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Goddess Open Mic Night at Black Cat Books

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Contributed by: Karen Sucharski on 4/16/2008

The Goddess Open Mic at the Black Cat Bookstore in Manitou Springs is not just for goddesses!

"The moniker refers to the energy that is prevalent in Manitou and my personal beliefs about how poetry should be shared," said Karen Sucharski, co-founder and host of the open mic. "Many poets have commented on how welcome they feel, which thrills me since that's what I'm trying to do," Sucharski added.

The open mic, located at 720 Manitou Ave. is on the first and third Mondays of the month from 7-9 p.m. It was founded in September 2007 by Tina Provenzano and Sucharski. It has evolved to an open mic the first hour and a game of poetry tag the second hour. Sucharski explains that poetry tag is where one poet reads a poem and then everyone scrambles through their journals trying to find a poem that has a similar theme, word or is just reminiscent of the first poem. "It's like the old-fashioned game of telephone and we start in one theme and end up somewhere totally different. It also brings out a lot of poetry that would not otherwise be shared at an open mic," Sucharski said.

For the next couple of weeks the Goddess will depart a bit from the regular program by having a "feature" poet come and read and perform for 15 minutes between the first and second hours. The poets are coming from Poetry West, the oldest poetry organization in Colorado Springs. The first poet featured was Fawn Bell, a local landscape architect, who spoke beautifully with many of her poems about nature, gardening, and a few about death.

Julianza Shavin-Katz, one of Poetry West's new vice presidents, will feature on April 21st. Shavin-Katz brings a love of language to her poetry. She strives (very hard) to choose just the right words for each line, often agonizing and rewriting long into the night. She is also a muscian and visual artist and has written numerous articles for Your Hub.

Yousuf Zaigham, who has recently published his first book of poems in English, will feature and sign books on May 19th beginning at 6 p.m.

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