Roy Bent is the featured reader at this month's event. Open mic to follow.

Poet Bio: At one time Roy thought he would be a novelist. He studied novel writing with Paul West and Tom Rogers, poetry with Jon Balaban and William Empson. He made his first failed attempt at novel writing in the Penn State building where John Barth wrote Giles Goat Boy. Along the way he was in many speaking and writing competitions. He performed in two dozen Reader's Theatre productions, including the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, the Narrator in A Little Night Music, the abortion doctor in John Barth's End of the Road.

Then he finished his MBA and wrote virtually nothing creative for thirty-one years. In retrospect he thinks many business or financial plans he wrote for Kodak divisions could be considered fantasy or science fiction...

When he sold his business, he decided to take a year off. To fill the time he pulled out a play he wrote in college, which hinged around a poetry reading. He decided to try writing a poem to replace the Robert Bridges piece he used in the original play. Then he decided to get up and recite it at an open mic.

And here we are four years and 234 poems later. This will be his 266th public reading. He knows this because the businessman in him keeps records.