Next Up to The Mic: Dan Wilcox at The Olde English Pub

This week on Next Up to the Mic, we’re returning to August 12, 2019, to hear Dan Wilcox read two poems at “The Past in Poetry” reading held at the Olde English Pub in Albany in collaboration with Historic Cherry Hill.

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Historic Cherry Hill preserves more than two centuries of Albany history, using family papers, photographs, personal belongings, and the stories of the people who lived and worked there to connect the present with the past. The Past in Poetry invited local poets to do something similar—exploring history through memory, imagination, family, and place.

For this episode, we’re featuring Albany poet Dan Wilcox.

Dan has been a fixture in the Capital Region poetry community for decades. He hosts the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany and is a member of the poetry performance group 3 Guys from Albany. He’s also a photographer and longtime documentarian of the local poetry scene, joking that he has “the world’s largest collection of photographs of unknown poets.”

His work has appeared in Chronogram, Poetica, Post Traumatic Press, and numerous small-press journals and anthologies. He also publishes poetry through his own A.P.D. imprint, and his chapbook boundless abodes of Albany reflects his longstanding connection to the city and its people.

At “The Past in Poetry,” Dan approached history from two different directions. In “Therese’s Balcony,” he blends an imagined past with fantasy. Then, in “Where Were the Professors,” he turns his attention to a history he knows firsthand—the early days of Albany’s poetry scene.

Dan hasn’t simply written about Albany’s poetry community. For decades, he has been part of it, photographed it, published it, hosted it, and helped preserve its history.