West Virginia Writers’ Workshop. Four days of workshops, panel discussions, readings and lectures. July 17-July 20, 2008. Faculty includes Mark Brazaitis, Denise Duhamel, Brian Henry, and Sheri Reynolds. Also Nick Carbo, James Harms, John Hoppenthaler, Renee K. Nicholson and Jane Varley. Click here for information.

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Almost Tomorrow by Ray Nargis (Raven Productions) has edged its way into the top 10 contemporary bestsellers at poetryfoundation.org.

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Annual WV Writers Spring Conference, June 13-15, 2008, at Cedar Lakes Conference Center near Ripley, WV. Pre-registration is open through May 25, 2008. That’s Sunday.

Check out WV Writers online for information.

Poet John McKernan — Photo by Vic Burkhammer

Award-winning poet John McKernan, whose poems have been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review and many other places, will sign his book, “Resurrection of the Dust” (Backwaters Press) from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 24, 2008, at Borders Express, Charleston Town Center.

McKernan, a longtime professor of English at Marshall University, has also won awards for his teaching. He edits “ABZ: A Poetry Magazine,” issued yearly.

On the Net: http://www.abzpress.com

Tune in at 9 p.m., Thursday, May 22, on W.Va. Public Radio … for a radio version of poet Diane Gilliam Fisher’s “Kettle Bottom”… produced by Kate Long … hear the emotional truth of voices from a 1920s Mingo County coal camp.

My friend Wil Haygood has written a wonderful piece on Obama and the poetry of politics. It’s on 1C of today’s Washington Post. Click here, and enjoy.  As Alice in Wonderland might say at last, if she were really here, it’s nice to see things making sense for a change.

“Flood seen through a car window” Photo by Vic Burkhammer

I’ve been consumed recently with politics. Months before an election, I am hit with a flood of politics, and when I next look up, it seems, it’s almost Memorial Day.

Wil Haygood, a friend who writes for The Washington Post, called me the other day. We wanted to talk longer than we could at that moment. Wil had been traveling with the Obama campaign in North Carolina.

This morning from the APPALNET listserv, I received a note about Ron Eller’s “Obama’s ‘Appalachian Problem’? It’s Not So Easy.” The word cogent comes to mind.

I see how some of the media got it all wrong about Obama and West Virginia. The viewpoint piece online references an interesting slideshow of “The Photos That Began the War on Poverty.”

I want my poetry to take into account these things in some sense, not to explain them, but to put the truth of it all out there in the most powerful way possible for all to see. West Virginians are being stereotyped again. Continue reading »

Photo by Vic Burkhammer

Some say poetry is the center of the moment, compressed. A way of looking at the world. Words of iron, butterfly words. Poetry can be both terrifying, comforting. Saying the unsayable.

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My friends and I rarely write letters these days, the kind you find tucked away in a book years later. I found one the other day, and it captured my imagination.

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Covenant House sends along a reminder about “Poetry & Politics: Protest in Verse” coming up soon, 6:30 p.m., Thursday, May 8, 2008.

Click here to view flyer.

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AFTER WEST. By James Harms. 77 pgs. Carnegie Mellon University Press. 2008. $14.95 paper

By Vic Burkhammer
MountainWord

WVU’s director of creative writing James Harms has published a new book of poems called “After West.”

This is his sixth, and it has me thinking again about the whole notion of “west” and what it means.

“After West” the poem, the long centerpiece, weaves together many threads of the idea of “west.”

I simmer with possibilities while I read this book — I’m thinking of “The American Adam” by R.W.B. Lewis and how after the War of 1812 an air of optimism emerged in American life…. And then I’m thinking of the 20th century’s air of loss that extends into today. How we deal with that I think is part of what this book is about.

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