Poetry Open Salon: Expressions and Challenges from a Radical Imagination

Bring your poems of peace, social justice and resistance to our annual Left Forum open mic! The Radical Poets Collective is a group of poets who are also activists and dissidents across a range of movements for social change, from immigration to Israel-Palestine, Syria, climate change, Marxism, the Black Lives movement and more. Poetry, as an expression of the radical imagination, challenges society, empowers us in speaking truth to power, and inspires us to action, bringing hope to those who are hopeless and self-empowerment to those who have felt helpless. Come to learn more about us and what we do, and then read your poems along with us as we read ours.
Participants
A longtime resident of Greenwich Village in NYC, Gordon Gilbert writes and performs poetry, songs and monologues at spoken word events in the metropolitan area.
He has also authored several short stories and a play, Monologues from the Old Folks Home, produced 8 times at various Manhattan...
Farid Bitar is a poet/musician/filmmaker. He has read his poetry, performed his music and shown his films in the U.S., Egypt, Palestine, Israel and Iran. Farid’s poetry books are "Footprints in the Mist" and "Treasury of Arabic Love"; his poems are also included in the new...
Read moreAs a performance poet Zigi Lowenberg has appeared at music festivals, rallies, clubs, the Left Forum, and universities from NYC to New Orleans to Oakland. Zigi’s acting credits include “The Lysistrata Project,” the “Stein-Toklas Project,” and “John Brown’s Truth.” A member of the National...
Read moreSam Friedman Phd. is a poet, AIDS researcher, socialist, and lifelong activist. His first book was Teamster Rank and File. Sam has published hundreds of poems in various magazines and journals, four chapbooks (most recently "Grief and Rage: An American Jew’s Poems on Palestine") and a...
Read moreThe Town Crier, Raymond Nat Turner, is a NYC poet privileged to have read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium. He is Artistic Director of the stalwart JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge! NYC and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in...
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