Poets Michael Cirelli & R. Erica Doyle @ Big Apple BAP: NYC's Best American Poetry Poets

Poets Michael Cirelli & R. Erica Doyle @ The Inspired Word's Big Apple BAP: NYC's Best American Poetry Poets, Thursday, June 16, 2011, @ One and One Bar/Restaurant, Nexus Lounge, Manhattan, NYC.

Michael Cirelli was born in Providence, RI in 1975. His newest collection, Everyone Loves The Situation (Penmanship Books, 2011), deconstructs MTV's hit reality show, Jersey Shore, flipping the cultural zeitgeist on its (gelled and sprayed) head. He is also the author of Vacations on the Black Star Line (Hanging Loose Press, 2010), which was named in About.com's Poetry Picks "Best Books of 2010," and Lobster with Ol' Dirty Bastard (Hanging Loose Press, 2008), which was a NY Times bestseller from an independent press and was featured in the "Debut Poets" issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Hanging Loose, Texas Review, World Literature Today and King Magazine, among others. He is the Executive Director of one of the nation's largest youth literary arts organization, Urban Word NYC, and has authored two poetry curricula, Poetry Jam (Recorded Books, 2010) and Hip-Hop Poetry & the Classics (Milk Mug, 2004). He has also appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and Brave New Voices. He appears in the 2011 Best American Poetry.

R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian immigrant parents, and has lived in Washington, DC, Farmington, Connecticut and La Marsa, Tunisia. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Best American Poetry (2001), Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, Callaloo, Ploughshares, Best Black Women's Erotica, Bum Rush the Page, Bloom, and from the Fishouse, among others. She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and was a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. She is also a fellow of Cave Canem, and her manuscript, proxy, was a finalist for the 2007 Cave Cavem Poetry Prize, selected by Claudia Rankine. Excerpts from proxy were also published as a Belladonna* chapbook. She received her MFA in Poetry from the New School, and lives in New York City, where she teaches in the NYC public schools and facilitates Tongues Afire: A Creative Writing Workshop for queer women and trans and gender non-conforming people of color.

This inaugural Big Apple BAP: NYC's Best American Poetry Poets was a night celebrating New York City's finest poets, whose poems over the years have been honored with inclusion in the highly respected annual anthology, The Best American Poetry. http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/

Hosted by The Best American Poetry's founding editor, David Lehman, the debut lineup included a dazzling array of accomplished poets: 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 Vicki Hudspith.

It was a fabulous night of poetry.

Founded by award-winning journalist and former Village Voice columnist Mike Geffner, The Inspired Word is one of the hottest new poetry/spoken word series in the country, happening every Tuesday and Thursday night in Manhattan's East Village.

Venue: One and One Bar/Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street (corner of 1st Avenue)
Manhattan, New York City

Filmed & Edited by: Laurence Wallace
http://www.laurencewallace.com/