JoAnn Balingit, Delaware’s Poet Laureate, and rising talent Lindsey Warren will take the stage 3 p.m., March 21 at Wilmington’s Chris White Gallery, where Dreamstreets Downtown presents its monthly reading. The Chris White Gallery is at 701 Shipley St. in Wilmington. Balingit was named poet laureate by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner in 2008. She has been the recipient of the 2011 Whitebird Chapbook Prize, an individual artist fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts, two Creative Fellowships from The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and a Global Filipino Literary Award in poetry. Balingit publishes regularly in literary magazines such as Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, PoetsArtists, Salt Hill, Smartish Pace, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Her books include “Words for House Story” (WordTech Editions, 2013), “Forage” (Wings Press, 2011) and “Your Heart and How it Works” (Spire Press, 2009). Warren is the recipient of the 2015 DDOA Emerging Artist in Poetry Fellowship. Having attended Wilmington’s Cab Calloway School of the Arts, she has published in the Fox Chase Review and The Broadkill Review. She has been featured reader at 2nd Saturday Poets and will read at the Manayunk Arts Center April 12. Says Delaware Poet Phillip Bannowsky, “Lindsey Warren has a gift for metaphor. Her words pour out in a luscious serving of relations and revelations.” Dreamstreets Downtown is produced by Steven Leech, for decades the executive editor of Dreamstreets, a magazine of Delaware Valley literature and arts. Though it ended publication in 2006, a commemorative issue is planned this year in partnership with the Delaware Art Museum. Dreamstreets also partners with Broken Turtle Booklist.com, an online catalogue of Delaware writers, and Broken Turtle Blog, a forum of Delaware literature, arts, and politics.
