Charis Poetry Showcase

From the venue:

This event takes place in person at Charis and on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. Click here to register to attend virtually. Please read the in-person event guidelines at the bottom of this page to be sure you can participate in the event. 

In honor of National Poetry Month, Charis presents an exciting showcase of local and regional poets! Kelsey L. Smoot (we was bois together and Muse), Rosa Castellano (All is the Telling), Bess Cooley (Florence), and Ken Anderson (The Goose Liver Anthology: Mother Goose Meets The Spoon River Anthology) represent a range of voices and styles in contemporary poetics. Join us virtually or in-person to explore these "small bites" of each poet's larger works, which are sure to leave you hungry for more!

About the Poets 

Kelsey L. Smoot (they/he/Kelz) is a gender theorist, an elective Southerner, a writer, and a poet. Their autoethnographic style has become the lens through which they understand and reflect on their experience navigating the US sociopolitical landscape. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Spring Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, and the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button PoetryVideo Contest. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and proudly, the author of two chapbooks: we was bois together with CLASH! (An Imprint of Mouthfeel Press) and Muse, with Another New Calligraphy.

Originally from Tampa, Fl, Rosa Castellano is a poet and teacher living in Richmond, VA. A finalist for Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and co-founder of the RVA Poetry Fest, her work can be found or is forthcoming from RHINO Poetry, Diode, Passages North, Nimrod, The Ninth Letter, and Poetry Northwest among others. 

Bess Cooley is a poet whose work seamlessly weaves vivid imagery, playful experimentation, and a deep sensitivity to sound. Drawing from her background in classical music, her poetry resonates with musicality, enhancing her exploration of the intersection of language, spirituality, and form, creating poems that are both deeply personal and universally resonant. A winner of The Mississippi River Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Western Humanities Review, The Journal, and Verse Daily. Cooley is a co-founding editor of Peatsmoke Journal and teaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Island of Wak-Wak Press (Orebro, Sweden) just released Ken Anderson’s The Ward at Twilight: Goth Poems and has submitted it to the Bram Stoker Awards. Red Ogre Review Books (L.A.) recently released his The Goose Liver Anthology (Mother Goose meets Spoon River Anthology). His first poetry book was The Intense Lover. Coffin Bell Journal nominated his poem “Blood Quartet” for the 2024 Best of the Net anthology. He was a Finalist in the 2021 Saints and Sinners poetry contest. His poetry manuscript A Sweet Oblivious Antidote was a Semifinalist for the 2024 Washington Prize.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person at the event.

In-person event guidelines:

All attendees must wear a face mask. 
We will begin seating people at 7:00 PM ET.
This event will be live-streamed via Crowdcast. Click here to register to attend virtually.
As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact info@chariscircle.org or call the store at 404-524-0304.

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.

By attending this event, whether in person or virtually, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately.