Join Me and The Magic Poetry Band to Celebrate the Season

Please join us this Thursday, December 21st at 7 pm at the Aretha Jazz Cafe located inside the Detroit Music Hall at 350 Madison St, Detroit, MI. There will be music, poetry, and plenty of good cheer! Wear your dancing shoes! Free. There are a number of parking lots available near the venue.

The Band:

The Magic Poetry Band aka MaPoBa, Ted Nagy, Brigette Knudson, and Lou D'Lou together again for the first time in 22 years

The Poets:

Diana Dinverno is the author of “When Truth Comes Home to Roost” a chapbook published in 2022 and a winner of the Celery City Chapbook Contest. Her poems and short stories have appeared in The Gyroscope Review, The Westchester Review, Panoply Magazine, The MacGuffin, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Michigan Poetry Society’s 2019 Margo LaGatutta Memorial Award, the Barbara Sykes Memorial Humor Poem Prize, and the 2022 Chancellor’s Prize. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, Diana writes and practices law in Michigan.

Ginny Grush lives in Farmington Hills, Michigan. A former Peace Corps volunteer and Spanish teacher, she’s married, has two grown children and one grandchild. She writes poetry, personal essays, and short stories.

She has been published in MacGuffin, Peninsula Poets, Ridgewriters’ Anthology and the Detroit Free Press.

Her book of poetry is Absinthe and Oatmeal.

Robert Laidler is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Wayne State Department of English, is the author of a poetic libretto, The Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers, which premiered at Chamber Music Detroit in 2022. He earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, where his poems won various Hopwood awards. Most recently he was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, long listed for Palette Poetry’s chapbook contest, a finalist for Driftwood Press’ chapbook contest, and a finalist for Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s prize. His poems can be found in the Missouri Review, Ilanot Review, Driftwood Press, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He enjoys listening to music, playing music, eating, eating while listening to music, but not playing music while eating.

Diane DeCillis is the author of Strings Attached (Wayne State University Press, 2014), winner of the Michigan Notable Book Award and the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Award and finalist for the Forward INDIES Award. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals. Her most recent Made in Michigan Series book is When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double (2021).

The Host:

M. L. Liebler is an internationally known & widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist and arts organizer. He was named The 2017-2018 Murray E. Jackson Scholar in the Arts Award at Wayne State University. Liebler is the author of 15 books and chapbooks including the Award winning Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne State University Press 2008) featuring poems written in and about Russia, Israel, Germany, Alaska and Detroit. Wide Awake won both The Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellenceand The American Indie Book Award for 2009. In 2005, he was named St. Clair Shores (his hometown) first Poet Laureate. Liebler has read and performed his work in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Russia, China, France, UK, Macao, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland and most of the 50 States. M.L. Liebler has taught English, Creative Writing, American Studies, Labor Studies and World Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980, and he is the founding director of both The National Writer's Voice Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization. He was selected as Best Detroit Poet by The Detroit Free Press & Detroit's Metro Time, and in he is the nation's first ever Artist in Residence for a Public Library at The Chelsea District Library for 2008-2009. In 2005, Liebler became the Co-Editor In 2010, he received The Barnes & Noble Poets & Writers Writers for Writers Award with Maxine Hong Kingston & Junot Diaz. In 2011, his groundbreaking anthology Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the James (Coffee House Press) was given a 2011 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award. In 2017, Liebler received two Library of Michigan Notable Book Awards for both his new collection of poems entitled I Want to Be Once (Wayne State University Press / Made in Michigan Series) and for Heaven Was Detroit: An Anthology of Detroit Music Essays from Jazz to Hiphop (The Wayne State University Press Painted Turtle Series) Editor. Bob Seger's House: An Anthology of Michigan Short Stories (Co-Editor with Mike Delp). Both Heaven Was Detroit and Bob Seger's House are Finalist for the prestigious Forward Book Awards. Forthcoming recordings & vinyl include Poetry Score: M. L. Liebler & Al Kooper and KING by M. L. Liebler & Steve King. The beginning of 2020 saw the release of RESPECT: Poets on Detroit Music edited by M. L. Liebler & Jim Daniels (Michigan State University Press 2020). RESPECT just received the 2021 Library of Michigan Notable Book & The Tillie Olsen Book Award 2022 and In September 2021, M. L. was awarded the Michigan Humanities Champion of the Year, and a 2024-2025 Distinguished Faculty Fellowship from Wayne State.