Next Up to The Mic: Carol Graser at Restaurant Navona

This week, Thom Francis welcomes poet Carol Graser to the stage. Carol shared her poems at Albany Poets Presents that took place on February 21, 2018 at Restaurant Navona in Albany.

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In the late-2010s I hosted a series at Restaurant Navona on New Scotland Ave in Albany. At these readings a poet would share their work and then they would answers questions from me and the audience. On February 21, 2018, the great Carol Graser was the featured poet.

Carol Graser is the author of the poetry collections Prayer for the Sorrowful Brain (Kelsay Books, 2025) and The Wild Twist of Their Stems (Foothills Publishing, 2007). She hosts the fourth Tuesday of the month open mic poetry reading at Caffe Lena, a series that she initiated in 2003.

For the reading part of the evening, Carol began with “Poem Read in a Dream,” then on to a wedding poem for her son “Dissolving the Distance Between You.” A couple poems from when she worked at a bookstore, the first in the “persona” of a haiku, and then a poem about eating lunch in Congress Park. Ending with “Ghost of Ambitions.”

Carol will be reading this Sunday afternoon st Saratoga Arts as part of the weekend-long Saratoga Book Festival.