The Keepers

The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum is happy to welcome back visual artist Cyriaco Lopes and poet Terri Witek to Flagler College for a participatory virtual event on Thursday, April 8 at 5:30pm. This event is a collaboration with the St. Johns County Public Library, in conjunction with National Poetry Month. The event is free and open to the public, and registration is required.

Zoom has become a ubiquitous part of both our personal and professional lives during the course of the pandemic. Through The Keepers, Lopes and Witek will utilize Zoom as an investigation of the gap between images and text, as orchestra, as conversation, as interactive performative work. The artists encourage viewers to participate in the creation of both visual and auditory elements in order to generate a unique art experience on this newly popular platform.

We would appreciate the audience’s participation during this event, and therefore we will request all participants to turn on their cameras (aka share video) and unmute themselves during certain segments of the performance. While full participation is strongly encouraged, we understand that not everyone might feel comfortable showing their faces and lending us their voices, and there will be ample opportunity to participate in the event through the chat function.

The Keepers will be the second time the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum has collaborated with Lopes and Witek, and the fifth time working with Witek and her other collaborators. In 2015 we presented Lopes and Witek’s exhibition Currents/Correntes. In 2016 we hosted visual artist Matt Roberts and Witek for their interactive, multiple site-specific digital project Dream Garden. In 2017, we invited Roberts and Witek back to Flagler College who, alongside Denke Chen, performed Implements for Removing Foreign Bodies.

Last Sunday of the Month Poetry Reading

Get on the sign up list and share a poem or just soak in the spoken word scene at St. Johns County’s longest running monthly poetry reading series
hosted by Ancient City Poets with support from the St. Johns Cultural Council. Browse old-fashioned book fair featuring local authors. Sign up starts at 2:30 pm. Emcee Chris Bodor will call up the first 15 readers on the list at 3:00 pm. Outdoor art patio at 137 King Street in the San Sabastian Art District.

National Poetry Month at First Friday Art Walk

Friday, April 2nd National Poetry Month at First Friday Art Walk. Meet local poets and browse an old-fashioned book fair featuring local authors. Enjoy poetry writing activities with Ancient City Poets and the St. Johns Cultural Council during April’s ArtWalk. From 5 pm to 8 pm at the Cultural Arts Center, St. Johns County Pier

January Poetry Reading – Online

THEME: “New Year is Here” ​

Ancient City Poets Michael Henry Lee and PAM Jam Coordinator Chris Bodor will co-host this month’s community open mic on-line event. Share two or three of your polished poems or bust out some fresh ink from your notebook during Saint Augustine, Florida’s longest running open mic poetry event. Invite a friend or two or three to view the livestream on FB Live to cheer you on. Love, or our aversion to it, is in the air and all are invited to write words to that theme. The writing prompt is just a suggestion, and you are free to follow it or not. What is important , is that we get to know you and your artistic words.

NOTE: At 3:00 pm EST on Sunday, JAN 31, the FB Live feed for this reading will appear on the following site:
https://www.facebook.com/ancientcitypoets

Poets and poetry fans have been gathering for free open mic poetry reading since August of 2009. A sign-up sheet will be available at 2:30 and the open mic will start at 3:00 pm.

If you would like to share a poem, please let us know through our website. We will email you the Zoom Meeting ID and any passcode that might be needed. We have space on the list for 15 poets at 5 minutes each. Readers will be called to the virtual podium in the order their names appear on the list.

PAM JAM Preview 2020 Virtual Poetry Reading

Special PAM JAM Preview during the October Ancient City Poets open mic reading.

Invited poets will read the poems that they wrote from being paired with an artist from the Butterfield Gallery. Fine art created during the poet/artist collaboration will also be worked into this presentation.

What’s a PAM Jam?

Back in August of last year, The Butterfield and the Ancient City Poets partnered to form a project named PAM Jam – Poets, Artists, and Musicians Spreading Joy. The inspiration was a project that featured 9 poets collaborating with one artist: Anna Miller. The show was called “Refractions”, and it was on display from January 15 to March 15, 2019, at the St. Johns County Administrative Building Rotunda.

This year, 18 fine artists from the Butterfield Gallery were paired with a poet partner from Ancient City Poets. The deadline for the finished poem and artwork from each paired collaboration team was April 1st of this year – right in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak. PAM Jam became the perfect pandemic project. In isolation, writers and artists got to know each other through emails, text messages, zoom meetings, and late-night phone calls. Writers and artists bonded together, built new relationships with each other, and learned to ride out the new normal. When the poems and paintings were completed, musicians were brought in to add another layer to the collaboration process.

On October 25th, the Ancient City Poets will hold a poetry reading at 3 pm online through zoom featuring the 18 poets and their poems from the inaugural PAM Jam. The event will be streamed through FB Live to the group’s Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/ancientcitypoets