This Thursday March 6th at 7:30, poet Sally Bliumis-Dunn, of whom Billy Collins wrote: "The best poems in Sally Bliumis-Dunn’ s Talking Underwater proceed tentatively, one line at a time, a pace that reassures us there is no agenda here, only the faith that one utterance will lead to another. Sally Bliumis-Dunn’s readers are lucky to be part of this adventure, this pushing forth in the direction of revelation", will be reading at Seventh Avenue’s Community Bookstore.

Her poems have appeared in Lumina, Nimrod, The Paris Review, Poetry London, RATTLE, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her book, Talking Underwater, was published by Wind Publications in 2007, and has been a finalist for The University of Arkansas Press’ First Book Prize in 2006, a semifinalist for The Kenyon First Book contest in 2002, the Bright Hill Press in 2005 and a finalist for the Richard Snyder Poetry Prize from Ashland Press in 2006. She teaches Modern Poetry and Creative Writing at Manhattanville College.

She will be joined by poet Van Hartmann’s, who’s poetry has appeared in multiple journals. His first book, Shiva Dancing, is a collection of lyrical poems set in motion by a concrete observation or recollected moment that releases its own organic stream of poignant associations. The result is an embodiment, in each poem and in the collection as a whole, of the complex energies and perceptions that define our most human experiences. Van Hartmann teaches literature and film studies at Manhattanville College, in Purchase, New York.