Please come out, support, and hear some more amazing poetry this month at the JP Open Mic. As always, it is at Before Your Quiet Eyes and all are welcome. Remember to bring a poem or two of your own to read as well! 

This month's featured reader is Dwain Wilder. 

Dwain Wilder, a native of a small town outside Dallas, moved to Rochester, NY in 1970 to study Zen Buddhism. He has had a varied career as navy flight crew member, research technician, software engineer, and lutherie (the building of stringed musical instruments). Dwain had leadership roles in the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War Movements, as a staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Project Dialogue, and Coordinator of the Southern Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. In this latter capacity, he worked closely with students, Quakers, pacifists and Civil Rights field workers across the South to organize the only South-wide Anti-War March, on Lincoln’s Birthday, Feb 12, 1967. He was also Security Marshal for the 1967 Fifth Avenue Parade Against the War, He worked with Staughton Lynd as a community organizer in New Haven, CT, and as an organizer for the 1967 People’s Congress, an attempt to nonviolently occupy the House of Representatives in Washington.

Dwain is a graduate of Yale, with Honors, in American Studies (History of Technology and Literature) He is a poet and essayist, with work published in various poetry periodicals and collections, and his poetry collection, Under the Only Moon, was published by Foothills Press in August, 2011. Foothills Press also published two anthologies he coedited, Liberty’s Vigil, and Vigil for the Marcellus Shale.

Dwain lives with his wife and their dog, cat, and parrot, in a quaint cottage on the edge of a large, dark forest. He currently makes his livelihood in lutherie, and his Appalachian dulcimers are held in high regard, both here and abroad.