Seven, At One Blow!

The evening began with snakes and ended with birds, when the Cool Women Poets arrived to perform at the Highland Park Public Library. The performance group, centered in Princeton, has roots that grow as close as Highland Park and as far as Portland, Oregon.

More than 50 people traveled from all over the state to enjoy the jauntily-clad poets. The group does themed readings, with each poet spontaneously picking a reading after listening to the previous selection. "Similar to jazz,” founding member Juditha Dowd says, “where a musician starts with the sax and then the drummer picks up on another theme.”

This evening’s theme was Animal House. The seven poets did three rounds of one poem each. "Some poems might never have been read before, but as a group we know each other pretty well. We've published four books and two CDs together," Dowd said.

Seven of the poets started as a critique group in 1997 and all the members have continued to meet regularly over the years. "The critiques are valuable," says Judy Michaels, a poet in residence at the Princeton Day School. "You're expected to have a poem ready for the group each month."

They began performing together in 2000 and noone knows where the evening will end, least of all the poets themselves.

Penelope Scambly Schott, who now lives in Oregon after 30 years in New Jersey, started off by recalling a hiking trail sign out west:, in "Watch Out for Poison Oak, Ticks, and Snakes." "I love to caress the scales of snakes," Penelope read. "They feel like expensive leather. Almost as good as paying my whole electrical bill at once." Schott also hosts Cool Women readings in out west to standing room only audiences.

The poems moved from snakes, to whales, to a poem about an angry daughter. "Today My Daughter is Angry," by Gretna Wilkinson, a creative writing teacher at Red Bank Regional High School, addresses the raw feelings of an eleven year old facing womanhood. Even the poodle hides under the table, protecting himself from her rage. Wilkinson was born and raised in Guyana and began her teaching as a missionary. Her poems often reflect anger and the small, defining moments of family bonds.

"Yesterday my daughter was cooing," Gretna, an animated reader, mimicked the bewildered mother of an adolescent. "Today she has opinions."

Catching on to the previous mention of a poodle, Eloise Bruce read "My Dalmatian Reads archy and mehitabel.”

"I cannot write with my paws and sometimes stand upwind of the poem and catch it with my nose and sign it wallace stevens with wags of my tail." Eloise has the ability to catch the details of dogness without losing the literary thread. She is a poet in the schools for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and she teaches creative writing at the Middlesex School for the Arts. Along with publishing with the Cools she published RATTLE in 2004.

Eloise was married to the poet David Keller and started writing seriously in the late 1980s and has also had a life in the theater as a director.

The Cool Women were followed by an open mic session, where the humor and poetry connection was further proven when another Highland Park poet, Betty Butler, read her "Viagravation."

"What I liked about their reading is that they were having so much fun," Gerrie Weltman, a Highland Park poet said. "Their poems are so funny and just go to prove how you can write a poem about anything, nothing is forbidden."

Don't miss the next Poetry Night on Monday, May 10 at 7:30 PM with one of New Jersey's most popular poets, Ed Romond, the poet's poet.