Richard S. Bank won an international Merit in Poetry award from the Atlanta Review. Ryan Eckes is the author of five books and a professor at Temple University. Al Tacconelli is the author of three chapbooks and a painter. Open mic following.

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The Moonstone Arts Center’s mission is to “promote creative exchange through diverse cultural programs” and we produce over 100 public events each year in several venues. Emerging and established poets are featured every Wednesday at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street at 7pm. Philly Loves Poetry, a talk show and poetry reading, is on PhillyCAM, public access television, the first Tuesday of each month at 6:30pm. The programs during the Fringe are both at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street 9/13/2017, One Gritz & Dan Simpson, followed by an open reading (free); 9/20/2017 Poets as Grandparents with Al Tacconelli, Richard S. Bank, and Ryan Eckes followed by an open reading. We have had many distinguished writers and historians who have presenting in Moonstone’s programs, but our objective is to support emerging artists and to recognize our elders who have made exceptional contributions to literature and history. These have included two United States Poet Laureates: Daniel Hoffman and Rita Dove; as well as all the Philadelphia Poet Laureates. Pete Seeger was here twice as was Amiri Baraka, Howard Zinn, and Nelson George. Our Moonstone Gold Series has presented Major Jackson, Gregory Pardlo, E. Ethelbert Miller, Stephen Dunn, Samuel R Delany, Tim Seibles, Gerald Stern, and Afaa Michael Weaver. The Moonstone Press publishes anthologies from our group readings, poetry books and chapbooks from emerging and established poets. Please contact us at www.moonstoneartscenter.org if you would like to see our catalog or submit a manuscript to be published. The Moonstone Chapbook Contest is an annual contest, the winner of which gets their chapbook published and prize money. The Moonstone Arts Center The Marathon Poetry Ink: 100 Poets Reading is an all-day poetry reading, presented every April since 1996, in which poets present their work back to back, often in pairings that create contrasts between styles, levels of experience, and the culture of the poets themselves. “Nowhere else in Philly do we get such a wonderful mix of people, voices, and generations, and it is an experience in varieties of personalities as much as in poetry and poetics—everything from uplift to satire, from political protest to personal sorrow, love poems and tirades, transgression and decorum, the outrageous and the outraged, ranters and restrained formalists, street and academy, performance poets and shy ladies barely audible—pretty much the human spectrum. “I loved listening . . . stayed a while, came back for more. Anyway, it was a great day. . . . Only death is as great a leveler as Moonstone [Arts Center].” Eleanor Wilner, author of Tourist in Hell, The Girl with Bees in Her Hair.

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FREE / 90 minutes