News & Events

BONK has been rescheduled November 21, 2020.

NEWS RELEASE

DATE TO BE RELEASED: Immediately

SUBJECT: BONK! Poetry and Music Series November 2020 virtual event

CONTACT: Nick Demske, nick.demske@racinelibrary.info, 2626192570

Racine – This month the BONK! Poetry and Music Series will be another virtual event, taking place on Saturday, Nov 21st, at 6 p.m. Featured performers will be: Milwaukee-based poet Su Cho, New Jersey-based poet Cortney Lamar Charleston and Kenosha-based musician Brent Mitchell.

Created to expose the public to both local and nationally recognized artistic talents, the BONK! series has showcased poets, writers, musicians, filmmakers and all sorts of talent in between. Founded in fall of 2008, the BONK! series has been running with an event every month for 12 years now. BONK! is a free event and is open to the public. This event will be live streamed via the BONK! Facebook page. To join as an audience member and participate in the comment thread, visit https://www.facebook.com/BONK-51655071250

Su Cho received her MA in English Literature and MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Cream City Review after serving as Editor-in-Chief of Indiana Review. She is pursuing a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is an Advanced Opportunity Fellow. Her poems are forthcoming and/or found in POETRY, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, The Journal, Crab Orchard Review, BOAAT, Thrush Poetry Review, PANK, Sugared Water, and elsewhere.

Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of Telepathologies, selected by D.A. Powell for the

2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, and the forthcoming Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021). He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Granta,The Nation and elsewhere. He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus and on the editorial board at Alice James Books.

Brent Mitchell is a sculptor, painter, and songwriter/guitarist. A few years ago he was named Poet Laureate of Kenosha, and soon after published his first book of poetry: Cowboys, Mermaids, and the Lord of Death. As a songwriter, Brent has written songs for publishing houses including Bug Music, and Tree Publishing, with writers from Sony, Decca, and SESAC, and has recorded a number of CDs. His songs are included in the movie Partners in Crime and in the 2018 film La Barracuda. In 2005 his song Hand of God was listed for a Grammy. In 2016, he obtained a Master’s degree in theology, and He continues to play music, and to write poetry, and has recently begun teaching religious studies at Carthage College where his wife, Dr. Stephanie Mitchell is a professor of history. Together they live in perfect serenity in their ivory tower just a few blocks from the college with their four impeccably behaved children.

Robert Wynn describes a Brent Mitchell- solo-performance as “literally a songwriting clinic. Just amazing. The man can play and sing like nobody’s business and his songs are pure poetry.”

BONK! is made possible by the The Racine Public Library, the Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, the Friends of the Racine Public Library, the Racine Community Foundation, and Olde Madrid restaurant. For more information or to view video of past BONK! performances please visit http://bonkperformanceseries.wordpress.org .

You may also contact Nick Demske at the Racine Public Library: 262.619.2570 or nick.demske@racinelibrary.info. If you would like to receive monthly email updates about the BONK! series, please send a blank email to the address above with the subject heading “BONK! Email.”