Poet David Blair March 21, 2017

David Blair

David Blair grew up in Pittsburgh. He is the author of three books of poetry, Ascension Days, which was chosen by Thomas Lux for the Del Sol Poetry Prize, Arsonville, and Friends with Dogs. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Ploughshares, Slate Magazine, and many other places as well, including the anthologies, The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Devouring the Green, and Zoland Poetry.
He has taught at the New England Institute of Art and in the M.FA. Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter, and he has a degree in philosophy from Fordham University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 

Feb. 21, 2017 Michael Anthony author of Civilanized



Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony is a veteran, essayist, and memoirist. He is the author of Mass Casualties: A Young Medic's True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor in Iraq, and his newest memoir Civilianized: A Young Veteran's Memoir. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University and has written for the Washington Post blog, Business Insider blog, among others, and spent a year as the War & Veterans editor for the Good Men Project blog.  Michael lives with his wife and daughter in Massachusetts. He spends his free time with his family and volunteering for veteran charities. He can be reached at his website: MassCasualties.com   see it live at http://scatvsomerville.org

Feb 14, 2017 Guest Poet U-Meleni Mhalaba Adebo

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, M.Ed. B.A. is a multi-talented academic and creative sensation who is a multi-award winning international best-selling author and Top 10 charted soul singer.

The married mother of a 5-year-old son is a native of Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa, and is based in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. She has delivered several hundred high impact workshops taught through the mediums of poetry, the spoken word, music,film and theatre.

U-Meleni is an Adjunct Professor at Endicott College in Boston. Her two degrees are from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and The University of Massachusetts Boston. Her latest book, “Soul Psalms,” from She Writes Press publishers became an instant international best seller prior to its official launch.

 U-Meleni has been honoured with a host of awards over the years from organizations including; Roxbury Community College Teaching and Learning Center,Massachusetts, The Binnacle, the literary and art magazine at The University of Maine at Machias, Boston Public Health Commission Adolescent Wellness Program, The National Society of Black Engineers, N.S.B.E., American Idol Underground and Live. Love.Fashion.

The acclaimed artist and ardent supporter of empowering teaching, artistic and sporting methods for over 16 years, has performed on some of the most prestigious stages in the  world from Harvard University and Boston Opera House to The Museum of Fine Arts Boston and The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston plus dozens more renowned venues including the Africa University, Zimbabwe.

On the sporting front, U-Meleni is a member of the National Black Marathoners’Association, N.B.M.A. and is a respected 5K running mentor to young people in the Boston area. She and her husband raised $10,000 for cancer survivors and ran the Boston Marathon in 2012.

Acting wise, U-Meleni has starred in a variety of films. She had a lead role in a T.V. series entitled, “Ya Ma’Afrika,” filmed in the United States and broadcast worldwide on TéléSud.Living a fascinating life as a wife, mother, educator, artist and athlete, U-Meleni is active with dozens of teaching, art and sports organizations in Boston.

U-Meleni’s name means,“What are you waiting for,” in the African Ndebele-Zulu language. Her dream is to share her message on stages around the world and to one day soon start a non profit initative that provides financial support to individuals, families that are dealing with mental health in Zimbabwe.

view it live  Feb 14, 2017 at 5PM  go to http://scatvsomerville.org  

Jan. 17, 2017 Novelist Josh Cook--author of-- An Exaggerated Murder

 

Josh Cook

JOSH COOK is a bookseller at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications, including The Rumpus, The Millions, and Bookslut, and he is the blogger for Porter Square Books’ blog. This is his first novel.

Jan 3, 2017 Poets Diane P. Smith and Khem K. Aryal

Khem K Aryal

Diane P. Smith

 Diane P. Smith is the founder of the Grey Sparrow Press. Khem K. Aryal collaborated with Smith on the American-Nepal issue of Snow Jewel ( Grey Sparrow Press) in 2015.  Both poets will most probably be working together on the forthcoming issue, 2016, as well. Diane Smith is a noted editor and publisher. She is currently doing graduate work at Harvard University. Aryal teaches writing at Syracuse University.



 To see the show live go to  http://scatvsomerville.org

Dec 13 5PM Poet Teisha Twomey

Poet Teisha Twomey

Teisha Dawn Twomey is the poetry editor at Night Train, as well as an associate fiction editor for Wilderness House Literary Press. She received her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online poetry reviews and journals. By day, she is the Resource Specialist at Springfield College's Boston campus and by night, she is (currently) at work on her first novel. We will talking about her new collection of poetry " How to Treat Pretty Things."  To see it live go to http://scatvsomerville.org 

Dec 6, 2016 5PM Poet, Milton Scholar, Playwright, and Novelist Francis Blessington

Poet Francis  Blessington

Francis Blessington’s first novel is The Last Witch of Dogtown. He has translated The Bacchae of Euripides and The Frogs of Aristophanes. He has published two books of poems, Lantskip and Wolf Howl. He is a Milton specialist, the author of Paradise Lost and the Classical Epic and Paradise Lost: Ideal and Tragic Epic (A Student’s Companion to the Poem). His essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in the Harvard Magazine, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals. He has also published a play, Lorenzo de’ Medici. A professor of English at Northeastern University in Boston. He lives with his wife, Ann Taylor, also a writer and English professor, and their two children. In the summer, he works part-time on a farm in Spain.

Nov 8, 2016 Nanette Perrotte

Nanette Perrotte

Born to an Ecuadorian mother and French father, Perrotte was raised in Amsterdam Holland and Orlando Florida before attending Boston’s Berklee College of Music where she received her BA in Jazz Composition and Arranging with a principal instrument of Voice. This course of study was the fulfillment of a childhood spent singing and performing that continues on as a professional vocalist.

Perrotte’s Masters Degree in Education from Lesley University in Cambridge Massachusetts focused her work on Arts as a tool to learn about and experience cultural diversity. With her college teaching career, private voice students, college choir and acting/improv troupe, Perrotte has now evolved a new lecture/presentation form. This is a new series that combines social history, musicology and storytelling. Ella Fitzgerald- Queen of Swing and Duke Ellington and the Harlem Renaissance.

Recently Perrotte has been traveling with her internationally recognized father who is a chef and Continental Director of the Americas WACS. These travels to South America, South Korea and France have been part of witnessing Louis Perrotte’s work using fine cuisine as cultural diplomacy- although here it is an American chef encouraging chefs in other cultures to pursue their own cuisine first.

Nanette Perrotte’s travels have led to a series of blogs reflecting on cultural differences around music, cuisine and food preparation. Her blog posts (May, October 2012) on South Korea have quickly attracted a following of interested South Korean readers. In these travels Perrotte finds that people want to know the real America. With her musical background, Perrotte is able to convey that to them through the great American Songbook, the richness of our original music tradition that is loved and shared around the world.

Starting in 2010, Perrotte focused her musical theatre work by re-creating the story lines and music of traditional children’s literature to reflect current times and current generations of creative students. Some of her adaptations include: Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Perrotte has a 500 hour advanced Yoga certification, an AFAA Group Fitness Certification, TRX training certification and CPR certification.

Poet Joyce Peseroff Nov 1, 2016

see the show live at  http://scatvsomerville.org

Joyce Peseroff

Poet and editor Joyce Peseroff grew up in the Bronx. She earned a BA at Queens College and an MFA at the University of California at Irvine, where she studied with Donald Justice. She began a lifelong friendship with poet Jane Kenyon in 1973, when Peseroff entered the University of Michigan’s Society of Fellows. In 1977, after both poets had returned to the Northeast, Peseroff and Kenyon cofounded the literary magazine Greenhouse.

Peseroff’s poems offer a sense of faceted perception, in which narrative supports rather than propels. In a 2014 interview with Katie Cantwell for the online literary magazine Niche, Peseroff discussed the thematic concerns of her forthcoming collection Know Thyself, stating, “I’m absorbed by the natural world and how we imagine it—more and more as the subject of elegy. The book was written after the deaths of my parents, so elegy is a sustained note in the chord.” Later in the same interview, she observed, “Whenever something new develops in poetry, many will argue, ‘That’s not poetry.’ Think of the reception of William Carlos Williams by the Poetry Society of America. Think of spoken word poets, poets who incorporate graphics, poets who write in code so robots can read them. It’s all poetry.”

Peseroff is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Hardness Scale (1977, reissued in 2000), Mortal Education (2000), Eastern Mountain Time (2006), and Know Thyself (forthcoming). She has served as an editor for Ploughshares and edited The Ploughshares Poetry Reader (1987), Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake (1984), and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon (2005).

Her honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation as well as a Pushcart Prize. Peseroff lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

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Joelle Renstrom Oct 18, 2016

Joelle Renstrom

Joelle Renstrom is a writer living in Somerville, MA. Her collection of essays, Closing the Book: Travels in Life, Loss, and Literature, was published by Pelekinesis in August, 2015. Joelle's blog Could This Happen? explores the relationship between science and science fiction, and won a 2012 Somerville Arts Council fellowship and a 2013 Writers' Room of Boston Nonfiction fellowship. She's the robot columnist for The Daily Beast and is a contributing writer for the new literary travel magazine Panorama. Her work has appeared in Slate, Guernica, the Guardian, The Toast, Slippage, Cognoscenti, and others. Joelle teaches writing and research with a focus on robots/AI, technology, space exploration, and science fiction at Boston University. Follow her on Twitter.

Oct 4, 2016 5PM Poet, Playwright, Novelist Lawrence Kessenich

Lawrence Kessenich

Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. His poetry has been published in Sewanee Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review and many other magazines. He has a chapbook called Strange News and two full-length books, Before Whose Glory and Age of Wonders. He has had three poems nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Kessenich has also published essays, had short plays produced at festivals in Boston, New York and Durango, Colorado, and his first novel, Cinnamon Girl,  was released inSeptember 2016.


To see the show live go to  http://scatvsomerville.org  

Poet Martha Collins: Sept 20, 2016 5PM

Poet Martha Collins

   ***** To see the show live go to:  http://scatvsomerville.org



Martha Collins is the author, most recently, of Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016), Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), and Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), a book-length poem based on a lynching her father witnessed when he was five years old. Collins has also published four earlier collections of poems, three books of co-translations from the Vietnamese, and two chapbooks (see Books and Poems).

Sept 6, 2016 Poet Kevin Gallagher

Kevin Gallagher is a political economist, poet, and publisher living in Greater Boston with his wife Kelly, their children Theo and Estelle, and Rexroth the family German Shepherd.  Gallagher's new poetry book, LOOM,  is published by MadHat Press.  Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston-based annual of poetry and poetics, and works as a Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Pardee School for Global Studies. 

Poet Kevin Gallagher


see the show live at 5PM  at  http://scatvsomerville.org

 

Aug 23, 2016 Poet Tomas O'Leary

( Right to Left)) POET TOMAS O'LEARY with poets Doug Holder and Ifeanyi Menkiti at a reading at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square

Tomas O'Leary's third full-length collection of poetry, A Prayer for Everyone is just out from Ilora Press. Of the poems in this volume, X.J. Kennedy said, "I relished their verve, their cheerful strain of Irish blasphemy. And Rhymer's Horoscope is the best poem about poetry I've read in years." O'Leary's previous books are Fool at the Funeral and The Devil Take a Crooked House, both from Lynx House Press. O’Leary holds an MFA in poetry and an MA in expressive therapies and taught for years, and for years has worked with people who have Alzheimer's. He plays Irish accordion, sings on key, doodles artistically, and translates poetry from the Spanish.

Aug 9, 2016 5PM Poet Alfred Nicol

Alfred Nicol

see the show live at http://scatvsomerville.org

Alfred Nicol’s third full-length book of poetry, Animal Psalms, was published in March, 2016 by Able Muse Press. Designed and meticulously edited by Alex Pepple, the book has received glowing recommendations from several of our finest contemporary poets, including David Ferry, winner of the 2012 National Book Award, who wrote, “Dear reader, I’ve fallen in love with this book, and that will happen to you too.”

Nicol’s previous collection, Elegy for Everyone, published in 2009, was chosen for the first Anita Dorn Memorial Prize as “a work of complex vision and stylistic mastery.” He received the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for an earlier volume, Winter Light, of which Jay Parini, biographer of Robert Frost, said, “This is certainly among the finest new volumes of poetry I have read in years.”
Alfred Nicol has written the lyrics for nine original compositions by classical/flamenco guitarist John Tavano. The CD, released in January, 2015, is titled The Subtle Thread.

In 2011 Nicol contributed a sequence of dream-notations to a book of images created by his sister, the artist Elise Nicol: the collaboration is titled Second Hand Second Mind. In 2009 Nicol, Tavano and poet Rhina Espaillat recorded the CD Melopoeia (poetry recited with musical accompaniment).
A member of the Powow River Poets since 1999, Nicol edited The Powow River Anthology, published in 2006.

Nicol’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, First Things, Atlanta Review, Commonweal, The Formalist, The Hopkins Review, and other literary journals, as well as in Contemporary Poetry of New England and other anthologies.

July 12 5PM Poet Mark Pawlak-- author of new poetry collection Reconnaissance: New & Selected Poems & Poetic Journals 2005-2015

Mark Pawlak

  Doug Holder interviews poet Mark Pawlak about his new poetry collection " Reconnaissance"






                   
Mark Pawlak was born in Buffalo, New York in 1948. He moved to
  Boston in 1966 to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
  he studied physics, and he has continued to live in the Boston area. At
  the MIT, Pawlak enrolled in a poetry seminar with Denise Levertov.
  Poetry has been an integral part of his life and work ever since. His
  original poems, and his translations from the German of Bertolt Brecht
  and others, have appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies.
  Levertov introduced his first poetry collection, The Buffalo Sequence
  (Copper Canyon, 1978). Eight other collections have followed, the most
  recent, RECONNAISSANCE: New an Selected Poems and Poetic Journals (Hanging
  Loose). Pawlak is also the editor of a number of anthologies. PRESENT
  TENSE: Poets in the World (Hanging Loose, 2004), is a collection of
  contemporary political poetry. With Dick Lourie, he has edited four
  anthologies of outstanding high school writing, Shooting the Rat,
  Bullseye, Smart Like Me, and When We Were Countries (all from Hanging Loose)