Pocket Lab Backyard Reading Series
Hosts local and national readers—mostly, but not only, poets. The series is held monthly from May-September at a Secret Location in Midway, St. Paul. The summer of 2025 was our first season, though MC and Jeff ran a reading series, also called Pocket Lab, in NE Minneapolis’s Rogue Buddha Gallery from 2009-2012. Each reading raises funds for a different local or national organization, chosen collaboratively by the readers and host (MC). Please reach out through my contact page if you’d like to be added to the series reading list!
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![backs of 2-3 rows of people seated in lawn chairs; in frony of a yellow house, a man in black-t-shirt speaks from a podium]()
Reader: Mike Corrao
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![The light of a lamp illuminates a white woman's long hair and the left side of her face. She stands at a podium, holding a book, and speaks into a microphone]()
Reader: Alicia Wright
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![An audience sits in the living room of a small bungalow. In the foreground, a folded program sits on the corner of a wooden podium]()
Wildfire smoke: indoor reading
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![A white woman wearing a navy blue bandanna and white shirt reads into a microphone while standing at a wooden podium. A sun flare arcs around her.]()
Reader: Kate Gibbel
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![A thumb and forefinger hold a yellow program, which reads "POCKET LAB BACKYARD READING / May 22, 2025"; the program also contains a short excerpt of a poem by Alice Notley]()
Program
Summer 2025 Readings
May 22: Emily August, Peter Burzynski, Jack Christian, Bailey Hutchinson
June 19: Tegan Daly, Kate Gibbel, Zachary Zalman Green, Miri Karraker, Luke Pingel
July 31: Paula Cisewski, Xander Gershberg, Katie Marya, Lara Mimosa Montes, Danika Stegeman
August 28: Jordan Dunn, Lisa Fishman, Lewis Freedman, Sarah Green, Richard Meier
September 25: LM Brimmer, Mike Corrao, Laura Paul, Alicia Wright
All readings held at a secret location in Midway, St. Paul