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The Rural Libraries Tour is a result of a seventeen-year partnership between Poets & Writers’ Readings & Workshops program and the California Center for the Book (CalBook), which sends writers into rural and underserved areas of California to teach creative writing workshops in libraries or at venues promoted by the libraries. Some workshops are bilingual (English and Spanish), some reach teens, and most reach all ages and types of people. As the eighteenth year of programming approaches, the participating writing instructors reflect on their experiences teaching these workshops.
My visits to libraries in rural areas of Southern California are always a special treat for me as both an educator and an artist. In my regular teaching job, I am used to working with students for an extended period of time. With the Rural Libraries Tour, I am often entering completely new spaces with people I will probably never see again. Yet, in every single workshop that I have conducted during the past nine years, I have felt very much at home. I believe this is because the love of words and the desire to create binds us, regardless of where we are and if we will meet again. The potential for meaningful connections via words and art (even in a short amount of time) is always possible.
My poetic spirit is nourished in amazing ways each time. We don’t just read and write, we share intimate parts of ourselves and, collectively, we create. It’s amazing how often participants linger past the workshop to express how much they enjoyed being able to tap into themselves and write something that surprises them. There is a glow about them that is familiar; I know that feeling of having created something and feeling empowered or proud. These workshops—they’re a dynamic exchange of creative energy and they always reaffirm my love of poetry and community.
I’ve driven the road to Hollister, California numerous times over the past several seasons that I’ve participated in the Rural Libraries Tour, but this time was special. After having just released my book, All They Will Call You (University of Arizona Press, 2017), based on the famous 1948 plane crash that killed twenty-eight Mexican migrant workers, I knew I was returning to a community that not only knew the realities of migrant life very well, but more than that, Hollister is positioned on the western slope of the very canyon that the plane crashed down on—Los Gatos Canyon.
I was visiting with students, most of whom had come from migrant farm working families. They had never heard of this story before, but felt an immediate connection to it. They were rapt, and we conversed and shared stories for what seemed like hours. The most beautiful part came in the final minutes when students began asking if one of the passengers on the plane was named Rodriguez. And then another asked about the name Martinez. Another still wanted to know if there was a Ruiz who was killed. They were each going to go home and share this story with their parents. Perhaps they too were related. This is the power of stories, I nodded to myself. I never know what exchange will impact the people I get to work with, as well as myself. But always, I leave feeling grateful.
I’m happiest when people of all ages and ethnicities appear at workshops. Including the California border towns of Imperial and Crescent City, I’ve visited small libraries tucked in Markleesville, Placerville, Alturas, Yreka, Etna, and Weaverville (in the Trinity Alps), Susanville and Quincy where, always, surprisingly gifted youngsters, teens, and adults appear with their pens and their souls waiting for expression. Most recently, twenty people gathered on round tables at the Shasta Library in Redding.
Our workshops together have welcomed me into the heartland of California as part of a larger mission: to bring love of language to small-town California. I’ve been heartened and changed as part of our years-long, far-and-wide endeavor. I feel delight and honor and, hey, almost “credible!” I feel held and loved by the support and camaraderie (not to mention pay!) provided by Poets & Writers and the California Center for the Book. These years of sessions nourish and transform my own writing. My (almost finished!) book about land and language includes many chapters about experiences and revelations in small libraries—“Damien’s Waterfalls” (South Lake Tahoe), “Sublime Limes” (Colusa), and “Cesar Stealing Words” (Williams), to name a few. Our rural libraries outreach adds a wildly colorful dimension to my writing and life.
Support for Readings & Workshops in California is provided by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Photo 1: Olga García Echeverría (Credit: Maritza Alvarez). Photo 2: Tim Z. Hernandez (Credit: Tim Z. Hernandez). Photo 3: Susan Wooldridge (Credit: Shannon Iris).In this short film produced for Voluble, a Los Angeles Review of Books channel, Tarfia Faizullah reads two of her poems. Faizullah, author of the poetry collections Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014) and Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018), collaborated with emcee and producer Brooklyn Shanti and tabla player Robin Sukhadia to create this video.
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“I’ve left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system that revolves too near a black hole. I have left a patch of dirt in my place and many of you won’t know the difference...” Danez Smith reads his poem “Dear White America” at the 2014 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Festival. Smith’s second collection, Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), is longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in poetry.
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Submissions are currently open for the 2017 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets. A prize of $2,000 and publication in Frontier Poetry is given annually for a poem by an emerging poet. Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, will judge.
Poets with no more than two full-length published collections are eligible. There is no style or topic restriction, but the editors want “work that is blister, that is color, that strikes hot the urge to live and be.” Using the online submission system, submit up to three poems totaling no more than five pages with a $20 entry fee by September 30. Multiple submissions are allowed. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Check out our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Watch Tyehimba Jess read from his Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Olio:
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The 2020 Literary Writers Conference was held online from December 2 to December 4. The conference, which was hosted by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, featured agent pitch sessions, pitch clinics, a query letter clinic, and panel discussions. The faculty included fiction writer Emily Temple, agents Claudia Ballard (William Morris Endeavor) and Regina Brooks (Serendipity Literary Agency), and editors Danielle A. Jackson (Oxford American), Jonathan Lee (Catapult), and Jyothi Natarajan (Margins).
Literary Writers Conference, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, 154 Christopher Street, Suite 3C, New York, NY 10004. David Gibbs, Contact.
“Well, I only write about cute boys and snowy streets, so my poems are always in tune with each other. Seriously, though, I find myself returning to the same subjects. I try to vary my approach to these subjects,” poet Chen Chen says in an interview in the Adroit Journal. Select a poem you’ve written in the past and write a new poem that returns to the same subject from a different angle. Has your perspective become more nuanced over time? How does altering your point of view, verse form, or language provide your topic with a refreshed perspective?
