Poetic Voices will be held Sunday at Pooh’s Place in Downtown Dayton, 1371 Market St., from 2-5 p.m.

The spoken word through poetry and story telling will be presented by award winning poets.

This is a drop in event. Each poet will read twice during the afternoon. For full information contact Bruce Majors at 618-8909.

Bruce Majors authored The Fields of Owl Roost, finalist for an Indie Excellence Award in the 2007 book awards competition. These awards are given to books from independent publishers. Mr. Majors recently learned that two of his poems will be published in Distillery Magazine in July and that he won an Honorable Mention in the NCPS Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage contest and will read the honored poem in May at the Weymouth Center for the Arts in Southern Pines N.C. It will be published in Pinesong Anthology for 2009. Also one of his poems, “Eden,” has made the very short list for publication in Rave Magazine later this year.

E. Smith Gilbert has published extensively in the United States and Great Brittan. His works appear regularly in Poetica and in TPQ Online.

Penny Dyer is the recipient of the 2007 Oberon Poetry Prize, and the 2006 Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry. Other work appears in Original Sin: The Seven Deadlies Come Home to Roost, SouthernReader, Poems Niederngasse, SouthLit, Arsenic Lobster, Dogwood, Narrative, Rosebud and others. Ms. Dyer stays busy inventing new words when she can’t find ones she wants. Meanwhile, she hopes her poetry manuscript, Awaiting the Fall of Babylon and her novel, Salt in the Wound, enjoy traveling the country as much as she would if they actually found publishers.

Finn Bille published his first book of poetry, Rites of the Earth, in 1994. He is working on a collection of “Every Time Poems” and his Fire Poems, a chapbook, is out there looking for a publisher. He has published about 50 poems in various journals and anthologies. Mr. Bille is a member of the Chattanooga Writers Guild, Tennessee Mountain Writers, and Three Poets. He reads at local venues like Barnes and Noble and Feed Your Brain. Mr. Bille has been telling stories since the 1980’s. As part of his summertime English teaching in Denmark, he told Native American and Appalachian stories. After earning a PhD. in English at Georgia State University, he taught at Baylor School in Chattanooga where he once had students tell Canterbury Tales from horseback. Mr. Bille has derived inspiration from the National Storytelling Festival held annually in Jonesboro, Tn. He has been invited to tell at Talespin and Atlanta’s Winter SoryFest, and the Carter Center in Atlanta. He will be telling at Southern Adventist University on Martch 31, and at Cleveland State’s Culture Fair on April 15.

Michael Bodine is informally known as the Poet Laureate of East Ridge. He is retired from the mental health profession and is a skilled artist as well as poet. His poetry is noted for intricate and sometimes humorous rhyme schemes.

Ralph Speck’s writing experience has been long and varied. In the mid fifties he spent a couple of years with a newspaper publishing company doing feature writhing, advertising, and a weekly column. In the sixties, seventies and eighties he filled a management position with an insurance company where he did a lot of motivational writing and speaking as well as a lot of lesson plans and teaching. He also wrote a lot of poetry during those years, however this was written as an emotional outlet with no thought of publishing any of it. He has now had poetry published is several different publications. He first book when he was seventy and has had a couple more published since then. He currently has two more books in the process of being written.

Mr. Speck is also involved in lay minister, prison ministry, Bible teaching and motivational speaking. There is a lot of spiritual and motivational writing involved with those endeavors. In his spare time he is involved with taking care of his log home and 20 acres of property that he calls home in the Sequatchie Valley.

Helga Kidder won first prize in the Alabama State Poetry Society’s “Oil on Canvas Award” competition with her poem “O’Keefe’s Purple Petunia.” She has published numerous poems and won several awards.

Ray Zimmerman read his poem “Glen Falls Trail” at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, in October of 2007. The poem took second place in the Tennessee Writers Alliance poetry contest, and the reading was part of an awards ceremony. He organized the “Feed Your Brain” poetry series at Mocha Joe’s Bistro (St. Elmo) and the “Open Mic Night” at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library. He edits the literary newsletter, Feed Your Brain, and has published chapbooks of his poetry and fiction. He is a former president of the Chattanooga Writers Guild.

John C. Mannone is widely published. His poetry appears (or has been accepted) in the Iodine Poetry Journal, Thrift Poetic Arts Journal, MO: Writings From the River, Relief: Christian Quarterly Journal, Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine, Wordgathering: The Journal of Disability Poetry, Astropoetica, and others, as well as in various anthologies. He has won several poetry contests and conducted poetry workshops for the Sweetwater High School English classes. Mr. Mannone writes poetry for his PoeticWord Ministries. He lives in north McMinn County, is a nuclear consultant and teaches physics and astronomy. He is a member of the Knoxville Writers Guild.