Cool Women are accomplished. Cool Women are articulate and intelligent. Cool Women are uppity and fun and supportive of each other.

And at Roosevelt Borough Hall Dec. 6 at 8 p.m., Cool Women is holding a poetry reading.

The group’s seven members began as a poetry critique group seven years ago. Several years into their Sunday afternoon meetings, the women began to present readings as a group beginning with a Valentine’s reading called "Hot Poems by Cool Women."

Since then, Cool Women has published two volumes of the group’s original work.

Cool Women members include teachers and writers who have taught students of all ages, won numerous awards, published many books as individuals, and written for journals, newspapers and magazines. Together they prove that "cool" can be way over age 30, having over 400 years of living between them.

They have experienced much of what it is to be human and they have written about it, said Eloise Bruce, one of the poets.

"It’s all there: poems about marriage, illness, love, anger, memories, music, death and birth, dancing, food, intimacy, families, nature, success, survival, fast cars, rejection and joy. The result is mostly unrhymed, often irregular verse which is eminently readable.

"When they read, expect passion, energy and clarity," Bruce said. "Don’t expect poems that are overly academic or that you will be in the company of depressed old ladies. Cool Women may not fit the conventional connotation of the word, but their contentment in being who they are is very cool."

All seven of the women have published extensively in a wide variety of journals. Bruce is a poet in the schools for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She teaches creative writing at Middlesex High and Middle Schools for the Arts and is resident staff at the Frost Place Festival of Poetry in Franconia, N.H.

Her first book of poetry, "Rattle," is forthcoming from Cavenberry.

She is a 1998 recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the NJSCA.

Carolyn Foote Edelmann writes on nature, travel and history for Princeton’s U.S. 1 newspaper and The West Windsor Plainsboro News. She has published two chapbooks, "Gatherings" and the award-winning "Between the Dark and the Daylight."

Lois Marie Harrod teaches high school English and creative writing and is the former supervisor of creative writing at the New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts and a Geraldine R. Dodge poet. Lois has published four books of poetry, "Spelling the World Backwards," "Part of the Deeper Sea," "Crazy Alice" and "Every Twinge a Verdict," as well as two chapbooks, "This Is a Story You Already Know" and "Green Snake Riding."

Harrod was awarded fellowships in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in l993, 1998 and 2003. Her third chapbook, "Put Your Sorry Side Out," is forthcoming from Concrete Wolf.

Betty Bonham Lies is a poet in the schools for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a Geraldine R. Dodge poet. She is the author of four books, including a book for creative writing teachers, "The Poet’s Pen," and "Earth’s Daughters: Stories of Women in Classical Mythology." She was named an NJSCA Distinguished Teaching Artist and received the Governor’s Award on Arts and Education.

She was awarded a fellowship in poetry from the NJSCA in 1995.

Joyce Greenberg Lott teaches high school classes in creative writing and English. In 1999 she won third prize in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards and was a finalist for the Ragdale Foundation’s Frances Shaw Fellowship. She has published many essays and stories as well as poetry, and is the author of "A Teacher’s Stories: Reflections on High School Writers."

Judith Michaels is the artist in residence at Princeton Day School where she also coordinates an interdisciplinary program in arts education. She is a Geraldine R. Dodge poet and the author of two books on teaching adolescents, "Risking Intensity" and "Dancing With Words," as well as a book of poems, "The Forest of Wild Hands." She received a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1995, and in 1997 won first prize for poetry in the John Harms Center for the Arts Competition.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a longtime New Jersey poet, who now lives in Portland, Ore. She has published a novel and three chapbooks of poetry as well as a full-length poetry collection, "The Perfect Mother," and a book-length narrative poem, "Penelope: The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman." She has received four poetry fellowships from the State Council on the Arts and has a senior fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center and a Dodge Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center.

The Cool Women poetry event is part of the Roosevelt Arts Project. A voluntary contribution of $5 is suggested. For information, call Eloise Bruce at (609) 530-9516.