The Flood Fine Art Center poetry reading series Friday night inspired me. Four talented poets read their work to a very supportive audience.
Stephen Kirbach
Shad Marsh
Jennifer Callahan
Lynette JamesSunday afternoon offered a Writers at Home Series at Malaprop’s Cafe & Bookstore. Patrick Finn and Michael McFee read from their work.
Michael McFee
FRI Mar. 16, 8:30pm
Poetry reading series features:
Stephen Kirbach, Shad Marsh, Jennifer Callahan & Lynette James.
Flood Fine Art Center located in the
Phil Mechanic Studios
On March 16, 2007, Flood Fine Arts Gallery will host its monthly poetry reading at 8:30pm, featuring the following poets:
Stephen Kirbach’s work can be found in Apocryphal Text, Shampoo, and Word for Word. He teaches Humanities at UNC–Asheville, and organizes the web-based writers’ forum, Wire Sandwich. Kirbach also hosts “Stunt-Cipher-Mayhem,” a radio show on WPVM that explores experimental music and sound.
Shad Marsh has published fiction in the flash fiction anthology Blink, and his poetry has appeared in Artvoice, Ghoti, Light, The Muse, The Pebble Lake Review, Vox, and Wire Sandwich. Marsh serves as the poetry editor for the E-zine Edifice Wrecked. He lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and son.
Jennifer Callahan studied creative writing at Austin Peay State University, and attended graduate school at Washington University. Her poetry has been printed in Zone 3. In 2004, Callahan participated in Words of War, an exhibit featuring writers’ and artists’ works about their personal experiences with war. Her photography has been displayed at Maryville College of Art and Design, Studio 101, and Untitled Nashville. Callahan currently lives in WNC, and works as a wedding photographer.
Lynette James will be the fourth poet. Her bio was unavailable at the time of this release.
Flood Gallery Fine Arts Center is located at 109 Roberts Street in the River Arts District of Asheville North Carolina. For more information, please contact Mark Prudowsky at info@floodgallery.org or call 828-776-8438.
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.
This week’s contribution to Write Stuff is a Valintine’s Day Card.
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.
Check out four new poems published over at the Southern Cross Review. I don’t know what I like more–being published at SCR or being sandwiched between and W. H. Auden and a Rubens painting (visit the link to see what I mean).
One of my favorite paintings is Rubens’s painting “The Allegory of Peace and War.” In fact I wrote a lengthy paper about that painting during the university years. Though I am more familiar with W. H. Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening,” I enjoy the gravity of “The Unknown Citizen” and feel a bit comfortably out of place between two great artists.
Saturday morning’s beauty provided a wonderful backdrop to listen to Eleanor Wilner’s lecture about the conception of poems: “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove,
a poem must ride on its own melting….” (Frost)
Poems referenced included Robert Frost’s “The Woodpile” and Louise Glück’s “The Wild Iris.” I recall Denise Levertov mentioned, but I don’t recall the title of the work. I didn’t have access to the handouts that everyone seemed to be reading from.
I sat next to an open door of the Fellowship Hall and wrote a page full of notes, but as I reread them I realize my mind must have drifted a bit off topic. Maybe I was a bit distracted by the two young hipster students who brought their ceramic bowls full of crunchy cereal to the lecture and sat on the floor behind me and proceeded to consume it during the first portion of the lecture. Come on already! If you are to attend a morning lecture on poetry don’t bring crunchy granola feed and eat like cows, suck down some espresso and drag on cigarettes like true bohemians. What is wrong with the young people nowadays?
One point I noted with clarity is how the modernist poets, according to Wilner, fought the institution of formal meter of their predecessors and how the following generations of poets take for granted free verse and blank verse; poets of the 70s and 80s are blurry photocopied reproductions of the original modernist movement.
My wife and I just returned from a poery reading at the Flood Fine Art Center. Four great poets read their work. All I can say is… heavy, man, real heavy.
Had to cut out early because morning comes early when your one of the maniac Americans traveling this weekend. If you’re on 95 heading to NYC look for me… I’ll be cussin’ out drivers in Old English; Geoffrey Chaucer style–thou dryve as if the develes on thyn ers.
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.
Here’s some images from last week’s farewell poetry reading at The New French Bar. Sorry I didn’t post these sooner. I have been cur-AY-zee BIZ-ee (that’s listless lingo for “crazy busy”).
If you missed it… too, bad. The place was packed–standing room only! The entire Asheville literary scene was there… OK, maybe not the entire literary scene. Jeff Davis, Keith Flynn, Sebastian Matthews (BTW, congrats on your Pushcart nomination), Chall Gray and many more came to enjoy a night of poetry and say good-bye to poet Jaye Bartell.
Jaye invited several local poets to read and then he closed out the evening by reading from his chapbooks and yes–his beer coaster poems. His beer coaster poems are scheduled to be published in April 2008 by someone who I can’t remember. Anyone remember?
For this week’s Write Stuff column I cannibalized this post in order to offer Go Deep. It is something I have been considering all week.
If you are not familiar with Write Stuff, Karen offers a great column on the importance of establishing writing goals. For accountability, she lists Write Stuff contributors’ goals here.
I scanned the goals of the other writers and I am amazed with their organization. I’m a little jealous too. I submitted one item in my own ambiguous fashion but also to provide a “measurable, meaningful, and attainable” goal. I wish I could offer more goals, but simply have limited time and resources.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
All weekly contributors to Write Stuff present a piece based on a photo prompt. My contribution is a poem titled: Red Dye #40 Epsicle ice pop. Comments include:
“tasting heatwaves. great description.”
—Divine“There is something eerie about the little note of trivia at the end that I can’t put my finger on but I like it. I also like the clean, concise language as well.”
—Tammi“Normally I’m not a fan of Haiku, but I like this a great deal.”
—d.challener
Thanks Divine.
Thanks Tammi. I love studying the origin of words and their meaning. Recently inspired by Ezra Pound’s poetry, specifically In a Station of the Metro, I attempted to do likewise but in my own voice.
Thanks D. Challener. I was more influenced by Pound than by haiku. However, knowing that haiku is often used, abused from its honorable beginning; I picked it up, dusted it off and attempted to “make it new.”
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Readers from last night’s event were, in order of appearance: Devin Walsh, Shad Marsh, Jaye Bartell and Selah Saterstrom. I wanted to write a lengthy post about it but I have a very busy morning and many creative projects to involve myself.
In brief, the readers read in “three rounds.” The place was packed with a few people standing along the side and back of the gallery–at least for the first round of readings. The second round of readings the crowd thinned a bit for smokes and drinks. By the end of the second round there was a new crowd filling the gallery.
Because I had to be up before 6 AM I was not able to stay for the third round. The event was a good showing and the artwork on the walls seemed to add to the atmosphere of public expression of art and culture.
I’m inspired to write a fictional account of last night’s reading for the sake of being entirely postmodern.
Really enjoyed the reading by Jon Pineda last week. (I would have written about it earlier, but I had a cantankerous iBook that refused to operate to my satisfaction. Thus delaying this post until today.) Being half Pinoy (or Filipino), Pineda explores themes common to those who have been removed from their heritage. He is now discovering it through poetry. The book’s epigraph sums up his theme: “It’s what always begins/In half dark, in half light” — José Gracia Villa.
He read exclusively from his award-winning book, Birthmark. Poems read included, “Matamis,” “Wrestling,” “Arboretum,” “Night Feeding,” “Birthmark,” and others.
The poem “Wrestling” still haunts me:
“At our first match, I wrestled a guy/I had met summers ago at a Filipino gathering, … a few of the boys pinned my shoulders against a tree//while one punched me.”
“I watched the clock as I locked a breath inside his throat.”
I wanted to buy a copy of Birthmark that night but I only had $6 in my pocket and the cover price was $14.95. This displeased me greatly for I wanted a signed copy of Jon Pineda’s book. Why is it that poets cannot afford poetry books? After working on a book project for the last six months, I know that the book (most likely) costs less than $4 to manufacture. This is not the poet’s fault. I recently bought two books at another reading (which is probably why I only had $6 left). One book was a 275-page hard cover book for $18.50 while the other book was a 57-page soft cover book for $16.95. The poetry book was the skinny, expensive book.
Maybe that’s why readers don’t read as much poetry–there’s not much to read for 17 bucks. Forgive me again. This is not the poet’s decision. I understand why this happens. Poetry publishers supposedly schedule small press runs–maybe 500 to 3000 copies per printing. With those quantities, the book production costs range from $3 to $6 per copy–possibly higher. Add mark-up for retail distribution and the cover price is logically $16.95 per copy.
I’d like to challenge that system. If poetry publishers offered a subscription based books program (i.e. an annual subscription offering three to four books), then they could print with more efficiency and pass the savings to readers. As it is currently, poetry publishers risk a lot and have to build that risk into the cover price. For example, if an independant small press offers a poetry book subscription of $39.95 for their annual series of four books, then they could operate with less risk due to the fact that they have a defined audience (i.e. subscribers) rather than a hopeful audience (i.e. retail outlets).
I forgot to mention my weekly contribution to Write Stuff yesterday: Through Yonder Window.
I’m overwhelmed by the kind, warm reception to my contributions. Comments made include:
“That’s a beautiful analogy. The way you write hooks me and I can vividly see what you’re describing.” —Benjamin
“I loved this post. And it sure is a beautiful analogy, as already mentioned above. It’s heart warming! I really loved it! Hugs!” —Anele
“This a truly beautiful and insightful post. Do you think that we can often be “too” educated?
Nothing is more endearing than those innocent little babbles;) I guess balance is the key.” —Tammi
Thanks Benjamin.
Thanks Anele (and hugs).
Thanks Tammi and good question. I like how Kent Nerburn put it: “Education will not inform your spirit and make you full. So, along with knowledge, you must seek wisdom.” Education with out wisdom is simple mathematics. The more one learns the more one realizes there is much more to learm. Soon the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of itself becomes empty. Wisdom provides a balance and purpose by offering an individual how to apply knowledge to those “young unsteady” ones spoken of in the post.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Instead of writing an eloquent report of last night’s reading, I will just post the notes I scribbled into my notebook. Yeah, if you were there, I was the one with my head buried in a notebook frantically writing. Blame it on my ADD tendencies. Apart from running spell check these notes are as they generally appear in my notebook–complete with poor punctuation, abbreviated thoughts and for some odd reason attention poets’ fashion. Right on … here I go …
Chall Gray
Breaks the ice nicely with a humorous poem about furniture and contrasts it with a poem about a brother and a sister who observe but do not talk about things. He wears a black long-sleeved button down shirt rolled up to the elbow–blue jeans–hair dark, pulled back into tight short ponytail. He ends with a moving homage to his departed father by asking “why.”
Ingrid Carson
Begins with a poem asking what color is the American dream. “What Now” is read second. She wears a black top, wavy brown hair pulled back, framing her face. “What am I going to do now?” she asks and ends; “What am I going to do now?” Her last poem is in two parts; “Still Life” and “My Hands.” She reads, “a violence of flowers…” She reads with purpose and poise and through delicate lips and intense blue eyes as if to say, I know something you don’t know and I have the floor for a few more lines. “You have pushed the mind to the limits…” She concludes that beauty is found in the ugliest of things.
Thomas Rain Crowe
Wearing all black–he tunes up a wooden flute–poet is participant–reads a letter to the editor of a local newspaper in Jackson county–admits he spent a lot of time writing editors. He reads of beauty and uses metaphor–King Kong movie cements his argument to turn corporate development back to nature’s beauty. He next reads an extended haiku written for Steve Earl for some event last year. “What profit? What Price?” he asks. “We can do better than this,” he concludes the poem powerfully. His poem “Peace Will Come” is accompanied by the evening’s featured keyboardist, Steve Davidowski. “Peace will come one day” is lifted over the ambient keyboard harmonics–his reading intensifies. “When peace comes to stay” ends his poem. He steps back, places the flute to his lips and plays–the keyboardist joins the melody which concludes that session.
Emoke B’Racz
First poem is recited in Hungarian. “Fragmented Life” is about her father who she says is bigger than life–sometimes everyday. “Try not to talk about the time,” she reads. She reads about her father’s internment camp experience: “Now take that.” She shares of the hard life of the punished young men in those camps. “Silently he left.. to give your youth for democracy…taken…” She wears a white blouse, gold necklace with pendant, black suit jacket–1965–“Poets Among Each Other” translated and published in 1970-something (’76?). “This is how we stand my brothers,” she reads her translation. It’s a short work. She rolls her tongue across her lower lip from right to left frequently before saying “I could use some water” then reads her last poem of the evening.
15-minute intermission
Will Hubbard
Reads several poems–long brown hair wrapped behind his ears–as he gazes down upon his papers it rests on his shoulders like a hood–he reads a poem called “Porn” with cynical tones of humor and wry sensibility. “5 for 5 for 3 Straight” is his last poem “and one learns where to leave off” he reads. His left hand casually in his pants pocket, his right hand holds his loose-leaf manuscript. “Saying it how it was originally said…” He reads as one might read a tele marketer’s script.
Rose McLarney
She reads a collection of poems concerning the over development of Madison county–lose of land to corporate contractors–overgrowth of urban/suburban sprawl. “Shouldn’t fight … farms let them go,” she reads. Her thin lips clip her words nervously as if she is unaccustomed to public reading. She wears a black sleeveless top with flowing flowery patterned skirt–hair pulled back, leaving dark curls to cascade down the back of her neck. Her last poem: “… the peace of the American South.”
Laura Hope Gill
She tells of her BMC connections–reads “Ponco” with an eruption of words and demands social justice “when she was the question” referring to the dead old woman under a poncho many Americans saw after Hurricane Katrina–The image of a woman who died waiting for medical assistance in the aftermath of the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans. She wears hoop earrings, thin gold necklace upon her chest, low-cut white blouse and black sweater. She reads several poems of childhood witness “we slept in our bunk beds … spelled out in silk.” She reads about a stallion. She reads with proficiency and like Ingrid has a smile and sparkle in her eyes suggesting a joke that only she knows the punch line. Her speech skills draw several people forward in their seats. Or maybe its the hard wooden seats we all endure. “The wind of their grandfather’s song… ” she reads.
Glenis Redmond
“Enter through the door of war…” she begins after adjusting the microphone. “Grief is an uttering tongue.” She begins with a powerful recitation. She is a performer–practiced in public settings. Her second poem is “Lifting” about the Kenilworth slave cemetery near her neighborhood. “Bid us ride,” she reads. By far she is the most charismatic poet of the evening. “Looking back to the land where courage was born.” Due to the lateness of the evening she says she’ll only read three poems. Her next poem is about Nina Simone: “bitter aint born black.” Her final poem is a recitation: “Every time I hear King speak I feel a rumble…” she starts and concludes, “We shall.”
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
I heard
crickets
chirp
for the
first time
this Spring.
Every week I write an article for Write Stuff. This Sunday I posted Under the Holly. Every Sunday I’ll contribute an article.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
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.
Tags: [Asheville, poetry, Fresh Air Reading Series, New French Bar]
By invitation, I’ve begun contributing to Write Stuff. I’ll post new articles every Sunday. Here’s my first piece: Below an Oak Tree.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
The Rapid River just published a poem I wrote. It is featured in the April 2006 issue. I guess I’m on a roll. I think the poetry editor has published four or five of my poems in the last eight months. Furthermore, I have been invited to read some of those poems at a best of Rapid River poetry reading on June 22nd at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café. Details are pending, but it looks like six local poets will be reading their work that evening. I’ll update the new EVENTS section (located in the left column) as information is available. Regarding the published poem, Values: II–it is part of a series of poems I’m tentatively calling Elements of Design. Surprisingly it stands well on its own, but I have a hard time reading it without knowing its sibling poems.
Tags: [Rapid River Magazine, poem, poetry, published]
Coffeehouse Junkie 