The Poetry Forum (Columbus, Ohio)

07/28/2024

Friends, a deranged man entered Bossy Grrls Pin Up Joint, stormed the burlesque stage during a performance, assaulted an employee, frightened patrons, and smashed their front door. A GoFundMe account has been opened to help employees who've lost income, cover medical bills and repairs, and upgrade security. We ask you to join us and consider helping out the business that welcomed and hosted The Poetry Forum for many years.

Hi Friends. Late Wednesday night our venue was the victim of a hate crime. A … Cora Helton needs your support for Support Bossy Grrl's After Hate Crime Attack

08/01/2023

Well, the swan song last night of The Poetry Forum’s weekly readings at Bossy Girls Pin Up Joint was a community of joy: dear friends; longtime supporters; powerhouse poets from other reading series; new acquaintances who’d never been at a reading with us; past featured readers from near and far; 20+ people sharing a poem in the open mic; and an appreciative reception for Steve Abbott's reading that offered poems new and old, political and humorous (sometimes in the same poem).

Special thanks to Zach Hannah for his romp of a poem poking fun at poets’ pretensions, and to our favorite bartender Marla Hicks for blessing us with a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem. We also want to thank Michael Elton Crye, now in Seattle, whose poetry shined at Larry’s in the Forum’s early days and who IM’d us a message that Steve used some language from to close the reading. It touched on the concept of community as not being a place but “a gathering of people who are vested. The numbers wane. The venue may change. But it is the energy of those who come and take part that keeps it alive….” What matters most, he wrote, were “the moments we were there ourselves.”

Monday was a landslide of those moments. Thank you all for being THERE over the years. Thank you, thank you, thank you to coordinators Rose M Smith, Nathan Moore, Cw Everett, and Steve Abbott, and all of you who built and maintained this poetry community for nearly 40 years. And, of course, one more shout-out of gratitude to Bossy Grrls and its owners, Cora Hinton and Mike Folker.

You'll be hearing from us.

(Photo by Scott Woods)

07/28/2023

Last Monday, Hanif Abdurraqib packed the house—and wowed it—with two sets of his work that were a showcase of how social awareness, a sense of place, a discerning approach to observations of family and popular culture, a broad appreciation of culture and humor, and a style that is at once conversational and lyrical can make poetry both accessible and powerfully moving.

This coming Monday will conclude The Poetry Forum's 39 years of poetry readings. It’s been an uplifting 7 months since we announced that 2023 would be our final season of weekly—OK, the pandemic noticeably threw that off—readings. We’ve attempted to present what has been admittedly only a sampling of the best that central Ohio poetry offers, and our audiences' response has suggested we hit the mark. We hope you’ll join us Monday evening to hear

Steve Abbott

Steve has been a coordinator of The Poetry Forum since its founding in 1984 when, in his mid-30’s, he was recruited into a group of Columbus poets working to establish a weekly poetry series at the same time his own poetry was beginning to develop seriously. Since then he’s published widely in journals, served as an associate editor for Pudding Magazine and Evening Street Review, worked to expand poetry’s place at the Columbus Arts Festival, and helped to develop Columbus State’s run of writers conferences. In addition to presenting workshops at conferences locally and nationally, he has edited two anthologies, Cap City Poets (2008) and Ohio Poetry Association’s Everything Stops and Listens (2013). For the past 10 years, he has edited OPA’s annual member journal Common Threads. He has produced five chapbooks and two full-length collections, A Green Line Between Green Fields and A Language the Image Speaks, a collection of ekphrastic poems. He continues to see some relevance in the fact that he has never danced the Macarena.

We’ve given our venue’s owners a heads-up that Monday may be more hectic and go a bit later than our readings usually do. We hope you’ll join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, July 31, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic (we’re not sure exactly how that’s gong to work, so we hope you’ll be understanding regardless of how things pan out). Bring some cash or a credit card and a few friends. It’s likely to be an emotional roller coaster.

We can’t say enough to appropriately thank Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. Despite deciding early in the year to no longer be open on Mondays, they offered to open for Poetry Forum readings until we completed our already scheduled events that are now coming to a close.

We also want to acknowledge the founding members and other poets whose work as coordinators of The Poetry Forum sustained it for nearly four decades:

Cheryl Abdullah John Cropp Mary Kenney Rumm
Elizabeth Ann James Homer Weathers Bill Redding
Jack Boenninghofen Steve Abbott MJ Abell
Linda Smith Gary Hammons Carol Jevrem
Glenn King Dale Russell Davis Charlene Fix
Is Said Danny Hunsinger Lewis Meyers, Jr.
David Baratier Stephen Mainard Frank Richardson
William Fabrycki Julie Otten Connie Everett
Rose M. Smith Nathan Moore

Although our weekly readings are ending, The Poetry Forum hopes to host occasional readings in the future (no commitments at the moment, however). We'll maintain our email lists and let you know when a specific event is about to happen.

It goes without saying that any poetry series owes its success to its audiences. Like any cultural offering, a reading series depends on the size, quality, and financial support of its audiences. YOU have made The Poetry Forum as successful and influential as it has become. We hope that your interest and support will move gracefully to some of the other literary and cultural events that make Columbus a city that continues to develop the arts in ways that reflect and showcase an evolving culture and its residents' wealth of talent.

Steve Abbott & Nathan Moore
Coordinators

07/27/2023

A solid article about an organization or individual is always welcome, but it's rare for a writer to accomplish what Scott Woods does here. In this generous and insightful commentary, he gets behind the facts in a way that artfully explains what The Poetry Forum's mission, purpose, and contributions to Columbus's cultural life have been. And he says it even better than we could have. Much gratitude and great respect, Scott.

The Poetry Forum is hanging up its microphone after 39 years of weekly shows. When organizers turn the lights out following a final event on Monday, July 31, it

07/22/2023

Last Monday, Sara Abou Rashed shifted the ground under a large audience as she delivered two superb sets of poetry that explored themes of identity, family, loss, justice & injustice, and joy. It was an honor for The Poetry Forum to play a part in her growing reputation.

This coming Monday will our next-to-last reading as we conclude 39 years of poetry readings. Of course it’s going to be special, another of the powerful evenings we’ve been proud to present all year. We hope you’ll join us to welcome poet, essayist, and cultural critic

Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif is a Columbus native and a longtime friend of The Poetry Forum who describes himself as a writer from the east side of Columbus and others describe in more detail. For several years, he hosted the Pen & Palette reading series at Travonna Coffee House in the Short North. He’s developed a national reputation as a poet with the collections The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster. He edited the poetry anthology Again I Wait for This To Pull Apart. His nonfiction work includes Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, a book of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, which was awarded the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. In 2021 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

If we sometimes seem to gush about some of our poets, it’s because many have accomplished a lot, both in the Central Ohio arts community or across the nation. We’re justifiably proud of city residents whose work contributes significantly to defining the power of poetry and its important place among the arts.

We’ve given our venue’s owners a heads-up that the next 2 Mondays may go a bit later than our readings usually do. Swan songs can do that. We hope you’ll join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, July 24, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic. Bring some cash or a credit card and a few friends. We’ll be looking for you.

And thank you thank you thank you thank you to Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. You’d think writers could find words to convey how much that support means to us. We haven’t yet.

Steve Abbott & Nathan Moore
Coordinators

Poetry Forum featured readers
July 2023

July 10 ~ Roy Bentley
July 17 ~ Sara Abou Rashed
July 24 ~ Hanif Abdurraqib
July 31 ~ Steve Abbott

07/14/2023

Well, we promised a monster night of poetry with last week’s Roy Bentley, but he embarrassed us a bit with our failure to adequately anticipate just how good he’d be. Roy delivered what one attendee—who’s heard him read several times in the past—described it one of the best readings Roy’s ever given. We can only say that it wowed a packed house. Every one of our featured poets is bringing their A game to the stage.

There are only three more Monday nights before we bring down the curtain on 39 years of poetry readings. We hope you’ll join us this coming Monday, when we’ll welcome as our featured reader a young local poet who’s building a national reputation

Sara Abou Rashed

Sara is a Palestinian poet and public speaker now living in Columbus. She came to our attention in 2015 when her poems received both Ohio Poetry Association’s David Francis Smith Award and the Grand Prize in OPA’s Student Poetry Contest. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Arab Lit Quarterly, and The Nation, as well as the anthology A Land With A People and the latest high school English curriculum from McGraw Hill. In 2018, Sara created the autobiographical one-woman show, A Map of Myself, narrating her family’s immigration story, which she has performed multiple times across the US. A poetry fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, Sara earned her BA from Denison University and her MFA from the University of Michigan, where her manuscript recently won first place in the Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award. Do we need to say you don't want to miss her?

Join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, July 17, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic. Bring some cash or a credit card and a few friends. Bring the expectation of a powerful night of poetry. We’ll be looking for you.

And a continuing grateful shout-out to Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. 🥰

Steve Abbott & Nathan Moore
Coordinators

Poetry Forum featured readers
July 2023

July 10 ~ Roy Bentley
July 17 ~ Sara Abou Rashed
July 24 ~ Hanif Abdurraqib
July 31 ~ Steve Abbott

07/09/2023

This article (thank you, Brittany Moseley) offers a wonderful panorama of The Forum's history and legacy, both of which would not be what they are without the committed work of other coordinators whose talent and insight have sustained the series over the decades. The Great Man theory of history is bunk; the reality is that great women and men who unite in common purpose change the world. The Poetry Forum would not have lasted or had the impact it has had without these people who served as coordinators over nearly four decades: Nathan Moore, Rose M Smith, Cw Everett, MJ Abell, Julie Otten, Charlene Fix, David Baratier, the late and unforgettable Is Said, Frank Richardson, Gary Hammons, Carol Jevrem, Stephen Mainard, Linda Smith, Danny Hunsinger, Dale Russell Davis, Lewis Meyers, Jr., Glenn King, and others whose names escape me as I write this.

Praises and thanks to you all: to the founders and hosts of other Columbus reading series Scott Woods, Louise Robertson, Vernell Bristow, Hanif Abdurraqib, William Evans, the late Jennifer Bosveld, Sandra Feen, Anna Soter, Edward Mabrey, Doug Rutledge, and Craig McVay; to the venues that took us in: Remembering Larry's, Rumba Cafe, and Bossy Grrls Pin Up Joint; to the hundreds of poets whose work and presence made The Forum a cultural touchstone, and to the varied audiences who came and kept coming. WE made it happen.

Here's the line-up for our closing month:
July 10 Roy Bentley
July 17 Sara Abou Rashed
July 23. Hanif Abdurraqib
July 31 Steve Abbott

The group's leader, Steve Abbott, said he’s happy to pass the reins to the next generation of Columbus poets.

07/08/2023

It’s a bit dizzying to realize that it’s July and that here are only 4 more Monday nights before we bring down the curtain on 39 years of poetry readings. Kip Knott gave a packed house two powerful sets of poetry on June 26, and we hope you’ll join us this coming Monday, when we’ll welcome as our featured reader

Roy Bentley

Roy Bentley is the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins in 2018 as finalist for the Miller Williams poetry prize; Starlight Taxi, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize; The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana, chosen by John Gallaher in 2006 as winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize. He has received fellowships from the NEA, Ohio Arts Council, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Poems have appeared in magazines such as The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, American Literary Review, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, North American Review, RATTLE, and The Laurel Review.

That’s a raft full of prizes, awards, and other such recognitions, but none of them does justice to Roy’s work and the Appalachian heritage he brings to the page and the stage. His keen eye and ear, coupled with insights into both American culture and himself, along with an occasionally caustic edge and no small amount of humor, make this reading one that—OK, like so many of our readings—you don’t want to miss. And we’d be remiss if we didn't mention he holds the record for the number of Ohio Arts Council Excellence in Poetry Awards he’s received.

Join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, July 10, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic. Bring some cash or a credit card and a few friends. Bring the means by which to buy a book or two. We’ll be raffling off several books. We’ll be looking for you.

And a continuing grateful shout-out to Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. 🥰

Steve Abbott & Nathan Moore
Coordinators

Poetry Forum featured readers
July 2023

July 3 [Independence Day observance /no reading]
July 10 ~ Roy Bentley
July 17 ~ Sara Abou Rashed
July 24 ~ Hanif Abdurraqib
July 31 ~ Steve Abbott

06/21/2023

In our 39 years, The Poetry Forum has seen few nights to equal this past Monday’s reading by Dionne Custer Edwards. As our Juneteenth feature, she warned attendees that her reading would be “very black.” It certainly was, and it soared on her powerful voice through history, the complexities of love and family, contemporary social concerns, military veterans, multiple generations of genealogy, and sprinklings of well received humor. Truly a night to remember.

There are only five more Monday nights (no reading July 3) before we bring down the curtain on 39 years of poetry readings. We hope you’ll join us this coming Monday, when we’ll welcome as our featured reader

Kip Knott

Kip is a 7th generation Appalachian who was born and raised in Ohio. Over the years, though, he has called Michigan, England, Alaska, Iowa, and Oklahoma home. He found his way back to Ohio in 2001, where he has lived ever since, teaching at Columbus State. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being The Other Side of Who I Am, published by Kelsay Books. A full-length collection of stories, Some Birds Nest in Broken Branches (Alien Buddha Press), was published in 2021. He is also the author of six poetry chapbooks, the most recent being One Promise of Green, published by tiny wren lit. A new poetry chapbook, Little Hiroshimas, is forthcoming in 2024 from Finishing Line Press. Kip’s writing and photography have appeared in Barren, Beloit Fiction Journal, Gettysburg Review, Poet Lore, The Sun, and Virginia Quarterly Review, and he is the recipient of grants from the Ohio Arts Council for both poetry and playwriting. A teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer, he spends his free time traveling throughout Appalachia and the Midwest taking photographs and searching for lost art treasures.

Join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, June 26, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic. Bring some cash or a credit card and a few friends. We’ll be looking for you.

And a continuing grateful shout-out to Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. 🥰

06/16/2023

Friends,

Last week Aimee Noel brought a personal and politically charged reading to The Poetry Forum stage. This coming Monday is Juneteenth, the international celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that two years ago became a national holiday. And we couldn’t think of a Columbus poet we’d rather have be our featured reader than

Dionne Custer Edwards

Dionne Custer Edwards was a member of one of Columbus’s seminal poetry performance troupes, Hybrid Tongues. She is a writer, educator, and Head of Learning and Public Practice at the Wexner Center for the Arts. She has published critical and literary writing, internationally and nationally in Sanat Dünyamiz (“Our Art World”), Turkey; Journal GEARTE, Brazil; and in the University of Arizona’s Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. Her literary work has appeared in 3Elements Review, Barren Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Flock, Gordon Square Review, Grist, Porter House Review, Storm Cellar, The Seventh Wave, Tahoma Literary Review, The Journal, and others. Dionne is co-editor of a forthcoming series On Possibility: Social Change and the Arts + Humanities, which will be published by Ohio State University Press. We assure you that Dionne will offer a special evening of poetry.

Join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, June 19, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic. Bring some extra cash or a credit card so you can help us compensate a continuing roster of exceptional poets. We’ll be looking for you.

And a continuing grateful shout-out to Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. 🥰

Steve Abbott & Nathan Moore
Coordinators

06/10/2023

We have another 2 months in our schedule (the remaining schedule is below), and the presentations of our featured readers continue to be stunning. Sayuri Ayers brought an understated power to last week’s stage, and we hope you’ll join us Monday night to hear

Aimee Noel

Transplanted from the steel city of Buffalo, Aimee Noel now lives with her wife in Dayton, Ohio, where she works as an educator and advocate for food access. Her working-class roots are evident in her poems, which have been published in journals such as Witness, Michigan Quarterly Review, Belt, and elsewhere. She is proud to have been Daytonian of the Week and the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for poetry in 2020. She is particularly grateful to the Poetry Forum who, in 2014, selected her as the William Redding Memorial Award recipient and gave her the confidence to keep writing.

Aimee is also a bit too modest. She neglected to mention to us that she is one of six Ohio poets selected and paired up to collaborate with six Ohio photographers to produce “Playing Well Together: Ohio Photographers and Poets in Conversation,” an exhibition that will open in the Riffe Gallery in April, 2025. It’s going to be a powerful show.

Join us at Bossy Grrls Pin-Up Joint, 2598 North High Street (in Old North Columbus) on Monday, June 12, at 7 PM. Bring a couple of poems for the open mic. Bring some extra cash or a credit card so you can help us compensate a continuing roster of exceptional poets. We’ll be looking for you.

And a continuing grateful shout-out to Bossy Grrls’ owners Cora Helton and Mike Folker for their generous support. 🥰

Steve Abbott & Nathan Moore
Coordinators

Poetry Forum featured readers
June - July 2023

June 19 / Juneteenth ~ Dionne Custer Edwards
June 26 ~ Kip Knott
July 3 [Independence Day observance /no reading]
July 10 ~ Roy Bentley
July 17 ~ Sara Abou Rashed
July 24 ~ Hanif Abdurraqib
July 31 ~ Steve Abbott