Switching Tracks is a poetic collage of reflective musings by local poets.Imagine yourself on a train…can’t you just hear the sounds, visualize the panorama through your window, and breathe in the aroma?Your journey begins with words and where our minds lead us as we “switch tracks’ and travel to unexpected places.As you experience the music, embrace how it highlights where the words travel. Words flow from one mind to another and the musical train sounds add to the rhythmic pulse of the poetry.Trains are meditative and help our minds to wander to unexpected places! Come join us on our journey into the minds and hearts of our local poets.
Michelle Oram is the creator and director of Switching Tracks. She recently published a children’s book and CD titled Songs of the Woods and is currently writing an adult book called Finding Your Voice.
Michelle believes everyone has a Voice. All we have to do is silence the mind and delve into the heart. After spending over 35 years training and developing arts and education programs for students age 3 to adult, she has witnessed the power of the arts and nature to help us find our own unique voice. Your relationship with your voice carries over in all aspects of your life. “We must learn to nurture and embrace the voice, flaws and all in order to find balance and harmony.”
Michelle was a headliner for the 2017 Scranton Cultural Arts “Jump Jive Jazz Festival” and the Milford Music Festival. She also participated in The Settlers Inn Summer Jazz Series with her band All That Jazz paying tribute to a blend of musical styles including jazz, cabaret, blues, Broadway and pop. She frequently holds Open Mics in Hawley and Honesdale encouraging all to share their voice whether through prose, poetry or music.
A native of ‘Penn’s Woods,’ Nancy Dymond embraces the temperate zone’s four seasons, their drama, their circular march through the maturing seasons of our personal lives. Dymond, who has been a member of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective for 15 years, reads and performs her poetry in venues throughout the upper Delaware River region. Her poetic work, The Road to Night won first place in the 2011 Mulberry Poets & Writers Annual Poetry Contest. Her first volume of poetry, Complete Breath, emerged from the High Watermark Salo(o)n’s artist/poet collaborations in the flood plain of the upper Delaware River. Sleep Barn, her second volume of poetry, was published in 2015.
Juliet Falcone, age 19, graduated from Wallenpaupack High School and is currently a student at Penn State majoring in professional writing. You can find her working this summer at the Dairy Twist in Hawley. This is her first appearance in front of an audience to share her poetry.
Brian Fanelli‘s most recent book is Waiting for the Dead to Speak was the winner of the 2017 Devil’s Kitchen Poetry Prize. His other books include the collection All That Remains and the anthology he co-edited entitled Down the Dog Hole: 11 Poets on Northeastern Pennsylvania. Brian’s writing has been published in The Los Angeles Times, World Literature Today, The Paterson Literary Review, Main Street Rag, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. He has an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton University. He is an Assistant Professor of English and chair of the Humanities Department at Lackawanna College. He blogs about horror movies and literature at brianfanelli.com.
Page Nolker, author of Materials on Hand, refers to herself as a storyteller. She views life as a collection of stories and appreciates that the way we tell our stories shape how and what we feel, our choices and our reality. After more than two decades writing and editing for businesses and entrepreneurs, Page applies her craft today to modeling the art of storytelling as our most powerful and important tool for defining and creating fulfilling lives. Page can be found at BabeEffect.com
Daryl Sznyter is the author of Synonyms for (OTHER) Bodies. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published or is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Poet Lore, Folio, Gravel, Phoebe, Best American Poetry Blog, and elsewhere. She received her M.F.A. from The New School. She currently resides in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where she works as an SEO Analyst. To learn more, visit darylsznyter.com.
David M. Wolf is a graduate of Rutgers College where he majored in Philosophy. David held positions at Time, Inc. in New York, Brandeis University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. While in Boulder he completed a Master’s Degree in Philosophy and then co-founded a medical marketing firm called Consumer Health Services, Inc. He also performed frequently in Boulder, singing and playing guitar. David is a writer who has published three novels, a work of poetry, short stories and a book of original philosophy.