Event Description:
Discuss about The Divine Comedy with Cliff Bleidner, WWBA’s 2021 LI Poet of the Year.
Event Video Link: https://youtu.be/ShUmjoAU_pI
Cliff Bleidner invites you to hitch a ride with Dante, Virgil, and Dante’s beloved Beatrice through the realms of the next world in the year 1300. (All links mentioned in this video are below). Dante creates his own universe with respect to the standing beliefs of the time and walks this universe from one end to the other. Cliff Bleidner additionally offers a brief look into Dante’s youthful work of prose, poetry, and commentary on La Vita Nuova.
Cliff Bleidner writes haiku poetry and has received recognition among local writers as a distinguished poet and organizer in the Long island poetry community. He was a cofounder and coordinator of the Performance Poets Association (PPA), Long Island’s largest poetry organization. He also manages the annual PPA poetry contest, now in its 25th year. He has co-hosted PPA poetry events at more than a dozen different locations across Long Island. Due to his dedication for the PPA, it has been a successful outlet for the many Long Island poets. Cliff also assembles the PPA Literary Review manuscript from the judge’s decisions of submissions; the most recent publication in 2020, its 24th consecutive year. Cliff Bleidner has presented lectures on Dante and has held Haiku workshops, and formalist poet seminars. Cliff’s poems have been published in, 24 issues of the PPA Literary Review, The Haiku Calendar, Long Island Sounds, Paumanok I: Poems and Pictures of Long island, Paumanok II: Interwove and Writing Outside the Lines, among many others.
