BITE-SIZE POETRY NEWS 7.6.2008
Musicians are gathering today at the Pour House, 4030 West Washington Street, Charleston, W.Va., to remember ex-coal miner Mo Truman. Known as West Virginia’s Willie Nelson, he was a much-loved member of the state’s music community. He died at 58, on June 4, 2008, of heart disease complications.
If you go today, the show starts at 4 p.m. The Carpenter Ants and others will be there. I understand that donations will be accepted, and an auction is planned to raise money to help Truman’s family defray funeral expenses.
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West Virginia poet Bob Henry Baber is the new state chairman of The Mountain Party of West Virginia, the Green Party affiliate. He teaches at Glenville State, and has long been in the public eye here, having been the mayor of Richwood (a town well-known for timber and ramps) and a gubernatorial candidate before that.
He has taught poetry in prisons out West, and edited “Time is an Eightball: Poems from the Juvenile Home & the Penitentiary of New Mexico.”
He also edited “Old Wounds, New Words: Poems from the Appalachian Poetry Project.”
His poetry is socially and environmentally very hip, and I recall the occasional sprightly humor of his book, “A Picture From Life’s Other Side — Appalachian Poems,” where he mixes in haiku and lowku.
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DID YOU KNOW?
Virginia’s poet laureate is Carolyn Foronda. Click here for her Web site.
Foronda reading a poem on YouTube:
