Welcome!

Upcoming Events

 

River Poets -

River Poets can be found at the Bloomsburg Public Library

the first Thursday of the month

Events are 7:30 pm until 9 pm

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Featured Poets: Marjorie Maddox & Jerry Wemple

November 6, 2025 7:30 pm

Marjorie Maddox is the Poetry Moment host for WPSU-FM, assistant editor of Presence, and Professor Emerita of English at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 17 collections of poetry  including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (Kelsay Books), Seeing Things (Wildhouse), and Hover Here (Broadstone Books, forthcoming),   as well as the ekphrastic collaborations Small Earthly Space; Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (both with Karen Elias), and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (with daughter Anna Lee Hafer www.hafer.work and others). Maddox also has published a story collection, 4 children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and  Keystone Poetry (co-editor with Jerry Wemple, PSU Press). Her middle-grade biography, A Man Named Branch: The True Story of Baseball’s Great Experiment, is forthcoming from Sunbury Press. For more information, see www.marjoriemaddox.com

Jerry Wemple is an award-winning poet and prose writer who has published four poetry collections, most recently We Always Wondered What Became of You from Broadstone Books. His collection Artemas and Ark: the Ridge and Valley Poems chronicles the lives of two generations living in a small town in the central Susquehanna Valley.   He is co-editor, with Marjorie Maddox, of the recently published anthology Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, and its predecessor, Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania  Both published by Penn State Press. He also co-edited the anthology Rivers, Ridges, and Valleys: Essays on Rural Pennsylvania, released earlier this year by Catamount Press.

MC: Dave Barsky

Featured Poet: Craig Czury

December 4, 2025 7:30 pm

“Quintessential Czury:
“How can I feel less for not quoting Virgil in Latin when Walt Whitman is a service station on the Jersey Turnpike?”
I gotta say I love your “And If You Saw Me”. It’s a wild ride into the mixta of your life of sidestepping despair and defeat by going somewhere else. No vainglory of greatest hits. Instead it serves up a maze of no deadends where every twist and turn is an aha of pure czur(y). Reading it feels like riding the old Atlantic City Wild Mouse, hanging on for dear life, getting it that life is dear.”

Visit him at www.craigczury.com

MC: Deborah Filanowski

Reading Billy Collins, January 8, 2026 2nd Thursday

January 8, 2026 7:30 pm

Reading Billy Collins is a delight.    He’s insightful, witty, & a pleasure to read.  “Dubbed ‘the most popular poet in America’ by the New York Times.”

Poet and critic Michael Donaghy called Collins a “rare amalgam of accessibility and intelligence…”

NOTE:  Mr. Collins will not be present, his poems will be.

MC: Danny Robinson


Announcements

Nothing at the moment.

Disclaimers and Possible Grains of Truth Department:

Connecting with the RIVER POETS – Still waiting for the world to right itself, our power of ESP has dissipated, so the responsibility rests solely in your hands to make contact with us. You could show up and track us down at any of our events; however, if you are not the stalking type, connect with us by contacting any one of these members:

Mike DeMarco at mdmep@ptd.net or telephone him at (570) 387-0920

 Linda Dietrichson at lindadietrichson@gmail.com

If you are computer friendly and would like to receive reminders of poetry events, please send your email address to Janet Locke at janetmarielocke@gmail.com. Do not forget to mouse click your way to and through our digital home at www.riverpoets.com.

Publication Opportunity – Ours has a catch: you must be heard for you to be seen. Poems submitted for consideration in our booklet must have been read aloud at a River Poets reading between March 20 23 and March 2024. Show up, enunciate, invoke elocution, and then Submit! Submission limit is four typed pages of poems per poet. Your last chance to submit occurs at the March 2024 reading, bring hard copies of poems, or attach to an e-mail (only .odt, .doc, .docx, or .rtf file formats will be accepted) and send to Steven Concert at paperlesspoets@gmail.com with “River Poets submission” in the email subject header & copy to wordrummager@gmail.com.

The plan is for our booklet to be assembled and ready for distribution by the June 2024 reading and you may buy at least one (at a ridiculously low price for these original works). If you miss this year’s booklet deadline (as you are new to the River Poets), there will be future opportunities to submit. There are copies of earlier River Poets booklets if you are curious about River Poets progress, art, and production efforts over time. We know where they are and we are darn proud to be amateurs.

Please understand, we have reached tentatively into this century and continue to explore the junction of space, time, energy, and matter with varying degrees of success.

OTHER THINGS of importance somewhere. Our readings often feature a poet/reader and sometimes a theme; sometimes both a reader and a theme are present, and usually followed by an “open reading opportunity”. Although not strictly rule-bound, we do encourage a 3-poem or 5-minute time constraint on open readers (not open-ended) before we bring out the hook. Mostly we try to avoid having the audience wander away before the teapot makes a circuit or fall off their chairs while sleeping. All people and all works are welcome — bring original items, favorite works, songs, a story, even a complete fabrication or two. River Poets are an encouraging and supportive group of pilgrims, pioneers, and seekers of wisdom. Hopefully you will find us notoriously polite and not too preachy. Honestly!

open reading opportunity® is trademarked, copyrighted, and reserved by the River Poets of Bloomsburg (as far as we know and believe). People may use those words singly or in combination, but we would like some recognition or a citation that River Poets® (also copyrighted) was an early user and promoter of that particular order of letters. Thank You. (FYI — we do not claim these two words as original).

You may obtain similar information (possibly updated, hopefully not outdated) on our web page.

While there, you will find random links to other people, places, and things.

We may be coming soon to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, (check Wikipedia eventually). And yes, we are approachable in person.

THINGS TO KNOW – If you go you will return, so there is time to learn it all.

Please enjoy being here; choose to be happy (no, we can’t do that work for you).

www.riverpoets.com