Facilitated and hosted by co-directors Jim Eve and Mike Jurkovic, 2008 marks the ninth successful year of The Calling all Poets Series at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY.

On every first Friday of the month, poets from the tri-state area, lured by art and surrounded by books, listen and lend their voices to the rich resonance of history. Under the colorful CAPS banner, The Howland stage has bore witness to such nationally recognized voices as poet/playwright Irene O’Garden; poet/photographer Eddie Bell; poet/author Barbara Adams; poet/tattoo artist Shotsie Gorman; poet/publisher/editors Steven Hirsch, Susan Sindall and Don Lev as well as Hudson Valley notables Shirley Powell, Janet Hamill, Robert Milby, Carl Welden, Cheryl A. Rice, Matthew J. Spireng, Bill Seaton, and Roberta Gould.

CAPS has evolved into a committee of creative individuals dedicated to bringing the spoken word in all its imaginative forms to its ever growing audience. This has included writing workshops, plays, classically themed coffeehouse readings, poet swaps, and songwriter coffeehouses (one more on September 29th 2007 featuring Jim Coyle & another with Gandolf Murphy & The Slambovian Circus of Dreams , and more planned for 2008).

To raise funds to expand their mission, The CAPS Anthology, a compilation of featured poets is now available as is the Voices of the Valley, Vols. 1 & 2 CDs, produced by Mike Jurkovic, both an evocative selection of poets recorded live from the Friday night series. All are seven dollars and available at HCC. A CAPS website, set to feature bios, poems, reading schedules and audio samples is in the works. CAPS also participates in the Second Saturday in Beacon program, when all the shops and galleries open there doors until 9:00 pm.

For more information please contact jalou713@aol.com and rnrcurmudgeon@yahoo.com