Tuesday, May 10, 2016

May 10, 2016 (Pittsburgh Poetry Society)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
May 10, 2016

Jeen-Shang Lin currently teaches civil engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He wrote poems in his youthful days during college. Only in the past few years did he start writing again, an indisputable living proof that inhaling enough Pittsburgh air is a sufficient condition for becoming a poet. However, he only has a small repertoire; it could be that his professional writing is smothering the poetry in him, or more plausibly, he simply writes at the pace of a snail crawling.

Jeen-Shang Lin - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Christine Doriean Michaels came to Pittsburgh from England in 1971 and joined the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop in February 1984. A retired psychologist, she was a member and word-weaver for Tea Time Ladies, a poetry performance group, in the 1990s. More recent publications can be found in Fission of Form and Labyrinth Pathways 2009, and a review in OUT. Earlier works can be found in Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami; Along These Rivers: Photography and Poetry from Pittsburgh; Voices from the Attic;The Exchange; No Choice but to Trust; Pittsburgh and Tri-State Area Poets; Taproots, Songs for the Living and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Christine Doriean Michaels - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Randy Minnich is a retired chemist, now focusing on writing, environmental issues, t’ai chi, and grandchildren.  A member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop and Pittsburgh Poetry Society, he has published two books, Wildness in a Small Place and Pavlov’s Cats.  His work has also appeared in Main Street Rag, Pearl, Pudding, Snowy Egret, Blueline, and other publications.


A career educator, Christine Pasinski taught secondary English in the West Mifflin Area School District for over 36 years. Following her career in public education, she supervised student teachers for Penn State University. A lifelong devotee of poetry, she took her high school and her university students to the International Poetry Forum, where she served on the Advisory Council for 36 years. Currently, she enjoys membership in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, and she has read them at various venues in the city. In 2011 she published a book of her poetry, Rustlings of Regret.


Fred Peterson grew up on rice farms throughout Southeast Arkansas in the 1940's and 1950's, the son of a sharecropper and the seventh of eight children. His poetry takes one on a journey with a family rich in love. A teacher early in his career, his life-path took him from Arkansas to St. Louis and to Pittsburgh with his life-partner where they have lived for 30 years. He is past president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society. His book of poetry, Writing by Flashlight, was published by Awesome Books in 2012.


Joanne Samraney, author of the poetry chapbook, Grounded Angels, which won the 2001 Acorn-Rukeyser Award and co-author of Breaking Bread with the Boscos, a collection of family memoirs and recipes has poems in many literary magazines and journals such as Main Street Rag, Verve, Voices in Italian Americana, Loyalhanna Review and most recently in Hudson View, Earth Daughters and Steam Ticket. Her poems have also appears in both Along These Rivers and the Sandburg-Livesay anthologies. Her latest chapbook, Remaking Driftwood was published by Finishing Line Press (2010).


Shirley Stevens is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society and the Squirrel Hill Poetry, and St. David’s workshops. She serves as a mentor for the Writing Academy and a poetry workshop leader for Passavant Retirement Village and The First Word. Her poems most recently appeared in The Potter’s Wheel, Honing the Poem, and A Time of Singing, as well as Poet Lore, Along These Rivers, Fission of Form, The CommonWealth: Pennsylvania Poets on Pennsylvania Subjects, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Squirrel Hill Magazine. She is the author of Pronouncing What We Want to Keep.


Christine Aikens Wolfe is a reading specialist with the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Christine has published poems in Sonnetto Poesia, a bi-lingual quarterly out of Ottawa since fall 2006.  Her poetry, fiction, and articles have appeared in the publications of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, including Parachute, the WPWP Bulletin, Riverspeak, and Threads, and in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society's  bi-annual magazine, The Potter's Wheel.  Her poetry has also been published in Woman Becoming and Poetry Magazine, and the multi-media book, Fission and Form. She is the co-editor of The Poetic Classroom (Autumn House Press) and currently serves as president of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. 

Christine Aikens Wolfe - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Judy Yogman is a retired ESL teacher.  She enjoys trying new poetic forms, misses Anita Byerly's little workshop and recently became a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Though lazy about submitting poems, she has submitted work that has appeared in the Post-Gazette and in various anthologies, including Out of the Rough: Women's Poems of Survival and Celebration, Along These Rivers, and Written on Water: Writings about the Allegheny RiverShe is married, with three sons and three granddaughters.


Open Mic

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