Not long after our March revival of the E-Verse Equinox Reading Series, the city went into lockdown for the pandemic. We discussed the possibility of an online installment, to see how it felt. We know it might lack some of the warmth of the readings we hold in the bar upstairs at Fergie’s Pub, but it may have its advantages. For one, we can invite poetry lovers who live anywhere in the world, and we hope some will join us. Of course, we hope you’ll join us as well. So pull up a chair. Pour a glass. Bring a poem to read. We want to hear you this equinox!

When: Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020 at 7 PM to 9:30 PM

Where: Online event, on Zoom, at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88410117845?pwd=SDJkQWxreFJLbnc2MjROTUZlTXlXdz09 Meeting ID: 884 1011 7845, Passcode: 035824, Phone: 1 646 876 9923

Who: Host John Wall Barger, poets Indran Amirthanayagam, James Arthur, and Leonard Gontarek. Learn more about our featured readers below.

Indran Amirthanayagam, (Sri Lanka/United States) writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese. and Haitian Creole. He has published nineteen poetry collections and recorded a spoken word album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly. He is a curator of the literary platform http://www.ablucionistas.com. He has won the Paterson Poetry Prize. His new books are The Migrant States, Sur l’île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2020), and Lírica a Tiempo (Editorial Mesa Redonda, Lima, 2020). Signed copies of these new books are available from the author. Contact: indranmx@gmail.com. Twitter: @indranmx. Instagram: @Indran1960. Facebook: Indran Amirthanayagam

Canadian-American poet James Arthur is the author of The Suicide’s Son (Véhicule Press 2019) and Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012.) His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and The London Review of Books. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Hodder Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Northern Ireland, and a Visiting Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Leonard Gontarek coordinates Peace/Works, Poetry In Common, Philly Poetry Day, hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series, is Poetry Consultant for Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy, and contributing editor for The American Poetry Review. He is the author of six books of poems, most recently Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket, Shiva. His poems have appeared in Field, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, Fence, Poetry Northwest, and The Best American Poetry. He has twice received poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on The Arts. He conducts poetry workshops in venues including, The Kelly Writers House, Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, and weekly workshops from his home in West Philadelphia.