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Celebrating National Poetry Month

Poetry Marathon with Mimi Chenfeld, Fred Andrle, and Friends

Celebrate National Poetry Month with a poetry marathon! Listen to readings from Mimi Chenfeld, Fred Andrle, Scott Woods, Rikki Santer, Steve Abbott, Paula J. Lambert, and more!

Celebrate National Poetry Month with a poetry marathon! Enjoy an afternoon of poetry at the library from some of Columbus's most revered and celebrated poets.

Poet Bios:

Mimi Chenfeld - Raised in NYC, Mimi and family moved to Columbus in 1970. A teacher, dancer, writer, she has been actively involved in the arts community for decades. Beside her lifelong teaching career and dance activities, she writes poetry, fiction, essays, and education books. Her latest  book, Still Teaching in the 'Key of Life,' was published by NAEYC and is widely used. Her poems are included in the recently published Pudding Magazine - The Journal of Applied Poetry. Her creative writing sessions at Cultural Arts Center and Bexley Library are always enjoyed.

Fred Andrle’s current poetry book is rocking in the cradle of the moment, a collection of haiku and other short poems. Fred was host of WOSU Public Media’s Open Line talk show for 20 years until his retirement in 2009.

Scott Woods is an Emmy award-winning writer and event organizer in Columbus, Ohio, and founder of Streetlight Guild, a performing arts non-profit. Woods is the author of three books. He is a 2018 Columbus Foundation Spirit of Columbus Award recipient. He was awarded “Best Columnist in Ohio” in 2023 by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists. He is the founder of Streetlight Guild, a non-profit performing arts organization. In 2006 became the first poet to ever complete a 24-hour solo poetry reading, a feat he bested seven more times without repeating a single poem.

Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her twelfth poetry collection, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me, is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.  Please contact her through her website, https://rikkisanter.com.

Steve Abbott was a co-founder and co-host of The Poetry Forum in Columbus for nearly 40 years, during which it became one of the nation’s longest-running poetry series. He has published five chapbooks and two full-length collections, A Green Line Between Green Fields and A Language the Images Speaks, 46 ekphrastic poems accompanying the artworks that inspired them. He has edited two anthologies, Cap City Poets, a collection of work by 74 central Ohio poets, and Everything Stops and Listens, a showcase of work by Ohio Poetry Association members. He edits OPA’s annual member journal Common Threads.

Paula J. Lambert’s fourth full-length poetry collection, As If This Did Not Happen Every Day, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She has authored five chapbooks, including Uncertainty (The Only Hope We Have), just out from Bottlecap Press. Lambert is also a visual artist, small-press publisher, and literary translator. Her work has been recognized by PEN America and supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist. More at https://paulajlambert.com.

Jerry Roscoe is the author of three collections and a chapbook. He has received an Ohioana Book Award, two Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, published widely in literary magazines, given numerous readings, and had poems read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac.  For ten years he was poetry reviewer and columnist for the Columbus Dispatch.

Charlene Fix’s poetry collections are Jewgirl (Broadstone Books 2023), Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat (Bottom Dog 2018), Frankenstein’s Flowers (CW Books 2014), and Flowering Bruno (XOXOX 2006). Her prose homage/film criticism is Harpo Marx as Trickster (McFarland 2013). Emeritus English Professor at Columbus College of Art and Design, co-coordinator of Hospital Poets at OSU Medical Center, and activist for peace and justice, Charlene is mother of three and grandmother of two. Her website is charlenefix.com.

Jacquelin Smith won the Chiron Review Chapbook Contest in 2000 for My G-Rated Life.  She has been published in a variety of literary magazines. Jacquelin has given readings and taught classes on creativity and poetry at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center as well as at local bookstores.

MJ Abell is a catalyst for personal growth and creativity, drawing on her experience as a poet, SoulCollage® facilitator and leader of professional development workshops.  She has received an OAC Individual Artist Fellowship for Poetry and won the Thurber House humorous essay contest.

Jack Burgess has been a soldier, secondary teacher of English & social studies, labor relations practitioner, political organizer, pre-history researcher, political consultant,  and writer whose columns on education, politics, and government appear in The Chillicothe Gazette and other Ohio newspapers, as well as online. He believes poetry should be, like government, democratic and accessible. His chapbook entitled It’s Always Gettysburg was published by Pudding House.

Kathleen Burgess has received national awards as well as four Pushcart and two Best of the Net nominations for poems in many journals and anthologies. Editor of Reeds and Rushes—Pitch, Buzz, and Hum, Burgess has authored four poetry collections including The Wonder Cupboard and What Burden Do Those Trains Bear Away, while serving over 20 years on editorial staff for two journals. The retired public school music teacher and husband Jack Burgess live amid Hopewell World Heritage Site earthworks. kathleensburgess.com.

Karen Scott is a poet living in Columbus, Ohio. She is a member and ardent supporter of the Ohio Poetry Association (OPA), a past participant in the Women of Appalachia Project, and a proud member of the SALON writing group. Her work has been published in Common Threads [annual OPA members anthology], Women Speak [Women of Appalachia anthology], Delirious: A Poetic Celebration of Prince (2016), the inaugural issue of the Northern Appalachia Review (2020), Quaranzine published by OPAWL (https://www.opawl.org/quaranzine). She has also been included in the anthologies American Graveyard: Calls to end gun violence (Read or GreenBooks); The Dead Pets Poetry Anthology (Transcendent Zero Press); and the Final issue of Pudding Magazine.

Linda Fuller-Smith - Once a professional ballet dancer, Linda Fuller-Smith now enjoys a more sedentary writers’ life. A Central Ohio native, she also lived a decade in Southern California and nearly a year in Florence, Italy. Linda’s poems engage with both personal experience and history, and she is currently writing a book of poems related to the 1927 school bombing in Bath, Michigan that killed her grandmother’s sister. The poet received an Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award and has two grown daughters who amaze her.

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