Clipart.com photo
Audio of MountainWord’s reading of “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins, onetime U.S. poet laureate:
1:45 minutes
For text, click here.
For the book, we find Collins at his best:
“Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems” by Billy Collins
West Virginia Poetry Society President Holly Cross sent along this missive about events we’d want to know about:
Kathy Mattea’s “Coal” is full of poetry, the lyric blended wonderfully with the music — I’m thinking particularly of the Billy Edd Wheeler songs like “Coal Tattoo” and “Red Winged Black Bird.” From Cross Lanes, W.Va., Mattea says this is her tribute to “my place and my people.” Both of her grandfathers were coal miners and her mother worked for the UMW. Mattea said the Sago Mine disaster that killed 12 miners in January 2006 prompted her to make the album of coal songs. It’s due out April 1, 2008, right around the corner. Try Amazon.com for a pre-order price guarantee. Check out this YouTube of “Black Lung,” the last song in the collection, for a vivid swath of reality.
Creative writing professor
Claudia Rankine at Pomona
College in California produces
multimedia poetry — sound,
video and photos. Her
much-praised work,
“Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric,”
blends poetry, essay, and
video imagery.
Dogwood, April 2007 — Photo by Vic Burkhammer
Robert Lee Brewer at Poetic Asides is challenging himself to write a poem a day during April, National Poetry Month. Read all about it here.
Brewer is editor of WritersMarket.com, and his latest blog post at Asides asks the question: “Is poetry a collectible commodity?” as he focuses on the Eureka Books plan for broadsides of famous poets’ poems.
***
The poets over at the West Virginia Poetry Society are honing their skills with a variety of poetry prompts. One of the most fascinating recently was the prompt for a form called haibun, a combination of prose and haiku poetry. Some have said the haibun is “a narrative of an epiphany,” or if not an epiphany, a special moment. Good examples of haibun can also be found at Contemporary Haibun Online.
Poets.org has unveiled the world’s first mobile poetry archive. Click here, for “Woo or woe on the go.”
You can preview the mobile site from your desktop or laptop. Poems are arranged by occasion or theme.
There’s a Poem in Your Pocket section, with poems like “Two Countries” by Naomi Shihab Nye, “Broadway” by Mark Doty, and, yes, “Shirt” by Robert Pinsky, “Chaplinesque” by Hart Crane, “Pockets” by Howard Nemerov and many others. Remember, Poem in Your Pocket Day is coming up during National Poetry Month, on April 17.
Continue reading »
Poet William F. DeVault — Photo by Vic Burkhammer
William F. DeVault was born in Greenville, SC, on August 16, 1955. He spent a lot of his young life in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he graduated from Morgantown High School and attended WVU.
Carolyn Rose Garcia, WV Poetry Out Loud winner — Photo by Vic Burkhammer
Winners of the West Virginia Poetry Out Loud competition at the Cultural Center today:
Carolyn Rose Garcia, of Notre Dame High School, Harrison County, won with her delivery of Robert Pinsky’s poem “Shirt.” She will receive $200 and an all-expense paid trip to the nationals in Washington, D.C., on April 29.
Jasmine Lewis of Spring Valley High School, Wayne County, was runner-up with Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.”
Jasmine Lewis, WV Poetry Out Loud runner-up — Photo by Vic Burkhammer
Some free workshops for writers are coming up on Saturday, April 5, 2008, at the Cultural Center in Charleston, W.Va.
About Norman Jordan’s recent book, and his free poetry workshops on second Saturdays of the month in Malden: 
Jordan’s book “Where Do People in Dreams Come From? & Other Poems” features different times of his life, including poems and photographs which you could not find elsewhere. The book is well worth buying; you get the feeling you’ve connected with a rare and real person. An old teacher of mine told me once that it seems we study everything in schools except people, and that we need to study people around us more closely. The people to pay close attention to, my teacher cautioned, are the ones who have something to impart to you that they could not have learned in any ordinary way. Jordan seems to be one of those unusual people.
You are currently browsing the MountainWord weblog archives for March, 2008.