Poetry Event! Celebrate National Poetry Month

Benjamin Morris, a fixture of the local poetry scene, will host eight or so poets who will read from their work beginning at 2 p.m., Saturday, March 22, at the Old Metairie Library, 2350 Metairie Road. 

This event is free of charge and open to the public. Registration is not required.

Dylan Krieger is a poet, writer, editor and performer based in South Louisiana. She earned her BA in English and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and her MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. She is the author of Giving Godhead (Delete, 2017), dreamland trach (Saint Julian, 2018), No Ledge Left to Love (Ping Pong, 2018), The Motehr Wart (Vegetarian Alcoholic, 2019), Metamortuary (Nine Mile Books, 2020), Soft-Focus Slaughterhouse (11:11, 2021), Hideous Compass (Underground Books, 2022), Predators Welcome (Limit Zero, 2024), and No One Is Daddy (Saturnalia, forthcoming).

Emily M. Goldsmith is a queer Cajun-Louisiana Creole poet originally from Baton Rouge. She received her BA in Creative Writing-Poetry at Louisiana State University in 2016 and MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry with a Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning at the University of Kentucky in 2021. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of ​New Limestone Review. Goldsmith was the 2023 Derven Scholar at The Historic New Orleans Collection. Her research about Louisiana Creole identity, language, and culture will be added to The Historic New Orleans Collection's educational resources.

Geoff Munsterman hails from Plaquemines Parish. His work has been published in The Double Dealer, story|south, Steel Toe Review, Margie, The Levee Review, The Raging Pelican, Poets for Living Waters, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Spillway Review, The New Laurel Review, and Solid Quarter. His debut collection, Because the Stars Shine Through It, came out Fall 2013 from Lavender Ink in New Orleans. 

Wanda Noonan is a writer and filmmaker. She studied writing at Vassar College and the Sarah Lawrence Institute, and in 2022, her work-in-progress novella received an Honorable Mention for the Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship. She began her film career as a 2D animator in Liege, Belgium, and returned to New York to pursue live action filmmaking and stand up comedy. She co-ran a comedy show called “You’re Doing Amazing Sweetie” from 2018-2020 in Brooklyn with Megan Gilbert. In 2019, the pair’s original play, “The Road to Horsecamp,” premiered at the Interrobang Theater Festival. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Sundance Episodic Lab and finished my first short film, “It’s a Cultural Thing,” which premiered at the East Village Queer Film Festival in 2020.

Poet Gina Ferrara is also an editor, educator, and nurturer of her peers. As curator of the Poetry Buffet at Latter Library, Ferrara maintains a venue for poets to meet and share their work with audiences and each other. In her poetry, Ferrara explores her Italian roots, which are planted deeply into the fabric of this often-haunting space we call the Crescent City. In these brief selections, her lines pay homage to the sweetness of blossoms and to the great Lee Grue, another poet’s poet dedicated to the New Orleans poetry scene.

Stefene Russell is a journalist, editor, and poet (who sometimes does acting and tarot stuff). In her past life, she was the Utah Eats reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune; St. Louis Magazine‘s culture editor; and Laumeier Sculpture Park‘s poet in residence. Her chapbook, Inferna, was published in 2013 by Intagliata Imprints, with a cover by The Firecracker Press. The Possum Codex was published by Otis Nebula in the fall of 2015. In 2019, Spartan Press published 47 Incantatory Essays..

Jack B. Bedell is professor of English and coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits ​​​Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are Ghost Forest, Against the Woods' Dark Trunks, Color All Maps New, Rock Garden, and No Brother, This Storm. His work has appeared in the Southern Review, Radar Poetry, The Fourth River, Terrain.org, Construction, Grist, Sugar House, Shenandoah, Pidgeonholes, Cotton Xenomorph and other journals.  Bedell is the recipient of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Individual Achievement in the Humanities Award and the Governor’s Award for Artistic Achievement. He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2017-2019.    

A native of Mississippi, Benjamin Morris is the author of Coronary (Fitzgerald Letterpress, 2011), Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (Arcadia/History Press, 2014), and Ecotone (Antenna, 2017). The recipient of academic and creative fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission and Tulane University, his writing appears regularly in the United States and Europe. He lives in New Orleans.