On the air: WXPN radio show taped at Kelley Writers House

A handful of students and community residents turned out at Kelly Writers House for the taping of the show, which will air on Penn's public radio station WXPN this Sunday at 11 p.m. As Christy Santoro, host of this month's taping, explained, the show gives the West Philadelphia community a taste of the growing Philadelphia music and poetry scene. "This was my first time hosting a radio show," Santoro said. "This show was a chance to expose people out there in radio station land to what is going on in Philly. It lets people experience kinds of poetry that they might not usually get on the radio." While the show consisted of many tearful poems and eclectic sounds, it was a poem about menstruation that had the audience talking at the end of the hour. Yolanda Wisher, a graduate student in the creative writing program at Temple University and an organizer of a Philadelphia-based group called Poetry for the People, recited her "Ruby Flow," a piece praising the menstruation process. "It is the type of poem that reminds you of who you are," she said. "When I wrote the poem I thought that it was something I would have to live with for 40 or 50 years so I tried to see how I could look at it in a good way." Community member Cidalia Cornelio started off the program by reading from her poetry book Narcoleptic Memories, which featured an unusual blend of rap and poetry, while Hannah Sassaman, a College junior, followed with an unusual poem of her own about anticipating her 20th birthday. Mark Wil-Helm's eclectic poems, "Elvis in Las Vegas" and "An Ode to the Last Cigarette," induced a few laughs in the otherwise quiet audience. And the laughter continued when Greg Fooks, coordinator of the Highway Gallery Reading Series in downtown Philadelphia, read a few selections from his book of poetry, Came Like It Went. In between tales of hamburgers and girls, Fooks lightheartedly admitted that he simply put words together without trying to create any specific meaning. As a change of pace, Nancy Falkow, a local singer/songwriter who performed at last year's Lilith Fair, played a few tracks off her self-titled, five-song EP. With strong vocals and emotional lyrics it was easy to see why Falkow was chosen to perform on the popular concert tour. Composer and performer Mike Higgins, a native of England and a newcomer to the Philadelphia music scene, was an immediate hit when he surprised the crowd with smooth guitar sounds and a stint on the house's piano. While she wished the turnout had been better, Heather Starr, program manager of the Writers House and coordinator of the show, thought it was generally a success. "This was the first show of the season and a lot of people didn't know each other," Starr said. "I tried to bring together people who are really involved in poetry in the community and people who had never read before but who were good writers and readers."