Poetry Plus to Feature Steve Abbott & Leonard Kress on 11/19 in Lakewood

Acclaimed poets Steve Abbott and Leonard Kress

Poetry Plus at Art on Madison will triple your pleasure on November 19th with readings by two acclaimed featured poets - Steve Abbott (Columbus, OH) and Leonard Kress (Toledo, OH) - plus an open mic. Doors open at 7 pm, with poetry to begin promptly at 7:30.

Leonard Kress has published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex, and Walk Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz were both published in 2018. His latest book, Craniotomy, will appear soon (if it hasn't already). He teaches philosophy and religion at Owens Community College in Ohio.

Columbus native Steve Abbott has been a community activist, alternative newspaper writer and editor, criminal defendant, delivery truck driver, courtroom bailiff, private investigator, PR flack, and college professor. He was a founding member in 1984 of The Poetry Forum, now Ohio’s longest-running poetry series, and continues to co-host the weekly event. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in English of Columbus State Community College. His poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals as well as in several anthologies. He received an Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in Poetry in 1993 and an OAC residency the following year at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. 

He has six poetry collections: five chapbooks, A Short History of the Word (1996) and Greatest Hits (2004), both from Pudding House; The Incoherent Pull of Want (NightBallet Press) and Why Not Be Here Now? (11thour Press) in 2016; and Kicking Mileposts in the Video Age (Moria Poetry, 2017). He has also recorded a live reading on CD titled Stardust in Franklin Park. He edited the anthologies Cap City Poets (Pudding House, 2008), a collection of 74 central Ohio poets, and Everything Stops and Listens (OPA Press, 2013), containing work by members of Ohio Poetry Association. His full-length collection A Green Line Between Green Fields was published in 2018, and a collection of ekphrastic poems, A Language the Image Speaks, was released in September. He also edits Ohio Poetry Association's annual journal Common Threads, and in 2015 he represented the OPA on the Ohio Arts Council panel selecting Ohio’s first Poet Laureate.

Open mic to follow the features, emceed by Ohio Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs.

Poetry+ happens on the third Tuesday of each month. For more information, please visit: https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com.


Upcoming Poetry+ features:

11/19 - Steve Abbott (Columbus) & Leonard Kress (Toledo)
12/17 - Ray McNiece (Cleveland) & Michelle R. Smith (Cleveland)
1/21 - Chuck Salmons (Columbus) & Renay Sanders (Peninsula)
2/18 - Bill Yarrow (Chicago) & Laura Grace Weldon (Litchfield)
3/17 - Leah Mueller (Tacoma WA) & Rikki Santer (Columbus)

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107