Forwarding on this interesting campaign to bring a little poetry into this frenetic election season ...

What would you do as President?

Now put that thought in poetic form!

Are you writing a screenplay?

Working on a solo piece?

Organizing around a social justice issue?

Interested in changing the world?

Then this Institute is for you!
We are excited to announce the launch of our second WGI! Leadership Development Institute!

Mahogany Red, The Red Hot Experience
is looking for Artists to Showcase their talent.

Mahogany Red is A Night of Artistic Expression that is held on Thursday nights in Cleveland, OH.

We are looking for artists to showcase, so if you would like to Blaze The Mic contact us at

TMH@GStyl.com
or
(216) 235-9803

www.MySpace.com/ThaRedHotExperience

I’ve recently been evaluating what I’m dong in this world we call Spoken Word Poetry
For I am simply a writer whose writings end up being things people call poems
My writings are therapy for all the things I go through in life
They are away of exploring my thoughts and feelings
And most times after exploring those thoughts and feelings with paper and pen
I no longer wish to explore them again
And that is why I’m evaluating my place in this world called Spoken Word Poetry
I am finding it difficult to place myself in the same emotional stat I was in when I wrote the poem

Are you a woman? Are you a poet? Do you have a blog? Would you like your blog to be syndicated on Let's Do It on the Road? If your answers to all four of these questions are yes, email the URL of your blog's RSS feed to susan at letsdoitontheroad.com and it will soon appear in the "Latest from the poetry blogosphere" box on the right.

Login to CurrentTV and vote for Kelly's video. Click on the following links for an interview with Kelly and the text of the poem.

Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, edited by Alix Olson with a foreword by Eve Ensler, brings together new and signature poems as well as personal essays by some of the performance poetry world's most exciting female voices.

Published by Seal Press, $15.95

From "Wants," in Grace Paley's collection "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute:"

“I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.

“Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

“He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

“I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.

Sharing this email from Marty McConnell ...

Hello good people. I'm writing you today not with news of upcoming shows, but with a call for support for a stellar human being and wonderful poet. Derrick Brown ( www.brownpoetry.com or www.writebloody.com for those of you who don't know him), as you may or may not know, recently suffered a major medical incident, the cause of which is still not known. His whole story is below, but in summary he's recovering and looking at massive medical bills.

I just updated the festival calendar for 2007. Check it out, and start submitting your stuff! A lot of the Ladyfests seem to be defunct, but I'm keeping them up there for now in hopes that that's not the case and someone can tell me where to find them now (please post any info you have in the comments). If you know of any other festivals not listed, please post their details in the comments as well. Thanks!