Category: Asheville

Okay, my wife called this morning and said they mentioned my name on the local NPR radio station–WCQS. It is in regards to the Arts & Events Calendar–specifically the poetry reading at the Flood Fine Arts Center. I will be reading 6 to 10 poems with other poets–read press release.

So I had my three seconds of NPR fame. Back to your regular activities. But don’t forget–Friday night, 7PM, Flood Fine Art Center.

(Now if I can get Garrison Keillor to promote this gig…)

So, there’s this poetry reading Friday night and you’re all invited. And I think there’s drinks and food available. So, like, I guess I’ll see you there.

Flood Fine Art Center, Asheville, NC

Asheville, NC (January 31, 2007) – On February 16, 2007, Flood Fine Arts Gallery will host its monthly poetry reading at 7:00 PM, featuring the following poets:

Britt Kaufmann lives in Burnsville with her husband and three pre-school aged children. She hosts a local women’s open-mic at Blue Moon Books and serves on the steering committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. Her work has appeared in The Pedestal, Literary Mama, Rapid River, WNC Woman, SouthLit.com, and The Mennonite.

Matthew Mulder is a senior contributor to an independent monthly newsmagazine, The Indie, a weekly contributor to Write Stuff (a Web log about writing), and had been published in ISM Quarterly, The Blotter Magazine, Rapid River, and other small press publications. His poetry chapbook, “Late Night Writing”, is available from Wasteland Press and Amazon.com. He lives with his wife and children in Asheville.

Brian Sneeden has lived and worked in Asheville for three years. His one-act play, Act of Kindness, is currently in rehearsal for a mid-March world-premier. Brian’s work has been found in Wander, Headwaters, and Eye for an Iris, as well as the spoken word compilation CD, Objects in Mirror. Brian is a recent recipient of the UNC-A Undergraduate Research Grant for Playwriting, and his first manuscript of poetry, Antlers, was completed earlier this year.

Barbara Gravelle spent many years of her writing life in San Francisco’s North Beach poetry scene. There she completed North Beach Women of the Fifties, a series of interviews and discourse with women integral to the Beat movement. Archangel Books published her first full-length poetry book, Dancing the Naked Dance of Love, in 1976. Gravelle is currently active in the local writers’ group, Women on Words, and is completing a new manuscript, The Woman on the Roof.

Audrey Hope Rinehart handed my wife an event card about this poetry reading:

Asheville, NC… On Friday, December 22, 2006, at 7:00pm The Flood Fine Art Center in the River District, will host the first in an ongoing series of poetry readings. Four local poets: Jeff Davis, Josh Flaccavento, David Hopes, and Audrey Hope Rinehart will each read in a round robin format.

I’m not sure what to say about tonight’s event. Seven and a half pages in my notebook filled with observations and thoughts of the reading. Though I haven’t the energy to type it all tonight, I’ll post details of the event later.

One thing, of many, did strike me this cool, blue Spring evening. I sat in an old wooden folding chair next to a wall lined with photos by Hazel Larsen Archer. Portraits of Josef and Anni Albers looked over my shoulder. A photo of Josef Albers teaching class displays students’ compositions scattered in the foreground. I know exactly what they are doing because my university art professor, a student of Albers, had his students apply gouche to panel and board in order to create swatches of tint and shade in the same manner. I spent hours painting a dozen variations of blue evenly representing shade to tint (i.e. dark blue to light blue). A whole semester was spent on Albers color theory and related understanding of color.

I examined the students in the photo carefully trying to identify my university art professor Emery Bopp. But I forgot, at the time, that he studied under Albers at Yale not Black Mountain College. Still, I see Josef Albers in that portrait and there is a representative of Bauhaus style. His intensity of gaze from a vintage gelatin silver print hauntingly reminds me of a loose connection to him through my art professor and the hours spent mixing, applying and peeling paint from my fingers. In a physical way, the smell of gouche and the feel of mixing it in trays is that connection to a soft spoken professor, Emery Bopp. And I wonder if he learned his teaching approach from Josef Albers.

Last night was my first time attending the Fresh Air Reading Series at the New French Bar

As always, I had my composition book with me and wrote the following notes during the readings:

Mara Simmons–her series of poems reflect a serious study of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Each poem exhibits much research and passion … bringing humanity to news stories which desensitize Americans. The theme is well born out through references in Hebrew and Arabic and native plants and streets. Really inspired by her theme-based poems.

Jeff Davis–the elder poet with long gray hair and soft voice at time almost a whisper … brings a melancholy maturity to the round-robin reading. He offers love poems and poems heavy with nostalgia … he is taller than the other poets and needs to re-adjust the microphone and still he leans down into the foam covered device as if praying … his water poems are most excellent.

Kathy Godfrey–a bawdy poet with spunky, sensual, sensational poems. From what I overheard among the crowd, she teaches poetry at ABTech and many in the audience were her students … ethical question … should a teacher read a graphic poem about masturbation in front of her students … among other poetic subjects include green beans, Tough Man contests

Autumn Choi–slam poet … holds her own … confessional style presentation. Sort of romanticizes the school-of-hard-knocks subject matters … works well in this vehicle of drama.

I left immediately after the readings. I guess that was a bit impolite on my part for several people were in attendance that I knew. But I needed to get away–to think. I walked for several blocks pondering the poems and poets I heard Wednesday night. Why do I write what I write? Do I have what it takes to write poetry on the level of these local poets? Do I have the commitment to follow through with what I’ve started? Or am I merely dabbling in something, which I should leave to professional wordsmiths?

Some of this wondering is directly related to last weekend’s event. Saturday afternoon I found myself at Barley’s sitting across the from a local writer who has received well-deserved accolades for her work. Other local poets were in attendance with comparable merit and distinction. And there was me feeling very much like an outsider or poser.

After reading last night’s notes again at morning light it is apparent that I am partial to poems with academic/intellectual substance. Not to disqualify the other poets mind you. Annie Dillard writes: “The writer … is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know.” I know what kind of poetry I want to produce. So, I favor and enjoy hearing from poets who seem to exhibit attributes of what I’d like to write in verse.