A great evening combining home-made pie and readings from the works of three fine Wisconsin poets: Chris Straw, Bill Murtaugh, and Stephen Anderson.
Chris Straw is best known for her singing (the Moxy Chicks) and songs written from her time in the Portage Road Songwriters Guild). Tonight’s performance will showcase the poems that have been years in the works.
Bill Murtaugh is a local writer of poetry, prose, and plays. Bill has inhabited and read at many coffeehouses and poetry venues in our fair city, and has been a much loved reader at The Coffee House for decades. The poet Antler invites us to read Bill's Autumn Runs to Darkness and to "...discover secrets of survival and tenderness from one of Milwaukee's longtime lifelong poets."
Stephen Anderson is a Milwaukee poet and translator whose work has appeared in Southwest Review, Latin American Literature Today, Verse Wisconsin, and numerous other print and online journals. Many of his poems have been featured on the Milwaukee NPR affiliate WUWM Lake Effect Program. Stephen is the author of three chapbooks, as well as two full length collections, In the Garden of Angels and Demons and The Dream Angel Plays The Cello. In the summer of 2013, six of his poems formed the text for a chamber music song cycle entitled The Privileged Secrets of the Arch performed by musicians from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and an opera singer. Stephen's new full-length poetry book, High Wire, was published in late 2021 by Kelsay Books.