As our loyal readers know, each month we have a little happy hour party to present the new print issue of Arts+Culture Magazine. Lately we’ve been loyal as well – to the poetic slangers of booze at Mongoose Versus Cobra. The high ceilings and bright light from the giant windows paired with the nearly overwhelming wall of taps of beers selected with special love and care for our consumption, make it the perfect setting for us. Plus, any one of the handsome men posted behind the bar can whip up a cocktail on a whim.
While it may seem that we’re all about the atmosphere and alcohol, there’s more to the Mongoose Den than that. Shafer Hall, proprietor of Mongoose Versus Cobra is more than a peddler of fine libations, but a noted poet as well. This arts season he has put together the monthly Mongoose Versus Cobra Reading Series, including writers and readers from Houston and beyond.
This coming Monday night, MVSCRS curators Kristin Kostick and Shafer Hall will be reading original work, and they will be joined by fellow curator Greg Oaks, who helms the Poison Pen reading series here in town.
Monday nights at Mongoose always feature half-priced Texas draughts, so please get ready to raise several of them to the many fine readers who have joined us in the past months, and to the many fine readers who will be joining us in the coming years!
Greg Oaks is one of the founders of the Poison Pen reading series here in Houston, Texas. He has been published in the Gettysburg Review, the Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and teaches at Lone Star College-University Park.
Kristin Kostick is a poet and medical anthropologist. She is the former curator of a long-running reading series at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, and her poems have appeared in Forklift, Ohio, Open Letters, and a number of other journals.
Shafer Hall is the proprietor of Mongoose versus Cobra. For five years he curated the Frequency Reading Series in New York City, and he is a senior editor for Painted Bride Quarterly and Lungfull! magazine. Never Cry Woof, his full-length collection of poetry, was published in 2005 by No Tell Books. His poems have appeared in the Indiana Review, Jubilat, and many other journals.
We hope you’ll stop by for a beer and some poetry, plus we hear there will be some 70’s jams playing!
Mongoose Versus Cobra Reading Series Part Eight
Monday, June 10
8 PM
1011 McGowen Street btw Main and Fannin
