TINY TALKS is a monthly series of short talks on poetry at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop this fall. December's theme is MAGIC.

EMILY BRANDT, "Yeats and The Second Coming"

Emily Brandt is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Sleeptalk or Not At All. Her poems have recently appeared in LitHub, The Recluse, The Offing, Apogee, and other journals. Emily is a co-founding editor of No, Dear and Web Acquisitions Editor for VIDA. 

IAN DREIBLATT, “Greenish Sundial Eternities"

Ian Dreiblatt is a poet whose work has appeared in Elderly, Entropy, Bomblog, Pallaksch. pallaksch., The Agriculture Reader, and other journals, as well as chapbooks from DoubleCross and Metambesen. His translations include Comradely Greetings, the prison correspondence of Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova with Slavoj Žižek (Verso), and contributions to Not a Word About Politics by Roman Osminkin (Cicada) and Avant-Garde Museology (e-flux classics). He lives with Anna in Brooklyn near a giant rusty painting of a hamburger.

GRAHAM FOUST, "Pressing Buttons: On Robert Creeley's 'Some Afternoon'"

Born in Tennessee and raised in Wisconsin, Graham Foust is the author of six books of poems, including To Anacreon in Heaven and Other Poems (Flood Editions 2013), a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award, and Time Down to Mind (Flood Editions, 2015). With Samuel Frederick, he has also translated three books by the late German poet Ernst Meister, including Wallless Space (Wave Books, 2014). He works at the University of Denver.

CHRISTINE KANOWNIK, "The Sacred and the Feminine"

Christine Kanownik is the author of KING OF PAIN (Monk Books 2016). Her poetry can or will be found at FENCE, Poetry Crush, Jubilat, among others. Her chapbook We Are Now Beginning to Act Wildly was published in 2012 by Diez Press.

KAREN LEPRI, "Spellbound in my Words"

Karen Lepri is a poet, translator, and essayist living in Brooklyn. Her poetry, reviews, and translations have appeared in various national and international literary journals, such as Conjunctions, Chicago Review, and Shearsman. She has been a recipient of the Academy of American Poets, Weston, Kim Ann Arstark, and Frances Mason Harris prizes for poetry. Lepri is the author of the poetry chapbook “Fig. I” published in 2012 by Horse Less Press. Her book of poems, Incidents of Scattering (January 2014), won the 2012 Noemi Poetry Prize. She is a former Writing Fellow at the Millay Colony. She teaches writing and literature at Cooper Union, Bard, and Queens College while pursuing her PhD in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

JESSICA SMITH, "Lovemagic: The Coven and the power of building positive relationships between women to create space for writing, reading, and publishing"

Jessica Smith, Founding Editor of Foursquare and name magazines and Coven Press, serves as the Librarian for Indian Springs School, where she curates its Visiting Writers Series. She is the author of numerous chapbooks including Trauma Mouth (dusie) and two books, Organic Furniture Cellar (Outside Voices) and Life-List (Chax Press).