Tag: poetry

Kathryn Stripling Byer Poetry Reading & Booksigning

Sunday, November 11, 2012, 3:00 p.m., Malaprop’s presents a poetry reading and book signing for Kathryn Stripling Byer.

From Malaprop’s news release:

Poetry reading and booksigning event with Kathryn Stripling Byer, former North Carolina Poet Laureate and another favorite here at Malaprop’s.  On November 11 she will read from and sign DESCENT, a collection of poems described as “navigating the dangerous currents of family and race,” in which Byer “confronts the legacy of southern memory, where too often ‘it’s safer to stay blind.'”

We bury secrets deep into lyrics

There are secrets between singer songwriters and poets. We share them in dark corners of pubs or cafés. We talk about live performances and audiences and the craft of writing. A singer songwriter confesses that “at least a guitar is between me and the audience, but poets are left completely vulnerable on stage.” Yes, indeed. Naked before audiences that, in general, don’t care about poetry or don’t know anything about it. We wonder why singer songwriters embrace lyricism while academic poets skitter away from deep lyrics and the hint of rhyme. We will bury our secrets deep into the lyrics of a song or poem–so deep that it requires of map to locate ars poetica.

September 16, 2012: poetry at Malaprop’s

Writers at Home – Sept. 16th

This Sunday at the Malaprop’s cafe at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 16, join the following poets as they read from their recent books: Holly Iglesias (ANGLES OF APPROACH), Sebastian Matthews (MIRACLE DAY: MID-LIFE SONGS), and Katherine Soniat (THE SWING GIRL). More details here. Link.

Peace Is a Flower: A Night of Poetry and Music

Peace is a flower – poetry and music

Tomorrow, 8:30 p.m. join James McKay, Laura Hope-Gill, Caleb Beissert, Pasckie Pascua, and Aaron Price at Battery Park Book Exchange & Champagne Bar, 1 Page Avenue, Asheville on SEPT 11, 8:30 to 11PM. This event is free to the public. Read poet and musician bios as well as other information on the Facebook events page. Link.

Quote: “Poetry exists… to sing the praises…”

I think poetry exists partly in order to sing the praises of who and what we love. . . . As well as for the purpose of showing us ourselves, at our worst as well as at our best.

—Sharon Olds [1]

SOURCE: [1] Megan O’Grady, “Fine Print: Poet Sharon Olds Chronicles the End of Her Marriage in a New Collection,” Vogue, accessed August 28, 2012, http://www.vogue.com/culture/article/fine-print-poet-sharon-olds-chronicles-the-end-of-her-marriage-in-a-new-collection/#1.

Poetrio, this Sunday, at Malaprop’s Bookstore

August Poetrio — 2012

This sunday, Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café continues the monthly poetry reading series, Poetrio, with Meta Commerse, Cassie Premo Steele, and Pauletta Hansel.

In an email from Virginia McKinley, of Malaprop’s, here’s a write up about August’s featured poets:

Meta Commerse. . . is the author of six books, including a novel intended to be a book of hope for middle-school-aged black girls.  That book began as her culminating project for the MFA degree in creative writing at Goddard College.  RAINSONGS: POEMS OF A WOMAN’S LIFE is her most recent book of poetry. . . .

Cassie Premo Steele’s poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, magazines, and journals, including such publications as Sagewoman and Calyx. Her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. . .  Her most recent book of poetry, THE POMEGRANATE PAPERS, is based on the Persephone/ Demeter myth and addresses the themes of mothers, daughters, creative cycles, loss, healing, and living in harmony with the seasons. . . .

According to Jackie Demaline of The Cincinnati Enquirer, Pauletta Hansel has been “an arts administrator and an unflagging arts advocate, [but] doesn’t like to talk about herself.”  Yet she seems happy to talk about the work she finds most interesting: “community organizing and community arts.”  . . . . Pauletta Hansel has published poems in . . . journals . . . and . . . has three previous collections of poetry, Divining, First Person, and What I Did There; at Malaprop’s she will read from her most recent book, THE LIVES WE LIVE IN HOUSES. . . .

Hope to see you Sunday, August 5, at 3:00 p.m. for Poetrio!

Last Night, Poetry at the Altamont – Featuring Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley reading at The Altamont Theater, Asheville, NC

If it is possible to be drunk on poetry, than I am still sobering up from last night’s event Poetry at the Altamont featuring Evie Shockley. It was quite a special night as Evie Shockley read selections from the new black and a half-red sea as well as some new poems in progress.

Other highlights include poems read by notable poets including Lee Ann Brown, Jeff Davis (who also hosted the event), Eric Steineger, Caleb Beissert and many others whom I have forgotten there names, but not their words. There were verses read about five drinks at a bar with reflections of a homeless man in a cardboard box home and another poem about bees and honey and lazy hippies squatting in someone’s home all summer.

I also read some poems last night. Earlier in that day I had mailed off a manuscript to a publisher and had intended to read selections from that manuscript, but I changed up what I read. I can’t tell you what I read. You’ll have to ask someone who was there last night at The Altamont.

It was such a pleasure to join this gathering of poets and share works in progress in sort of literary laboratory. Looking forward to the next gathering.

Afternoon poetry and jazz

Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon Audio CD

Sometimes a few notes of music follow you for days are weeks or years. Sometimes a line of poetry haunts you like a memory you can’t quite recall. It’s like rain, it permeates the air, wets the ground, even makes tea taste more pronounced.

Here’s part of a story I can share with you. After I was at university studying art and design, I found an audio CD in a music store titled Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon. What attracted me to the album, a compilation, was the fact that the cover art reminded me of a sexier version of Gustave Caillebotte’s famous painting. I purchased the audio CD. It was background music initially. Something to edge off lonely days as a poor graduate beginning a career in graphic design. About the same time I discovered, and purchased, a copy of William Kistler’s poetry book America February.

I have always enjoyed poetry and music, but reading Kistler’s work was rigorous for me. Light verse and traditional poems, the variety that fill American and English school book anthologies, were what I was familiar with. But Kistler’s poetry was a new dish for my inexperienced palate. Equally, understanding the musical selections of Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon as more than a background soundtrack was challenging.

A line from one of Susan L Daniels’s poems has captured my attention this past week—the way jazz and poetry sometimes do. The speaker in the poem answers a question, so you like jazz, by saying: “…the answer is no/I live it sometimes…” That’s what I have come to enjoy about the complicated progression in a song or a poem that avoids a clean resolution.

Jazz and poetry work into you. It takes you down that familiar path of a rainy day afternoon, a common enough subject, but it is a variation of that theme. Never the same way twice. Like reading a poem as a school boy and reading it later as a graduate and later as a professional. Same poem printed on the page, but different. Always different. But familiar, because you “live it.” There’s more to this story. Maybe I’ll share it with you on another rainy day afternoon.

July Poetrio 2012

Sunday, at 3:00 p.m. at Malaprop’s Bookstore/café, the Poetrio series continues with three poets: James Davis, Kyle P. Harper, and Laura Walker.

An evening of poetry at the Downtown Books & News

Tonight, 7:30 p.m., Downtown Books & News presents an evening of poetry hosted by Jeff Davis and features Evie Shockley (recently selected for Holmes National Poetry Prize), Holly Iglesias, Luke Hankins and Tina Barr.

June 2012 Poetrio reading series with Donna Lisle Burton, Alice Osborn, and Erica Wright

Sunday afternoon, June 3rd at 3 p.m., the Poetrio monthly reading series continues with Donna Lisle Burton, Alice Osborn, and Erica Wright. Details here [link].

From Malaprop’s community outreach director, Virginia McKinley:

Poet and visual artist Donna Lisle Burton. . . . has two previous collections of poems; is also an accomplished painter, portraitist, and photographer; and has four decades of experience as a special education teacher. Of Donna Lisle Burton’s third collection of poems, LETTING GO, award-winning Asheville poet Pat Riviere-Seel has written, “Do not be misled by the title: once you start reading, there will be no Letting Go [sic].”  North Carolina Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers has offered this additional appreciation: “Reading the poems of Donna Lisle Burton is like happening upon a cache of tender and beautifully crafted love letters.  Among the objects of her most intimate affections are lovers both old and new — parents and siblings and children; students and friends; flowers and bridges and mills.  And, finally, her luckiest of lovers, whoever might open the pages of this exquisite book.”  The variations on letting go that are gathered in this collection are not entirely beautiful or easy, and not always for the reasons one might anticipate. . . .

Alice Osborn is another transplant to North Carolina. . . . AFTER THE STEAMING STOPS is her most recent collection of poetry; previous collections are Right Lane Ends, and Unfinished Projects.  The latter prompted these remarks from writer Homer Hickam: “I love Alice’s poetry.  She gives me thoughts I’ve never thought, and dreams I’ve never dreamed.  She uses words like a master potter — molding the clay of the mind into vessels that hold not things, but life, place, and time.”  AFTER THE STEAMING STOPS seems a book more of broken dreams than of new or unexpected ones.  There is no sentimentality in the face of death, departures, endings. . . Before the fierceness of nature and life, love becomes fierce — but after the fact, and nearly as helpless as the child who declared, “I’ll find my own way!” — and bicycled off as a tornado approached, “no clue dueling cyclones ate children / near the road he and Daddy drive on every day to school.”

Erica Wright. . . . serves as poetry editor for Guernica, a magazine of art and politics, and teaches creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College. . . . Of her 2011 book, INSTRUCTIONS FOR KILLING THE JACKAL, Christopher Crawford observed in a recent review for the literary magazine Neon, “Wright is not afraid to use the darkest of imagery combined with a violence of language. A great number of the poems here are in tercets and couplets and Wright makes good use of these forms[,] which allows her to move her short, sharp-edged anecdotes with disquieting ease from beginning to end. Wright’s poems often follow the tracks of her thoughts through various twists, turns and enjambments. The darkness that informs these images is always just below the surface, the music in the lines is subtle and tense . . . The poems give a sense of someone trying to find something while at the same time avoiding it, leaving the scene while simultaneously confronting it. . . .”  Erica Wright’s imagery, settings, and situations often recall the elements of tall tales — but tales whose paths soon wind toward mythical landscapes, the unsettling territory and characters of fables, a realm of constant metamorphosis and of faith mingled with superstition. . .

Hope to see you at this month’s Poetrio reading series.

Tonight’s Malaprop’s reading featuring Sebastian Matthews, Sybil Baker and Chris Hale

Just received this email from Malaprop’s regarding tonight’s, June 1st, reading at 7 p.m.

Triple reading event, featuring new poems by Sebastian Matthews, and selected poems from his most recent collection: MIRACLE DAY: MID-LIFE SONGS; a reading by Sybil Baker from her novel INTO THIS WORLD; and a reading by novelist Chris Hale from her just-completed memoir, LINE OF SIGHT.

I’m very excited to learn of Sebastian Matthews’s new collection of poems.

What is your creative space?

An open window to creative space

The window is open on a warm late May day and a cool mountain breeze  moves the curtains like papery fingers. Occasionally, I glance at the Japanese maple outside or the grape vine wildly clinging to a handmade, crude trellis of found pine limbs….

[read more]

UPDATE: This blog post is available as part of an audio podcast.

Listen now:

Or listen on:
PodOmatic: coffeehousejunkie.podomatic.com
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/coffeehousejunkie

E-book: This blog post will be featured in a forthcoming e-book. More details coming soon.

Tomorrow night – Juniper Bends Literary Reading

The afterglow of Asheville Wordfest 2012 has barely faded. In truth, I’m still recovering from the rich, full weekend, but excited to announce tomorrow night’s literary reading.

Friday, May 11th at 7:00 p.m. the Downtown Books and News (67 North Lexington Ave., Asheville, NC) hosts the Juniper Bends Literary Reading featuring poets and prose writers: Abigail DeWitt, Anne Maren-Hogan, M. Owens and Mesha Maren. More details on the Juniper Bends Literary Reading Facebook events page: link.

How does one prepare for a poetry reading?

It’s less than two hours before the event and I find myself pacing the house with loose leaf pages of poems wondering if I’ve chosen the correct poems for tonight. I’ve been preparing for tonight’s reading all week. Reading poems I’ve written (and avoiding making additional edits). Selecting the poems I plan to bring to tonight’s reading at The Altamont Theater. I’ll read at the Asheville Wordfest event Voices of the City alongside Katherine Soniat, DeWayne Barton, Ronald Reginald King, Ekua Adisa and Roberto Hess. But I can’t help wonder, what do these fine poets do before a poetry reading? What rituals do they observe the day before an event like tonight?

Asheville Wordfest 2012 – poems that open conversations

It’s true. There is only one article I read from the pages of O: The Oprah Magazine. It is the interview between Maria Shriver and the poet Mary Oliver. [1] “I consider myself kind of a reporter. . .” Mary Oliver says. I think that’s the same sentiment Wordfest director Laura Hope-Gill expresses in this week’s Mountain Xpress article where she describes poetry as “citizens’ journalism.” [2]

“Poetry is a short line between different cultures,” says Laura Hope-Gill. “It can heal the cultural divides that still plague our city. It opens conversations that we need to have.”

The invitation to read my poems at this year’s poetry festival is something I don’t take lightly. I spent the last few nights reviewing poems I’ve written during the last year as well as poems composed during the last decade. The PR/marketing side of me wants to chose poems to read that promote a certain manuscript I’m developing or maybe only read published poems. It’s a promotional game poets play when they read their work publicly. They casually mention that “the next poem I’m going to read was published in the Atlantic Monthly…” or the American Poetry Review or some other notable journal as away to promote their ascendancy of poet extraordinaire.

But my thoughts returned to the idea Laura mentioned in the Mountain Xpress article. I looked through pages of my poems last night searching for material that addresses the idea of healing cultural divides or opening conversations. Selecting poems that fit the general theme presented a bit of a challenge, but there are subtle threads of those ideas in several of the poems I’ve written during the last few years.

Tonight, however, I’ll put aside the task of poem selection and venture to the Vanuatu Kava Bar for Poem-ing the 28801 [3] featuring Barbie Angell, Ten Cent Poetry, Jonathan Santos and Jadwiga McKay.

NOTES: [1] Dear Oprah, you stole my idea, but I’m not filing charges [2] A short line between different cultures [3] Wordfest 2012: Poem-ing the 28801

Wordfest — Voices of the City

Asheville Wordfest 2012 presents Voices of the City and features several local poets. I’m honored listed among the following local poets: Katherine Soniat, DeWayne Barton, Ronald Reginald King, Matthew Mulder and Roberto Hess.

I set up a Facebook page with more details. Friend me on Facebook to get an invitation to the event. If you’re not on Facebook, consider yourself invited to Asheville Wordfest’s Voices of the City.

Upcoming reading at Asheville Wordfest 2012

Next week I’ve been invited to read some of my poems at one of the Asheville Wordfest 2012 events. The schedule is still fluid. So, you’ll have to check the official Wordfest website for the schedule details. Suffice it to say, I am extremely humbled and honored to read with great local and global poets.

Life is lived as a messy first draft

How do you explain a poem without revealing its mystery? I thought about that question this weekend after a private poetry reading session. A few poets gathered under a full moon to read new work….

[read more]

UPDATE: This blog post is available as part of an audio podcast.

Listen now:

Or listen on:
PodOmatic: coffeehousejunkie.podomatic.com
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/coffeehousejunkie

E-book: This blog post will be featured in a forthcoming e-book. More details coming soon.

Poetry at the Altamont

Poet Laura Hope-Gill

Tonight from 7:00 p.m. until 8:30 p.m., Poetry at the Altamont continues with this month’s featured poet, Laura Hope-Gill.

It’s been awhile since I visited the The Altamont Theatre. I believe it was during last year’s Wordfest. It’s a gorgeous setting to hear poets read their work. I’m looking forward to tonight’s event.

Here’s more details about the event Poetry at the Altamont from their Facebook invite page:

Poetry at the Altamont is a reading series for poets and poetry lovers commencing on the third Monday of each month at seven o’clock in the evening at The Altamont Theatre in downtown Asheville. The event consists of a reading by the feature poet followed by an open microphone, for which readers may sign up and recite one or two short pieces. During the open portion of the event, we encourage new voices and accomplished poets alike to share what they have been working on, a space where writers have the opportunity to try out new works in front of an audience on a regular basis. Please join us for consistent, fine poetry in a setting that is equally fine.

Hosted by Jeff Davis and Laura Hope-Gill
Produced by Caleb Beissert and Aaron Price

$5 at door
Beer and wine served

(link)

Poetrio at Malaprop’s

The monthly poetry reading series Poetrio continues Sunday, March 4, 2012, 3:00 p.m. at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café. The March Poetrio features Megan Volpert with SONICS IN WARHOLIA, Rupert Fike with LOTUS BUFFET, and Jethro Clayton Waters with SOUTH OF ORDINARY.

Please note that UNC-A has a champion basketball event downtown this weekend and the public parking garages will charge a special daily “event fee.” Park away from the center of downtown Asheville and enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon stroll to Malaprop’s. They have a wonderful café with refreshments and poetry for after a nice walk through the city.

POETRIO readings and booksignings:
Megan Volpert, Rupert Fike, Jethro Clayton Waters
Sunday, March 4, 2012, 3:00 p.m.
Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood Street, Asheville, NC 28801
www.malaprops.com

Big week for poetry shows in Asheville

Poetry at The Altamont

Today at 7:00 p.m. Poetry at The Altamont is a NEW monthly series. Hosted by Laura Hope-Gill and Jeff Davis. $5 Cash at the door. The event consists of a full reading by a featured published poet followed by an open mic for new voices and accomplished poets alike.

Open Mic at the Vanuatu Kava Bar

Every Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. Hosted by poet and translator, Caleb Beissert. Poetry, comedy, spoken word and music. This is a poetry open mic, but we welcome all forms of artistic self expression.

Barbie Angell’s Bar Poetry Show & Benefit.

Saturday, February 25, 2012, 8:00 p.m. at Tressa’s Downtown Jazz and Blues. Event features Asheville Poet, Barbie Angell performing her charming, audacious “bar poetry” with special guest Asheville singer/songwriter Chelsea LaBate, known as Ten Cent Poetry. The evening is a benefit performance for Grateful Steps Foundation, a local nonprofit publishing house, bookshop and community space.

Representing nations through poetry

Today, I followed a link to a web site that I rather enjoy — the United Nations of Poetry. Serendipitously I found the link and learned that it presents a catalog of international poets. I noticed, however, that some nations are missing from the list. For example, Germany is not represented. Consider including German language poets Durs Grünbein, Michael Hofmann and Sarah Kirsch. Also notably missing are Polish and Russian poets. Vera Pavlova makes a good addition to the United Nations of Poetry representing Russia. For Poland, Eugeniusz Tkaczszyn-Dycki might make a good contribution. And last, but not least, add Greek poet Dimitris Varos to the list of poetry dignitaries. One thing that is unique to the United Nations of Poetry is the inclusion of poets from America representing the indigenous peoples.

Why is this important? I think C. S. Lewis wrote that literature “irrigates the deserts that our lives.” Along that line of thinking, to know and understand the inner life of a nation or culture is to explore the fertile literature of their poets and writers. Film tends to present caricatures and stereotypes of Germans, Russians and Americans, but literature plumbs the depth of cultural nuances. For example, you might miss the significance of the shamrock and the lily in a film about two brothers in North Ireland. In a novel, the weight of those two images will elucidate the drama between the two siblings, and a reader will come to realize that the tensions between two brothers are often the same between nations.

‘Annunciation’ by Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov

 

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

____________________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

______________________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.

(via chriscorrigan.com)