Poetry in Portage

A monthly Poetry Reading with a Featured Poet, a Featured Reader and OPEN MIC debuts in Portage at Suzy's Steak and Seafood House.
Suzy's starts serving dinner at 4:00pm - so feel free to come early, eat, socialize or stay afterwards to mix and mingle.

Featured Poet:  
May 7 – Richard Merelman and Gabriel Sauers  
  

On May 7 a trilogy of traveling troubadours will read their poetry at the monthly public gathering of Poetry in Portage at Suzy’s Steakhouse and Seafood.  There will also be an open mic opportunity for anyone in the audience to share a poem (original or a favorite).  Readings begin at 6:30 pm.  

Our visiting poets this month are:
Richard Merelman, a Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, his first book of poems,  The Imaginary Baritone (Fireweed Press), appeared in 2012. In 2016, Finishing Line Press published his chapbook The Unnamed Continent. In 2017, Bent Paddle Press published his Sensorium, another chapbook. He has published individual poems in such journals, as Main Street Rag, Lake Effect, Stonbeboat,  Measure, and The Road Not Taken. Most recently he published a villanelle in Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, an anthology (Kelsay Books), 2018. His “At Sixteen” is forthcoming from Main Street Rag.  Richard is a native of Washington, D. C.

Mark Kraushaar will also be reading. His poetry has been included in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Yale Review  the web site Poetry Daily and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. A full length collection,“Falling Brick Kills Local Man” was published by University of Wisconsin Press, as winner of the 2009 Felix Pollak Prize. A recent collection, “The Uncertainty Principle” published by Waywiser Press, was chosen by James Fenton as winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize you.  He has worked as a pipe welder, wig salesman, shoe factory line worker, waiter, motel clerk and, most recently as an RN.

And joining them will be Sue Blaustein.  Sue published her first book “In the Field, Autobiography of an Inspector” in 2018. Her publication credits and bio can be found at www.sueblaustein.com. Sue retired from the Milwaukee Health Department in 2016, and is an active volunteer with several organizations.