Sirowitz said 
July 28, 2006

Hal Sirowitz is the author of four books of poetry: Mother Said, My Therapist Said, Before During and After and Father Said. He is the recipient of a Frederick Delius Award and The Susan Rose Recording Grant for Contemporary Jewish Music. Mother Said will be released on CD with music composed by Alla Borzova, sung by Paul Sperry. John Flansburgh, of the rock group They Might Be Giants, has recorded him for Hello Records, and the group spoke about him during their Mother’s Day interview for NPR’s Studio 360.

Garrison Keillor has read his work on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. Sirowitz has performed on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS’s Poetry Heaven and NPR’s All Things Considered. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a 2003 New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Sirowitz is also the best-selling translated poet in Norway, where Mother Said has been adapted for the stage and has been made into animated cartoons. He is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. 

Sirowitz’s poems have been published in Garrison Keillor’s anthology Good Poems, in Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast, in Poetry After 9/11 and in 110 Stories: Writers Respond to 9/11. He worked for 25 years as a special education teacher for the New York City public schools. Sirowitz is married to the writer Mary Minter Krotzer.

Poetry reading By Hal Sirowitz
Wednesday, August 2, 5pm, Sala Quetzal, Insurgentes 25