Calling All Poets: Commitment, Continuity, Community

A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. Salaman Rushdie

What can I say about Calling All Poets that has not been said by a multitude of poets and writers worldwide in one way, shape form or another over the last two plus decades? Those voices here, those missing, those who joined the journey for a time and moved on. . .

Calling All Poets has created a diverse community of poets and writers who support one another. Whenever I’m there, I feel as if I am part of something bigger. Calling all Poets is the best series in the Hudson Valley! - Rebecca Schumejda, poet, Cadillac Men, Waiting at the Dead End Diner

Together we have recorded a rich history that has created a most unique bond. From a small open mic in Beacon March 1999 to international Zoom reading events every First Friday and Third Thursday of the month. Our thriving and robust community has its own universal language that we fully engage with and embark gratefully upon.

CAPS is about poetry of course. But it’s also about community, how it’s actually created a community of personalities and backgrounds that come together each month to speak in the one language we all know: The spoken word. – Ken Holland, award winning poet, 3x Pushcart nominee, author Rust and Slag

As Calling All Poets enters our twenty-seventh year, it is now more urgent than ever — as we watch the willful and spiteful destruction of our social, cultural, and political institutions — that we provide a forum that advocates free speech and new ideas. Nourish poets and writers be they nervous, unsure first timers or veteran world travelers.

Poetry in the Hudson Valley is as important to American culture in the 21st century as the Hudson River School of Painting was in the 19th century and Calling All Poets is at the forefront. – Dr. Barbara Adams, poet, author, Professor Emerita, Pace University1981-2001

So join CAPS every First Friday and Third Thursday of the month (except July) by visiting https://callingallpoets.net/ and register for our Zoom events. Visit our Youtube page and see for yourself https://www.youtube.com/@CallingAllPoetsSeries2025 See our FaceBook page for upcoming events https://www.facebook.com/callingallpoetsseries/ CAPS will also be back in- person starting Friday, March 6, 2026 at Full Circle, 297 Bruynswick Road, Gardiner NY

Contact: media@callingallpoets.net

My own journey from open-mic poet to Off-Broadway playwright was due in large part to the ongoing opportunities and warmth provided by my fellow poets at CAPS. I’ll always be grateful.- Irene O’Garden, Pushcart award wining poet, author, playwright, Women On Fire

Poetry and political protest are foundational to me. I recited poetry at student protests in the ‘70s. I walked union picket lines and participated in wildcat walkouts in the ‘80s. Ditto the ‘90s. In this battered new century I have mobilized with Occupy Wall Street and rallied with many of you these wary, troubled days.

Through twenty-six years of presenting poetry with our non-profit Calling All Poets Series (https://callingallpoets.net/) we now present voices through Zoom internationally. But in these, roiling, chaotic times, I wanted to do something outside that template, something to get people talking to each other again. Something to hopefully resist and negate our current national leadership.

So I began the Poetry As Protest and Political Action program at welcoming area libraries and bookstores. And it has caught on. It has we the people participating in an active community dialogue. It has folks from all over our beautiful valley letting me know this is just what they needed. It is just what we needed.

To talk to each other again.

Except for inviting two fellow poets to read; I prepared a soundtrack of protest music from the 1940's through 2000’s with poetry by Allen Ginsberg, Adrianne Rich, Wisława Szymborska, Gwendolyn Brooks, Patti Smith, and Kenneth Patchen, among others. I had no idea how the presentation would work. I figured (actually I was hoping) the people would make the event their own.

That is, after all, what democracy looks like. It has become what democracy sounds like.

The poets read and engage. The audience responds. We discuss history, climate, today’s events. We define strategies on how to resist the current downward arc of history and how to talk to those who don’t quite see things our way. Have the discussions and participants for the most part been center, left, and progressively leaning? Yes. But the events are free open to all. What donations we collect go to the library or various Hudson Valley chapters of Indivisible.

I would like to take a moment to thank Beacon and Dutchess County Laureate Ruth Danon for working with me on the Dutchess side. Greg Correll, Linda McCauley Freeman, and former Ulster County Laureate Kate Hymes on the Ulster side. Special thanks to James at Elting Memorial Library. Noah at Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Saugerties. Scott at Beahive, Beacon. Margie at Kingston Library. Many more thanks to the hard working folks at Indivisible New Paltz, Indivisible Ulster 18-19, Indivisible Saugerties, and Indivisible 845 for getting the word out.

Several events are already planned for the 2026 in New Paltz, Beacon, Port Jervis, Gardiner. I will be reaching out to others over the winter.

In Solidarity