Labor Lit and Music Open Mic

?Labor Lit and Music Open Mic? is part of the Guild Complex?s Second annual Chicago Labor Arts Festival and features an evening of poetry, prose and music.

Performers will include Daniel Ferri, Brenda Mathews, Lew Rosenbaum, Michael C. Watson and the band Ziffels and more. Anyone with art that has a labor angle is welcome to take the stage. Daniel Ferri is an elementary school teacher and writer. He began writing poetry to perform and now also writes radio commentary for WBEZ. His work has appeared in Hammers, Red Brick Review, An Anthology of Coffeehouse Poetry, Via: Journal of Italian-American Literature, Jackleg Press, Harper?s Magazine, Chicago Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Brenda Matthews for the past 10 years has been utilizing drama and poetry as a vehicle to plant seeds of change. Work as Case Manager in the field of social service allows her to reach out to those who many have turned their back on. Brenda believes change is possible for everyone and uses cultural tools to touch lives, bring healing and offer solution of hope. Lew Rosenbaum has been a bookseller active in the arts for 20 years. As manager at Guild Books he helped initiate the first annual national reading to benefit the homeless. He is active in the Rogers Park Chapter, and in the Cultural Workers and Artists Caucus, of the Labor Party. He leads regular discussions of literature exploring the art?s response to working class life and struggle. He believes that art provides a way to challenge people?s assumptions of what must be and offer an imaginative view of what is possible.

Michael C. Watson, native of Chicago, was a student of the University of spices, Dejoies, the Guild Complex stage and Lit X. He is a bearer of baaad tidings, herald of strange things to come, wild-eyed mystical words linger from the wrong side of a one track mind. And oh yeah, he?s a poet, although it is widely accepted that more people remember that he is a poet than those who now know it. He is after all a self described intellectual ronin and hermit. He?s trying to change?

Ziffels is a newly formed band of Chicagoans with country and soul music influences. Musicians include Andy Willis on harmonica and vocals who has lived her for over 10 years, John Ford on guitars, and Stacey Earley on background vocals. Also a duet will be performed by folk singer songwriter Joanne Nemcek accompanied by guitarist Bob Depugh.