A Gathering of Poets

A Gathering of Poets, April 9, Community Arts Cafe in Winston-Salem. This looks like a poetry event not to be missed. 4 workshops with people like Fred Chappell, Kay Byer, Debra Kaufman and Joseph Mills! Here is the link: http://www.press53.com/GatheringofPoets2011.html


SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 8 AM - 6 PM
SPECIAL OPEN MIC EVENING, 7:30-9:30 PM, FEATURING A CAPPELLA POETRY BY FLEUR-DE-LISA
Held at The Community Arts Café, Fourth & Spruce, Winston-Salem, NC

SCHEDULE AND WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

Check-in & Continental Breakfast: 8 - 9 a.m.

First Morning Workshop Block: 9 - 10:15 a.m.
These workshops will be offered again during the First Afternoon Workshop Block: 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.

Debra Kaufman: Polishing the Lines (Limited to 30 poets)
We write poetry to discover something about ourselves and our world, and to share what we learn with readers. We will look closely at how to strengthen our poems by focusing on the ways precise imagery and musicality in our lines reveal a poem’s intended meaning. We will explore ways to refine our images and enhance our musical
phrasing to better reveal to ourselves and our readers the deeper truths inside our poems. Please bring a poem you would like to work on.

Alex Grant: Compression in Poetry (Limited to 30 poets)
This workshop focuses on practical, tangible methods and techniques to help you strip down and polish your poems. We will focus on specifics, before reading and discussing poems which exemplify this approach, then working on your own poems. Participants will take away practical, understandable methods they can immediately
apply to both new poems and work under revision.

Joseph Mills: What’s in a Name? (Limited to 30 Poets)
Margaret Mitchell considered naming her story Tomorrow Is Another Day and Tote the Weary Load. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested Under the Red White and Blue and The High Bouncing Lover to his publisher. None of these phrases has entered popular culture; instead we have Gone with the Wind and The Great Gatsby. Titles are not simply handy ways to catalogue works; they can be crucial elements. Without the title “Station in a Metro,” the reader would have little idea what Ezra Pound’s poem was about. In this workshop, we’ll consider the importance of a variety of titles from books, paintings, poems, and songs, and we’ll explore ways to develop intriguing, effective titles for our own work.

Terri Kirby Erickson: Marketing Yourself and Your Work (Limited to 30 Poets)
Google "Terri Kirby Erickson" and you will find her everywhere, from her personal blog, to online lit mags and book blogs. In 2010, her poetry collection, Telling Tales of Dusk, reached #23 on the Poetry Foundation's list of Contemporary Best Sellers thanks to the endorsement of nationally syndicated columnist Sharon Randall in her column entitled, “Best Reads.” No matter where you are in your writing process, it’s never too early to start selling yourself and your work. The difference between being an unknown poet and a widely read poet is effective
marketing. In this workshop, we’ll examine various methods and strategies to get you and your poetry noticed by readers, editors and publishers.


Second Morning Workshop Block: 10:30 - 11:45 a.m.
These workshops will be offered again during the Second Afternoon Workshop Block: 3:00 - 4:15 p.m.

Fred Chappell: Master Workshop (Limited to 30 Poets)

Kathryn Stripling Byer: Studio-style Master Class (Limited to 50 Poets)
In this studio-style master class, former North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer will select poems written by four poets in attendance to read and discuss in a studio-style forum with the four selected poets and then everyone in attendance. Attendees may submit one poem for consideration no later than March 15. Ms. Byer will select four poems for discussion, to be announced at the beginning of the master class.

Valerie Nieman: Every Picture Tells a Poem (Limited to 30 Poets)
Ekphrasis is a marriage of imaginations, that of the visual artist and the writer. In this poetry workshop, Valerie Nieman will discuss noted works, such as poems by Rilke, Auden, and Fred Chappell, and will take advantage of the Community Arts Café’s Gallery of the Arts to lead writing exercises using contemporary art as the source for new poems.


Other Important Times and Events

Lunch Break: 11:45 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. (Buffet lunch provided)

Faculty Reading With Special Guest Poet Isabel Zuber: 4:30 - 5:30 p.m.

Closing Remarks: 5:30 - 6 p.m.

Dinner on Your Own: 6-7:30 p.m.

Open Mic Reading with A Cappella Poetry by Fleur-de-Lisa: 7:30 - 9:30 p.m.
($5 cover, Free to Gathering of Poets Attendees.) Poets wishing to read must place his or her name in a bowl. Readers will be determined by a drawing at two different times during the evening. If the poet called is not present, another name will be drawn. Sixteen poets will be selected to read during this event. Each poet will have three minutes to read, and this will be strictly enforced to be fair to all poets.

Registration:
To register, visit the registration page.
Check box to select your desired workshops.
If workshop is full, you may check the "waitlist" box and you will be placed on the waitlist in the order you signed up.
Waitlists will be cleared if space becomes available.

Press 53 reserves the right to make last-minute changes due to cancelations by faculty. If a cancelation by faculty occurs, we will do our best to replace the workshop with an equally beneficial workshop, but no guarantees can be made.

To Register, click here.

Questions can be emailed to Kevin Watson at kevin@press53.com or by calling Kevin at 336-414-5599.

Review of "The Sound of Poets Cooking"

First Published in "Wild Goose Poetry Review" and in a modified form in "Outlook"

Review of The Sound of Poets Cooking, edited by Richard Krawiec
Jacar Press, 2010, 172 pages
ISBN: 9780984574001

It happens to all of us at one time or another. Late of an afternoon, we start to feel a certain emptiness, as if something is missing, something needed. We call it hunger or craving. And the more we try to ignore it, the stronger it gets. Maybe we long for something light and refreshing, or something heavier, meaty. Maybe just something sweet. Or maybe we can’t figure out exactly what we want. And that’s when we know that the answer to our appetite is surely a buffet. And that’s just what Richard Krawiec has arrayed before us as editor of The Sound of Poets Cooking. Whether we long for something exotic, something familiar and comforting, something spicy, salty, or even a bit saucy, this enticing collection of delectable delights is sure to satisfy.

To be clear and leave metaphor behind for a moment, The Sound of Poets Cooking is a new, 172-page anthology of poems about food accompanied by related recipes, from Krawiec’s fledgling press, Jacar Press. And it is an impressive debut, featuring wonderful work from poets both familiar and new, including two NC Poets Laureate, Fred Chappell and Kathryn Stripling Byer, and numerous other standards: Joseph Bathanti, Kelly Cherry, Jaki Shelton Green, Susan Ludvigson, Joanna Catherine Scott, Shelby Stephenson, and more, wrapped in a clever cover with an image of Buddha cradling a pomegranate, eggplant, carrots, tomatoes, sweet potato, chef’s knife and some spiky yellow fruit I’m not familiar with, appealingly conveying the mixture of spirituality and whimsy one might expect from poetry about food.

Of course, individual poems and individual recipes from the collection prove both enjoyable and useful, but like any good recipe, The Sound of Poets Cooking also masterfully blends disparate elements to create what might be experienced as a single savory delight, a cohesive record of the diverse ways in which the culinary arts and poetic arts are woven into the fabric of our memories, our experiences, and our daily emotional and intellectual lives. Here a reader finds the mock heroic tetrameter couplets of Chappell’s “Pot Luck Supper: Aunt Lavinia Strikes” delicately balanced by the therapeutic free verse of Grey Brown’s “Scrambled.” Or the stick-to-your-ribs heaviness of Debra Kaufman’s “Minestrone, Rainy Day” relieved by the joyful ad-libbing of Alice Owens Johnson’s “Gumbo.” Or the formal propriety of Jim Clark’s “Sunday Dinner” harmonized by the titillating temptation of Deborah Kolodji’s “Eggplant Parmigiana.”

As for the recipes, there are many I intend to try my hand at, including the onion pie, the Brussels sprouts & goat cheese risotto, and the coconut cake, but like Lenard Moore’s daughter, the one I look forward to the most is the three cheese macaroni and cheese.

To whet your appetite a bit more here is a sampler platter of some of my favorite lines from The Sound of Poets Cooking. Bon appetit!

from Scott Douglass’ “Bread Crumbs:”
. . . I fill
each page with bread crumb words,
a trail for someone, sometime
to follow back to me

from Anne Barnhill’s “Tiramisu:”
Don’t give me puffy white clouds
Fat as marshmallows
To lounge on when I die.
. . . . . . . . . .
Just place a generous block of tiramisu
In front of me;
. . . . . . . . . .
Sin straddling goodness--
Delicious as Dante.

from Pat Riviere-Seel’s “Road Trip Conversation:”
Beside you now I am ravenous
for the ripe figs of your fingers
folded around the steering wheel.

from Michael Beadle’s “Fromage:”
For a flash of free verse, I invoke
the Goddess of Gorgonzola, //
who bids me long life
as long as I use her bounty //
upon this holy cracker of truth,
this snack we have to share //
as the Muenster metaphor
melts in our minds.

from Susan Meyers’ “Fork: Song for the Misunderstood:”
May the fork in its daily travels discover
an insatiable mouth.
May the mouth
always adore the fork’s repetitive tune.

Lincoln County Youth Named NC Student Poet Laureate

LINCOLN COUNTY YOUTH NAMED NC STUDENT POET LAUREATE
“Musings” for December 3, 2009

Every semester for the 20 or so years that I’ve taught poetry at the middle school, high school and college levels, I’ve had the experience where a student has written a wonderful poem and then announced that they really didn’t know much about poetry and never thought they would write it. For a poetry lover like myself, it is always one of the most gratifying moments of the semester to see that poetry remains accessible and relevant even to those who initially resist it.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this experience. Recently, Ms. Lydia Dunn, who teaches English at West Lincoln Middle School in nearby Lincolnton, was notified by NC Poet Laureate, Kathryn Stripling Byer, that her student, Christopher J. (CJ) Murphy, had won the 2009 NC Student Poet Laureate Award sponsored by the NC English Teachers’ Association (NCETA). According to an article by Sarah Grano in the Lincoln Times-News, CJ had never really thought much about poetry and despite winning this competition still didn’t see himself as a writer.

While Murphy might not have recognized his own talent or the power of poetry to help one see things more clearly, Byer and fellow judge John York did. In fact, in First Light, the competition’s anthology, Byer writes, “C.J. Murphy’s Where I Come From stood out for all the reasons good poetry sticks in the mind: imagery that opens up the world in which it’s set, a voice that knows how to journey through that place with knowledge and humor.”

I offer my congratulations to Murphy and my thanks for allowing us to reprint his winning poem here. I also offer my gratitude to Byer, Dunn, and NCETA for continuing to help students discover the wealth of possibilities that exist in the practice of poetry. Founded by Byer and NCETA in 2007, the Student Laureate Award features high school and middle school categories with top prize of $250 in each. For more information, please visit the NCETA website at www.ncenglishteacher.org.


Where I Come From

I come from the smell of
Fresh cut grass on an old dirt road, off
a two-lane black top.
Old lawn mowers shade the yard.
A squirrel dashes up an oak tree
in a stream of smoke and lead.
Grandma with a basket full of eggs,
Grandpa and Dad working,
Sharing a spit cup, working
In the old tin building,
Uncle Mike tuning his Camaro,
Cousin Hannah, drinking a Nehi,
watching the chickens picking the ground.

My cousin Johnnie and me in the tree stand
in the old pasture by the creek,
watching the field like a hawk
through the scope of an ought-two-seventy.
(But when Mom yells “Supper’s ready!” we
Hop in the pickup with chicken and
blackberry pies on our minds.)
I walk in with mud on mud on my boots
And Mom says, “What? Were you raised in a barn?”
But after lunch, dressed up and armed
With Bibles, we hop in the truck
And head for evening service.)

NC to Lose Poet Laureate

“Musings” for May 21
NC to Lose Poet Laureate

On June 1, North Carolina will join 8 other states in the dubious claim of being the only states without a poet laureate. At that time, Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina’s Poet Laureate since 2003, will complete her term, and in the wake of state budget cuts, no new laureate will be named.
The word “laureate” is derived from the Greek laureatus, meaning crowned with laurel, after the practice of crowning Olympic champions with branches of the laurel or bay tree. Over the years that practice was applied to other fields, and the term laureate was used to designate a person who had been honored for achieving distinction in a particular field.
It is unclear who the world’s first poet laureate was. The term was used as a degree in rhetoric in the Middle Ages, so it was applied to a number of poets from that time. At the same time, British monarchs had developed a tradition of having a court or royal poet, the earliest perhaps being Gulielmus Peregrinus, King’s Poet for Richard I in 1190. Geoffrey Chaucer was considered poet laureate in 1389, and James I named Ben Jonson poet laureate in 1617, but Charles II was the first to have a legally designated poet laureate, that being John Dryden.
In the U.S. there has been an official Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress since 1937, but the term poet laureate has only been used in an official status at the national level since 1985. On the other hand, North Carolina has had a poet laureate since 1948. The first such NC Poet Laureate was Arthur Abernethy from 1948 to 1953. He was succeeded by James Larkin Pearson (53-81), Sam Ragan (82-96), and Fred Chappell from 1997 until Byer took over the post.
The official purpose of the state poet laureate, as overseen by the NC Arts Council, is to promote the reading, writing, and appreciation of poetry across the state. The poet laureate is also called upon to write “occasional” (meaning written for a particular event or ceremony) poetry and to mentor the state’s community of writers. Byer has gone well beyond the official call of duty, visiting hundreds of schools, judging competitions, and creating her blog, “The Laureate’s Lasso,” which features poetry news and events, commentary on and samples from new books of poetry in NC, links to NC poetry journals, links to other poetry-related blogs, and a poet-of-the-week profile of NC poets.
It is difficult to say what impact not having a poet laureate will have on the state of poetry in NC. Poets tend to be missionary in their work, and with or without the title I know Byer will continue in her efforts to promote the mission of poetry. Nevertheless, one can’t help but be saddened when their home state becomes one of the few to no longer have a publicly-supported presence in an undertaking as noble and vital as that of poetry. Certainly the inability to share in a statewide pride in our very own poet laureate will weaken our sense of North Carolina as a place rich in the arts, and if Mary Cloake, Director of the Arts Council in Ireland is right when she says the presence of publicly-funded arts is “considered a key indicator of a mature and attractive knowledge-based economy [which] plays a crucial role in attracting inward investment by global corporations,” then our financial health may be damaged as well.
In honor of Byer’s work as poet laureate and to illustrate the sort of “occasional” verse she created in that post, I’m including below a poem she wrote for her own coronation.

Piece of Cake

When the young woman calling from
Charlotte to interview me for her radio program
asked, “What is a Laureate, anyway?”

I heard my voice hem and haw
like a bad line of poetry. I thought I heard all of the Old
North State holding its breath while I struggled

to say something clever, but all I could think of
was “lariat.” Then in a moment
of quiet desperation, I thought of Laurette,

who lives just down the road
from my childhood home, hands busy sculpting
the icing on each of her Milky Way cakes

as she stands in the heart of her kitchen,
the sun sliding into the cornfields, another June
day disappearing, another night kindling

its Milky Way stars,
and at long last I know how to answer
that question. A Laureate

lassoes the Milky Way,
word after luminous word of it,
holding it out in her hands

like a piece
of Laurette’s chocolate cake
saying,

Try this!
Believe me,
You’ll like the way poetry tastes!