Whistle Stop Tour featured in The Daily Orange ahead of Syracuse appearance

“The Whistle Stop Tour has a mad howling, a mating call, a ringing in the ears; it is the attempt of an undisciplined chorus to harmonize with the echoes of the dead. It’s a protest, it’s a serious joke, and it’s an excuse to get together on the nights of the televised election debates for some reason other than the televised election debates,” Ryan said. “Whistle Stop is a hell of a good time.”

Deniz Sahinturk of Syracuse University's Daily Orange penned an excellent feature on the Whistle Stop Tour, featuring comments from me, poet Ben Brindise, and the Syracue-based Ghost City Press editor Kevin Bertolero, who published Gerry Crinnin's Haiku to the Chief this summer, and has been a big Whistle Stop supporter since the start.After appearing at Nox Cocktail Bar in Rochester, stopping at Canisius College for a special Banned Books Week event, and giving an intimate performance at Gerry Crinnin's house in Fredonia, the tour has picked up steam, fans, and maybe even a sense of holy purpose. From the Daily Orange article:

Brindise said the project hopes to show that the debates this cycle are “much more than a circus.”“They are a defining moment in our history and if we’re able to affect the people watching them in a way that makes it less surreal and helps to ground them in this moment, then maybe we did something worthwhile,” Brindise said.

The tour rolls through Syracuse this Sunday, 9 Oct, with a reading at The Vault at 5pm. That reading will feature poets Rohan Chhetri and Timothy Carter from the Syracuse University MFA program. Our last stop will be in Toronto at The Steady Cafe and Bar, 19 Oct. staring at 5:30 pm and featuring Ontario poets and spoken word performers Valentino Assenza, Dane Swan, and Robert Priest.