Busy Poetry Week in a Short Story May
On Monday night I hosted a performance by Brad Buchanan, professor of British Lit at Sac State, and Farrah Field from Brooklyn, New York. The two were amazing, and the open mic afterwards was energizing. That's the thing, the energy I get from these readings--I get so inspired I become restless. A surge of creativity.
Brad Buchanan recited (performed) English Poetry from John Milton to Dylan Thomas, famous selections. His rendition of Yeat's "The Second Coming" was a subliminal moment. I was sitting there thinking, "Walking around with these masterpieces in your head has to have a certain effect on you own writing". And of course, Brad has writtehn two well-crafted collections, The Miracle Shirker and Swimming the Mirror, both of which I have had the pleasure to read many times. I have nearly destroyed my Miracle Shirker because of good habit of crafting my poetry inside other poets' books. I hate that empty space we leave on the right of the page...it's only bad (perhaps still good) when I have to replace a copy.
I think every poet should memorize someone's poetry. If that's asking for too much, memorize and recite your own poetry.
Farrah Field read several new poems and some from her award-winning collection Rising. She was generous enough to give me a copy at the end, and I see it won the Levis Poetry Prize, judged by Tony Hoagland. According to Hoagland, Field is "a slinger of the colloquial phrase, the slangy, side-of-the-mouth aphorism, which combines the clever and the cornpone. At once masked and mouthy, cryptic and in-your-face, her voice is flavored by Southern regionalism, but the country manners are deployed at a metropolitan speed."
So as I prepare to read the collection, I notice some strong sense of place; I am taken to Arkansas, to Wyomming,I am told about "The Disturbed Mississippi", which in itself is a play with William Faulkner's phrase as presented in If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem. I respect references to Faulkner almost to the point of glaring bias. The poem laments the damage to the Mississippi River, which is "shrinking where it should not" and in places it is "a crooked appendage". Of course, over time, the river has been victim and victimizer, bringing life, but sometimes threatening it. There is something about poetry and rivers, in fact about creative writing and rivers. The scariest idea is when I set a story in Runde River, or Tugwi, or Save, even when I imagine the nameless (because I have forgotten it) river in the Rusitu Valley of Chimanimani, whatever I am creating pours out, unreservedly...life itself, we have been told many times, is like a river, and a river is a plot, of a poem, a story, just waiting to be explored, to be exposed.
If you know about cobwebs perhaps you know about spiders. In "Malvern, Arkansas", Farrah Field asks, without a question mark, "where will the spiders live after the old barn is torn down." The couplets take a wicked turn when we discover what's remembered by the persona: "Two teenagers steal away into a garage", and we have already been told, "The old lust bakes/and rises, searching for a new home," and alongside these lines, we see some like, "parishioners are singing / and clapping."
I look forward to reading the rest of the book.
This is a busy week for poetry. Tomorrow, Cosumnes River Journal editors (I am one of them) are hosting a reading by the contributors to issue number 3 of the publication. It features works by both emerging and established poets, and has a geographic reach of as far as South Africa, with the Thamsanqa Ncube "Homecoming" poem I may request to read if he does not show up to the reading. I know it deals with exile and return to home, in the context of the reality of the Zimbabwean Diaspora life, for instance.
On Wednesday, I am taking a group from CRC to the Rita Dove reading at the Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento. The event is part of the California Lectures series, which brings reputable authors to Sacramento. Rita Dove, an accomplised writer, is a former US poet Laureate and a strong presence in African American literature.
Then on Saturday, maiwe-e, the Sacramento Poetry Center will co-host an Arts Festival for children. This is happening in the Fremont Park, in downtown Sacramento. Lot's of fun for your children, activities ranging from face painting, readings, talking to poets, live music, and many more fun stuff.
May is being celebrated by some as the month of the short story. That works for me. The recent success of writers like Petina Gappah, Brian Chikwava, Christopher Mlalazi, Chimamanda Adichie, Colm Toibin, Jhumpa Lahiri,and others, has reawakened my interest in short stories, and I have been meaning to read quite a few books. I have even pulled out my copy of Dubliners, to understand why my A-level peers said I understood "The Dead". Soon I will have more time to commit to he short story, and I will finish off May with reviews of some single short stories. Over at Emerging Writers Network, they read and talk about three short stories per day, which I think is just fantastic. To show my support for this idea, let me display the short story month logo here:
My short story work in May will culminate in the African Roar collaborative editing work with Ivor W. Hartmann, Chief Editor of the African E-Zine StoryTime. He has done a great job of publishing some very promising African writers from Cape to (shall we say it) Cairo. The book will be published in August by the UK-based Lion Press Ltd.
Brad Buchanan recited (performed) English Poetry from John Milton to Dylan Thomas, famous selections. His rendition of Yeat's "The Second Coming" was a subliminal moment. I was sitting there thinking, "Walking around with these masterpieces in your head has to have a certain effect on you own writing". And of course, Brad has writtehn two well-crafted collections, The Miracle Shirker and Swimming the Mirror, both of which I have had the pleasure to read many times. I have nearly destroyed my Miracle Shirker because of good habit of crafting my poetry inside other poets' books. I hate that empty space we leave on the right of the page...it's only bad (perhaps still good) when I have to replace a copy.
I think every poet should memorize someone's poetry. If that's asking for too much, memorize and recite your own poetry.
Farrah Field read several new poems and some from her award-winning collection Rising. She was generous enough to give me a copy at the end, and I see it won the Levis Poetry Prize, judged by Tony Hoagland. According to Hoagland, Field is "a slinger of the colloquial phrase, the slangy, side-of-the-mouth aphorism, which combines the clever and the cornpone. At once masked and mouthy, cryptic and in-your-face, her voice is flavored by Southern regionalism, but the country manners are deployed at a metropolitan speed."
So as I prepare to read the collection, I notice some strong sense of place; I am taken to Arkansas, to Wyomming,I am told about "The Disturbed Mississippi", which in itself is a play with William Faulkner's phrase as presented in If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem. I respect references to Faulkner almost to the point of glaring bias. The poem laments the damage to the Mississippi River, which is "shrinking where it should not" and in places it is "a crooked appendage". Of course, over time, the river has been victim and victimizer, bringing life, but sometimes threatening it. There is something about poetry and rivers, in fact about creative writing and rivers. The scariest idea is when I set a story in Runde River, or Tugwi, or Save, even when I imagine the nameless (because I have forgotten it) river in the Rusitu Valley of Chimanimani, whatever I am creating pours out, unreservedly...life itself, we have been told many times, is like a river, and a river is a plot, of a poem, a story, just waiting to be explored, to be exposed.
If you know about cobwebs perhaps you know about spiders. In "Malvern, Arkansas", Farrah Field asks, without a question mark, "where will the spiders live after the old barn is torn down." The couplets take a wicked turn when we discover what's remembered by the persona: "Two teenagers steal away into a garage", and we have already been told, "The old lust bakes/and rises, searching for a new home," and alongside these lines, we see some like, "parishioners are singing / and clapping."
I look forward to reading the rest of the book.
This is a busy week for poetry. Tomorrow, Cosumnes River Journal editors (I am one of them) are hosting a reading by the contributors to issue number 3 of the publication. It features works by both emerging and established poets, and has a geographic reach of as far as South Africa, with the Thamsanqa Ncube "Homecoming" poem I may request to read if he does not show up to the reading. I know it deals with exile and return to home, in the context of the reality of the Zimbabwean Diaspora life, for instance.
On Wednesday, I am taking a group from CRC to the Rita Dove reading at the Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento. The event is part of the California Lectures series, which brings reputable authors to Sacramento. Rita Dove, an accomplised writer, is a former US poet Laureate and a strong presence in African American literature.
Then on Saturday, maiwe-e, the Sacramento Poetry Center will co-host an Arts Festival for children. This is happening in the Fremont Park, in downtown Sacramento. Lot's of fun for your children, activities ranging from face painting, readings, talking to poets, live music, and many more fun stuff.
May is being celebrated by some as the month of the short story. That works for me. The recent success of writers like Petina Gappah, Brian Chikwava, Christopher Mlalazi, Chimamanda Adichie, Colm Toibin, Jhumpa Lahiri,and others, has reawakened my interest in short stories, and I have been meaning to read quite a few books. I have even pulled out my copy of Dubliners, to understand why my A-level peers said I understood "The Dead". Soon I will have more time to commit to he short story, and I will finish off May with reviews of some single short stories. Over at Emerging Writers Network, they read and talk about three short stories per day, which I think is just fantastic. To show my support for this idea, let me display the short story month logo here:
My short story work in May will culminate in the African Roar collaborative editing work with Ivor W. Hartmann, Chief Editor of the African E-Zine StoryTime. He has done a great job of publishing some very promising African writers from Cape to (shall we say it) Cairo. The book will be published in August by the UK-based Lion Press Ltd.
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