Buffalo Area Poetry & Literature Calendar (week of April 14 to April 20)

(photo from left: Hoa Nguyen, Dale Martin Smith, David Hadbawnik, Aaron Lowinger)

Tuesday, April 15, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Tuesday Night Open Mic Series at the Em Tea Coffeecup Café. All are welcome whether new to poetry or a long-time member of the community. 80 Oakgrove Ave., Buffalo, NY. Free and open to the public.

Wednesday, 6 p.m.: Ten Annual Victor E. Reichert Robert Frost Event at the University at Buffalo Poetry Collection of the University Libraries. This year's event presents a dramatic reading of Frost's 1945 publication A Masque of Reason featuring faculty and students from UB's Department of Theatre and Dance. Directed by Lana Sugarman, Cinical Assistance Professor of Theatre, the cast includes:

Job - Paige Kent
Job's Wife - Ofeibea Micah
God - Troy Coleman
Satan - Lana Sugarman

Reception begins at 6 p.m. Opening remarks and performance begin at 6:30 p.m.
The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, 420 Capen Hall, University at Buffalo North Campus.

Wednesday, April 16, 7 p.m.: Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center and the CAS Office of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging present filmmakers Joe Brewster & Michèle Stephenso and their documentary GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition, this beguiling documentary portrait follows poet and activist Nikki Giovanni as she approaches 80. The film explores Giovanni’s Afrofuturist-feminist philosophical outlook as well as her poignant relationship with her family, her political audacity, and her poetic eloquence, all knit together with a constant eye and ear for its subject’s own aesthetic verve. Looking back at a personal life and history cast in the long shadow of American racism, and forward to hopeful, possible futures, Giovanni acts as our guide and narrator, with refreshingly unorthodox filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson refraining from traditional chronologies or talking-head conventions.

Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. Free.

Wednesday, April 16, 7:30 p.m.: The Screening Room Reading Series hosted by poet Sandy Geary. Richard Olson will be the featured reader. Additional reading slots available. The Screening Room Cinema Café, 880 Alberta Drive, Amherst. $3.

Wednesday, April 16, 9 p.m.: Poetry Night at Caffe Aroma, biweekly open mic reading series hosted by Ben Brindise and Justin Karcher. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Thursday, April 17, 12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.: Buffalo State University's Drop Hammer/ELJ (Elm Leaves Journal) Series Reading and celebration of the publication of the ELJ (Elm Leaves Journal)'s Endurance Edition. Contributors Nancy McCabe, T.L. Sherwood, Carol Townsend, and Theresa Wyatt will read from their works, as well as a virtual reading from National Book Award Recipient Jean Thompson. Student editors will also read selections. This series is a tribute to the legacy of the late Buffalo State professor Emanuel J. (Manny) Fried. Ketchum Hall 302, SUNY Buffalo State University, 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Thursday, April 17, 7 p.m.: Fitz Books & Waffles presents an evening with poets Hoa Nguyen, Dale Martin Smith, Aaron Lowinger, and David Hadbawnik in the first major group reading in their new location on 1462 Main St. in Buffalo. About the poets:

Born in the lower Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington DC area, Hoa Nguyen is a poet and educator teaching creative writing and poetics at Toronto Metropolitan University. The author of six books of poetry, her titles include Red Juice: Poems 1998 - 2008, Violet Energy Ingots and A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure, all from

Wave books. Hoa is the 2024 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art.

A poet and literary scholar, Dale Martin Smith was born in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of the full-length poetry collections The Size of Paradise (KFB, 2024), Flying Red Horse (Talonbooks, 2021), and Slow Poetry in America (Cuneiform, 2014). Smith’s scholarly contributions include Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and

Dissent after 1960 (2012) and two edited editions, An Open

Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson and Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson (both 2017). Recent writing focuses on Canadian American poet Norma Cole and can be found in That Tongue

Be Time: Norma Cole and a Continuous Making (2025). He joined the faculty of English at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2011.

Aaron Lowinger is a writer from Buffalo who has worked between poetry and journalism. A former editor for the alt-weekly newspaper The Public (2014-2019), Lowinger’s work has been published by City and State, The Challenger, BlazeVox, Boog City, Kadar Koli, among many others, including a succession of chapbooks under the House Press imprimatur.Lowinger also co-hosted Just Buffalo Literary Center’s poetry and performance series “Big Night” for five years.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, David Hadbawnik is a poet, translator, and medieval scholar who completedhis studies in the UB Poetics Program in 2015. Books include a translation of the Aeneid (Shearsman, 2023); an edited volume, Postmodern Poetry and Queer Medievalisms (Medieval Institute Publications, 2022); and Holy Sonnets

to Orpheus and Other Poems (Delete Press, 2018). His most recent book of poetry, Accidentals, is forthcoming from Subpress. He currently lives in the Minneapolis area with his wife and family.

Fitz Books and Waffles, NEW LOCATION: 1462 Main St. in Buffalo.
Free and open to the public.

Thursday, April 17, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: The Buffalo Corner Reading Series presents its annual Mystery Night reading and discussion guest hosted by novelist Gary Earl Ross (Nickle City/Gideon Rimes Series) and featuring fiction writers Terez Peipens (The Dan Kiraly Series), Lissa Marie Redmond (The Cold Case Series), and historical fiction writer Stephen Eoannou ( author of After Pearl, Yesteryear, and Rook). The group will also pay tribute to their colleague Susan Lynn Solomon (The Emlyn Goode Series) who passed away recently. This will be a hybrid event, live in person and livestreamed via Zoom. Congregation Shir Shalom, 4660 Sheridan Drive, Amherst. Visit shirshalombuffalo.org for the Zoom link to this free event.

Saturday, April 19, Noon to 2 p.m.: Monthly poetry open mic afternoons at Bella Dulce Café, 2938 Delaware Ave. in Kenmore. Melissa Liberatore is the series host.