We are so excited to bring back Open Mic First Fridays!

All performers and poets are welcome! Share a poem, song, story, or other inspiration. 5 minute slots are limited and sign up begins at 5:45pm.

5:45-6:00pm: Sign up for open mic

6:00-7:00pm: Open mic readings

7:00-8:00pm: Visiting Poet

Email wsplprograms@rcls.org for more info.

Eric Baylin, poet, sculptor, and musician, currently resides in North Branch in Sullivan County. He served as Sullivan County Poet Laureate for 2021-22. A teacher of visual art for over 50 years, he recently retired after spending 37 years at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn. During his term as Poet Laureate, he gave poetry workshops for adults and young people and read his poems at numerous county events including the Bagel Festival in Monticello, the Jeffersonville Jamboree, and the Members’ Annual Reunion at Bethel Woods. He co-curated an exhibit at DVAA “For the Love of Wood” which included artists, craftspeople boat builders and others who worked with wood. As part of that exhibit, he organized an afternoon of poetry and music that related to the subject of wood. As a finale to that program, he provided everyone in the audience with 2 pieces of kindling that were used as rhythm sticks to accompany a spontaneous reading of wood-related words submitted earlier from audience members.

A major focus of his year as Poet Laureate was to create the first Youth Poetry Festival that took place at Bethel Woods in April 2022 with more than 70 students from around the county participating.

He has exhibited his sculpture in recent years at both DVAA and Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor. As part of his work as an artist he created performance works entitled “Drawing Performed” in which the act of drawing with large arm and body movements becomes dance-like and simultaneously creates a drawing. In one entitled “Big Jump,” performed in 2019, more than 80 people jumped in place to rhythmic music while facing a plywood wall. Each person held two hand-sized crayons that left marks on the plywood at the apex of their jump. The cumulative process created a textured spectrum of colors at different heights over the breadth of the wall.

He is currently working on a series of sound poems that hang in the balance between poetry and music and was recently awarded an individual artist’s grant from DVAA to develop this work.

As part of his work at Packer he created a course for Upper School students entitled Life’s Big Questions, a philosophical exploration of matters important to adolescents. His interest in asking such questions also informs his recent poetry.

A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (MFA), he was also a Klingenstein Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia in 1990-91.

He plays keyboard, writes songs, and also is a member of a ukulele band. He is especially interested in using poetry and music as vehicles to bring communities together.