Past Events

April is National Poetry Month, and Staten Island OutlOUD offers full poetry service for our community!

Throughout the month of April, OutLOUD distributes free poems throughout the Island (North Shore, mid-Island & South Shore).  Pick up a poem (or 2!  or 3!  They’re free!), keep it in your pocket & share with people throughout the month of April.  Share your poem with family – Share your poem with friends – Share your poem with the person sitting next to you on the Ferry, bus or subway!

National Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day is Thursday, April 30th.  So get your poem from Staten Island OutLOUD, and get ready to share!  You can pick up a free poem from OutLOUD at all Staten Island branches of the NY Public Library, as well as at many community & cultural centers.  Participating community organizations include:ETG Book Cafe, 288 Bay St, SINY 10301, AHistoric Richmond Town (441 Clarke Ave, SINY 10306),and the Greenbelt Nature Center, (700 Rockland Ave, SINY 10314). 

Sunday, March 15, 2pm at Rossville AME Zion Church, 584 Bloomingdale Road, SINY 10309

Staten Island OutLOUD’s series for The Big Read on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird continues with this special event.  Featured guest: our neighbor Rev George McClain, who will have just returned from the 50th anniversary commemoration of the historic Selma-Montgomery marches.

Staten Island OutLOUD is honored to present this event in collaboration with Pastor Janet Jones and the congregation of Rossville AME Zion Church, one of Staten Island’s leading faith communities.  The Rossville church stands on the site  of historic Staten Island’s Sandy Ground community, where freed Black oyster fishermen settled with their families in the early 1800s.

Rev. McClain worked in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s as a seminarian and as a young minister.  OutLOUD has been featuring his oral history of that pivotal time in civil rights history, as part of our 2014-15 series on Harper Lee’s gripping novel.  The march on Selma, Alabama was a critical point in the nation’s growing civil rights movement, and many observers credit To Kill a Mockingbird as helping to catalyze public opinion.  For excellent guides on To Kill a Mockingbird, visit http://www.neabigread.org/books/mockingbird/readers-guide/.

Sunday, March 8, 3pm.  At Historic Richmond Town’s Courthouse, 441 Clarke Ave, SINY 10306.  Plenty of free parking in the Courthouse lot.  Free & open to the public

Staten Island OutlOUD is proud to celebrate the work of two Staten Island poets, Victoria Hallerman and Lisa Rhoades.  By remarkable coincidence, each woman won the coveted Bright Hill Press Poetry Prize in two consecutive years.  OutLOUD’s event will honor their work, together with that of a recent Bright Hill Prize winner, Constance Norgren, a poet who makes her home in Brooklyn.

Ms. Hallerman has written and editted a variety of chapbooks,  journals and books of poetry.  Bright Hill Press published her luminous volume, The Aerialist.    Ms. Rhoades’ Bright Hil Press publication is Strange Gravity; other works include The Week I thought I Was, Ugly, Wretched, and New Jersey Girls Are Fixing Their Hair.  Bright Hill Press published Constance Norgren’s Tonight’s Quiet; her other works include Falling Again and poems included in the anthology Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems.

Molly Peacock, past president of the Poetry Society of America and the author of more than six books of poetry, said of Lisa Rhoades’Strange Gravity, ” Very few poets, only the truly gifted ones like Lisa Rhoades, dare to write poems of such vulnerability and depth that readers can enter them as if they were made from our own thoughts and emotions.”  Strange Gravity won The Bright Hill Prize, and was published in 2004.

Sapphire, American author and performance poet, said of Tonight’s Quiet, by Constance Norgren, “These are poems with glistening quiet surfaces that crack open suddenly, radiating heat and vitality.”  Tonight’s Quiet won The Bright Hill Prize, and was published in 2014.

Jean Valentne, New York State Poet Laureate from 2008-2010 and winner of the National Book Award, said of  The Aerialist, “With mature authority and true poetic intelligence, Hallerman presents us with our lives as aerialists:  ‘Her life is the wire–she can never come down…/if she were to cut the wire (she dreams of this)/ the sky would break like a mirror into the sea/ and nothing would be whole again…'”  The Aerialist won The Bright Hill Prize, and was published in 2005.

L to R: Constance Norgren, Victoria Hallerman and Lisa Rhoades.  

Sunday, Feb 15, 2015, 2pm at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, 388 Lighthouse Ave, SINY 10306

In anticipation of Tibetan New Year, Staten Island OutLOUD hosts a reading from a Tibetan national epic, King Gesar of Ling.  The Tibetan Museum will serve momos (Tibetan dumplings), and will also feature a free screening of a Tibetan film after our reading concludes.  Free & open to the public.  Details TBA.

Saturday, Jan 31, 2015, 7pm.  Art Lab, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Building H (Snug Harbor), SINY 10301

Years ago, Staten Island artist Sarah Yuster painted the portrait of the novelist Saul Bellow.

“I wrote to him, sending samples of my work, and asking if we could meet so I might paint him. He liked my  letter and we began a correspondence.  A year later he invited me to Vermont, where I spent several days taking photos and talking with him and his wife.”  From those photographs, Ms. Yuster created a portrait of  the Nobel Prize-winning author of Henderson the Rain King, the Dean’s December, Ravelstein, and many other distinguished works.

The young painter was delighted to work with Bellow, and he was pleased with the final result.  The painting now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.  Sarah wrote an essay on her experience working with one of the most eminent American writers of the 20th century.

The painting is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

Join us for a winter’s evening of readings & conversation with Sarah.  Free & open to the public.

Sunday, January 25, 2015, 2:30pm at Greenbelt Nature Center, 700 Rockland Ave (@Brielle), SINY 10314

Young readers can build confidence and strengthen their skills by reading aloud to a thoughtful, patient listener: a kindly licensed therapy dog named Sweetie Pie.  Sweetie Pie is a gentle, kid-friendly boxer.  She’s getting older, so she moves slower and loves to sit & listen as kids read to her.  Kids enjoy Sweetie Pie and she loves curling up on the floor as kids and their parents hang out with her.

Kids can bring their favorite books from home, or borrow one of ours.  This is a fun event for the whole family; parents and kids can read together, or big brothers & sisters can read with their younger siblings.  Join us to sit in front of the fireplace, and gaze out the windows at the winter woodland scene, as we read our favorites.

Paws & Read OutLOUD  for Kidz is fun for all ages.  Free & open to the public.

At the St George Library Center, 5 Central Ave (@Hyatt St), SINY 10301.           A spoken-word-performance workshop for adults age 55+.  Our free eight-week series takes place on Saturday afternoons, January 17 – March 14.

Upcoming sessions: Saturday, Jan 24 at 3pm,  Sat, Jan 31 at 2:30pm, Sat February 7 at 2:30pm, Sat Feb 14 at 2:30pm, Sat Feb 21 at 2:30pm, Sat Feb 28 at 2:30pm, Sats March 7 & 14 at 2:30pm.

Have you ever wanted to get onstage at an open mic event, but hesitated to stand in front of an audience?  Have you ever felt uncertain when asked to make a toast at a wedding, or to speak in at a meeting or at some special occasion?  Our workshops will help you get comfortable in Staten Island OutLOUD’s spoken-word events, and in other aspects of public speaking.  If you want to read poetry at an open-mic, audition for a performance or make comments at a meeting our workshops will help you build confidence.  We’ll help you develop skills to present yourself effectively, enjoy the experience – and let your voice be heard!

Staten Island OutLOUD offers this 8-week workshop on developing and strengthening your spoken word performance skills.  And guess what?  Those skills will also help you communicate more effectively one-on-one, in small-group settings, on the phone, and in many other informal situations.

Here are some of the topics that our workshop series will explore: Introduction to voice & speech technique, movement, breath control, creating & structuring your script, speech, rehearsal technique, tricks for getting comfortable onstage, using a microphone, understanding and overcoming “stage fright”, engaging with your  audience, preparing for the unexpected.

Saturday, January 10, 2015.  8pm at Every Thing Goes Book Cafe, 208 Bay St, SINY 10301

Staten Island OutLOUD’s series on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird continues with this free screening of a beautiful film by Polish filmmaker Piotr Kajstura, who is now based in New York City.

Winner of multiple film festival awards, this film combines magical realism with slave folk takes of the Deep South.  It is a lovely way to highlight some of the messages of Mockingbird:  Hope, community, questioning what we think we know, and striving against all odds.  The filmmaker will join us to talk about this unusual film; here’s your chance to enter into a dialogue about a very special project.

Baritone Anthony Turner will be our musical guest; he’ll sing I’ll Fly Away and other 19th century spirituals.  A Staten Island resident, Anthony has sung at the Kennedy Center, toured internationally with Laurie Anderson in Songs & Stories from Moby Dick, performed with Jessye Norman and appeared on the PBS Great Performances series, “Aida’s Brothers & SIsters”.