Haiku Poets Featured at Fanwood Poetry Reading

From the Carriage House Poetry Series:

FANWOOD, NJ – The Carriage House Poetry Series in Fanwood invites the public to enjoy a special presentation of haiku poetry on Tuesday, October 18th. The free performance will begin at 8 p.m. in the Patricia Kuran Arts Center on Watson Road, off North Martine Avenue, adjacent to Fanwood Borough Hall (GPS use 75 N. Martine Avenue). Featured will be R. G. Rader, an award-winning haiku poet, playwright, actor, stage and film director and professor, who will share the stage with acclaimed haiku poets Alan Pizzarelli and Jean LeBlanc.

R.G. Rader, founder of Muse-Pie Press, has been widely published in journals and anthologies throughout the U.S. and abroad and has received numerous awards for his haiku. He is the author of three poetry collections: Neon Shapes (Merit Book Award winner), Raising the Blade: Collected Haiku and Tanka 1980-2000, and Kicking the Rain. Rader has been writer-in-residence and playwright-in-residence at several art and theater organizations, including the William Carlos Williams Center for the Performing Arts in Rutherford, NJ. His stage and audio plays have been performed and heard throughout the country. Two of his audio plays, “The Wind at Our Back” and “Spit” won awards from the National Audio Theatre Festivals. The Wind at Our Back was produced live by the National Audio Theatre Festivals and has been heard on radio stations throughout the U.S. As an actor, Rader has appeared in numerous Off, Off-Off Broadway, and regional plays, as well as in films. He is co-founder of Nocking Point Productions, which debuted in the New Filmmakers New York Winter Festival in New York City and was an Official Selection of the Guerilla Movie Making Awards Festival in 2016. Rader has appeared in two Carriage House Series special productions: as Lord Byron in The Festival of Famous Poets and as Christopher Marlowe in Renaissance Night.

Alan Pizarelli’s haiku and senryu have received worldwide acclaim. He has published 13 chapbooks of his haiku and senryu including The Flea Circus; Amusement Park; City Beat (Merit Book Award winner); Senryu Magazine; The Windswept Corner; and, most recently, Frozen Socks. His haiku and senryu have been featured in various textbooks, periodicals, and anthologies including three editions of The Haiku Anthology. Pizzarelli was also a consultant for Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus. From 2005-2009, he was the senryu poetry editor for the online journal, Simply Haiku. He is currently co-host and co-producer of the poetry podcast Haiku Chronicles.

Jean LeBlanc is the author of My Book At Any Moment, The Stream Singing Your Name, and Where We Go. Executive editor of the Paulinskill Poetry Project, she has been a featured reader in various poetry series, including the Idiom Reading Series at Sussex County Community College (currently the Betty June Silconas Poetry Center), the First Tuesdays sponsored by the Writers' Roundtable, and the Poetry on the Loose series in Warwick, New York. She has also been featured at the Warren County Poetry Festival. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Kerf, Lullwater Review, and Modern English Tanka.

The Carriage House Poetry Series is currently in its eighteenth year at the Kuran Arts Center, an historic Gothic Revival structure that was once a 19th century carriage house, hence the name of the series. The October 18th reading is free and open to the public. An open mic reading will follow the featured performance. For this open mic, local poets are asked to read two three-line poems only. For more information call 908-889-7223 or 908-889-5298. For online directions and information, click here.

Image via the Carriage House Poetry Series.