Join us for our monthly Poetry Night & Open Mic! Each month features a local poet speaker, followed by a short Q&A with our host, Marlo, and book signing by the author. This Month's Featured Poet:Matthew Cory was born and raised in Bowie, Md, his parents a school teacher and an Air Force intelligence officer. His poetic passions formed his senior year in high school, during a shakespearean sonnet segment of AP English. He wrote mostly free verse poetry and song lyrics in his college days, but also composed poems to the beats of well-known chart toppers. He put his pen down for most of his career as a tennis teaching professional, working in Tallahassee, FL, Williamsburg, VA, Tallahassee, FL a second time, and then Charlotte, NC. Just prior to the Covid pandemic, he picked up his pen again with a motivation to pen formal poetry. Diving head first into the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Hardy, Edward Arlington Robinson, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Robert Frost among others, he honed his craft from their example. His work has been featured in The Lyric, Blue Unicorn, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Westward Quarterly. He won The Lyric’s Spring 2021 Quarterly Prize, and was honorable mention in 2023 for The Lyric’s annual Roberts Memorial Prize. Marlo, our host, will kick off Open Mic with a few readings, followed by other Open Mic sign-ups! To read during Open Mic, please arrive 6:15pm - 6:30pm to sign up in person. Each open mic reader will have a time limit of 3 minutes on stage to share 1-2 poems. This event is complimentary, but RSVPs are encouraged. Connect with Marlo! • @MarloThePoet