[NEohioPAL] FIRST MONDAYS PRESENTS SARAH GRIDLEY AND PER AAGE BRANDT, NEXT MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7 AT THE ALCAZAR.

[Jean Seitter Cummins]

FIRST MONDAYS PRESENTS SARAH GRIDLEY AND PER AAGE BRANDT, NEXT MONDAY,
FEBRUARY 7 AT THE ALCAZAR.

FIRST MONDAYS POETS IN PERFORMANCE series features Sarah Gridley on Monday,
February 7 at 7 p.m. at The Alcazar.  In addition to being a published poet
and a 2010 Cuyahoga County Creative Workforce Fellow, Gridley is also an
Assistant Professor of English and Poet in Residence at Case Western Reserve
University. She will share the podium with fellow professor Per Aage Brandt
who is both a published poet and an accomplished jazz musician. CWRU poets
Margot Chervony, Jesse McGuiness, Lynda Montgomery and Megan Norr will add
their own special talents to the mix.

Gridley’s two books, Green is the Orator (2010) and Weather Eye Open (2005)
were published by the University of California Press as part of their New
California Poetry Series. Her work has also appeared in Crazyhorse, Denver
Quarterly, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Kenyon Review Online, New American Poetry
and Slope. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana and
served as a visiting professor in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of
Iowa before returning home to Cleveland.

Her work has been described as springing from “the sharpest of intellects
and the tenderest of spirits, sonically superb and wildly engaging.”  A poet
of the natural world, Gridley has an eye for images that harkens back to a
time when nature was still viewed as a miracle, a conduit for connecting
with our deepest self. The Kenyon Review praised her “eyes-open, hands-out
empiricism . . .recalling the world of naturalists in the time before Darwin
’s great unifying theory.”

Per Aage Brandt is a Professor of Cognitive Science who leads a jazz quartet
and produces LPs as well as books of poetry and scientific work. His latest
These Hands, was published by Host Publications, NY, in 2011. Brandt's work
has been described as “ rich with humor and humanity. His poetry has a sense
of playfulness and a sense of a personhood—someone behind the poem who
doesn't take himself too seriously, even as he addresses profoundly serious
subjects such as language, consciousness, and existence, mixing comedy with
critique. In this exuberant and sharp-minded collection, Brandt re-sets the
limits of language and creates a new kind of verse, prompting one Danish
critic to remark that his work ‘bears more resemblance to a brainwave than a
book of poems.’”

The Alcazar is located at 2450 Derbyshire, just at the top of Cedar Hill.
Admission is $5 at the door. Street parking is available on Derbyshire and
Surrey or in the metered lot just off Cedar at Surrey. Call (216) 321-5400
on the day of the program to arrange handicapped parking inside The Alcazar
garage.