OLLI Connects kicks off our annual April Poetry Month with featured readings from the Victoria Dym & Friends Poetry Open Mic event that was held on Friday January 27, 2023. For your enjoyment we present excerpts from four of OLLI’s favorite verse writers, Evelyn Romano, Thomas Mueller, Kathy Winarski and Cath Mason. In each case their committed performance demonstrated poetic excellence that brought the written word to life. Below each video excerpt the poem is repeated in written form to allow you, our readers, to explore the meter, scheme and rhythm chosen for each piece. — Editors
Undone by Evelyn Romano
Undone
When I was ten I couldn’t imagine twenty. That was old. But I’d be a grown-up and know things for sure.
Older now, on a rollercoaster I slide backwards. Birds rise to heights and know how to descend. I spiral, spiral on an under- draft of not enough.
Disillusioned by the final dance when I’ll partner with certainty, I try to abide: feet on gliders, pulled in all directions, mind a purse heavy with change, pockets fat with confusion.
Three Short Poems by Thomas Mueller
Three Short Poems
The Train
Dancing through time I watch candles burn flickering past midnight into early morning waking to the mournful sound of a train whistle. I would like to be aboard that train sitting on a pile of hay feeling the thump, thump of the tracks underneath going anywhere, who cares? my mind carefree to soar above the moon listening to their chatter the lost souls beside me
Rapture
White star burning a hole through the moonless sky a searing laser point of light wrapped in the silk fabric of the infinite mystery My mind leaps, arching through the bright hope of early morning when I awaken from an opaque dream to the rapture of your love
Satan On Leave
Satan took a holiday cashed a check, flew to Cancun for dinner and a bottle of wine Rest, breathe, easy no dark dreams, the devil’s delight Candles burn, the sweet fragrance of midnight swaddles my soul
Absences by Cath Mason
Absences
What do you miss most? You miss family, friends fish ‘n’ chips, then sheep. Or maybe pubs. Yes pubs with names like Load o’ Mischief Craven Heifer and Crooked Billet. Pubs serving Sunday roasts of local lamb and mint sauce.
Pubs in countryside. You trek across fields strewn with sheep droppings, your face in wind and slant rain until you drip indoors, duck under beams — drawn in by laughter.
You miss your local The Rising Sun set in a terrace of cottages, Aspidistra resilient in front parlour window, wood fire in the snug,
the warmth of Lancashire hotpot— pie ‘n’ mushy peas.
Spring in its beer garden You bicker with your husband. He calls you woollyback. Bleats ricochet around The valley, cream lambs Scud across fields hemmed by dry stone walls.
Today in a flat Florida landscape of gated neighbourhoods lined with palms, you long For pubs on Pennine Moors: shelters from wind-wuthered gritstone. You crave heathered moors where sheep scale crags and thrive on land that won’t be tamed.
The Bastard Son’s Daughter by Kathy Winarski
The Bastard Son’s Daughter
I scrutinize A fast fading photograph Pulled from an old album Long ago glue stains still visible No names. No date.
Hoping to find the man whose blood’s my own I speculate A young man neither tall nor short Skinny, for sure, dominates the 3″ by 3″ Slouching a bit, hands behind his back.
Yes, it’s him! Look at that nose! Those ears! His grin’s wicked. His eyes like mine. Teasingly, he leans into the woman next to him. His wife? His mother? An older sister?
Her perfunctory smile, eyes screwed as tight as her bun. Stiff, straight, not engaging the teasing boy man. Annoyed that her work’s delayed for a silly photograph? Behind them an old house, wood shingled, in need of repair Vines hanging from the kitchen window.
Who wanted to remember them? Who didn’t want us to know?
Standing in the Buffalo cold long ago, I was stunned by a mother’s silence. I am still shocked by an orphan’s truth.
THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2023
ART Thursday: Saying It Out Loud, A Reading of Original Poetry 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm USF Contemporary Art Museum (CAM)
Join in a night of Poetry Readings by USF graduate students in the “Craft of Poetry” course. The original poems were written with imagination, mystery and wildness in response to the MFA artists in the exhibit Someday You’ll Have To Say It Out Loud.
For questions or more information please email caminfo@usf.edu or call (813) 974-4133. This event is free and open to the public.
Evelyn Ann Romano was a member of the Lifelong Writers at USF for several years and has been a member of OLLI since 2016. She has taken OLLI courses in poetry, writing, technology and laughter yoga. Her latest anthology of poems published in February 2023, Eve Redeemed, is available from Amazon and other book sellers.
Tom Mueller holds bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering and sociology from the University of Miami. He worked in the private and public sectors as a civil engineer for thirty-eight years before his retirement in 2012. He is an athlete, plays drums, studies world religions and is struggling in earnest to learn conversational German. Tom has backpacked and hiked extensively in the United States, Canada, Europe and New Zealand, carrying up to sixty-five pounds of gear and single malt scotch. He published a collection of poems entitled Hope and Healing in the summer of 2021. Tom, his wife Janet and their black cat Ollie live in Temple Terrace, Florida
Cath Mason’s poems are forthcoming, or have appeared in Palm Prints, Literary Mama, Woman’s Weekly, Pennine Ink and Sandhill Review. Her poem “Dent in the Day” won an honorable mention USF’s Poetry Competition 2015. Her poem “The Out of Body Experience of a Potato” won the humor prize in the 2012 Southport Writers’ Circle International Poetry Competition. Her poem “A Tampa Welcome” is on display on the Tampa Poetry Post at the downtown Municipal Office Building.
Kathy Winarski has taken many OLLI courses in poetry, literature, art, architecture, music, history and science. She is also a member of Write Time for Poets SIG. The Bastard Son’s Daughter was published in Slipstream 42.
4 Replies to “Poetry Open Mic Night”
This is delightful! A high-class poetry jam right in my room at home! Thank you all for performing your creative and colorful poems for us in this way. Each one stimulated my brain and gave me a smile. Please keep sharing your lovely poems with us!
What a treat, thanks to all!. Before retirement, I used to go to work Monday morning–now I can sit back and read and listen to poetry–how cool is that. Such vivid and arresting poems too. Write on!
I echo Mary’s words…this is a treasure trove to savour over and over again…each poem each time elicits new images, new reveries, new musings, new joys. Thank you, thank you….
This is delightful! A high-class poetry jam right in my room at home! Thank you all for performing your creative and colorful poems for us in this way. Each one stimulated my brain and gave me a smile. Please keep sharing your lovely poems with us!
What a treat, thanks to all!. Before retirement, I used to go to work Monday morning–now I can sit back and read and listen to poetry–how cool is that. Such vivid and arresting poems too. Write on!
I echo Mary’s words…this is a treasure trove to savour over and over again…each poem each time elicits new images, new reveries, new musings, new joys. Thank you, thank you….
Once again I’m blown away by the talents of our fellow OLLI members.
These poems are a treat