Welcome to MountainWord. I’m Vic Burkhammer. If you’d like to read one of your unpublished poems over the phone, just call me at (304) 348-5184 and wait for the voicemail to kick in, leave your name and number for verification and then read away.

I may feature your poem on MountainWord. To send poems, mp3 demos or poetry-related news, click my e-mail link here. Here’s what I’m looking for this time around: poems of under 30 well-written lines. Nothing sentimental or old-fashioned, just lots of precision, strong imagery. The tone can run the gamut from humorous to serious.
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World Poetry Day is coming up on March 21. The purpose of the day is to promote poetry around the world.

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I’ll probably mention this again, but here is an intercepted e-mail that I know Norman Jordan wanted to get out:

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Willow Island Cemetery, Willow Island, W.Va. — Photo by Vic Burkhammer

On West Virginia Public Broadcasting today, in another touching rumination, W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney talked about happiness and its close relationship to compassion.

It seems apt now particularly as I am in Day 4 without my Aunt Earlene, my mother’s only sister, who died in an Indiana hospice care house early Saturday morning. Her obituary mentioned that she liked to “help people.” What could be better than that, for a woman who had her large share of difficulties. Helping was her refuge.

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Wick Poetry Center features W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney — 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 4, 2008, Room 306, Kent State Student Center, Kent, Ohio. Another marvelous poet, Maggie Anderson, is coordinator of the Wick Poetry Center and teaches at Kent State. Both WVU graduates, Anderson and McKinney go way back to the days of Trellis in the 1970s with my friend and teacher, poet Winston Fuller of Morgantown, W.Va.
For an interview with McKinney and more information, click the Wick Poetry Center blog here.

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