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Conversations with/through/about poetry in the Greatest City in the World
Look, real quick before I jump in: How do you wrestle with the experience of living through History and what it demands? For me, it’s finding and celebrating the work we do to connect through art and maybe especially through poetry, that ongoing work to maintain faith that community can bring us closer. Even when hate keeps coming, sometimes it’s enough to know that people are creating a space for reflection and conversation, the room to be messy and vulnerable and maybe hilarious, a place to look the unspeakable in the eye and speak to it.
Wow, hi! I didn’t plan on going so hard in the very first issue of LFG. I started this newsletter to be a Philly poetry hype guy. But since I can’t blame the world’s problems on the Phillies falling apart in the playoffs until October, I want to acknowledge the context, the importance for me to get hype immediately. Today. And I’m excited to share some of the many ways poets are in conversation (with philosophy, with each other, with the city) right now.
Every Tuesday in February and March, poet and editor ebs sanders is leading a free Simone Weil Reading Group at the Free Library’s Central Branch. (It’s not too late to sign up!) You’ll be reading Weil’s Gravity and Grace alongside writing by poets and others who’ve deeply engaged with Weil’s philosophy and works. You’ll also dive into the poetry that “ushered Weil into her first mystical experience.”
Weil lived her short life as a journey framed by questions about truth and justice during the lead-up to and first years of World War II (here’s a fairly in-depth overview of her philosophy). In her last work published in her lifetime (1943), Weil wrote, “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” Could there be a more urgent or relevant time to read and think and talk about the idea of rootedness, maybe using grace as a guiding concept, in contrast to self-preservation, detachment, or worse? About living (interrogating!) your values and engaging deeply with the world?
The beautiful thing is, there are places to ask these questions together all over Philly through a poetry lens. And what I really love is that there’s always another gathering of folks coming out to share their observations of the now and visions of who we can be to each other. Let’s take the Parkway to Kelly drive and head uptown to Mt. Airy, for example. When I started posting about the newsletter on Instagram, one of the lovely folks at Ida’s Bookshop told me, “You need to talk to cj.” YEAH I DID.
cj (Cheryl Jones) is a poet who uplift others through her writing and her presence. She’s a journalist, educator, and radio host of “cj speaks LIVE” every Tuesday from on WPEB 88.1/95.1fm (also streaming on scribe.org). You’ll find her performing and supporting spoken word events all over the city, and she organizes a couple of monthly events in Mt. Airy. You can find her open mic Spoken Word in Philly (turning 3 this month!) at The Movement, an event space on Germantown Ave just a couple of blocks from Lovett Library, where she hosts a gathering for creatives.
cj is Philly-raised but was born in Alabama, and her first open mic, Spoken Word in Mobile, is still going there (since 2001). The Philly version, along with her radio show, highlights folks beautifying the city (in the broadest sense) through their words and actions. And then there are the many events she participates in, from Seeding Joy writing workshops at the PMA (with the Writers Room and Museum of Black Joy) to Womynfest to LOVEFREE’s Sunday Dinner Series of community action meetings. If you want to find conversations centering justice, honest expression, and grace, pay attention to the people she highlights on her platforms (also, her Instagram offers a great curated list).
Making our way down from Mt Airy to South Philly, we find Philly Writers Circle, a reading series that features an ensemble cast of featured poets from all over the city, emerging and established. An offshoot of New York Writers Circle (some might say the new and improved version, if they’re from Philly and know what’s up), it’s been around for six months now, and every single month the lineup is stacked. Check out March!
PWC goes down the second Tuesday of the month at Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar, a Philadelphia institution known both for the free shot you get on your birthday and for the truly epic karaoke (which is, as we all know, the open mic’s party-forward cousin whose motto is “Don’t threaten me with a good time”). You won’t be surprised to hear that from the bartenders to the regulars, the series has received a warm welcome. (They also have NA drinks, sober friends.)
I asked PWC co-founders Alex DiFrancesco and Jane-Rebecca Caranella how they landed on Ray’s for the location. Alex: “I discovered Ray's as soon as I moved to Philly. I was out with a friend and I ended up meeting and having a whirlwind night with a lovely woman who took me over to Ray's for karaoke. As a bona fide dive bar enthusiast, I loved it immediately and became a regular.” Truly, it is the spot to host a reading series whose older sibling hangs out at KGB Bar.
Why? The Ray’s vibe, as Jane describes it:“Meeting up with friends and clicking thick shot glasses of whiskey, that time a guy next to me at the bar told me his wireframe glasses were older than Benjamin Franklin, sitting on chairs outside the bar and sharing a cigarette with a stranger, who became an acquaintance, who became one of my best friends…”
I mean, exactly. In Philly, on some level, the place is always part of the conversation, helping us download instant context on someone’s version of the city or decide on weekend plans. (You know you’re a townie when any other neighborhood is “all the way over there.”) And then of course, once it’s summer, the radius extends a bit farther. Before I wrap up, a quick stop in AC, the setting for Lindsay Hargrave’s new chapbook Wheel, “a love letter to the Jersey Shore and in conversation with Twin Peaks.” We’re talking time-traveling slot machines, folks. LFG!!!!
Anyone who’s spent serious time down in AC or Wildwood is picking up what Wheel is putting down. The imagery is surreal and sometimes fantastical, with the out-of-time vibes that surely emanated from Morey’s Pier right after a dude from Wildwood Crest stole $175k of ferris wheel parts from that rollercoaster. Sad and fucking strange and very often deeply, darkly funy. Sometimes that’s the turn in the conversation we need.
And now we’ve arrived here. The place where the first issue ends! Thanks for reading, and more soon, starting with an open mic roundup next week from around the city by pseudogonzoist, poet, and musician Chris DeMento.
xoxo HB
PS: We are living in 2026, and LFG will be episodic for now. On the plus side, that means I’m not going to spam your inbox with 60% off activewear. In the interim between posts, please reach out and let me know what local poets you’re reading (or what you’re writing/publishing!) — what events you’re excited about (or hosting!) — where and how you’re learning about what poetry can do. You can even click this little button and let me know right now.