2morro Sunday May 27 11-3pm Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats

We pulled some data from the internet to create bios of our seven poets and 2 musicians headlining Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats tomorrow Sunday May 27, 2012 from 11am-3pm.

If tomorrow’s gathering is a success, this will be the first in a quarterly poetry/music series organized with support from Brandt Gallery.

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Our MC Steven B. Smith was born in Bitterroot, raised on Paradise Prairie. Farm boy, car thief, Naval Academy, expelled for dope, high society marriage, armed robbery, jail, escaping the cops, illegal loft dweller, ArtCrimes, rat attacks, overdose, overdose, overdose, celibate, remarried, expat. — www.agentofchaos.com

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Mary E. Weems, PhD, is a poet, playwright, author, performer, and imagination-intellect theorist. She is currently the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights (April 2007 – April 2009). Dr. Weems is the author and/or co-editor of several books including Poetry Power (Silvermoon Press, 2003), her educational text Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth (Peter Lang, 2003), Working Hard for the Money: America’s Working Poor in Stories, Poems, and Photos (Bottom Dog Press, 2002), and a book of poems An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles (Bottom Dog Press, 2008). http://uncrownedcommunitybuilders.com/person/mary-e-weems

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Katie Daley is a poet, performer, and teacher. Katie Daley has hit the road countless times to bring her word-music to theaters, schoolrooms and nightclubs across the US and Canada. As a backup plan, in case she ever runs out of poetry gigs, she keeps a suitcase in her trunk overspilling with circus outfits and confetti. — www.katiedaley.com

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Jim Lang is parts: artist, poet, photographer, potter, philosopher and Cleveland’s current reigning curmudgeon. He has a new chapbook titled “Coyote Moon” published by Nightballet Press.

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R.A. “Rafiq” Washington is a poet, artist, entrepreneur and musician into rock, hip-hop, free jazz, poetry, novellas, art shows, book publishing and is the guy behind Cleveland Tapes, a hip-hop label whose recordings are sold via Web site (clevelandtapes.com) and in independent record/book stores. His latest chapbook is “Primer for the Vanguard Youth” published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

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Christina Brooks has been an integral part of the Cleveland poetry scene for years, which is amazing since she lives in Detroit Michigan. She recently had her chapbook “A Thousand Voices – a city shaman’s notebook” published by The Poet’s Haven Chapbook Series.

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This will be Christopher Green‘s first feature reading so I don’t know a lot about him except that he’s a delightful young man who’s been my brother-in-law for the past six-plus years. His poetry is slice-of-life and economically consciously concerned. He follows this up philosophically by refusing to have a car and bicycles everywhere.

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Wendy Shaffer is a veteran of the Cleveland Poet scene, Wendy has been involved with such projects as the annual Thompsonian reading at Shaker Lakes in remembrance Cuyahoga County’s Poet Laureate Daniel Thompson, the Women and Words series of the early 1990’s, and went on the represent Cleveland on the Poetry Slam Team to San Francisco and Boston, to name but a few.

Wendy will be reading from her recently released book of poetry 22 Years: a book of relationships, family, friends, money, soap opera, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, love, life, and one’s self. Between her habits of nasty men and assorted debaucheries lies the philosophy of good waitressing and bleach, from a woman of age with an honesty from an adroit practitioner of the language who has lived her without apology.

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Tom Orange, PhD, has designed and taught introductory and advanced literature and writing courses at four nationally-ranked universities: (Cleveland State, Georgetown, George Washington and Vanderbilt), including “Literature and Jazz,” “Postmodern American Poetry,” “American Women Poets in the 21st Century,” and “Introduction to Creative Writing.”

Appearances in print and online poetry journals including Ambit, Anomaly, Big Game Revue, Boog City, Court Green, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, The Gig, Phoebe, The Poker, Primary Writing, Queen Street Quarterly, Rampike, Sulfur, Typo, and Wheelhouse.

3 poetry chapbooks: American Dialectics (Oxford, OH: Slack Buddha Press, 2008); A Day in Switzerland (Schaffhausen [Switzerland]: Dusie Press, 2006); 25 Poems (Washington, DC: The Interrupting Cow, 2004)

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These things are known about Davide Andras Imburgia: he was an itinerant coffee worker, a South American adventurist, and gravitates to sound. He has described himself as a woollybrained unprofessional journalist interested in noise, spirituals and as a stranger in a strange land.

Pat’s in the Flats calls itself a “Working-man bar by day, blue-collar rock-club at night.” From an online user review by M.M., “Pat’s, and Pat herself, are Cleveland institutions. I’ve been coming here on and off since the 1980s and have had some of the coolest times of my life here. If you look up at the record covers posted on the wall you’ll see 20-25 years of underground Cleveland music history, right there. And then if you cast your eyes downward you’re likely to see a couple of the people who are on those record covers, in their 10-20 years older incarnations, staggering around with beers in hand. Pat has met all those people in person, served them drinks, in some cases gone to their funerals. She’s truly the grand old dame of Cleveland punk and, now that Mitzi of Mitzi’s has passed on, probably the last great lady of the 1900’s Cleveland bar scene.” — http://www.patsintheflats.com/

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Sun May 27 11-3pm Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats at 2233 West Third Street (at the bottom of Literary Ave Hill, in Tremont). Doors open 11am, sandwiches for sale 11:30, poetry/music noon to 3. Pat’s is a bar so alcohol likely for sale.

(the 1st 2 chapbooks below use my fotos for cover art)