Open Mic following the Featured Readers — feel free to share one poem, one page.
At Casey Community Center, 810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Kevin Farragher doesn’t have a book, hasn’t won a prize and barely has a leg to stand on. He wonders at the limits of life and language and thinks there might be overlap. The Tower of Babel is in his backyard, as is a garden gnome he calls Chomsky. His ears have heard the holy word that dwelt among the ancient trees, yet he remains steadfast in his appreciation of ambient noise.
Atira Zeoli has been writing poetry since she was three years old. Raised in the flat farmland of Poolesville, Maryland, and the mountain vistas of Northern Arizona, she was an active member of Sedona’s poetry community, earning a feature in Red Rock News (2005) and performing at Gumptionfest (2006, 2007) and the 7th Annual Slab City Slam as the sacrificial poet (2007). She won the 2007 Montgomery College Award for Creative Writing and the 2008 Danielle C. Ezrin Creative Writing Scholarship for her poem Tabula Rasa. She also interned at Potomac Review. From 2007-2008, she ran the Open Mind/Open Mic series in Germantown, MD.
She is the author of the self-published chapbook we all have belly buttons, and other notions of suffering and was a contributing writer for If I Knew, a multimedia health education initiative for young adults. Her poetry is forthcoming in the spring issue of PLENTY. Atira has led creative writing workshops in schools for many years and teaches writing classes at Riverworks Arts Center.
DiVerse Gaithersburg 