michigan.
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