September brings the return of the Literary Café Series to the Center for Inquiry

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 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.

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 7 p.m.: Ground and Sky Poetry Roundtable, informal reading and poetry discussion group led by Joel Lesses. Format is ‘no mic, no list, no podium,’ but an organic discussion of life and poetry. Inspiration Point, 483 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public. Program also available via Zoom. Contact www.educationtrainingcenterinc.com/ for the link.

Wednesday, July 2, 7:30 p.m.: CFI Literary Café Series reading hosted by poet Ryki Zuckerman and featuring poets John Rigney and Julio Montalvo Valentin at the Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd. in Amherst. The event free and open to the public.

John Rigney is a poet, collagist, bookseller and English teacher from Buffalo, New York. John is a self-taught collagist and has published collages and collage poems in Instagram Poetry for Every Day, Cut Me Up Magazine, Rattlebear Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, Traditions: The Kanyer Art Collection, and PoetryXCollage. You can see some of his work at postpoetical.com and on Instagram. He attended LeMoyne College in Syracuse (B.A. English ’89) and received his M.A. in English Literature at SUNY College at Buffalo in 2000. He teaches English, theatre, and creative writing at Kenmore West High School. He was one of the featured poets in the Spring 2015 issue of BlazeVox Online journal. His work has also been published online at Dispatches from the Poetry Wars. Before its closing, John and his wife Dana were the proprietors of The Second Reader Bookshop on Hertel Avenue.

Julio Montalvo Valentin (they/his) is the author of three chapbooks, the recent being Those Who Pray to Rice (NightBallet Press, 2019), and is a member of Los Artistas del Barrio Buffalo (LADB). Julio received their bachelor’s and master’s degree in Writing and English literature from SUNY Buffalo State, where they also received two research fellowships, one for their second coast-to-coast poetry tour and another to study poetry curated on the Stonewall Nation Radio Program. Julio has been a guest editor for Mutata Re, Portrait, Coffin Bell Journal, Variety Pack, and is co-founder of the former Cringe-Worthy Poets Collective. Their work has been published in Thimble Literary Magazine, Cavity, Bangor Literary Journal, and Aisthesis: The Interdisciplinary Honors Journal, and more. Their work has been anthologized in Boricua en la Luna: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Voices, A Flash of Dark, Mansion, My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry, and the Silkworm Anthology Volume 13. Julio worked on creative writing experiences with the TimeSlips: WNY Tele-Stories Project, the BPS “Woke Words” program (“Freedom” poetry mural at Broderick Park), and the inaugural Teaching Artist Mentorship Program with the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable.

Wednesday, July 9, 9 p.m.: Poetry Night at Caffe Aroma, biweekly open mic reading series hosted by Ben Brindise and Justin Karcher. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.