Last Sunday Poetry Brings Flannelly, Abegunde, and Baths

August’s Bloomington Writers Guild “Last Sunday Poetry Reading and Open Mic” at Morgenstern Books (cf. July 30, June 25, et al.) began with multimedia poet and Butler University Creative Writing MFA student Bree Jo’ann Flannelly reading a group of “more recent” poems, followed with two from her book BLACK GLITTER (Monster House Press, 2018), a short story, and a final poem capping it off. She was followed by multi-published poet and Indiana University faculty member in African American and African Diaspora Studies, as well as recent NEH award winner in the category of Institutes for Higher Education Faculty, Dr. Maria Hamilton Abegunde (who we’ve met several times in the past), with a number of prose poems of varying lengths, to an overflow audience of some thirty or more listeners.

This completed the featured poets section. Then, after the break, there were about eight walk-on readers from those who remained, still at a healthy twenty-some strong, of which I was next-to-last with two horror poems to honor summer (thus closing as well a week of midish-nineties, at peak, sun-drenched late August weather): “Summer Cancellations,” originally published in THE PALACE CORBIE a few years back, and my “3rd Sunday Write” entry from last month, “Birdbath,” which you can read right here if desired by scrolling down to July 21.