Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, July 9, 2022 at 2pm (eastern)

via Zoom

Alison Woods
Matthew Burns

Poets Alison Woods and Matthew Burns will be the featured readers, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets virtually via Zoom on Saturday, July 9, 2022 at 2pm (eastern).

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike. Thank you.

The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

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Features:

Alison Woods - Alison Woods was born and raised in New York City. Her collection of poetry, Bless This Home, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020). Her chapbook, Dark Forest, won the New Women’s Voices Competition, Finishing Line Press (2011). Her poems have been published widely in literary journals, and her chapbook, She has collaborated with singer-songwriters including Steve Addabbo for his CD, Out Of Nothing, and Marion LoGuidice on her CD God’s House. Woods’ earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York City. She currently lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York.



Ever After

Across the rippling of the pond in Central Park
a model boat floats in its own oily shadow,
tilled white wing skimming the water.

Oh this voyage! A lifetime
to ask what love is, the good
questions a fragrance filling the air.

I know there are moments
mired and unreachable,
but then some pleasure, like dawn,

slips out from behind the curtain.

-Alison Woods

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Matthew Burns - Matthew Burns is the author of Imagine the Glacier (Finishing Line Press, 2021). His poems have won a James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, and have appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Posit, ellipsis…, Raleigh Review, Camas, Spoon River, Quiddity, and others. He teaches writing and literature in upstate New York and can be found online at matthewburnspoetry.com.



How to Go Home

Head North.
Forget the warehouses
held up by planks and the railroad
tracks coated black with coal; or,
rather, do not hate them the way you did
when they bent into you, tall and long

in their reach, deep too, dust under
your nails, grease in your veins. Look
at the rivers in their swell; they have nothing
against you; they do not care; not about the time
in ’89, in January, when you almost drowned,
setting old tires on fire and sliding them

across the ice like cheap comets—your weight
too much, the stink of melting rubber, the heat
too much, and then the cold that felt hot
for a good minute once you were in,
neck-deep—and they still do not care
about the thousand small rocks you’ve kicked

from the trestle nor the heavy ones you heaved
at the coffins when they floated south after May
rains washed them from their plots, pulled them
away to new grounds downstream;
the river does not even remember you. Keep
in mind: the firehouse and the creamery

and the public pool from first grade
all do not know your name,
even if they’re still there, holding on to the ground
beneath, the ground holding on, too,
the way everything here holds on: desperately
so it will not be ripped away.

Behold, be held. Stand on the hills,
sit in the parking garage, lie down
in the bottle return at the grocery store,
it all points to the same sure thing:
it will be waiting when you come back.
All of it.

-Matthew Burns

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WPS 2022 Schedule - all readings are now HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
All of 2022 Events: Events

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike following the featured readers. Thank you.

01/January 8th - Bruce Weber; Jerrice J. Baptiste via Zoom
02/February 12th - Leigh Ann Christain; Mike Jurkovic via Zoom
03/March 12th - Alison Koffler; Ken Holland via Zoom
04/April 9th - The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group via Zoom
05/May 14th - Roger Hecht; Saida Agostini via Zoom
06/June 11th - James Reitter; Jessica Cuello via Zoom
07/July 9th - Alison Woods; Matthew Burns via Zoom
08/August 13th - Arden Levine; Marjorie Maddox via Zoom
09/September 10th - Dennis Rush; Robert Charles Basner HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
10/October 8th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
11/November 12th - Cheryl Rice; Teresa Costa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
12/December 10th - Anique Sara Taylor; Cate McNider and Annual Business Meeting HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom

Also, why not become a 2022 Member or donate to the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join or donate, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as well as your mailing address and phone number. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html). Your membership helps pay for our upgraded Zoom account, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website.

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