WORDFLIGHT:RUGGIERI/SIPOS

Monday, May 14th @ 07:00 PM
Free and open to public

Crane Branch Library
633 Elmwood Avenue
Upstairs
Buffalo 14222
MAP

 Helen Ruggieri has several books of poetry out, including Glimmer Girls (Mayapple Press), and  The Poetess, Concrete Madonna, and Rock City Hill Exercises, as well as a  book of short prose pieces (haibun) from Foothills Publishing, called The Character for Woman, about living in Japan, and a book of haiku and haibun, The Character for Spirit. Her poetry has appeared in many small press publications including The English Journal, Earth’s Daughters,, River Styx, Blue Line, Snowy Egret, Sports Literate, Journal of New Jersey Poets,  Hawaii Pacific Review, del sol review,  Valparaiso, Hiram Poetry Review, Coal City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review,  MinnesotaReview, Labor,  Icon, Red River Review,  Poetry Midwest, Poetry Magazine,Adirondack Review, and more. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for work in the following anthologies: Poems of Francis and Clare, St. Anthony Messenger Press; Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Penn State UP; 20 Years of Uncommon Nature Writing, Wood Thrush Books; Knocking on the Silence: Poems of the Finger Lakes,  Foothills Publishing; Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains, Salt Marsh Press. Ruggieri taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford, PA and in the Arts in Education Program in Cattaraugus, Allegany and Chautauqua counties.  She spent a semester teaching  in Japan at Yokohama College of Commerce and is a member of the East Asian Faculty Association at the University of Pittsburgh. Her Japanese verse forms (haibun, haiku, senryu) have appeared in publications in Turkey, Japan, Belgium, England, Russia, Slovakia and Japan in the Mainichi Daily News, the Yomiuri Daily, World Haiku Review, etc. She has won several awards for haiku from Japanese publications and teaches workshops on Japanese verse forms. She studied with William Stafford at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and with John Balaban at Penn State where she received her MFA.  Balaban said of her work: "Ruggieri, with an intense regard for right diction and informing imagery, looks at those things that come her way and saves them for us, saves them from passing into oblivion, saves their enduring  values."  Ruggieri is also a Master Gardener and has a black sash in tai chi.  
     Irene Sipos has taught Composition at Buffalo State College and is currently a full time lecturer in the College Writing Program. She is a native Buffalonian who completed her graduate work in American Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo with Robert Creeley and Leslie Fiedler.  Sipos has lead poetry workshops at Buffalo State’s Rooftop Poetry Club. Her work has appeared numerous times in the Buffalo News and in several other publications including Artvoice, Lilith Magazine, The Comstock Review, Buffalo Book of Poetry and Buffalo Poets Against War.