If you attend poetry events in California with any regularity, you are likely to see Joyce Jenkins, who—with her long, wavy hair and graceful demeanor—is unmistakable in a crowd. Jenkins is the editor and executive director of Poetry Flash, Literary Review & Calendar for the West and chair of Northern California Book Reviewers. She is also the author of Portal and Joy Road, a limited edition chapbook. Her poems have appeared in Parthenon West Review, Ambush Review, ZYZZYVA, Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley's Poetry Walk, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Watershed, and elsewhere.

Jenkins received an American Book Award in 1994 and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, among other honors. Poetry Flash received Litquake's 2012 Barbary Coast Award. For many years, P&W has provided support to the Poetry Flash Reading Series and Watershed Poetry Festival in Berkeley. We were thrilled to be able to ask Jenkins a few questions about her 40 years at the helm of the "Flash."

What makes Poetry Flash and its programs unique?
Publishing Poetry Flash: Literary Review & Calendar for the West for over 40 years has been an unparalleled journey for myself and associate editor Richard Silberg. We’ve documented poetry and changes in writing over an incredibly turbulent and transformative time, and acted as both a forum and catalyst for the development of literary communities up and down the West Coast. Thoughout the years we've always remained open to all styles and poetics.

Poetry Flash evolved from its 1972 origins as a single sheet to a monthly tabloid to its current incarnation as an online magazine. Today, Poetry Flash publishes a literary events calendar for all of California, poetry and fiction book reviews, poems, interviews, tributes, essays, memoir, calls for submissions, news, and online archives. Other publications offer book reviews, interviews, and poems, but lack the same historical perspective and that certain Poetry Flash attention to detail. Also, everything we publish is entwined with our involvement in events and outreach (a legacy from years of distributing the Flash as a free paper).

We have published 302 print issues of Poetry Flash that will continue to echo and provide future generations with essential literary documents that detail the history of poetry on the West Coast. We have that deep well to draw from in our efforts to further our collective understanding of the present.

Our other projects include the Poetry Flash Reading Series at bookstore venues in Berkeley and Oakland, and the annual presentation of the Northern California Book Awards in San Francisco—now in its 33rd year. Also, there is the annual Watershed Poetry Festival, directed by Mark Baldridge and supported in part by Poets & Writers, which will celebrate its 18th year on September 28, 2013, in Berkeley.

What recent project have you been especially proud of?
I am proud of Watershed. It is a real statement to be there, to take part, and “stand up for the earth” as a poet, through poetry. I’m proud of the gorgeous hand-printed broadsides that commemorate and support the festival, the annual “Creek Poem” installation on the grounds of the festival, and the event for high school students at Berkeley High, which is held the day before the festival.

I’m also gratified and humbled by the number of incredible poets we have hosted in our reading series, from Czeslaw Milosz to Louise Glück. Furthermore, we have had the honor of recognizing amazing poets and writers through the book awards—talented writers from Al Young, Kay Ryan, and Adrienne Rich to Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Maxine Hong Kingston.

What’s the craziest (or funniest or most moving or most memorable) thing that’s happened at an event you’ve hosted?
There are too many to choose from! My favorite was when Kenneth Rexroth escaped from the hospital, or said he did, to read at the San Francisco International Poetry Festival in 1980—an event that I directed and Poetry Flash co-sponsored. I had an image of him ripping tubes out of himself! Anyway, he arrived in a great flourish and gave me the critical once over. Then he extended his arm, and we promenaded about the lobby of the Palace of Fine Arts.

Other moments include a choral reading of “The State of the Planet” at Watershed by Robert Hass. There was Joy Harjo’s saxophone and “Eagle Poem” wafting across the park at another Watershed. And the time that Wanda Coleman read so fiercely and beautifully that she... well, she didn’t levitate, but it was close. We are talking a higher vibration. And maybe for just a moment there was a kind of translucence—her movements and language were so concentrated she almost became pure energy for a moment there.

How has literary presenting informed your own writing and/or life?
Literary presenting, whether through live events or through publishing Poetry Flash, either online or in print, is my life. I have learned so much—I’ve felt like I’ve been in graduate school for 40 years.

What do you consider to be the value of literary programs for your community?
Poetry Flash’s mission is to build community through literature, and that’s exactly what readings do—event by event. They give poets especially the sense that someone is listening, someone cares, and they are appreciated. It feeds back into better work and more awareness. We learn so much about other poets and writers whose work we may not have delved into. At the Poetry Flash Reading Series, we present many fine younger or emerging poets whose names may not yet be widely known. Our audiences hopefully will trust our curatorial instincts and try our readings, even if they don’t yet recognize the names. Our readers are excellent!

What are you most excited about in today’s changing literary landscape?
I’m most excited about the fact that—whatever changes technology or society brings us, whatever new forms poetry and writing take on—creative writing and reading willl continue to flourish in an amazing variety of ways. The explosion of readings, access to evolving modes of publication, and writing “springboards” and shelters provided by universities have all contributed to the preservation and continued growth of the literary arts. No matter what, poetry and writing will always remain central to human consciousness and our culture.

Photo 1: Joyce Jenkins. Credit: Mark Baldridge. Photo 2: Jenkins (at right) with Jane Hirshfield at the 2011 Watershed Poetry Festival. Credit: Sharon Coleman.
Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

The Durham, North Carolina–based Carolina Wren Press has launched the new Lee Smith Novel Prize, which will include $1,000 and publication for a novel by a Southern writer, or about the American South. The deadline is October 15.

Novels by an author originally from, currently living in, or writing about the South are eligible. Original and previously unpublished works of at least 50,000 words, written in English, may be submitted via Submittable by October 15.

The prize was established in honor of award-winning Southern writer Lee Smith, the author of ten novels and four story collections, whose forthcoming novel, Guests on Earth, will be published in October by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

“It is our hope to find and promote novelists from the South and their novels,” the Carolina Wren Press editors write on the website, “and, in the process, to explore and expand the definition of Southern literature.”

Founded in 1976 in Chapel Hill by poet Judy Hogan, Carolina Wren Press is an independent nonprofit press whose mission is, simply, “new authors, new audiences.” The press publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature, and sponsors two other annual contests, the Doris Bakwin Award for books by women writers, and the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series, given for a poetry collection. Visit the website to read an essay by Hogan on the history of the press.

In the video below from Algonquin Books, Lee Smith discusses the inspiration for and creation of her forthcoming novel, which is based in part on historical events that occurred North Carolina.

P&W-funded Jamaal May is a poet from Detroit, MI, where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. His poetry won the 2013 Indiana Review Prize and appears in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, and The Believer. Jamaal has earned an MFA from Warren Wilson and fellowships from Cave Canem and Bucknell University. His first book is Hum (Alice James Books, 2013), and he is founder of the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press.

More than half of my small income is generated by visiting schools, libraries, bars, backyard birthday parties, etc. Some of these have been soul-sucking experiences I would’ve passed on if rent didn’t depend on it. This fall, my income is entirely dependent on paid readings, which makes it tempting to say yes to everything. Here are some things we should all consider before saying yes.

Last Minute

A last minute request for a first time or onetime event is usually a bad sign. This is especially true if the event isn’t poetry related: “I just realized today that I need a poet for my company’s end of the quarter rainmaker soiree. We don’t offer an honorarium, but you can sell books.”

Last minute does not necessarily translate to poorly organized. Consider whether the organizer had another reader cancel or had to take over for someone else. Even the most well-run events are powerless to a poet catching the plague.

Free Gigs That Rock

Some of the best reading experiences I’ve had were for organizations that either couldn’t pay me or barely could. These readings are usually easy to spot. Organizers will be upfront about what they can or can’t pay, they’ll be enthusiastic about your work, and you’ll get a generally good feeling from the person contacting you.

Free gigs that absolutely do not rock will usually feel like they’re doing you a favor. “There’s a microphone here. You’re welcome.”

What Is Your Fee?

This question used to fill me with panic. How much are my poems worth? Too high and I might price myself out of the gig. Too low and I might not be able to replace my broken glasses. What I do now is lean on candor. I tell the organizer the upper range of what I typically get for similar events, admit that I have a sliding scale, and ask them not to lowball me. It’s rare for a decent person to read “don’t screw me please” and still try to screw you.

Bizarre Events and Locations

Someone thinks, “I like poetry. I like corn dogs. We should do poetry at the state fair next to the corndog tent!” It keeps happening, though poetry is an intimate experience that requires attention. A situation where people will accidentally stumble across your poem on their way to the tilt-a-whirl is not ideal.

If you can be sure there is a built-in audience coming to an atypical event specifically to see poems, it can be a good time. Also, some events use the unexpected presence of poetry as a feature, such as Pop Up Poets and Kiss Punch Poem. The difference is that these are well thought out, ongoing projects.

Good Organization Accidentally in League with Hacks

This is one of the leading causes of poorly organized readings in bizarre locations. I’ve seen this paradigm enough that I run the other way when the following list of factors present themselves: An organization I trust is tapped by another organization with a big name, usually a corporation or respected institution, to provide poets, last minute, for a one-off event. What happens here is a lazy employee at Massivecorporateco is charged with filling a program they don’t want to be organizing in the first place. They contact a poetry-related organization to get free entertainment. A bad time is had by all.

Someone Who Loves Your Poetry Doesn’t Realize Their Friends Won’t

Sometimes an audience member will be so enthralled with your poems they won’t be able to fathom their frat brothers not being similarly wowed by you. So they scrape together some university funds and find a dank room for you to read in. Their bros and sister sorority show up because they’re socially obligated to. You are a chore to survive before the drinking starts. The flipside is that there’s pretty much always someone in that kind of crowd that will connect to your work. They didn’t realize they would until you showed up. I often think of going into these spaces that we don’t fit as part of the job. It’s different from the corndog tent because they’re actually a captive audience. If you have them present and listening, do your job and make it damn hard for them to remain unchanged.

Photo: Jamaal May. Credit: Tarfia Faizullah.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Detroit is provided by an endowment established with generous contribution from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors, and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Bobby Gonzalez blogs about his P&W-supported writing workshops at the Betances Community Center. Gonzalez is a nationally known performance poet, storyteller, and multicultural motivational speaker. Born and raised in the South Bronx, New York City, he grew up in a bicultural environment. Bobby draws on his Native American (Taino) and Latino (Puerto Rican) roots to offer a unique repertoire of discourses, readings, and performances that celebrate his indigenous heritage.

In July and August, Gonzalez, author of The Last Puerto Rican Indian: A Collection of Dangerous Poetry, facilitated a series of workshops titled “Spoken Word 101” at the Betances Community Center in the Bronx. Attending the half-dozen sessions were neighborhood residents, teenagers, and middle-aged poetry enthusiasts. Typically, the stereotype of a writer’s creative process evokes a solitary figure holding a pen in a dimly lit room, slowly and painfully scrawling words onto a blank piece of paper. In contrast, in “Spoken Word 101,” the participants gather together in a small room  to read, discuss, and even argue about verses from poets such as Langston Hughes, Joy Harjo, and Woody Guthrie. (Despite the lively atmosphere, the group was stunned into silence by Guthrie’s description of the horrific 1935 great dust storm that swept across Oklahoma.)

After the readings and discussions came the real work: writing. Each workshop challenged the students with a writing prompt, and they were told to compose an original piece within ten minutes. The first prompt was "I wish I had told my mother… .” The students dug deep into the recesses of their memories and inner emotions. When the students read their writings to the class, each paused at least once to sigh or wipe away a tear.

An objective of the “Spoken Word 101” workshop is to teach students the basics of reading and performing at Open Mics. This means developing skills that create rhythm, pacing, pauses, and silence to enhance spoken-word presentations. The class also studied ways to utilize body movement, eye contact, and other techniques to better communicate the intended message though physical gestures and facial expressions.

The workshop series ended with an Open Mic event, in which the students performed for friends and family members. The younger poets bravely recited their personal and sometimes heartbreaking lines to an audience that beamed with interest and pride. “Spoken Word 101” transcended the original goal of teaching students to read, write, and perform poetry. The workshop empowered the students to understand their life experiences and artistic talents are special gifts that should be shared with the outside world. So thank you, Poets & Writers!

Photo:  Bobby Gonzalez and Betances' Writers.  Photo Credit: Maria Aponte

Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.