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PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown gives an overview of the Borders saga, the last chapter of which begins today when the bookstore chain enters liquidation and offers going-out-of-business sales at its remaining locations, and talks with Slate's Annie Lowrey about the demise of the forty-year-old company.
Shot and produced by Almudena Toral, this video documents seventy-six-year-old New York poet Jack Agüeros's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Agüeros, a community advocate who directed El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem for eight years, is the author of four poetry collections, including Lord, Is This a Psalm? (Hanging Loose Press, 2002).
The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia has announced its 2011 fellows in the arts. Poets CAConrad and Pattie McCarthy are among the twelve Philadelphia-area artists, musicians, and innovators awarded sixty-thousand-dollar fellowships.
Conrad, who has lived in Philadelphia for twenty-five years, is a self-taught writer for whom "poetry and other art disciplines are forms of courage.” Innovator of a type of writing he calls "(Soma)tic poetry"—"instructions and recipes that invite the reader-listener into deeply embodied experiences," Conrad is the author of six books including The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009), The City Real & Imagined (Factory School, 2010), Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), and Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006). His latest, (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises & Poems, is forthcoming from Wave Books this fall.
McCarthy studied creative writing at Temple University, where she earned her M.A. in 1998. Experimenting with language and narrative, her collections include Table Alphabetical of Hard Words (2010), Verso (2004), and bk of (h)rs (2002), all published by Apogee Press, and she is currently at work on a project involving various Marys of history and fiction (from the Virgin Mary to Marys who figured into the Salem Witch Trials, for instance).
The awards, now in their twentieth year, are given to Philadelphia-area artists and writers at any stage in their careers. While there is an entry process for nominees, those who may apply for the annual fellowships are selected by an anonymous panel familiar with artists working in the region.
In the video below, Conrad reads from his most recent collection, The Book of Frank.
Poet Olga Garcia, author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas and the chapbook Lovely Little Creatures, blogs about her experience facilitating a P&W-supported workshop with young Latina women.
In July of 2008, I was invited by Calaca Press to facilitate a two-day workshop in San Ysidro with eight young Latina women. The goal was to nurture these emerging writers via an intense writing workshop, publication, and public reading. The participants ranged in age from eighteen to thirty-three years old, and came from a variety of communities in Southern California—San Diego, Los Angeles, Ontario, and Montclair.
We gathered at The Front, a San Ysidro art gallery exhibiting political prints. Zapatistas and workers in struggle from around the
world peered at us from the gallery walls as we began our journey. Our
objective: connect with our bodies and excavate poems buried therein. On that Saturday
and Sunday, for fours hours each day, we explored different concepts of the
body. We read Lucille Clifton’s “Hips,” Elba R. Sánchez’s “Me Siento Continente,”
Michelle Tea’s rant to America,
“The Beautiful.” Yusef Komunyakaa sang praises to the flesh in his sensational
poem, “Anodyne.” tatiana de la tierra gave us “Visions of Colombia.” And, Sandra
C. Muñoz gave us a body manifesto entitled, “For My Sister Who Thinks I'm Unhappy
Because I like her Don’t Wear a Size Six.”
The words of these writers were our guides, providing constant inspiration
and great poetic models.
Aside from reading and writing, we also played. Using collage materials from recycled magazines and newspapers, we created poster-sized body maps. These body maps served as springboards into writing exercises, allowing us to venture into poems about flesh, memory, and body scars. Sara Eslava, one of the participants, for example, wrote a celebratory ode to her curves, while Patricia Beltrán birthed a prose piece about a lover who failed to see the beauty in her cesarean scar.
In the weeks following, I worked with Calaca Press to compile and edit a small chapbook consisting of the women’s strongest work produced during the workshop. The women were encouraged to revise titles, flesh out gaps, and polish images. All of the women proved themselves extremely committed to the process and to improving their craft. Being a part of this unique project and working so closely with these women gave me more than they will ever know. They gifted me with the opportunity to be part of their evolution as writers, which has fueled my creative fire.
Photo: Olga Garcia. Credit: Weenobee.com.
Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Focus this week on collecting images, drawing on as wide a range of sources as possible. Cull family albums for interesting photos, visit online archives of images, cut out images from magazines or newspapers, take photos of buildings, billboards, birds—anything that strikes you as you make your way through each day. At the end of the week, assemble these on a table or tape them to a wall in your work space. Write a poem inspired by this collage.
Okay, this is just about the best thing we've watched all summer. Check out this video of Brazenhead Books, a secret bookstore inside Michael Seidenberg's apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Why is it secret? Just watch this.
The shortlist for the twentieth annual Forward Prize for Poetry, the U.K.-based award given for a collection by an established writer, a debut book, and a single poem, were announced this week. Among the finalists for the ten thousand pound best-collection prize (worth more than sixteen thousand dollars) isAmerican poet D. Nurkse, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, for Voices Over Water (CB Editions; first published in 1996 by Four Way Books in New York City).
Criticized by the Guardian for its all-male composition, the shortlist also includes former winners Sean O'Brien for November (Picador) and David Harsent for Night (Faber and Faber), as well as John Burnside for Black Cat Bone (Jonathan Cape), Geoffrey Hill for Clavics (Enitharmon Press), and Michael Longley for A Hundred Doors (Jonathan Cape). While women writers have historically had a strong representation among debut prizewinners, only three women poets, including U.K. poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, have received the top award.
The debut collections cited for this year's one-thousand-pound honor are Rachael Boast for Sidereal (Picador), Judy Brown for Loudness (Sidereal), Nancy Gaffield for Tokaido Road (CB Editions), Ahren Warner for Confer (Bloodaxe Books), John Whale for Waterloo Teeth (Carcanet Press), and Nerys Williams for Sound Archive (Seren).
Nominated for best poem are R. F. Langley, who died in January, for "To a Nightingale," Alan Jenkins for "Southern Rail (The Four Students)," Sharon Olds for "Song the Breasts Sing to the Late-in-Life Boyfriend," and Jo Shapcott for "I Tell the Bees."
The winners will be announced in October 5, the eve of U.K. National Poetry Day.
In the video below, Nurkse reads an "ecologically correct love poem," "The Present," at popular New York City poetry venue Cornelia Street Cafe.
This August will mark the twelfth year the Readings/Workshops program has supported poets taking part in the Tuolumne Meadows Poetry Festival at Yosemite National Park. The event is cofounded by ranger naturalist Margaret Eissler, who leads the park’s interpretive program and directs the Parsons Memorial Lodge Summer Series, a forum for the arts and sciences. Eissler’s answers to our questions bring to life the profound experiences this festival provides for her as project director, the poets, audience members, and more than a few lucky hikers.
What makes your program unique?
First, to get to Parsons Memorial Lodge, we walk an easy three-quarters of a mile on a trail across the meadow. Parsons Memorial Lodge, an historic gathering place, is a simple, rustic stone building with lodgepole pine beams and casement windows that overlook the Tuolumne River meandering through broad subalpine meadows surrounded by granite domes and peaks—all this with open sky. The lodge breathes this in and out through the windows and arched door. The setting, the intimate space, the audience—a warm and enthusiastic mix of park visitors, park staff, and residents from surrounding communities—make the experience unforgettable for everyone involved.
What have been the most memorable moments?
The consistently rapt and respectful audience. Poet and festival cofounder Patti Trimble wrote, “When I read, in that small room in the middle of Tuolumne Meadows, I felt viscerally that everyone in that room was right there with me. We were all experiencing, at the same moment, our human connection, our shared unexplainable nature within nature.”
Poet Jerry Martien remarking that the experience seemed to him the essence of community in the largest sense of the word: the perfect balance and combination of people with place—the rocks, river, bears, trees…. 
Gary Snyder reading his Yosemite trail crew poems within the building made of granite surrounded by the mountains and meadows he loves.
Dorianne Laux reciting, almost singing/dancing, a Li-Young Lee poem by heart during a workshop by the river.
Li-Young Lee, more accustomed to life in the city, saying in wonderment, “Margaret, there is something about this place that is so personal. It is almost haunting. It is sacred.”
David Hinton reading ancient Chinese wilderness poetry.
Brian Turner sharing poems he had written in Iraq—poems that observe the landscape, the war, the people (all people: men, women, children, taxi cab drivers, suicide bombers, soldiers, medics), their culture, history, and relationships—placing the war within a far larger context than we usually hear. He was a messenger from a place most of us know so little about.
The student intern who told me after a presentation by Terry Tempest Williams that he wavers between hope and despair, but the event pushed him towards the side of hope.
The two young women coming off the trail to find themselves unexpectedly at Terry’s event—their eyes bright with excitement.
Cofounder Patti Trimble remembers other moments: “Coleman Barks reading Rumi's poems from seven hundred years ago, and later, saying ‘It's all about love, isn't it?’; Pattiann Rogers’s long detailed list poems of nature's complexity; David Mas Masumoto’s connecting in a real way the Yosemite watershed with the Great Central Valley; the open mike: Parsons Lodge packed to standing room, fire blazing in the fireplace….”
And I will add, the working together that makes all this happen. That includes Poets & Writers, Inc., to whom I give many thanks for their very existence and long-time support.
How do you find and invite readers?
I look for diverse voices that complement each other. It’s like planning a menu. I spend blissful hours in bookstores. I subscribe to magazines and investigate ideas. Friends recommend writers or books. I attend readings when I can. YouTube videos or recordings are helpful. When I send an invitation, I feel like I am casting a line. I wait for a response, hoping to get a bite. I love that I can offer an experience that is a gift to the writers and audience alike.
What is the value of literary programs for your community?
The intent of the Parsons Memorial Lodge Summer Series is to inform and inspire, to enrich the visitor’s park experience through a variety of perspectives, and to realize the possibilities inherent when connecting people with a magical place. Poetry fits perfectly within these parameters. I witness people—often people who say they don’t like poetry— discover the beauty and power of poetry for the first time. Ah! What more? Poetry gets to the essence of what it is to be alive, how to be in this world, how to live on this Earth. That’s why I do this.
Photos: (Top) Project director Margaret Eissler; (bottom) interior view of Parsons Memorial Lodge before a reading/presentation by Gary Snyder and Tom Killion. Credit: Arya Degenhardt.
Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Check out this time-lapse video of a new Half Price Books store being built in San Antonio. The store opens for business tomorrow.
Poet Olga Garcia, author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas and the chapbook Lovely Little Creatures, blogs about her experience facilitating the P&W-supported workshop at Robidoux Library in Riverside, California, during May 2011.
Anton Chekhov wrote, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” I often use Esmeralda Santiago’s “How to Eat a Guava” to illustrate Chekhov’s point. In addition, I lay out an altar of fruits, vegetables, and sensory objects—there’s labor in carting around pineapples, baby watermelons, and football-sized conch shells, but for me the altar is ritual, the first thing I put up and the last thing I take down. Nowhere has the altar proven more effective than it did at Robidoux Library in Riverside, California.
Imagine a stampede of thirty teenagers who gravitate towards
the altar, handling radishes and jalapeños, asking “Are we gonna eat these?”
One spiky-haired kid quickly falls in love with a coconut. “Can I have this?
Please!? Please!?” Others follow his lead.
Luckily, I’m not the only adult in the room. Arlene Cano, coordinator of the
Jurupa Reads program, two English teachers from nearby schools, and the library’s
youth coordinator are also present. Together, we manage to get everyone seated.
We begin with a listening game. I read “How to Eat a Guava” as they jot down phrases from the text that trigger their senses. When I ask for volunteers to share, they respond with a manic show of hands. “Dark green guava,” says one student. “The size of a tennis ball” and “prickly stem end,” adds another. “It smells like summer afternoons and hopscotch under a mango tree.”
Next, they’re invited to visit the altar and choose an object for our first writing exercise. They swarm the table. The spiky-haired kid clutches the coconut. I encourage them to smell and taste some of the items. They cringe and say “Ugh!” at the small bag of salted dried fish. I give them chia to taste. When the tiny, flavorless seeds magically gel on their tongues, they describe the texture as slimy, soft, Jello-y. One student grimaces. “Gross!” She rushes to spit the seeds into the trash.
The writing exercises feel chaotic because they’re fidgeting in their seats, calling out, “Me! Me! Can you help me?” But when they share aloud... poetry comes alive. The coconut transforms into a brown, hairy sun in an alien world. A seashell triggers the memory of a day at the beach with a now-deceased father. A waxy green poblano sizzles on a mother’s stove.
At the end of the workshop, they beg to keep the altar items. “Please! ¡Por favor!” I say yes to the edibles. Coconut kid beams. Others seize the pineapple, bananas, even the dry hibiscus flowers, and the cinnamon sticks. When they finally disperse, I’m spent yet completely satisfied. On the table, they leave behind scattered shells and stones—skeletal remains of an altar well feasted on.
Photo: Olga Garcia. Credit: Weenobee.com.
Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
