Friday, Feb. 28, 6 p.m.: Fourth Friday Reading Series at Dog Ears Books. This month’s featured reader is J. Tim Raymond. Additional reading slots available. Dog Ears Bookstore and Cafe, 688 Abbott Road, 2nd floor, in Buffalo. Admission to the event is $5. Proceeds benefit the Dog Ears Bookstore, a 501 c (3) not-for-profit organization.

Friday, Feb. 28, 8:30 pm.: Ground & Sky Poetry open Mic at Caffe Aroma hosted by Joel Lesses. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Saturday, March 1, 6 p.m.: Kenyon College presents a Poetry Reading: Waste, Ecology, and Sustainability with Joe Hall, introduced by Orchid Tierney. A poet, critic, and junk bookmaker, Joe Hall is conducting a lifelong investigation into the intersections of labor, ecology, imagination, and structures of violence.

About the Author:

Joe Hall is an educator and the author of six collections of poems: Pigafetta Is My Wife (2010), The Devotional Poems (2013), Someone’s Utopia (Black Ocean Press, 2018) and Fugue & Strike (Black Ocean Press, 2023) in which this poem appears. With Chad Hardy, he co-authored The Container Store, Vols I & II (2012). With Cheryl Quimba, he co-authored the chapbook May I Softly Walk (2014).

Hall has performed and delivered talks nationally at universities, living rooms, squats, and/or rivers in most of the 50 states as well as Canada and Washington, DC. He participates in Hostile Books, a publishing collective dedicated to radical materiality, with Ryan Kaveh Sheldon and Angela Veronica Wong. He is currently an assistant professor at St. Bonaventure University. He has taught community based creative writing workshops through the Worker Center in Buffalo and Just Buffalo Literary Center. His college teaching experience includes all levels of undergraduate creative writing and environmental literature.
Where: Rust Belt Books, 415 Grant St, Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Sunday, March 2, 4 p.m.: Pure Ink Poetry Slam, a monthly, two-round spoken word and poetry slam competition series hosted by Brandon Williamson. Pure Ink Poetry Slam is always an open slam without specific themes or requirements other than the general rules of slam. Sign up is from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Open mic and slam starts at 6:30. $5 for slammers, $10 for spectators. Cash prize for the winner. Visit the website http://www.pureinkpoetry.com for more information. Em Tea Coffeecup Café, 80 Oakgrove Ave., Buffalo, NY.