Blue Hour
January 18, 2023

The Chicago Poetry Center presents BLUE HOUR, a free, public monthly in-person reading series and generative writing workshop hosted and facilitated by Marty McConnell.

The Blue Hour reading includes a brief open mic followed by two featured poets from Chicago and beyond. The open mic includes five readers drawn lottery-style from a hat that goes out at 7:15. The reading starts promptly at 7:30. Each open mic poet reads one poem or for three minutes, whichever comes first.

The name comes from a line by Chicago poet Li-Young Lee, from a section of “The City in Which I Love You”:

I wait
in a blue hour
and faraway noise of hammering,
and on a page a poem begun, something
about to be dispersed,
something about to come into being.

EVENT DETAILS FOR JAN. 18:

Workshop (registration required) begins promptly at 6 p.m., ends at 7 p.m.
Open mic sign-up begins at 7:15.
Reading (registration recommended) begins at 7:30, followed by community gathering time.

Featured Readers

Kemi Alabi

Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, among other honors. Alabi’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, the Grammy-nominated album Difficult Grace, and elsewhere.

Alabi is co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), an anthology of Black reproductive justice writing. They’ve spent over a decade building narrative power for trans and queer bodily autonomy, most recently as Head of Creativity & Impact of the reproductive justice organization Forward Together. Alabi is the 2024-2025 Feminist in Residence at Northwestern University and Beloit Poetry Journal’s Inaugural Iron Mouth Curatorial Fellow. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL.

Jessica Walsh

Jessica L. Walsh is the author of Book of Gods and Grudges (Glass Lyre Press, 2022) as well as two previous collections. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Cotton Xenomorph, and more. She is the Blog Mistress at Agape Editions. Originally from small-town Michigan, she now lives outside of Chicago with her family and teaches at Harper College.

Event Details

When

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Where

Haymarket House
800 W Buena Avenue

Price

Reading registration is free; the workshop is sliding scale with a suggested donation of $10.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
The Blue Hour generative writing workshop is suitable for writers and poetry fans of all levels. We will discuss a poem together, then Marty will guide the group through individual writing on an exploratory prompt that draws on themes from the poem.

ABOUT THE HOST:
Marty McConnell is a poet, educator, and healer based in Chicago. She is the author of when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there, winner of the 2017 Michael Waters Poetry Prize; her first full-length collection, wine for a shotgun, received the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Awards and was a finalist for both the Audre Lorde Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her first nonfiction book, Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Poetry Workshop, is available through YesYes Books. She is the co-creator and co-editor of underbelly, a web site focused on the art and magic of poetry revision. An MFA graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Gulf Coast, and Indiana Review.

 

To learn more about the series and history, go here.