In case my three followers didn’t know, I am getting to read my poetry along side an amazing group of poets. I am completely excited, and a little nervous, too. I’ve made my selections and am practicing so as to keep up with my brilliant friends. And I keeping pinching myself. This is so cool!

If you’re in Portland I hope you’ll come. If you’re not able to, geographically or otherwise, I hope we’ll be able to video the event. (Still trying to work that out.)

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Big Tent Poetry Celebration Reading

Saturday, July 17, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.

Big Tent Poetry Celebration Reading
St Johns Booksellers
8622 North Lombard Street
Portland, Oregon

Sage Cohen will be hosting a Big Tent Reading on Saturday, July 17 featuring a number of poets involved in Big Tent Poetry. This online site provides weekly poetry writing prompts, friendly community, inspiration and fun. Come on out and celebrate poetry with Big Tent Poetry founders, contributors and participants.

Featured poets will include Tiel Aisha Ansari, Sage Cohen, Dale Favier, Deb Scott and Carolee Sherwood. We’d love to see you there. Get the details at Sage’s blog, Writing the Life Poetic. Or you can get them at the Facebook Event page. (Actually, all the details are here, but it’s nice to cross link the love.)

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Sage Cohen is the author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry (Writers Digest Books, 2009), The Productive Writer: Tips and Tools for Writing More, Stressing Less and Creating Success (Writer’s Digest Books, forthcoming in December 2010) and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World.Find out more at “Writing the Life Poetic.”

Tiel Aisha Ansari is a Sufi, martial artist, and data analyst living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Islamica Magazine, Untitled Country Review, The Lyric, Barefoot Muse, and the VoiceCatcher anthology. Her poetry has been featured on KBOO, Prairie Home Companion and MiPoRadio and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection Knocking from Inside is available from Ecstatic Exchange. You can visit her online at “Knocking from Inside.”

Dale Favier is a massage therapist and a database administrator in Portland, Oregon. His poems have appeared in Qarrtsiluni and the print anthology Brilliant Coroners.  Pindrop Press will be publishing a chapbook of his poems, Opening the World, this fall. Drafts of his poems and essays appear regularly, you might even say inexorably, on his personal diary, “Mole,” and he writes a column, “Minding Words,” for the Writing the Life Poetic Zine.

Carolee Sherwood is a painter, mixed-media artist and poet from New York State. Her poetry has been published recently in Pirene’s Fountain, Awakenings Review, Scythe and Hobble Creek Review and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was one of the folks behind the poetry magazine and community Read Write Poem and is part of the creative team that produces Big Tent Poetry. In addition, she co-edits Ouroboros Review and writes reviews for Poets’ Quarterly. Read more about Carolee at her blog.

Deb Scott lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and pets. She blogs at “Stoney Moss” and was one of the folks behind the poetry magazine and community Read Write Poem. These days she is one of the ring-leaders at Big Tent Poetry. Deb’s poetry, prose and photography are published or forthcoming in a number of journals, including Qarrtsiluni, Tiny Words and Right Hand Pointing.

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Big Tent Poetry aims to create a fun, inspiring, motivational and supportive community for poets at all levels of writing.