The Somerville News Poetry Series was revived on Mother’s Day at the Toast Lounge in Union Square with readers for the event poets Marc Widershien, and Lo Galluccio, the poetry editor of The Alewife.

It was like old times when Chiemi, a singer-songwriter, who is best known for helping to put together CD “The Burren Project,” and who regularly performed at our Friday night poetry readings, sang songs from her own new CD “Living on Two Coasts.”

Chiemi, who was her chipper self and in strong voice, said her album is being sold at CD Spins in Davis Square, as well as Bull Moose Music stores in Maine.

Marc Widershien, the first reader of the afternoon, has read in Somerville before, and is impressed with the city, he said.

“I’ve read at McIntyre and Moore Books in Davis Square.  Somerville is a lively community that appreciates the arts. Audiences are both receptive and enthusiastic,” he said.

Widershien is the author of “The Life of All Worlds (Ibbetson 2001), a lyrical memoir of Boston and has just released a spoken word CD version of the book through Poplar Editions.

Widershien, a native Bostonian, read a poem about Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain that envisioned it at a time when Indians graced the land, and before all this construction.

Another one of his poems dealt with a trip to rural New Hampshire. Widershien read: “I am writing postcards from the green abyss/the world bursts with metaphors.’ He also read a poem about a Shaker village that had an austere beauty.

Lo Galluccio, was next. A jazz vocalist, as well as a poet, she has recently performed at Sculler’s in Cambridge. Galluccio, is the author of the poetry collection “Hot Rain” (Ibbetson 2004), and has recently had an essay published in the latest edition of “Heat City Review,” which I reviewed in the May 4 edition.

For Mother’s Day Galluccio read a poem about her Mom. A practical woman who held the family together after her husband’s untimely death, she said.

In this passage Galluccio describes her mother: “The practical one–Betty Crocker timers go off–Mother held it together.” 

Galluccio also read a poem about a long-ago love affair she had during her college days at Harvard. It was an intense poem that captured the insanity of young love.

Veteran open mike poet, and friend of the Toast Poetry Series,  Natasha Schneider read a poem about all things: chickens.

A poem from the new Ibbetson Street Press release “I Refused to Die: Stories of Boston-area Holocaust Survivors and the Soldiers Liberated Them” by Susie Davidson was read during the open mike session as well.

“The Somerville News at Toast” series now meets the second Sunday of every month at 3 p.m. The next event will feature poets Jim Dunn and Joe Torra poets; editors at Boston’s “Pressed Wafer Press.”