Thursdays are for Poetry

Thursdays Are For Poetry is delighted to announce that Zev Shanken will be our featured poet on Thursday, Feb 18, 2016. Zev will be reading two sections of his new poetry book , “Memory Tricks”, in their entirety. After this special presentation, general discussion will follow. Open mic with short poems only. 7:30-9:30. $6 cover at the door.

Zev Shanken is a retired teacher of English for the New York City Department of Education. He is currently an adjunct professor of English at Kean College and the College of Staten Island. Mr. Shanken is the recipient of two NEH Summer Fellowship for High School Teacher Grants: “The Art of Biblical Narrative,” Northwestern University. Director: Wolfgang Roth; “The Lyric Poetry of Shakespeare, Keats, Whitman and Yeats,” Harvard. Director: Helen Vendler.

Recent poems of his have appeared in The New Verse News, Yes! Poetry, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Terra Nova Books’ volume on mourning entitled Liminal Space; Weathered Pages; Jewish Currents; and brevitas annuals 2010 through 15. His poem “When the Father of an Old Girlfriend Dies” received an Honorable Mention in the North Colorado Writer’s 2015 Contest and appears in the current issue of Pooled Ink: 2016. In 1996, Blue Begonia Press published Mr. Shanken’s chapbook, Al Het.

Recent poems have also appeared in First Literary Review-East.
Mr. Shanken is cofounder of Thursdays are for Poetry, a monthly gathering of poets in Bergen County, NJ. He is a devoted member of brevitas, an on-line poetry group dedicated to the short poem.

On February 18, he will read from selections from his new manuscript, Memory Tricks.