Welcome back to Poetry in the Gallery! We hope you enjoyed the second annual Ventura County Poetry Festival, and we're excited to be presenting the next open poetry reading at Studio Channel Islands Art Center.

This month will be featuring Kali Bennett and Gale Naylor.

As always, there will be an open mic. Poets who would like to perform can sign up on the day and will have a maximum of five minutes (if you have shorter poems, please feel free to do more than one). Tickets are free for all students, members of the gallery and performers. So, if you plan to read on the open mic, please reserve a free ticket, since you will count as a performer. General admission is a suggested $10 donation. If you would like to attend but cannot afford the donation, please contact sean[at]studiochannelislands.org for options of financial support.

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Kali Bennett has been a poet since the age of eight. She hosts and has run a poetry slam in Oxnard, CA for six years. She has been published in local zines and publications and has her first featured poetry book being released in the summer of 2025, Who Cares. Kali has guest lectured in subjects of poetry and spoken word at Ventura College and Brookes Institute. She was the runner-up to the Ventura County Poet Laureate in 2024.

Poetry is how Gale Naylor makes sense of the world as a survivor of incest and sexual abuse. They hope their voice helps other survivors know they are not alone. Gale is currently pursuing an MFA at Antioch University LA. Their poems have appeared in Calliope-on-the-Web, Jupiter Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and the Ventura County page of the California Poet Laureate’s “Our California” website.