100+ people attended the albright college poetry reading for "the labors of our fingertips."

last thursday, we had 100+ people attend the poetry reading for the labors of our fingertips: poems from manufacturing history in berks county at albright college in the city of reading, a wonderful turnout ! and reading from the actual first volume in this series of poetry books, now that it's been delivered from the publisher, added a nice perk to the feel of sharing these poems with heart after heart in the audience. to order a copy of the book or help contribute to this countywide effort, visit the gofundme campaign page for this project.

willie kramer and vasilia vardaxis attended this poetry reading again like they did last month with berks bards' first thursday poetry open mic, to help everyone really see the people behind some of these manufacturing industry stories in poem-form. kramer even brought artifacts for us, including all different kinds of leathers and his old cutting tools. we passed a few of the leather samples throughout the entire audience so everyone could feel the texture of these old pieces of history and see them up close. of course, we kept the tools up front so nobody hurt themselves with sharp factors ! the poem-excerpt for kramer can be read here, while the one for vardaxis is readable here, in older blog posts.

john robert pankratz, a history professor on the albright college campus, is also a professional photographer. as an artist himself and a great advocate of the arts as well as history, which are both alive in these poems, pankratz contributed his photographs for use as a way to support this poetry project. many beyond-words thanks to him for this kindness. his photographs are below within this post.

( kramer & his wife, gerry kramer, chat with hetrick before the poetry reading )

( kramer answered a large number of questions from 

the audience about his leather tannery days )

 ( vardaxis shared her memories of leaving greece to 

live and work in the city of reading in the 1950s )

and plentiful thanks as well go to alberto cacicedo and marian wolbers of the english department on campus who helped this poetry reading to possible and for rounding up so many students who kept attentive for the evening. 

realizing some of the students were from out of the area and had no real concept of the fact that the city of reading was once very different and had department stores, all kinds of shops, and a lot of culture as a destination point many decades ago, we shared details of old days to help these young folks in the audience better appreciate the heart of berks county around vardaxis' candy-packaging memories from working in the former luden's plant on eight street.