Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library

The Larchmont Public Library is pleased to announce an evening of poetry on Thursday, April 20 at 7:00pm, in celebration of National Poetry Month in April. Featured poets will be Cynthia Manick and Mike Lala, both of whom have recently published new books of poetry.

Poetry is one of those topics that often gets dismissed as whimsical and unimportant. But poetry is a way to understand how language and symbol systems work. It is a worthy expression of emotion or deep feelings and aesthetics, or a sense of what is beautiful about the world. Poetry is one of the most universal vehicles of human expression, and one of the most important of all written media for describing experiences. Research has also concluded that teaching students poetry offers measurable results in a wide set of linguistic domains.

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). A Pushcart Prize nominated poet with a BA from Hollins University and a MFA from the New School; she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Fine Arts Work Center, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences, Hedgebrook, Poets House, and the Vermont Studio Center. She was a 2014 finalist for the New York Foundation of Arts Fellowship in Poetry; serves as East Coast Editor of the independent press Jamii Publishing; and is Founder and Curator of the reading series Soul Sister Revue. Select poems have been performed by Emotive Fruition, a performance series in NYC where actors bring to life page poetry for the stage; the 92nd Street Y Words We Live In project, and is currently being developed by Motionpoems, a organization dedicated to video poetry. Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, African American Review, Bone Bouquet, Callaloo, Clockhouse, Human Equity Through Art (HEArt), Fjords Review, Kinfolks Quarterly, Kweli Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, Pedestal Magazine, PLUCK! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, St. Ann’s Review, The Wall Street Journal, Tidal Basin Review, and elsewhere. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Mike Lala is the author of Exit Theater (Center for Literary Publishing, 2016). Mike Lala is a poet who works with text, recorded sound and occasionally with images. His poetry can be found in Boston Review, Fence, the Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Jubilat, the Awl and VOLT, as well as a number of chapbooks; most recently In the Gun Cabinet (The Atlas Review, 2016). He curated Fireside Follies from 2010-2013, edited Washington Square from 2012-2014 and was a Veterans’ Writing Workshop Fellow at NYU from 2013-2014. He lives in New York.