The Poet’s Table, 2021

The Poet’s Table took place on Saturday, September 4, 2021 from 3-6pm on the sidewalk under Nitehawk Cinema’s marquee across from Prospect Park, The Poet’s Table offered playful access to poetry, an art form that many experience only on rare occasions. During this afternoon of FREE one-on-one readings, poets recited a poem to each person who visited their table. Regie Cabico, Brendan Gillett, Molly Gross, April Naoko Heck, Purvi Shah, and Irene Villaseñor participated.

3-4pm April Naoko Heck + Purvi Shah

4-5pm Regie Cabico + Brendan Gillett

5-6pm Molly Gross + Irene Villaseñor

The Poet’s Table was conceived and produced by artist and poet Molly Gross and is supported by a City Artist Corps grant. Thank you to Ample Hills, and Chenelle Rico/Nitehawk Cinema for all their support. Event Team: JoAnn Castillo, Molly Gross, Craig Howarth, and Genevieve Wollenbecker.

Regie Cabico

Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer having won The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and later taking top prizes in three National Poetry Slams. Television credits include 2 seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam, NPR's Snap Judgement & MTV's Free Your Mind. His work appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Literary journal publications include Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, poets.org & Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

Brendan Gillett

In both his teaching and personal work, Brendan has a deep fascination with transmedial storytelling and simultaneous multiliteracy, meaning he’s always working in different styles, genres, and mediums. As a poet, his work has appeared in Freezeray Poetry, Glass Poets Resist, Headway Quarterly. Along with Regie Cabico, he helped launch Capturing Fire Press with his chapbook, A Puzzle Is Still Made of Pieces. He’s performed at various spoken word venues up and down the east coast and curates the ongoing Queer Nerd Poetics reading series.

Molly Gross

The Poet’s Table producer, Molly Gross is an artist, poet, and curator. As cofounder of Saint Flashlight, she is devoted to placing poetry in public spaces. Gross is a board member of The Poetry Project and the author of six chapbooks: “The Whisperer,” "Crisscross," “Shape,” "Between My Teeth," "Perpendicular," and "Glass, Maybe." Her work has been published and anthologized by "Diagram" and she was one of the featured readers in The Poetry Project’s 2020 New Year’s Marathon Reading.

April Naoko Heck

Born in Tokyo, April Naoko Heck moved with her family to the U.S. when she was seven. Her poems have garnered an AWP Intro Journals Award, Academy of American Poets Prize, and Allen Tate Memorial Award, among other honors. A Kundiman Fellow, she has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Vermont Studio Center. With the support of this incredible community of Asian American writers, she published her first book of poetry, A Nuclear Family (UpSet Press). Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Purvi Shah

Purvi Shah’s favorite art practices are her sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice. She won the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Service Excellence Award for her leadership fighting violence against women. Her new book, Miracle Marks, explores women, the sacred, and gender & racial equity. With artist Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive art at Circle For. Photo by Neha Gautam

Irene Villaseñor

Irene Villaseñor’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Queer Nature: An Ecoqueer Poetry Anthology, My Phone Lies to Me: Fake News Poetry Workshops as Radical Digital Media Literacy, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, The Santa Fe Writers Project's Quarterly Journal, Nat. Brut, and The Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. She is currently working on a manuscript about contemporary Indigenous art.