Poets Andrea Hollander Budy and Sheryl St. Germain will give a joint poetry reading in Pittsburgh, Pa., at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall in Oakland at 8 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007.

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Ebenezer Medical Outreach of Huntington is sponsoring a World AIDS Day poetry slam at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007, at the Marie Redd Senior Life Enrichment Center, 9th Avenue and 18th Street, Huntington, W.Va. HIV testing will be available. Contact number: (304) 529-0753, ext. 120 or 118. Charleston’s not having a poetry slam as far as I know, but here is a link to a story by Gazette reporter Eric Eyre about AIDS Day locally.

One point of interest mentioned elsewhere in Gazz is this: Sponsored by the West Virginia Department of Education, a section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display through Monday, Dec. 3 at the Cultural Center. For more information, contact: (304) 558-0220.

Photo by Vic Burkhammer

Poetry reading/book signing
Doug Van Gundy — “A Life Above Water”
Friday, November 30, 2007
5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Taylor Books
www.taylorbooks.com
226 Capitol St
Charleston, WV 25301
(304) 342-1461

Click here for an August 2007 MountainWord podcast featuring Van Gundy.

Today, let’s muse on the sometimes overlooked W.Va. poet Caroline “Danske” Dandridge, born in Denmark… a poet whose thoughts were profound and whose eye for natural detail was precise.
 
She was, I’m almost certain, too sentimental for some, especially those who followed Ezra Pound’s extraordinary remarks about poetry in 1912. “Direct treatment of the thing … (or object).” — Ezra Pound
 

Here are two sample poems:
 
WINGS
 
Shall we know in the Hereafter
    All the reasons that are hid?
Does the butterfly remember
    What the caterpillar did?
How he waited, toiled, and suffered
    To become the chrysalid.
 
When we creep so slowly upward;
    When each day new burden brings;
When we strive so hard to conquer
    Vexing sublunary things—
When we wait and toil and suffer,
    We are working for our wings.
 
–Danske Dandridge
 
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Photo by Vic Burkhammer

EVENT: Poetic Nightfall – Saturday, December 1, 7:30 p.m., at the Pocahontas County Opera House, 818 3rd Ave, Marlinton, WV 24954-1016.

After the open microphone readings, the program will feature three West Virginia poets: Kirk Judd, Wolf Knight and Edward Kennison.
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Click it — A JUST-AROUND-THE-CORNER EVENT: W.Va. Hall of Fame’s first induction ceremony Friday, Nov. 16, 2007

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Photo by Vic Burkhammer

Here’s Steve Scafidi reading his poem “To an Old Woman in the Air,” from his newest book, “For Love of Common Words: Poems” (Southern Messenger Poets). In the poem Scafidi zooms forward into the future when his young daughter is an old woman. It’s about the future, and the eventualities of hope and love and family. The poem carries Scafidi’s nice sense of humor too. I would give you an excerpt at this point, but I don’t want to spoil the surprises.

If this is your first visit to MountainWord, please read earlier posts. One I wrote last summer on Scafidi you might find interesting.

Some call Scafidi the best poet in West Virginia. Recorded live Oct. 13, 2007, at the seventh annual West Virginia Book Festival, Civic Center, Charleston, W.Va.

Enjoy.

(2:37 minutes)

Harry Humes has won the 2007 Keystone Chapbook Competition with his manuscript “Underground Singing,” rife with details of coal town life. This is hardly his first award. His first collection of poety was “Bottomland” (University of Arkansas Press). It won the 1983 Devins Award from the University of Missouri Press. He has received many accolades since then. Google him at http://books.google.com/ for a taste of his other books, and check back here for more about “Underground Singing,” due out in January 2008.

Another, more direct link to W.Va., besides this collection being about coal town life, is that Jeff Mann, who judged the competition, grew up in Virginia and West Virginia, and has degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech. His poetry has appeared in many journals and publications, including Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and an anthology called “Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999.” He has three chapbooks out: “Bliss,” “Mountain Fireflies,” and “Flint Shards from Sussex,” and two books of poetry, “Bones Washed With Wine” and “On the Tongue.”  “Mountain Fireflies” seems to be unavailable.