The Madtown Poetry Open Mic w/ featured reader Matt Cook

Art in the cafe...

John Isaac Lyons


"Drawings and Paintings by Isaac Lyons"


November 2025



Isaac Lyons grew up in an artistic family in the woods west of Madison Wisconsin. While surrounded by nature in his youth, Lyons was drawn to the urban aesthetic of trains, street art and Hip Hop culture. As a teenager he spent most of his free time painting graffiti in abandoned buildings, under bridges and on trains. He has also completed many murals around Wisconsin and the midwest. Isaac’s recent works on canvas have moved away from the Postmodern Figurative/Symbolic, as he is now embracing a Neo Abstract Expressionist aesthetic. These paintings, exude raw brush work, and reveal his knack for color and...
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Friday, November 3, 2017
8:00 pm

Matt Cook is the author of five books of poetry, including his newest collection, Irksome Particulars (Publishing Genius Press). His poems have appeared in The Evergreen Review, The Hawaii Review, Faultline, and other journals. His work has been anthologized in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, The United States of Poetry, and in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems, American Places. He is the former poet laureate of Milwaukee, where he currently resides.

The Madtown Poetry Open Mic, hosted by Ron Czerwien at Mother Fool's Coffeehouse, welcomes all forms of poetry. Readers in the open mic are invited to read their original work for up to five minutes.

Sign up starts at 7:30pm and the event begins at 8:00pm.

Open Mic