Nick Demske-Bonk!- Racine, Wisconsin 2018

ORGANIZER: Nick Demske

CONTACT: nick.demske@racinelibrary.info

BONK! 118
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH 2018
THE GEORGE BRAY NEIGHBORHOOD YMCA
924 CENTER STREET
RACINE, WI
6:00 PM (doors open at 5:30pm)
bonkperformanceseries.wordpress.com

This month’s event will be part of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots organization that brings communities together to call for environmental, social, and political change within the framework of peace and sustainability. An event that began primarily with poet organizers, 100 Thousand Poets for Change has grown into an interdisciplinary coalition with year-round events which includes musicians, dancers, mimes, painters, and photographers from around the world. BONK!s contribution to this global event will be held at the George Bray Neighborhood YMCA, 924 Center Street. Originally the George Bray Neighborhood Center, it reopened its doors in late February of this year as a branch of the Racine Family YMCA.

BONK POETRY READING IN RACINE, WISCONSIN, ONCE AGAIN CONNECTS AS GLOBAL 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE EVENT

This year’s September Bonk poetry and performance event in Racine, Wisconsin, U.S. A., once again served as connective part of the annual world-wide poetry reading known as “100 Thousand Poets For Change.” About twenty artists of various sorts gathered in the gym of the George Bray Neighborhood YMCA, 924 Center Street, on Saturday, Sept. 29, for a night of poetry, music, dance movement, multi-media, history reading. Pulled away due to commitments as a Racine county supervisor, well-known Racine master of ceremonies, Nick Demske, a fixture at Bonk readings and 100TPC, did not participate this year, as Racine poet Alex Reilly substituted in his place. With a back drop of portraiture murals done by local artists and basketball nets hovering above, poetry readers, musicians singing Woodie Guthrie songs, artists and historians continued to maintain the lively arts scene in Racine and Kenosha Counties and Southeastern Wisconsin.

One Hundred Thousand Poets For Change began in 2011 first organized in California by writers Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, bringing together poetry groups, educational groups, arts councils, musicians, interested individuals across the globe. The inaugural 100TPC featured 700 individual events in 95 different countries. Each year the visual and audio material from the performances is archived at Stanford University and posted on a 100TPC website.
-Tom Hibbard