Exoterica

Description

Contact: Rick Pernod. Organization profile: Exoterica is a nonprofit, Bronx-based literary organization now entering its seventh year. Exoterica means accessible to the public, and it was my belief that if poetry was presented in a certain manner, people would not only come but would experience a gift which Stanley Kunitz called, “life-sustaining, life-enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable.” The gift of poetry. Exoterica produces community writing workshops, a reading series in conjunction with the Museum of the City of New York, a reading series with the Aging in America senior citizens in the Bronx and various school and community projects that seek to promote the literary arts in our neighborhoods. Our focus has been the longest running reading series in the Bronx, the award winning “Poetry at the Poor Mouth” series. Many have observed that we have featured the most eclectic and interesting mix of the poets of our times. Poets we have featured in the past include Stanley Kunitz, Donald Hall, Linda Pastan, Sharon Oles, Nina Cassian, William Matthews, Jayne Cortez, Sekou Sundiata, Billy Collins, Stephen Dunn, John Ashbery, Gerald Stern, Paul Muldoon, Eamon Grennan, and Pierre Martory. We featured poets from all over the world, including Turkey, Sri Lanka, Australia, Wales, France, Trinidad, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Ireland, Belgium, Columbia, Iran and of course our own neighborhoods. We brought them all to the Bronx and they all were amazed at what we have built here.