Wednesday, March 26, 2008

So You Think You Can Write?


This Saturday, 3/29, I'll be participating in a one-day publishing festival sponsored by Old Dominion University. They have a bang up MFA program and fabulous teacher/writers like Tim Seibles, Sheri Reynolds, and Luisa Igloria. The festival will run all day and will have a series of panel son publishing in small and large venues and on techniques to get your work noticed by editors. Please come out to the festival if you're in the area. You'll find all of the pertinent details here.

You might even get more tips like the ones below ( I just love these, especially 4, 6 and 9):


Been thinking about all kinds of writing things this week, got a lot on my plate. I'll be at the ACTC Conference next week delivering a paper on August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Wilson is certainly one of the best and, arguably, the most prolific playwright the United States has ever produced. My paper deals with identity and spirituality, so contemplating those things on the page has made me think about the definitions I've set for those things in my own life.

Benn reading some great books in preparation for the upcoming Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Right now, I'm in the middle of Emily Rapp's memoir Poster Child and I am riveted. I can't wait to hang out with some of these fantastic writers. More on that as it approaches.

I also have a big exam coming up at work, so my students are getting antsy. Breathe guys, breathe. The comic strip below is just for them (though they better be studying and not on the computer reading my blog!):



Monday, March 10, 2008

Reading at William & Mary on Tuesday, 3/11 @ 7:00 PM


The Ringing Ear at The College of William & Mary, Tucker Hall 120, Williamsburg, Virginia. Remica L. Bingham, Matilda Cox, and Kendra Hamilton, with guest poets Tim Seibles and Toni Wynn, present an evening of poetry at the nation's second-oldest institutions of learning. Professor Hermine Pinson hosts. The event is co-sponsored by The Patrick Hayes Writers Series. If you're in the area on Tuesday, 3/11, please come out to hang with us!

Dance, Dance Revelation



This weekend's performance with INSPIRIT and VTDance was amazing. The movement of the body is such an intense and introspective art. I was awed by the fact that company directors Christal Brown and Vincent Thomas (pictured above) both found ways to mold their dancers into one continuous form, but not make them a homogeneous unit. Each dancer moved in his or her own skin precisely the way it was made to move, but each dancer was in unison with the others as well.

Both Vincent and Christal used various artistic mediums in their work. I couldn't help but think of Venus Thrash during INSPIRIT moving piece "Past Her Rites", in which the dancers begin their magnificent choreography to the voice of Nina Simone. Later, during the "Isms" piece that tackles various social boxes we find ourselves relegated to, INSPIRIT used some poignant lyrics from Goodie Mob and allowed me to recite my poem "Initiation" and pen a new, extemporaneous poem during the piece. There was constant music--live and recorded--even a saxophonist who was lifted into the air while still playing during a VTDance piece. There were media images--photography, newspapers, even conglomerate ads flashed at a dizzying pace across the stage's far wall. In short, I was blown away by the constant beauty and was blessed to spend time with so many brilliant artists.

Shoutouts to some of the cool folks who came to the show, touched base or hung out while I was in D.C.: promising poet Patricia Biela, Pat Washington (of the Poem-cees), my good friend Anita Taylor, Derrick Brown holding it down at Busboys, Kyle Dargan (check out his new venture), Thomas Sayers Ellis who loves to scream a poet's name while hanging out of a car window on U Street, and my Aunt Eunice and Uncle Frankie. You know family always shows love.

Thanks again to Christal for allowing me to be a part of something bigger than all of us.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Reading in D.C. with INSPIRIT Dance, March 8th and 9th


Something very cool has happened--I've been asked to be a part of a performance with INSPIRIT Dance Company in the next few weeks. Big ups to poet John Murillo ,who put me in touch with Christal Brown, the founder of INSPIRIT, after I made a trip to NYC last year.

The Company is using a few of my poems--about womanhood and sensuality, I believe--from my book, Conversion, in their new piece. I'm so excited to finally get to meet them and see the words come to full-bodied life. Needless to say, I am thrilled :-)
If you're in D.C. or will be there the weekend of March 8th and 9th, please come out to the performance. Details about the location are below:


Dance Place
3228 8th Street NW
Washington, DC 20017
Ticket Prices: $20 general admission;
$15 members, students, teachers (Pre K-12), professional artists & seniors;
$7 for children
For more information and directions, call 202-269-1600



It's only appropriate to end this post with a poem about dance that dances...

American Smooth

We were dancing – it must
have been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride—such perfect agony
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
By the effort of
Keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
Just enough to gaze out
Past your ear and always
Smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
How still you’d become until
We had done it
(for two measures?
Four?) – achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.


--Rita Dove

Monday, February 11, 2008

Tina Turner and Beyonce -- Grammy Awards 2008

Tina Turner will be 70 years old next year. She was born in Nutbush, Tennessee. She wears four-inch stiletto heels and silver lame'. My mother and I agree that we both want to be Tina Turner when we grow up...or at least get personal trainers now and hope for the best.

How does staying up until 11:30 watching the Grammys help one to write??? Well, I am still inspired by this performance and am thinking the eternal questions. How do you reinvent yourself (in song)? What are the extended metaphors in the Turner catalog? I always imagine that singing "Private Dancer" was especially painful for Tina, so she'd beat that song down every time she came to it. How did Ike's being gone, really gone, affect the way she showed the stage no mercy last night? Where are the odes for Tina? What line(s) can I use to write her Bop? Plenty of inspiration in tradition and history, the melding of classic and new.

Oh, and stop hatin' on Beyonce. She worked it, too. And girlfriend had to work pretty hard to keep up with Ms. Turner.

Something poetic from Tina:

PRIVATE DANCER

All the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names
You don't think of them as human
You don't think of them at all
You keep your mind on the money
Keeping your eyes on the wall

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
And any old music will do

I want to make a million dollars
I wanna live out by the sea
Have a husband and some children
Yeah, I guess I want a family
All the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
And any old music will do

Deutch marks or dollars
American Express will do nicely, thank you
Let me loosen up your collar
Tell me, do you wanna see me do the shimmy again?

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

A Few Things I Learned...


at (or from) the AWP Conference last week:


  • Forest Hamer is a brilliant poet with a day job that can teach you a thing or two about your own psychosis if you listen long enough.

  • Jericho Brown's book Please, soon to be released from New Issues Press, might just change the way we think about the standards for great poetry, especially if he's in front of us reading the poems aloud.

  • Tupelo Press publishes some fantastic boks and you will spend an hour (and all your money) at their table in the bookfair if you are not careful.

  • Inside joke: Truth or dare is as much about the mafia as it isn't, at three o'clock in the morning, with a bowl of steaming chili, in a cute apartment in Harlem.

Here's a poem by one of my teachers, the beloved Ed Ochester, who was there, and who taught me to laugh and cry in equal measure whenever necessary:


What the Frost Casts Up

A crown of handmade nails, as though
there were a house here once, burned,
where we've gardened for fifteen years;
the ceramic top of an ancient fuse;
this spring the tiny head of a plastic doll--
not much compared to what they find
in England, where every now and then
a coin of the Roman emperors, Severus
or Constantius, works its way up, but
something, as though nothing we've
ever touched wants to stay in the earth,
the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost
or cast away, as though they couldn't bear
the parting, or because they are the only
messengers from lives that were important once,
waiting for the power of the frost
to move them to the mercy of our hands.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

AWP in NYC


The off-site events at the AWP Conference are almost better than the on-site events this year! You'll find a meager sampling from the conference website of some of the things (and people) I'd love to catch below:


LITERARY EVENTS

If the 500 exhibits of the Bookfair and the 300 events on the official schedule of the AWP Conference are not enough for you, you should consider a few of the off-site alternatives, listed below.



Wednesday, January 30th, 2008


8:00PM
Page Meets Stage8:00PM
Page Meets Stage: Paul Muldoon & Thomas Sayers Ellis

Bowery Poetry Club308 Bowery (btn Houston & Bleeker)
Cost: $12
The reading series known as Page Meets Stage is like no other poetry reading series anywhere. Each month two different poets, one who writes primarily for the page and another who is more performance oriented, take the stage together and read back and forth, poem for poem. The current schedule includes Pulitzer Prize winners, Macarthur Fellows, poetry slam champions, and other spoken word icons. Co-produced by Words Worth Ink & Blue Flower Arts.


10:00PM
2nd Annual Cave Canem Fellows Reading
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (At the foot of First Street, between Houston & Bleecker, F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker)
Admission: $10

Readings by Michelle Berry, DeLana Dameron, Jacqueline Johnson, LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Krista Franklin, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Richard Hamilton, Myronn Hardy, Randall Horton, Marcus Jackson, Amanda Johnston, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, January O'Neal, Ernesto Mercer, Dante Micheaux, Indigo Moor, Nicole Sealey, Shia Shabazz, Evie Shockley, and Bianca Spriggs.


Thursday, January 31st, 2008


6:00PM
The Affrilachian Poets @ The Nuyorican Poets Café
236 East 3rd Street, between Avenues B and C(Closest Subway Stop is "2nd Avenue" on the F Train)
Admission: $7 student, $10 general
Featuring: Kelly Norman Ellis, Ellen Hagan, Parneshia Jones, Amanda Johnston, Hao Wang, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Bianca Spriggs, Natasha Marin, Marta Miranda and special guest Rane Arroyo.


Persea Books Poetry Reading
McNally Robinson Bookstore
52 Prince Street in SoHo
Readings by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Alena Hairston, Kate Northrop, Patrick Rosal, Anne Shaw, Sidney Wade, and Rachel Wetzsteon read. Introduction by Gabriel Fried, Persea Poetry Editor.



7:00PM - 10:00PM
Courting Risk: Multicultural, Multi-genre, Multidimensional Women
Macaulay Center
Macaulay Honors College
35 W. 67th Street
Cost: Free

Complimentary refreshments will be provided. There might even be some music and interactive performance art thrown in. Stick around after for a book signing and art sale. Featured Readers: Esther Belin, Naomi Benaron, M. L. Brown, Ching-In Chen, DéLana R. A. Dameron, Ashaki M. Jackson, Anne Liu Kellor, Natasha Marin, Maureen Owens, Khadijah Queen, Susan Southard.


Friday, February 1st, 2008


6:00PM - 9:00PM
Celebrating New Asian American Poetry
New York University19 University Place, The Great Room (101)

In recent years, there's been a palpable increase in books published by Asian American poets. A flight of fancy? A movement? Has our time finally come? One thing is certain: Asian American poetry is thriving with a panoply of enigmatic individual voices. The participants will read from their respective collections published in 2007 and forthcoming in 2008. Authors include Kazim Ali, Rick Barot, Jennifer Chang, Lisa Chen, Oliver de la Paz, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Joseph O. Legaspi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Jon Pineda. This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Supported by Kundiman and the Asian American Writers' Workshop.


6:30PM
ACENTOS: A Gathering and Celebration of Latino and Latina Poets
The School of Social Work at Hunter College
129 E. 79th Street (Corner of 79th St. and Lexington Ave.)
Presented by El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños and Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase.

To coincide with the AWP conference, Acentos and El Centro present a celebration and reading of more than twenty emerging and established poets of Latino/a descent. Scheduled readers include Martin Espada, Rafael Campo, Aracelis Girmay, Willie Perdomo, and many more. Hosted by Rich Villar. Directions: #6 Train to 77th Street. Walk two blocks north to 79th Street and Lexington Avenue. The School of Social Work is located on the northwest corner of 79th and Lexington.


Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

1:00PM - 3:00PM
Book Celebration: 1:00PM - 3:00PM
Book Celebration: "On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail"
Join Charles E. Cobb, Jr. in celebrating the publication of On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail. With real grassroots stories in the words of those who lived it, Charles E. Cobb leads us from Washington, D.C., through eight Southern states to visit the places where the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought for freedom. A book signing will follow the presentation.


7:00PM
Not for Mothers Only Anthology
NYU Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
58 West 10th Street(between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas)
Free and open to the public.

Featuring poets Lee Ann Brown, Gillian Conoley, Beth Ann Fennelly, Miranda Field, Annie Finch, Akilah Oliver, Alicia Ostriker, Molly Peacock, Eleni Sikelianos, Anne Waldman, Zhang Er, Rachel Zucker, and more. Fence Books Party following the reading.