Aug 15 5PM My guest will be Danielle Legros Georges.


Danielle Legros Georges was born in Haiti and raised in the U.S. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including The American Poetry Review,and her work is widely anthologized. Her many awards for writing include a LEF Foundation Fellowship; and a MacDowell Fellowship. Maroon is her first book-length publication. She is on the faculty at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.

Aug 1 5PM My guest will be Bagel Bard Scribe, Wilderness House Literary Review Poetry editor, and artist: Irene Koronas.

Irene Koronas and the SPIRITUAL POWER OF ZERO
by Lo Galluccio
Experimental poet and painter Irene Koronas based in Cambridge began creating when she was 12-years-old.
She explored language by reading and writing poetry and eventually fell in love with Octavio Paz, Cavafy and Yannos Ritsos.
Her Orthodox Greek heritage led her to be inspired by these poets as opposed to many confessional American poets.
Her latest creative exploration Project Zero, has led her to contemplate the meaning, image and representation of zero in all its many forms.
You will find paper reinforcements in some of her artwork because they are, after all, little sticky zeros. The title painting of her exhibition up at the O’Neill branch of the public library this month is titled 1 with 0=10-0_1 full circle.
Looking for zero, word combinations (o)
Wording zero’s representation, round soundVoid of biology, creator of chaos. Who belongsOpen? O differentiation from others. O only aloneAllows alone. O look you fools collapse
So broken so whole so smooth, so longSo propitious to soothe to group to blockCombinations; odd one equation annoys power;Old power oppositions. Zero uncovers
Look how wantonly, look you opposites,come, come. One, one good to twoZero zero plus two, no additionOnly zero operates somehow out of thought,subtraction. Others also born from cosmos,from reason, from axiom of you.
And Project Zero is not the first time Koronas has looked at numbers for their spiritual and artistic value. Her father made lists of numbers –pages and pages- before going to the dogtracks to bet and her Aunt was a compulsive scratch ticket gambler.
For Irene the numbers have a mystical meaning, for instance 1+ 2 = 3, is like the trinity. Her cubist paintings could compare with Eucharistic bread, broken into pieces but always whole.
Indeed her paintings --which relate to her poems like abstract correspondences-- are usually made on a grid composed of squares, which like eyes have images (or pupils) at the center.
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In the poem 12 cubes, printed below, she said, “The idea for this poem came from a painting done in a 12 cube grid. The words are not confined within the cubes but the cubes allow the images to co-exist. Unlike formalist writings and the use of a single subject; theme; I imagine the many and the varied images from the many sources. So each image compliments the other in and only in the fact that it is an image. The words paint an image. The image holds the words.”
12 cubes
everything’s wild on the way, in theway it is explained, i discover eightcubes from the 12 cubes painted. Nakedas opposed to nude, i witness yourleaps off the page, fifteen months toolate. Setting shutter speed, flexible andgetting paid for the method lovers tonein early morning. please sit, gatherliquid appropriately then clap. all sky,all video stores so red, no concept iscomplimented, it is blurry around myneck. I understand your concise cheer,red lines. Both round houses aremetaphysical, probably just adjustingwith ease with passing through. whatwill you inherit? the holes wornbackwards? dark night or day, standingby fountains fulfilling wishes? i dreamhow to button-hole memory: run staplesuntil an ostrich with no arms, a doorthat opens on explanations as conceit listens, tacks their thumbs; that’s whathappens in triangles. my brother wasthere he was orange he put himself inboxes to preserve our mothers for wesoak them in rain, in the end there by arope called victor, for grass in august islovely, sometimes an embarassment.have you transcended, thrown nerve upfrom tooth, given a ram one morechance to decode the seven purpleswamps. please, mothers, propel usthrough clouds, understanding our needto break even; hawks folding space, long corners into square houses
That poem relates to a painting in her upcoming exhibit, and is taken from a handmade chapbook called, “species.”
It’s full title comes from a definition found in a 1947 dictionary that Irene likes to use in order to find archaic meanings.
7. obsolete: specie.
{latin species seeing,appearance, likeness, aparticular sort, kind,species, from specere,to look at}
She said, “Forming a grid becomes a spiritual exercise, a discipline, a daily stance of commitment to my own definitions of what it means to be part of a species; historically I bring myself to myself each and every day. The becoming is within each square and each square represents that becoming.”
The maker of many one-of-a-kind handmade books, Irene Koronas also suggests that the musicality of her poems comes from her Orthodox Christian heritage where almost all the liturgy is sung.
“This is my history. It is as important to hear the poem as to read it,” she said.
Her watercolor paintings exhibit will be on display at the O’Neill Branch of the Public Library in Cambridge, 70 Rindge Ave., for the rest of January.
She is an exciting, experimental artist who is still dedicated to evolving

July 25 5PM My Guest will be Jean Trounstine:


"I am a professor of humanities at Middlesex Community College in Lowell Massachusetts, and I specialize in writing, literature and theatre courses. I am never bored! I became a writer because of needing to write about working in prison. I needed to tell stories of the amazing women behind bars. At Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts, I directed eight productions, including THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Drawing from music history, women's history, art, literature and drama, the program eventually earned college credit and was nominated for a prestigious Schwartz Award, considered by the Mass Foundation for Humanities as the most successful project funded in 1988. It is the basis of my first book SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS: THE POWER OF DRAMA IN A WOMEN'S PRISON, published by St. Martin's Press, 2001. Prison work changed me, and I've written many articles about teaching offenders and been featured on The Today Show, All Things Considered-NPR, and The Connection. I co-edited an anthology of writings used in the Changing Lives Through Literature Program, published by Notre Dame Press, a program I helped to establish for women in Massachusetts (see cltl.umassd.com), where criminals are sentenced to a literature seminar and probation instead of jail. Because of that work, I also coauthored FINDING A VOICE: THE PRACTICE OF CHANGING LIVES THROUGH LITERATURE, published by the University of Michigan Press (which also recently published the paperback of SBB). My first collection of poetry, ALMOST HOME FREE, a collection of poetry about the journey of cancer -- I'm a survivor -- was published by Pecan Grove Press in 2003 and received enthusiastically.Most recently I've co-edited a book with Karen Propp, WHY I'M STILL MARRIED, published by Hudson Street Press, an imprint of Penguin, 2006. Essayists include a slew of great writers! I live more happily than not with my husband in Massachusetts. "

July 18 5PM my guest will be Chiemi:

Chiemi is a singer, songwriter and performer in the Boston-area, and welcomes you to see her perform, download her music or buy her CDs, and enjoy her work.


Chiemi was born Ingrid Chiemi Schroffner on Halloween 1970 in Honolulu. Her Japanese middle name means blessed one. Chiemi was the reigning Miss Teen of Hawaii in 1987-88. As a 'teen queen', she performed, singing and dancing for and at many charitable functions and fundraisers. In 1988, Chiemi conducted her Punahou High School graduating class of over 400 to perform a rendition in four-part harmony of her first written piece, "Steps to Find." While a soloist and member of the 150 person Boston College Chorale under the direction of the late liturgical music composer Dr. C. Alexander Peloquin, Chiemi was graced with the part of the female angel in Haydn's "The Heavens Are Telling," which she performed with the Chorale in a special audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in Rome. While in graduate school, Chiemi was a soloist and member of "The Wand'ring Mistrials," an acapella singing group covering various pop tunes for charitable and graduate student events. Chiemi's musical influences are Joan Baez, Suzanne Vega and Annie Lennox. She enjoys micing at The Burren for the experienced and interesting people she has met to learn from—so much friendly talent! She thanks God for giving her a voice and sends much Aloha to her family and friends for their love and support, especially to her husband, Josh...

View the new Chiemi Montage video here.