Coffeehouse Junkie

From Malaprop’s e-newsletter:

On Sunday afternoon, March 6 at 3:00 p.m., Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café will welcome poets Landon Godfrey (SECOND-SKIN RHINESTONE-SPANGLED NUDE SOUFFLE CHIFFON GOWN), Luke Hankins (I WAS AFRAID OF VOWELS / THEIR PALENESS), and Britt Kaufmann (BELONGING).  The reading and booksigning event is free and open to the public, and we hope that you will join us at this monthly poetry event.

Poet, artist, and actress Landon Godfrey read her poetry at the Malaprop’s Poetrio event in May 2009, and some of you may remember that this versatile practitioner of many arts has had work published in the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center chapbook, Voicing BMC: The Women; in Best New Poets 2008, selected by Mark Strand; and in Orbis, The Missouri Review, The Southwest Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and many other literary journals.  You may also have seen her on the stage of the BeBe Theatre in Asheville, and she’ll be appearing in Labyrinth at the Magnetic Theatre in April.  For the manuscript of her just-published poetry book, SECOND-SKIN RHINESTONE-SPANGLED NUDE SOUFFLE CHIFFON GOWN, she won the 2009 Cider Press Review Book Award. Writes poet David St. John, who judged the 2009 award competition, “Never has the sumptuous materiality of language felt more seductive than in Landon Godfrey’s remarkable debut collection, SECOND-SKIN RHINESTONE-SPANGLED NUDE SOUFFLE CHIFFON GOWN.  These exquisite poems are both sensually compelling and intellectually rigorous — a rare feat indeed.  The iridescence of this marvelous volume continues to glow long after one has turned out the lights. . . .”

Luke Hankins has served as an Associate Editor of Asheville Poetry Review since 2006. His poetry, prose, and translation have appeared in numerous publications, including The Cortland Review, New England Review, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle, as well as on the blog of the NPR program “Being.”  He graduated from the Indiana University M.F.A. program in 2009, where he held the Yusef Komunyakaa Fellowship in Poetry, the program’s highest poetry fellowship.  At Malaprop’s, Luke Hankins will be reading from I WAS AFRAID OF VOWELS / THEIR PALENESS, his recent bilingual chapbook of translations from the French poems of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu. Radulescu was born in Romania but left in 1983, first seeking political asylum in Rome and then immigrating to the United States. A scholar and teacher as well as a poet, she has written and published books of poetry in Romanian, French, and English but does not translate her own work.  In his Translator’s Note, however, Luke Hankins acknowledges “her partnership in finalizing the translations” for I WAS AFRAID OF VOWELS / THEIR PALENESS — selected poems from Radulescu’s book UN CRI DANS LA NEIGE (A CRY IN THE SNOW).  Writer and translator Hoyt Rogers admires both the original poetry and Luke Hankins’ translations: “Like seashells with light shining through, these poems by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu express the tough fragility of being; in his lucid translation, Luke Hankins mirrors perfectly their deftness and their strength.”

Britt Kaufmann’s poetry has been published in The Mennonite, Western North Carolina Woman, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Main Street Rag, LiteraryMama.com, and elsewhere.   Her chapbook BELONGING was named a semi-finalist in the most recent competition for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press.  The poetry in her new collection loosely chronicles Britt Kaufmann’s upbringing in Mennonite Goshen and her move to the mountains of Western North Carolina.  Her hometown of Burnsville, North Carolina, hosts the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, for which she serves on the planning committee. Among others, Fred Chappell and Kathryn Stripling Byer, former Poets Laureate of North Carolina, admire Britt Kaufmann’s new collection of poetry.  Fred Chappell has written, “‘Belonging,’ that word is the best possible title for Britt Kaufmann’s earnest, engaging, affectionate, and wonderfully enjoyable collection of poems.  ‘Be,’ says the land and the nature that enfolds it.  ‘Longing’ is what we feel when we gaze upon the land and try to search its meaning.” Kathryn Stripling Byer adds, “[Britt Kaufmann’s] words call up the things of everyday life and make them last. This poet belongs unapologetically to that moment when joy pushes its way to the surface, like a crocus through snow, never hesitating to praise it and its many gifts, opening her arms wide to welcome its arrival.”

Hope to see you at Malaprop’s on Sunday!

UPDATE: Due to the scheduled the Asheville Mardi Gras parade for 3:00 p.m. Sunday, March 6, Malaprop’s staff recommends arriving early (the parade line-up begins at 2:00 p.m.). The city of Asheville has several parking solutions. Here’s a link to parking garages in near Malaprop’s Bookstore: Link.