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Had a great Open Mic on the 8th with JD Scrimgeour reading "Summer Night - Thoughts of Tu Fu." He is accompanied on piano by his son. Tu Fu, also called Du Fu, was a major Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. He was born in the year 712 in Gongxian, China. Watch video recap below.
J.D. Scrimgeour
J.D. Scrimgeour is the inaugural poet laureate of Salem, Massachusetts and the author of six books of poetry, the most recent being Small, Rectangular, Reflected World (Nixes Mate, 2025). Scrimgeour’s second book of nonfiction, Themes for English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class won the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s Award for Nonfiction. A longtime resident of Salem, Scrimgeour has written in many genres about the city. His ancestor, Mary Towne Eastey, was put to death during the Salem Witch Trials. Another ancestor, Thomas Perkins, sat on the jury that found her guilty.
Richard Hoffman is author of the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury; the poetry collections, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry, and most recently, People Once Real. He is also author of the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists. A fiction writer as well, his Interference & Other Stories was published in 2009. He is Emeritus Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College.
Gloucester Writers Center presents a "Kids Open Mic." Sam Cook reads EE Cummings, epic poetry by Willa Brosnihan, Cole Cunningham jumps and shouts.
Poet Dick Lourie reads his poem "Prologue" at Jan 2025 at Open Mic
