Word Thursdays Last Reading of 2007 Featuring Robert Milby and Christopher Zegers

Bright Hill has sent us this announcement for their last Word Thursdays reading for the year with featured poets Robert Milby (the busiest poetry host in upstate New York) and Christopher Zegers (from New York, NY). 

On Thursday, November 8, Word Thursdays, for its last regular reading of 2007, will present Florida, NY poet Robert Milby and NYC poet Christopher Zegers.  They will read from their poetry in Bright Hill's Word & Image Gallery, now showing "What I Saw: Photographs and Commentary by Ernest M. Fishman." The evening begins with an open reading at 7 p.m., during which all those present are invited to read their own work or that of another writer for up to five minutes, followed by the features. Bright Hill Center is located at 94 Church Street, one block north of Barlow's General Store. Admission is $3 for Adults and free to those 18 and under. Refreshments are served at the intermission.

Robert Milby has been reading his poetry throughout the Hudson Valley, and beyond, since early 1995. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks, and his individual poems have been published in Home Planet News, Hunger Magazine, Will Work for Peace, Hart, Fertile Ground, Chronogram, and the Hudson Valley Literary Magazine. Currently, he hosts poetry series at Joey’s Café in Washingtonville, Mudd Puddle Café in New Paltz, and Noble Coffee Roasters in Campbell Hall.  He was the invited poet at SUNY Oneonta, in March 2003. Robert is a listed poet with Poets and Writers, Inc. His spoken word cd is entitled: Revenant Echo(Sonotrope Recordings, 2004). Milby's first full-length book of poetry, Ophelia's Offspring was published in June, 2007 by Foothills Publishing. He is a freelance thinker.

Christopher Zegers was born, raised, and educated in Chicago. He was a VISTA volunteer, living and working in central Harlem in the sixties, attended Union Theological Seminary, and applied for and received Conscientious Objector status in 1969; his political direction came through working in a summer project of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the summer of 1966, hearing Martin Luther King give his anti-Vietnamese war speech in that same year, and as a CO.  He spent two years working on Worldview Magazine, a publication of the Council on Religion and International Affairs. Working as an editorial assistant revived his interest in writing, as did a long series of part-time jobs, during which his real work was becoming a poet. During that time he helped found and run a leftist community center in Brooklyn, was a member of a poetry collective, and began to publish. He has published two full-length volumes and five chapbooks. In the early eighties he trained in Secondary Education at Hunger College, and he has been teaching at Hunter High School for 22 years.

Word Thursdays regular bi-monthly readings will resume in April, with special readings for Black History Month in February. Bright Hill Press's 2007 programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O'Connor Foundation, the Walter Rich Charitable Foundation, the Otis A. ThompsonFoundation, the Dewar Foundation, the A. C. Molinari Foundation, the Delaware National Bank of Delhi, Stewart's Shops, area businesses, and its members and friends.

For further information and for information about Bright Hill Press and its programs, contact Bright Hill Center at 607-829-5055 or email wordthur@stny.rr.com.