Caffe Lena Poetry Featuring Bertha Rogers & Liv McKee

This monthly event, hosted by Carol Graser, takes place on the first Wednesday of every month and includes an open mic reading as well as featured poets. Sign up for the open mic starts at 7:00 and readings start at 7:30. The featured poets for August are Bertha Rogers and Liv McKee. Bertha Rogers is a poet and visual artist, and founding director of Bright Hill Press and Literary Center of the Catskills. Her poems have been published in many literary journals, anthologies and in collections, including Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), Sleeper, You Wake, The Fourth Beast, and A House of Corners. Her translation of the Beowulf was published in 2000; with a new edition in 2018. Her translation of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems from the Exeter Book (c.975), Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, is forthcoming. She has received grants and awards from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, Saltonstall, Caldera, Jentel, and others. A master teaching artist, her essays have appeared in Open the Door and the Asia Society’s Education Week. She frequently reads her poetry throughout New York and elsewhere. Liv McKee is a queer spoken word artist, dancer, musician, and farmer living in the Capital Region of New York. Liv has featured and organized poetry events at venues all over the Northeast and currently competes with Albany’s Nitty Gritty Slam. She placed 33rd out of 100 poets at the 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam in Flagstaff, AZ this past year, and took 1st at the 2016 Emily Dickinson Slam in Amherst, MA, the 8th Annual QEW Regional Slam in Buffalo, NY, the WordxWord Women's Invitational in Pittsfield, MA, and Wordfest in Troy, NY. Apart from (or wildly integrated within) writing and performing poetry, in her free time you may find Liv swimming, singing, mountain climbing, having conversations with the moon, and playing old time fiddle music. She hopes her poetry leaves you cut, bandaged, bathed, and heartened.