Wednesday Night Live at Caffe Aroma with Deia Elwadi is among seven events in the community this week.

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Tuesdays at Cabernet, monthly open mic poetry and prose reading series hosted by Sinead Tyrone. Cabernet’s Wine Café , 9 N. Ellicott St., Williamsville.

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Tuesday Night Open Mic Series at the Em Tea Coffeecup Café. All are welcome whether new to poetry or a long-time member of the community. 80 Oakgrove Ave., Buffalo, NY. Free and open to the public.

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 7 p.m.: Institutional Memory : Voices from Hallwalls History: “Artists-run Spaces As Part of a Cultural Immune System, a presentation by media artist and curator Chris Hill.

Multi-disciplinary artists-run spaces, especially those funded with state and federal funding in the 1970-90s in the U.S., supported emerging artists and often challenging cultural content. They additionally provided critical audiences for emerging media arts well before the arrival of digital tools (mid-1990s) when museums were finally seduced by good projection to commonly exhibit media art and the internet offered radically new ways to connect, critique and distribute work. Hill will discuss media arts programming at Hallwalls in the 1980s, discovering beekeeping shops (“old” media) in the Czech Republic in the mid-1990s, and harvesting the sweetness, light and medicine of bees in Ohio. Her conclusion suggests how the potential “sting” of contemporary art can function as a component of a cultural immune system. Chris Hill was Video Programmer at Hallwalls from 1983-94.

About the artist

Chris Hill is a media curator and has taught at CalArts, Antioch College, and the Technical University in Brno (Czechia). She received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo, and was video programmer at Hallwalls (Buffalo) from 1983-94. Hill curated Surveying the First Decade: Video Art & Alternative Media (1996), a 17 hour collection distributed by the Video Data Bank, and edited its resource guide Rewind. For Walking Trips in Czech Lands (bilingual website, 1997) she interviewed six artists active in the Czech “parallel” (underground) culture before 1989. She co-directed four Summer Documentary Institutes including surveys on Latin America, East Central Europe, and the US incarceration crisis while teaching at Antioch (1997-2008). Projects reflecting her interest in beekeeping include Sweetness & Labor (2006) and a residency in Prague (2019). Her research interests include re-performing archives, and a recent interactive online project for the Vasulka Kitchen Archive (Brno) is A Navigational Tool for Traversing the Vasulka Mediascape (2023).

Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Wednesday, Dec. 10, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.: Exquisite Corpse Accordion Books class in the Western New York Book Arts Studio with poet and teaching artist Robin Jordan.

This interactive workshop will lead you through an adapted version of the collaborative, surrealist artmaking game, Exquisite Corpse. You’ll learn how to make an accordion-style book and experience the sublime telepathy of collective creation through collage and writing experiments. Plus, we’ll set the vibes with a curated playlist of surreal sounds and film clips. The workshop is geared towards teens and adults, with special youth pricing. There is no prerequisite knowledge required. All materials provided.

Things to note:

• Makers of all skill levels are welcome. The workshop is geared towards teens + adults. There is no prerequisite knowledge required.

• All necessary tools to participate are provided.

• Please read our ‘Plan Your Visit’ page to review our health & safety procedures.

Any questions about the class please email curious@wnybookarts.org.
$15 – $35. Visit wnybookarts.org to register.

About the Teaching Artist

Robin Lee Jordan (she/her) is a poet/writer and multi/interdisciplinary artist, teacher, and event organizer. With a spirit of community-mindedness, she enjoys inciting artistic spontaneity, multimodal collaboration, and horizontal learning exchanges. She also really likes zines and is an organizer for ZineFest. Robin wrote the chapbooks Morning Blessing Poems (Foundlings Press) and THEY ATE EACH OTHER UP (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs). For 10 years, she ran a creative writing program for teens in Buffalo, NY and continues to celebrate and support young artists in her community.

Western New York Book Arts Center, 468 Washington St., Buffalo.

Wednesday, Dec. 10, 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.: Wednesday Night Live at Caffe Aroma featuring poet Deia Elwadi.

About the poet

Deia Elwadi is a Rochester-based poet whose artistic journey began at 13. Finding solace and expression in words, she embraced the stage at 15 as a spoken word artist, captivating audiences with her raw, authentic voice. After a period of rediscovery following motherhood, Deia returned to her craft with renewed purpose and a deeper understanding of life’s complexities.

Deia’s poetry is a reflection of her internal dialogue, a testament to the human experience in all its messy glory. She fearlessly explores personal experiences, societal taboos, and the joys, passion, and sorrows that shape us. Through her words, Deia seeks to ignite meaningful conversations, encourage vulnerability, and remind us all to embrace the “extremely real” in ourselves and the world around us.

Deia has been featured on WBFO’s What’s Next, the Pure Ink Tapings, and at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, among many others. She also spends time facilitating writing workshops both in-school and in the community.

Open mic hosted by Ben Brindise and Justin Karcher to follow. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.


Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.: TEACHERS ARE WRITERS, with award-winning writer Sandra Simonds. (Online via Zoom, visit justbuffalo.org for additional information.)

In collaboration with the Western New York Network of English Teachers and the Buffalo State English Education program, Just Buffalo Literary Center offers a workshop series for school teachers and educators so they will have the opportunity to explore their own creative work, engage in ongoing conversations about process, and grow as writers. This workshop is FREE and aimed at teachers. CTLE credit is available through the Buffalo State English Education program.BPS teachers can register on PGS; non-BPS teachers register by emailing Molly Eldridge at MEldridge@buffaloschools.org. Just Buffalo Writing Center, 468 Washington Street, 2nd Floor, in Buffalo.

About the teaching artist

Sandra Simonds, an award-winning writer and professor, is the author of ten books, including Burning Oracle (Wesleyan, 2026). In recent years, her poetry collection, Triptychs (Wave Books, 2022), was a 2022 New York Times selection and her novel, Assia (Noemi Press, 2023), won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Fiction and was shortlisted for the Dzanc Fiction Prize. She has been a finalist for numerous awards and previously won the University of Akron Poetry Prize for Further Problems with Pleasure (University of Akron Press, 2017) and the Cleveland State University Open Poetry Prize for Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012). She has also been granted residencies at The Arctic Circle Residency, Millay Arts Colony, the Story Villa in Finland, Vermont Studio Center, and Studio Faire in Southern France. Her poetry, criticism, and creative nonfiction have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Granta, Boston Review, Ploughshares, and others.

Friday, Dec. 12, 8 p.m.: Ground & Sky Poetry Open Mic hosted by Joel Lesses and Joe Baiz-Elm. Caffe Aroma, 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.