Jan 27, 2009

It's About Time Writers Feb 12 '09

Please join us!

Thurs. Feb 12, 2009 # 234 Sherry Reniker, Jack Remick, Elizabeth Austin + Joannie Stangeland on The Writer's Craft
6:00 - 7:45 p.m.
Ballard Branch Seattle Public Library
5614 22nd Ave. N.W.
Seattle , WA 98107
206-684-4089
http://itsaboutimewriters.homestead.com/

Elizabeth Austen was the Washington state “roadshow” poet for 2007. She provides weekly poetry commentary on KUOW, 94.9, public radio, and has poems forthcoming in Bellingham Review and Crab Creek Review. Her audio CD, skin prayers, is available at elizabethausten.org. She makes her living as a communications specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Sherry Reniker is a poet, editor, and college instructor of writing. She spent 15 years in Tokyo where she edited World's Edge, an anthology of poetry and photography, and published her first short collection, Geo Frictions. As a poet, she has been compared to Mina Loy.

Joannie Kervran Stangeland’s chapbook Weathered Steps was published by Rose Alley Press. A Steady Longing for Flight won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. In 2003, Joannie was a Jack Straw artist-in-residence. More recently, her work has appeared in Illya’s Honey, Pinyon, and Pontoon.

JACK REMICK is a writer, teacher, and editor. His publications include Terminal Weird, short stories; The Stolen House, a novel, and The Seattle Five Plus One, an anthology of poetry. Fction includes three California novels: Pacific Coast Highway; The Deification of Jack Kerouac; and Berkeley ‘71: Book of the Dead.

Jan 4, 2009

Canon fodder for thought

You don't like being pigeon-holed as a gay man, Greg? Weird! :P

Can't say I agree with the gist of the article that printed poetry's a dead art form (obviously), but I do agree with your own sentiment that people misconstrue performed poetry as dumbed-down.

It's funny. In academia, literature PhD profs/students (critics) often make the same claim of MFA profs/students -- that they're writing, but it's not the "real thing" like Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, etc. -- while MFA profs/students make the corresponding claim -- that literature PhD students are muddling around with dead language. Hell, Socrates (through Plato) was the first to make that claim.

The truth is, we're all in bed together, and the "real" poets know it. I remember meeting Bob Holman at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the mid-1990s, back when he used to MC. Bob asked me where I was studying at the time; I told him Columbia. He'd spent his undergrad years at Columbia, which is notorious for its bootcamp core courses on classical western topics. His response: "Oh, yeah? I was shot out of that canon!"

Thanks for sharing, Greg!

Jan 1, 2009

Spoken Word Poetry article in the Weekly

Hey all,
There’s an article in the Seattle Weekly this week about Spoken Word poetry that I thought I’d share. Two things I’m not wild about in the article:
· Instead of “a 43 year old gay man”, why couldn’t I have been a “43 year old poet”?
· I’m SURE I said “…excluding people from my work” instead of “…secluding people from my work”.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-12-31/music/spoken-world/
GregBee