Roundtable discussion: Five year anniversary celebration of on-line poetry open mics that started since the pandemic and continue with the growth of the poetry community. We started our Zoom open mic features during the 2020 pandemic. Hear our story, along with our special guests, of how Zoom has grown our audiences/communities, what we like about open mics, a bit of historical context, and what the future holds for Zoom open mics!
6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, 8 pm Central, 9 pm Eastern
Special guests:
Sandy Yannone: Cultivating Voices (Old Saybrook, CT)
Chad Parenteau: Stone Soup (Boston, MA)
Patricia Carragon & Roxanne Hoffman: Brownstone Poets (Brooklyn, NY)
Billy Brown: Fixed & Free (Albuquerque, NM)
followed by open mic (of course!)
Photos: Sandy Yannone, Chad Parenteau, Patricia Carragon, Roxanne Hoffman, Billy Brown, John Roche & Jules Nyquist
Sandra (Sandy) Yannone was named Poet Laureate of her hometown of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, in December, 2024.
Her poems and book reviews have appeared in both print and digital anthologies and literary journals, including Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, Prairie Schooner, Women’s Review of Books, and The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. Her work has received the Academy of American Poets Prize and Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Award, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award. She earned her BA in writing and literature from Wheaton College (MA); an MFA from Emerson College; and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
She is co-founder and host of Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry, an international, intersectional, intergenerational poetry group and reading series. In addition, Sandy hosts Last Tuesdays with Sandy, a special monthly online reading event for Olympia Poetry Network subscribers, and co-hosts the West-East Bicoastal Poets of the Pandemic & Beyond online reading series. Previous hosting and co-hosting appearances include The Collectibles Lesbian Trading Card Reading Series with Headmistress Press, and as the featured poet and collaborator on the Little Oracles: Divinations podcast miniseries.
Chad Parenteau is the host of Stone Soup Poetry. The Boston area’s oldest open mic started over 40 years ago. Chad’s newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.
Patricia Carragon & Roxanne Hoffman host Brownstone Poets. Patricia Carragon is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology.
She edits the online journal, Sense & Sensibility Haiku, and is listed on the poet registry for The Haiku Foundation. Her latest books: Angel Fire (Alien Buddha Press); Meowku and The Cupcake Chronicles (Poets Wear Prada). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Roxanne Hoffman serves as Zoom meister for Brownstone Poets and runs the literary press Poets Wear Prada with Jack Cooper. Her words can be found in cyberspace, set to music, on the silver screen, and in print. Her elegiac poem "In Loving Memory," illustrated by Edward Odwitt, was released as a chapbook in 2011. Their second collaboration, The Little Entomologist, was published in 2018.
Billy Brown holds MS and PhD degrees in Mathematics from Dartmouth College, and he teaches in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at UNM.. His history with poetry began when, as a high school junior, he was humiliated by his English teacher during a unit on poetry, after which he hated poetry for more than 35 years, refusing any assignments requiring the reading or writing of poetry. All that changed after the death of his daughter Elizabeth in a car crash at age 18. Almost immediately he began writing poems to help him process and express his grief. After several years he began writing many other types of poems, including what he describes as Poetic Sketches—short celebratory poems about people in his life, giving copies to his subjects immediately after writing them. He also often writes poems in response to classical music pieces.
When the monthly Albuquerque poetry reading Central Avenue ended its five year run in 2007, along with a few friends, Billy established monthly Fixed and Free readings, now in their eighteenth year. Four Fixed and Free Anthologies (2011, 2015, 2018, 2021) arose out of those readings, and now he edits and publishes Fixed and Free Quarterly (2022-2025). One month after the beginning of the COVID pandemic, in April of 2020, Billy took Fixed and Free online using Zoom, bringing into the fold poets from all over the United States, some from Canada, and one from India. These years of Fixed and Free have provided opportunities for hundreds of poets to read and publish their work. It is this for which Billy is most grateful—providing opportunities for poets of all types and at all stages of their writing careers to express poetically their deepest feelings. All of Billy’s poetry activities are carried out in honor and in memory of Elizabeth (1978-1996).