Join us on Friday, June 5th at 5:30 pm to kick off the month’s First Friday Arts & Eats with a reading from local poets Julia Blumenreich and Eli Goldblatt and to celebrate the release of Eli’s latest collection, From Away. Limited seating with additional standing room
About the Book
From Away is filled with spaces where memory fades into forgetfulness, where inattention opens into startling recollection.
Writing out of the pandemic, Goldblatt registers desolation realistically and surrealistically, in dreams forgotten at their margins, and yet turns the desolate toward renewal, as “catalpa front, . . . raccoon scat & mushroom waste embroider the / path I’ m on.”
About the Poets
Poet and teacher Julia Blumenreich is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Arts Council grant for her poetry. She is a founding member of 6ix, a literary journal devoted to cutting edge poetry, edited by six Philadelphia-area women poets. She has published four books of poetry: Meeting Tessie, Artificial Memory, Blue Angel of a Day and The What of Underfoot. Recently, Julia was the guest poet interviewed on two hour- long poetry shows: “Philly Loves Poetry” and “Poets Pause.” Her essay on the poet, Gil Ott, appears in Poets’ Poets: A Renaissance of Words, edited by Dennis Barone.
She remains optimistic that writing and reading poetry will unlock some greater understanding of our time on earth, or at least give her a place to use words like fiasco and hope in the same space.
Eli Goldblatt’s newest book is From Away, published recently by Chax Press. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as Epoch, Hambone, 6ix, Louisiana Review, and Another Chicago Magazine since 1973. Earlier poetry books include For Instance, Sessions 1-62, Speech Acts, and Without a Trace. His two books for children are Leo Loves Round and Lissa and the Moon’s Sheep. His scholarly books include Alone with Each Other: Literacy and Literature Intertwined and Writing Home: A Literacy Autobiography. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Temple University and former director of New City Writing, an institute focused on community-related literacy projects in North Philadelphia.