A New Orleans double feature, novelist Alan Brickman and award-winning poet Michelle "M.A." Nicholson, will be tonight's feature performers for Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.
The regular open mic session for all poets, musicians and storytellers will begin at 6:30 p.m. Brickman and Nicholson will begin their feature set at 7:30 p.m., followed by another round of open mic. "Admission is free and open to all ages. All are welcome. WNP is a safe space," a news release said.
"I was born in New York City in 1954," Brickman said in the release. "I spent most of my adult life in Massachusetts. I now live in New Orleans; I moved here in 2009. Presently, I am single, no kids. My wife Joan died of a stroke one month after our 10th anniversary in 2012. I am planning to read two pieces that deal with that at WNP. My 18½-year-old border collie Jasper died in 2023, and I haven't gotten a new dog ... yet."
Brickman is "a self-employed consultant to nonprofit, public sector, and philanthropic organizations, assisting them with strategy and organizational development. In addition to writing, my other interests are riding my bicycle, swimming in the ocean with my mask and snorkel, and soaking up all the culture New Orleans has to offer.
"The literary scene in New Orleans is very active with reading series, workshops, bookstore events, and literary festivals. I participate as much as I can, and I am sometimes kidded about being a 'Renaissance audience member,' because I am the guy who always shows up," he said.
Brickman earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1976 with a math concentration, "which seems funny and a little incongruous to me now."
Nicholson said in the release, "Because my dad was in the military, I was born in Newport News, Virginia, but New Orleans is home. My family has been there for hundreds of years. I taught in Newark, New Jersey, for a couple years after finishing undergrad, and lived in Tampa for 9 months after Katrina, but otherwise have lived in New Orleans. But the Hot Springs area (including Lake Ouachita and Petit Jean) is one of my favorite places on the planet, and my kids and I have spent a lot of time camping and hiking here and enjoying downtown Hot Springs."
She teaches creative writing at The Willow School in New Orleans and noted, "It's my 23rd year in education, officially, but I really started teaching when I was 12, as a math tutor. I love teaching and am always happiest when I can serve in that capacity." She also writes for "Where Y'at" magazine and organizes readings and workshops throughout the community.
Nicholson put together a panel for the New Orleans Poetry Festival in April on how to compose books or transforming "poems into a cohesive extended work that is an art object in itself. Collaborating with other writers on projects like this is what I love to do. It applies to my work in the classroom, too," she said.
The mother of two adult children, Nicholson has "the luxury of having a beautiful historic home in the Bywater neighborhood I grew up in, all to myself, but am within 6 minutes of both my children, who I see all of the time. I also have the privilege of working with my daughter, Tori Green, on creative projects."
Asked about her education, she said, "It's fun to tell my students that at this point, I have spent 27 years of my life as a student: B.A. in English Lit (with a minor in secondary education) from Loyola and three Masters degrees from the University of New Orleans: M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction (with a concentration in Gifted education), M.A. in English Lit (concentration in American Lit), M.F.A. in Creative Writing (concentration in Poetry)."
Nicholson's debut poetry collection, "Around the Gate," was selected for the 2023 Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize and was just published in June by The Word Works. She will have copies at WNP.
"My book is four sections of 11 poems, 44 poems and 88 pages long. When I first constructed the manuscript, I was working in a collaborative nonce form I created, what I call a Nola Renga, in which the linked poems are laid out in a grid and may be read horizontally or vertically, with each tanka in the sequence being able to be read in isolation, each as their own poem, or as two-stanza poems," she said.
"I ordered and revised the poems in this way as well, so the four sections are cycles within themselves but also parallel in development with the other sections. Each poem connected to every other poem in the book this way."
Both widely published poets, Nicholson also serves as Associate Poetry Editor for "Bayou Magazine," was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award, and has work featured in Best New Poets 2022.
Brickman's describes his writing history as, "I am primarily a fiction writer. I would call my fiction literary realism, dealing with issues such as family, memory, the search for meaning, what it means to be a good person... Sometime around 2002, I joined a writing group in Boston and got more serious about my fiction. That group continues (via Zoom) and is structured as a generative workshop, i.e., we write for about an hour in response to a prompt, then share what we've done."
"I am so excited to double feature these fresh new voices this week," WNP host and Hot Springs Poet Laureate Kai Coggin said in the release. "It is so amazing that writers can get a suggestion from a a friend and make connections, and you can trust, writer to writer, community to community that we will all feel at home with each other.
"Big thanks to WNP poets Dan Costello and Justin Stubie Smith, for singing our praises in New Orleans and connecting Alan and Michelle to Hot Springs. Reading about these two incredible and brilliant writers in their interviews has been a joy, and I cannot wait for their collaborative set to wow our Wednesday Night Poetry audience."
This week marks 1,872 consecutive Wednesdays of open mic poetry in downtown Hot Springs since February 1st, 1989--over 35 years. "Wednesday Night Poetry is the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country. For more information about WNP or Coggin's Poet Laureate Project for Hot Springs teenagers, Sharing Tree Space, email [email protected]," the release said.
