Explosion of Poetry at Stellar Beans

This week and weekend, Stellar Beans will offer quite literally an explosion of literary events to entice even the homebody in us all to get off the couch and experience downtown Lake Charles. On Thursday, March 15th, the coffee house's monthly poetry night will feature a reading by Chris Shipman at 7 p.m.


Shipman is the author of Human-Carrying Flight Technology (Blaze VOX), Romeo’s Ugly Nose (forthcoming from Allography Press), and co-author of Super Poems (forthcoming from Kattywompus Press). Shipman was a finalist for the 2011 De Novo Award, the 2010 Akron Poetry Prize, and the 2010 Copperdome Prize. His poems appear in Cimarron Review, Exquisite Corpse, La Fovea, Salt Hill, and The Offending Adam, among many others. Shipman has been featured on Verse Daily and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the poetry editor for Dig Magazine of Baton Rouge and teaches at Baton Rouge Community College.


On Saturday, March 17th, Stellar Beans will continue with a reading by Arthur Pfister at 1 p.m. Also known as Professor Arturo, he is from New Orleans and is a Spoken Word artist, educator, performer, editor, speechwriter and recipient of the Asante Award. He received a Master of Arts degree in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. degree in English/Journalism from the State University of New York-College at New Paltz. Pfister, one of the original Broadside Press poets of the 1960s, has collaborated on a medley of projects with a mélange of artists including painters, musicians, photographers, dancers, singers, fire eaters, waiters, cab drivers, and other members of the Great Miscellaneous. 


He has performed his poetry, fiction, toasts and “jazz poems” on a solo basis or with musical accompaniment at Ebony Square, Vincent’s City Club, Louisiana Music Factory, the Contemporary Arts Center, the Louisiana Folklife Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Urban League’s Annual Golden Gala, Ashe Cultural Arts Center, among many others.


Also on Saturday, Stellar Beans will be the site of another Rumble in the Chuck poetry slam competition with poets from Louisiana and Texas competing for top honors at 7 p.m.


All of these events are free and the public is invited to attend. Poetry is not censored. For more information, contact Stellar Beans at (337) 564-5739.