The Chicago Poetry Center and The Green at 320 are proud to reintroduce this free, weekly reading and open mic series co-curated by Chicago Poetry Center’s Poets in Residence Tarnynon Onumonu and Timothy David Rey.
Join us on certain Monday nights in August at 6:00 p.m. in this beautiful setting to hear outstanding featured poets perform their work in this partnership between Chicago Poetry Center and The Green at 320 S. Canal. After every poetry performance, there will be an open mic for any individual that would like to share poetry of their own!
ABOUT AUGUST’S FEATURED PERFORMERS:
August 7: Alyx Chandler (she/her) is a writer from the South who received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she taught writing. She now lives in Chicago and works as a writing specialist for National Louis University, a Poet in Residence at the Chicago Poetry Center, and a remote poetry teacher for Free Verse Writing Project, which hosts workshops for Montana children who are incarcerated or reside in psychiatric in-patient centers. She is a reader for Electric Literature and Poetry Northwest. Her poetry can be found in Cordella Magazine, Greensboro Review, SWWIM, Sweet Tree Review, and at alyxchandler.com.
August 14: Ola Faleti is a creative raised & based in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Reader, Interim, Jet Fuel Review, Hypertext Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s also the nonfiction editor for Vagabond City Lit. She believes there’s no such thing as too many flowers.
August 21: Atena O. Danner imagines Black liberation, engaged in boundless curiosity. Her poems range from kitchen-table specificity to universal relatability, covering topics including neurodiversity, human connection, and collective liberation. Atena has published poems in Raising Mothers Online, ‘Shelter in This Place: Meditations on 2020’; ‘Struggle, Elevate, Celebrate: An Anthology of Women’s Voices’ and in the inaugural issue of understory quarterly. Atena is an alum of the Hurston/Wright Writers Week, a former In Surreal Life Surreal Scholar, has been a featured reader for The Guild Complex Presents Exhibit B series, P. O. Box Poetry Series, and has participated as a reader in the tradition of Gwendolyn Brooks Day. She also collaborates as a member of Surviving the Mic, a collaborative collective of survivors dedicated to creating brave and affirming creative spaces for survivors of trauma. Atena’s first poetry collection, ‘Incantations for Rest: Poems, Meditations & Other Magic’ was released in 2021, and is a winner of the Silver Nautilus Award. In their home north of Chicago, near the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires and of the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations Atena lives with her partner and 2 free Black children.
August 28: Sarah A. Rae is a poet and essayist whose publications include her chapbook, Someplace Else (dancing girl press, 2020), and work appearing or forthcoming in Jet Fuel Review, Naugatuck River Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Mexican journal Revista Blanco Y Negro, the New Orleans-based Poetry Buffet Anthology, and others. Her translations of work by Mexican poet Guadalupe Ángela are featured in Ezra and in video format online in Jill! A Woman+ in Translation Reading Series. She is a native of Champaign, Illinois, and lives in Chicago.
ABOUT THE CO-CURATORS:
Tarnynon (Ty-yuh-nuh) Onumonu is an artist and licensed Paraprofessional born and raised in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood on the southeast side of Chicago and is extremely proud of and humbled by her SouthSide citizenship and West African lineage. In 2017, she took second place in the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards and represented Chicago on the Lethal Poetry Team at the 2018 National Poetry Slam. She has been a Poet in Residence at the Chicago Poetry Center since January of 2019 and has been featured in Newcity Magazine and South Side Weekly. Her “Darker Girl Manifesto” Broadside was on exhibition with the Center for Book Arts in the summer of 2021 and in April of 2022, she was commissioned by the environmental justice organization, the NRDC for National Poetry Month 2022. Her EP, “Brown Liquor on a Slow Sip” is available and streaming on all platforms as she compiles her first poetry collection.
Timothy David Rey is a writer/performer who works in poetry, plays, and monologue (both fictional and autobiographical). He teaches creative writing and performance throughout the city of Chicago and its suburbs. He is a 2015 Semi-Finalist for the Guild Literary Complex’s Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Award, and one of the winners of Project Exploration (The Poetry Center of Chicago 2004). He is the co-founder of the LBGT Solo Performance Showcase, Solo Homo (2002-2011). Timothy’s plays and performance pieces have been seen and heard at venues throughout Chicago as well as out of state and in Panama. Timothy’s writing has appeared in magazines and journals including ’60 Inches From Center,’ and ‘After Hours: The Chicago Journal of Writing & Art.’ ‘His book of poetry and performance, Little Victories, was published in 2012 by NewTown Writers Press. Timothy has performed at Steppenwolf Theater (Lookout Series), New York City’s International Fringe Festival as well as The Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts.
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