Caffe Lena Poetry Open Mic Featuring Alan Catlin & Bruce Bennett

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 and readings start at 7:30. Bruce Bennett is the author of nine volumes of poetry and more than twenty-five poetry chapbooks. He was a co-founder and editor of Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, and Ploughshares, and his reviews of contemporary poetry have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He was recently selected as the first recipient of the annual Writing the Rockies Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Creative Writing. Alan Catlin has been publishing for parts of five decades which makes him feel like the answer to a baseball trivia question. During that time he has amassed thousands of credits which range from the obscure, to semi famous, from Wordsworth's Socks to the Wormwood Review. That, and a ten trip bus ticket, will get you from where he lives in Schenectady to Saratoga. For the open mic, please plan to share one long poem or two short poems, altogether lasting no more than three to five minutes. All ages and styles welcome.