THE ALTERNATIVE NEW YEAR’S DAY SPOKEN WORD AND PERFORMANCE EXTRAVAGANZA
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery between Houston & Bleecker Sts.
Saturday, January 1, free, 2:00 pm – 12 midnight
212-614-0505
www.bowerypoetry.com
www.spokenwordextravaganza.org
The Bowery Poetry Club is hosting its seventeenth annual New Year’s Day alternative poetry reading, featuring more than 150 performers, including Hobo Bob, Steve Cannon, Steve Dalachinsky, Kathi Georges, Bob Holman, Richard Kostelanetz, Eve Packer, Tom Savage, Jackie Sheeler, Phillip Sherrod, Sparrow, Angelo Verga, George Wallace, Bruce Weber, Jeffrey Wright, and Zork, and there will be an open mic as well if you’d like to add your own contribution. Although the event is free, attendees are encouraged to bring paperbacks for Books Through Bars, which supplies reading material to prisoners, and canned goods for Urban Pathways, which collects food and other services for the homeless. This year’s theme, Dark Matters, relates to how an “invisible glue holds the universe together” much like “the arts hold all us disparate individuals together. . . . When the city, the country and the world split into fighting fragments, music, poetry, and dance keep us intact.”