Join us in the PEACE Park as Coventry Branch and Mac’s Backs Bookstore present an outdoor summer poetry series.

July 24th's reading features the poets: Bree Zlee Bodnar, Richard Vargas, Russell Vidrick and Mary Weems.

Bree is a poet, artist and performer. She has published several books including was chicken trax amid sparrows tread, The Rainbow Sweater & My Mother, Bree: do well of must and other works.  She is also the publisher of Green Panda Press and Least Bittern Books and since 2001 has produced numerous books, chapbooks and ephemera by herself and other writers.

She has performed original songs with the bands Johnnycake, Birdcake and Very Sharp & Midnight. Bree has also organized numerous poetry festivals including events to honor d.a. levy and Kenneth Patchen.

Richard Vargas was the recipient of the 2011 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference Hispanic Writer Award and was on the faculties of the 2012 10th National Latino Writers Conference and the 2015 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. Published collections include Guernica, revisited, (2014); How A Civilization Begins, (2022), and leaving a tip at the Blue Moon Motel, (2023). A new collection, The Screw City Poems, will be released in July 2025. He currently is host of a monthly poetry open mic in Madison (Poetry on Tap@Minocqua Brewing Company: “drink beer and don’t be racist.”) 

Russ Vidrick is known in the poetry community for his deeply soulful work. He has published several chapbooks including Waiting for Matisse, Drag the Sun Across the Sky, Yellow Scream and (with the late Jim Lang) Dueling Poets.

Dr. Mary E. Weems is an accomplished author, poet, playwright, and social/cultural foundations scholar. Her work is inspired by the human condition and by what is happening to Black people in America around issues of race, gender and class. To date, Weems has authored thirteen books and her plays and/or excerpts have been published or produced for nearly two decades. 

Dr. Weem's film Socks, about human trafficking, won numerous national and international awards in 2023 and 2024.

Poetry publications include Fall and Response (2024), For(e)closure (2012) and she edited Say it Loud, a collection of poetry about James Brown. Mary has also written several academic works about the intersection of art, race, and culture.