Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Best American Poetry Blog: "Inspired by The Inspired Word's Michael Geffner" by Stacey Harwood



This appeared yesterday on The Best American Poetry blog:

Inspired by The Inspired Word's Michael Geffner
By Stacey Harwood

I caught up with Michael Geffner recently, which, if you’re a facebook friend or are among his 8000+ twitter followers (@MikeGeffner), you know is no small feat. Geffner is founder, producer, and director of “The Inspired Word” (@TheInspiredWordNYC) series and as such he puts together a show every Thursday night, year round.

We met because Geffner is the mastermind behind this Thursday’s “Big Apple BAP: NYC’s Best American Poets” at One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge) 76 East 1st Street (corner of 1st Avenue) Manhattan. (Phone: (917) 703-1512. Cover charge is $15.) The program begins at 6:30 PM and brings together a blockbuster lineup of new and established poets, all of whom have been included in at least one volume of The Best American Poetry (Mark Bibbins, Jennifer Michael Hecht, David Shapiro, R. Erica Doyle, Jerome Sala, Elaine Equi, Michael Cirelli, Stacey Harwood, George Green, Carly Sachs, Matthew Yeager, Amy Holman, and host David Lehman.)

How did this award winning sports writer and journalist become a poetry impresario and what does he bring to the experience that sets his series apart from others?

Though he has a life-long love of poetry, Geffner was not part of the poetry scene until 2009 when he became involved in organizing shows for a restaurant in his Queens neighborhood.  When the restaurant closed, he decided to keep at it and scouted locations in Manhattan. At the same time, as he attended many readings and surveyed the landscape of NYC poetry, his vision of a successful series sharpened...

Please read the rest of the post by clicking here.

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