The directness of Allen Hoey’s poems amounts at times almost to a kind of existential obduracy, the smack of a fist in the palm that means no more bravery, the job is being. Being in the world. When you put this together with Hoey’s marvelous vocabulary and his exacting rhythmic and tonal demands on our language, you get what no academic poetry can ever attain, real pertinence. Nowadays, all of us are reading for our lives, I think. These poems are what we need. —Hayden Carruth
Hoey has given readings and presentations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and the South, as well as London, including universities, high schools, art galleries, nature centers, bars, book stores, and coffee houses. He has performed a sequence of dramatic monologues in the voice of Vincent Van Gogh, complete with a slide presentation of relevant drawings and paintings by Van Gogh, and has collaborated with musicians. His most recent collaboration involved poems from the sequence involving the work and career of Charles Mingus with jazz guitarist and composer Michael Hoffman at the first Bucks County Community College Jazz Program. A longer, more integrated version of this collaboration has been prepared and performed at Borders in Langhorne, PA, in May 2003, and at Bucks County Community Community in Fall 2006. He has also collaborated with poet George Drew on a dual reading of dramatic monologues titled “Riding the Flood.” (Photo credit: George Drew and Allen Hoey, by Glenn Raucher)
Hoey has many reading scheduled for winter/spring 2010.
January 9: KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th Street, New York, NY. Reading starts at 6:45.
Hoey has given readings and presentations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and the South, as well as London, including universities, high schools, art galleries, nature centers, bars, book stores, and coffee houses. He has performed a sequence of dramatic monologues in the voice of Vincent Van Gogh, complete with a slide presentation of relevant drawings and paintings by Van Gogh, and has collaborated with musicians. His most recent collaboration involved poems from the sequence involving the work and career of Charles Mingus with jazz guitarist and composer Michael Hoffman at the first Bucks County Community College Jazz Program. A longer, more integrated version of this collaboration has been prepared and performed at Borders in Langhorne, PA, in May 2003, and at Bucks County Community Community in Fall 2006. He has also collaborated with poet George Drew on a dual reading of dramatic monologues titled “Riding the Flood.” (Photo credit: George Drew and Allen Hoey, by Glenn Raucher) 
For information, contact: