Staten Island OutLOUD

Autumn 2021 – Spring 2022

For the 12th consecutive year, the National Endowment for the Arts has chosen Staten Island OutLOUD to present The Big Read in our community! From Autumn 2021 through Spring 2022, we are proud to present a series of events exploring “An American Sunrise” – a volume of poetry by Joy Harjo, the first Native American writer to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States – She has been renominated to serve three terms, an honor given to only one other poet in 80 years. Though some may think of her as a shy, virginal recluse, she was a daring pioneer in American poetry. We’ll examine her life in American letters, her essays and other volumes of poetry, her work as a musician and composer, her poetic themes and adventurous forms, and the work of writers who have been influenced by her work.

Throughout our series for the NEA/Big Read, we’ll feature An American Sunrise, Harjo’s poetry collection published in 2019.

Saturday, May 15, 2pm. This is a free online event with the St. George Library Center & Staten Island OutLOUD. To participate, please visit the Facebook Page for the St George Library Center: www.facebook.com/StGeorgeNYPL – There you can RSVP for this event. Then the library will email you the link you’ll need on May 15. Thanks!

In partnership with Staten Island OutLoud, the St. George Library invites you to “Open Me Carefully: A live reading of the letters of Emily Dickinson.” Emily Dickinson’s letters are as prolific as her poetry, and this event will honor that. Participants are invited to read letters of their choosing , or can listen.Copies of “The Essential Emily Dickinson” are available for free at the St. George Library.

Digitized copies of Dickinson’s Letters can be found at these sources:

Emily Dickinson Museum: https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Archive.org:http://archive.emilydickinson.org/wkintronew.htm

Saturday, May 22, 2021, 2pm at the Greenbelt Nature Center, 700 Rockland Ave, SINY 10314

NYSAI Press and Staten Island OutLOUD co-host this fun & free workshop

Mail art is for everyone, whether you’re a trained artist, or if you’re just starting to explore your creative interests. It’s not art hanging in a gallery, it’s art that anybody can share via regular mail. It’s free. It doesn’t hang in a gallery, and you don’t have to buy a ticket. Mail art is whatever you want it to be.

Our workshop will show you how! We’ll provide paper, pens & markers, images, scissors & glue, you name it: we’ll even have a stack of junk mail, or bring your own! We’ll keep everything COVID safe & sanitized.

This spring and summer, NYSAI joins Staten Island OutLOUD to present a series of free community events celebrating the life and work of Emily Dickinson. A renegade poet and mail artist, Dickinson wrote with “found paper”, whatever scraps she happened to find. She distributed her poetry via mail — sometimes tucking her verses into a basket of baked goods, or other whimsical delivery modes. In this spirit, we invite Islanders to respond to Emily‘s poetry with 21st century found paper: junk mail.Here’s your chance to share your poetry and save the planet by recycling your junk mail.

Here’s how it works: Grab a piece of junk mail and an Emily Dickinson line or poem. Write an Emily quote on your junk mail. If you feel like it, or cut out some printed words or pictures, and glue them together. Get creative!

Bring your piece of mail art to one of our drop-off locations: Stapleton Library, St. George Library, ETG Book Cafe, Greenbelt Nature Center, or the Conference House Visitors Center.

Then email your name and mailing address to wecarryus@gmail.com.We’ll send your mail art creation to some lucky Staten Islander, and you in turn will receive a piece of mail art yourself.

Saturday, May 8th, 2pm. Meet us at the historic Conference House Park, 298 Satterlee Street (at the southern end of Hylan Blvd), SINY 10307

We’ll stroll down to the gazebo that overlooks Raritan Bay as we read and share ideas on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and comments on her work by Asian-American writers. Free & open to the public.

ALL GUESTS MUST PLEASE WEAR MASKS. WE’LL BE SOCIALLY DISTANCED FOR EVERYONE’S SAFETY. THANKS!

Book giveaway too!

April – August, 2021. For the 1t1h consecutive year, the National Endowment for the Arts has chosen Staten Island OutLOUD to present The Big Read in our community! From April through August 2021, we are proud to present a series of events exploring the life and work of Emily Dickinson. Though some may think of her as a shy, virginal recluse, she was a daring pioneer in American poetry. We’ll examine her life in Amherst, her family, her friends and significant influences, some of the major events in Emily’s 19th century world, her letters, her poetic themes and adventurous forms, and the work of writers who have been influenced by her work.

Throughout our series for the NEA/Big Read, we’ll feature The Essential Emily Dickinson, a poetry collection edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

Saturday, June 10th, 2pm at Stapleton Branch Library, 132 Canal St, SINY 10304 (near Bay St)

Staten Island OutLOUD explores the life and music of blues icon Leadbelly (Huddie William Ledbetter, 1889-1949), together with the poetry of CSI Prof. Tyehimba Jess, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize.

Musical guests: Frank Mirra, and Joan & Gary Moore.

Readers include Michelle Heath, Gregory Taylor and others TBA.
Prof. Jess’ book, “leadbelly” has been described as “one of the most powerful exchanges of history and poetry” – “… this book, about one man’s journey through the blues, is as close as a book of poetry may get to describing what it means and what it costs to have this music in your veins”. FREE!

Saturday, April 29th, 2pm at Duzer’s Local Cafe,  387 Van Duzer St (off Beach St), SINY 10304.

By popular demand, Staten Island OutLOUD’s series for The Big Read on Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” continues into Spring 2017.  Join Island writer Marguerite Maria Rivas for a conversation & reading on some of the mystery novels that have shaped writers’ careers.  What we read as children and as teens can have a powerful effect on our future writing.  For example, the best-selling New York mystery novelist Linda Fairstein notes that the Nancy Drew novels that she read voraciously as a girl helped shape her adult voice as a mystery writer; Prof. Rivas frequently cites the Nancy Drew novels that captured her imagination as a very young writer.

Indeed, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle influenced the work of Dashiell Hammett, and Hammett in turn inspired the work of many modern mystery writers and crime novelists. Join us for coffee and conversation.

Free copies of “The Maltese Falcon” while supplies last.