December Poetry, Prose, & Open Mic Night
November 08, 2019
Featured Artists:
Dean Blehert was born in St. Paul in 1942. He decided he that writing poems was what he wanted to do in 1958, but then went ahead (on the off chance it might do him some good) with 8 years of college and grad school, then taught English for two years (1967-9) as an Asst. Prof. at Cornell U., then dropped out of academia to do various other things, including writing poetry, counseling, computer programming, cab driving and, of course, writing more poetry. For 20 years (1984-2004) he published a subscription poetry letter, “Deanotations” – just his own poems and his wife’s (Pamela Coulter Blehert’s ) drawings. There were 110 issues. Also, since 1976, he’s had 8 books published, some self-published, others not. They include “Kill the Children” from Word Wright press, “Please, Lord, Make Me a Famous Poet or at Least Less Fat” (self-published), and three chapbooks from Pogment Press: “Poems for Adults and Other Children” (poems about kids), “I Swear He Was Laughing” (poems about dogs), and “No Cats Have Been Maimed or Mutilated During the Making of This Book, But Some of Them are Disappointed – DEEPLY Disappointed – in Me” (poems about cats). Many more of his poems and essays (and poems and paintings by his wife) may be found at www.blehert.com.
Madeleine Mysko is the author of two novels, Bringing Vincent Home and Stone Harbor Bound, and a poetry collection, Crucial Blue. With three other Baltimore-area poets she is also the author of In The Margins: A Conversation in Poetry. Her poems and prose—short fiction, creative nonfiction, and opinion pieces—appear widely in both literary journals and news venues, including the Baltimore Sun. During the Vietnam War, she served as a nurse on the burn ward at Brooke Army Medical Center and is a member of Veterans for Peace. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she has taught creative writing in the Baltimore-Washington region for years. Among her honors are individual artist grants in both poetry and fiction from the State of Maryland. Presently she serves as a coordinating editor of the “Reflections” column at American Journal of Nursing. Website: www.madeleinemysko.com