the sixth annual memorial open mic for frank kelso wolfe—a digital approach for 2020.

emily neblock and i (jennifer hetrick; jen in the three-letter form) have been brainstorming in the past few months, considering our options for this year's sixth annual memorial open mic for frank wolfe.

we finally made a decision; for a number of reasons, we are unable to host the event at steel city coffee house & brewery in phoenixville. some of this is due to limitations in our own schedules and also what's going on societally. but we ask you to please check out this beloved venue when you can because some really wonderful changes are happening there recently, including a new food pantry aspect featuring local food producers. on top of that, NBC 10 based in philadelphia featured this go-to local business earlier this month, too.

instead, this year, we will be welcoming submissions of reflective writings, poems, or other types of creative writing, jokes, photos, pictures of art, and links to music or other kinds of videos on youtube, including recited or performance poetry. these can be frank's, yours, or someone else's, if you have permission to share whatever the submission may be. submissions can be about existing, life, how honestly hard it is live and keep existing on this earth, how beautiful it can be, the complexity of these crossovers, or any other expression of art in some sense, as frank was very much about all of this and very real conversations, time spent creating, etc.

so literary, visual, and music art submissions are all gladly encouraged. also, since frank was one of our favorite comedians, we will be thrilled to take jokes and comedy submissions! please help us all to laugh a little in this strange year we're living in nowadays, if you have any worthwhile humor to share. think submissions not only in darker themes of truth related to loss but also gratitude, humor, the comedy in some honesty, etc., well in line with what frank would advocate.

if submitting videos, please send a shareable hyperlink to the videos posted to youtube, vimeo, etc.

 

(we feel this is a good frank wolfe painting to share right now, as it's 

symbolic with life especially recently in how we need to keep letting our

existence flow onward in hard times during the pandemic, and it is not easy, 

but less resistance, like how water often travels around rocks versus getting

 stuck behind them as we humans often do in our worlds of obstacles, is

a useful lesson for all of us in the turbulent degrees we experience;

also, here is a relevant article on the flows and currents in life and

how we can control and perceive our reactions to it)

our plan is to post all received submissions onto the blog for frank here at http://frankkelsowolfe.blogspot.com, and each post will have a section available for comments by registered users (using gmail/google accounts shroud work) and those who post anonymously.

we welcome whatever you would like to contribute, much like our usual open mic approach, and if you know anyone who may have known frank or maybe didn't but might be interested in participating, please share this info onward.

please include the following with your submission:

• your name as you'd like it to appear with your submission (or if you would prefer a pen name or to not be named)
• a brief third-person biography for yourself, so we know a bit more about you
  
• your phone number in case we have clarification questions about your content to share
• any notes you feel will be helpful in preparing the content to post 
  

please send submissions to poetrywithjenniferhetrick at yahoo dot com.

edit as of the 6th of october: we as organizers have been our usual too-busy-to-live + more, so we are fitting in this posting work for submissions as we can and plan to keep taking submissions well past the original deadline of the 5th of october. so if anyone hasn't submitted yet, please do! that's the glory of the internet accidentally never ending time-wise. =)

if you have any questions, please feel free to let us know. and please also feel free to share this blog post URL (http://frankkelsowolfe.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-sixth-annual-memorial-open-mic-for.html) via social media, email, text, etc.

all the best to all of your hearts,

 jen & emily