Saturday Night Special presents: Sirens

In honor of National Poetry Month, join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic readings

Featuring:
Austin Poet Laureate Zell Miller III &
San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus Tongo Eisen-Martin

Theme: Sirens
(scroll down for writing prompt)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

Saturday, April 25, 2026
8:00pm Central time

Online Event
Free Admission

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The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX
Scroll down for monthly writing prompt

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Meeting ID: 858 1033 8675

Passcode: 493753

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Author Bios

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. He is the author of “Someone’s Dead Already”, “Heaven Is All Goodbyes”, “Waiting Behind Tornados for Food”, and “Blood on the Fog”. In 2020, he co-founded Black Freighter Press to publish revolutionary works. He was San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.

Zell Miller III is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Austin, Texas—an award-winning interdisciplinary theater artist, playwright, and performer known for bold, thought-provoking work exploring identity, culture, and the human experience. Named Best Poet/Writer by the Austin Chronicle in 2004 and inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2017, he has become a powerful voice in contemporary American arts, with features on PBS, KVUE News, and in the Austin Chronicle. A nationally and internationally touring artist, Miller has opened for legends such as Nikki Giovanni and The Last Poets, and his poetry blends history, race, and emotion into compelling, resonant narratives. As a playwright and director, he has created 12 full-length productions, including My Child, My Child, My Alien Child, Hands Up Hoodies Down, Ballot Eats the Bullet, and The Evidence of Silence Broken, earning the David Mark Cohen Playwright Award. His artistic style, rooted in a jazz aesthetic influenced by mentor Laurie Carlos, emphasizes rhythm, improvisation, and deep audience connection. Through his work on and off the stage, Miller remains committed to using art as a catalyst for creativity, healing, and social change. He has his first book of poetry released in 2026 on 310 Brown Street.

Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!

LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on **Saturday** afternoon, **April 18**, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up

April Writing Prompt: Sirens

We live in perilous times. The headlines are full of war as the government seeks to silence journalists, protestors, educators. When I think of sirens, I think of fire, of police, of Amber alerts, air raids and storm warnings. The unheeded siren songs of scientists crying in frustration as children die from measles and the world rolls back its climate initiatives and defunds women’s health. I think about mythical sharp-toothed mermaids pulling vain men toward a watery demise. The importance of poets, the power of songs and words to bring people together, to raise the alarm.

A siren calls attention—warns, seduces, interrupts, gathers. Sirens can signal danger or desire, or both. Follow the sound. Let the call lead you somewhere—toward urgency, memory, myth, the body, toward the world as it is or as it could be.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

Write toward a literal siren—a police car, an ambulance, a fire engine. Who hears it? Who responds? Who gets left behind? Is the siren at the center? Or just noise in the background?
Write a poem of warning. What needs to be said, urgently, now? Who refuses to listen?
Write from the perspective of a siren—mechanical, human, animal, mythical. What does it want? What does it demand?
Write toward the mythic siren—sea creature, singer, seducer. Who gets pulled in? What does the song promise?
Write a poem that listens. Follow a sound through a city, a neighborhood, a memory. Let the poem move where the sound moves.
Write about a moment when something pierced the ordinary—a noise, a voice, a realization—and changed the course of a day or a life.
Write a poem that gathers many voices, like a chorus or a call and response. Let the lines echo, overlap, argue, or harmonize.
Write about silence after the siren passes. What remains? What lingers in the body?
Write a strange or playful siren—dogs howling in unison, a choir of appliances, a warning system no one understands.
Write toward seduction. What draws you in against your better judgment? What song do you keep following?

Feel free to follow your own song if something else emerges. As ever, the theme is optional — an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.