Wine, Cheese, and the Spoken Word, Featured Poet Peter Martin Junker

From the venue:

The July event of this poetry reading series, held on the 2^nd Saturday of each month, features Peter Martin Junker, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, who studied religion at Arizona State and received an MFA in creative writing from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he served as poetry editor for The Iowa Review. After working as an editor in museum publications at The Art Institute of Chicago, he had a long career in nonprofit development as a grantwriter and marketing communications specialist. His other jobs have included church sexton, singing waiter, and graveyard manager at a fast-food drive-through. His work aims for the broadest possible range of storytelling within the strictures of a narrow, obsessively controlled form. His idiosyncratic poems-each limited to just 100 syllables-bring music and meaning into focus like curios displayed under crystal. Humor, poignancy, and surprise imbue his writing, whether the subject is a rodeo cowboy’s prayer, a lover’s complaint, or the unruly companion that is bipolar disorder. An open mic session will follow the first set of readings, providing local poets an opportunity to share their work. The readings may contain adult content and language.