What are you doing this Sunday evening? Well cancel it, because at 7PM on December 8, Broad Ripple’s Indiana Writers Center is hosting a new reading in their series An Evening with the Muse: The Inter Urban Poets, the roster of which includes two talented, veteran poets from our MFA program, Tracy Mishkin and Allyson Horton. The other poets on the bill include Linda Lee, Jeffrey Owen Pearson, Helen Townsend, Ali Birge, Mike Brockley and Pat Cupp. The event is free, open to the public, and will feed both your soul and your body. Because poems… and refreshments. Continue reading
poetry
“A poem is a type of prayer…”
Those of you who don’t know poet Doug Manuel must be recent additions to our program, because when he was a student, even if it was in some minute way, he touched damn near everybody. Doug was an almost irreplaceable part of the Writing in the Schools program; when I spoke to the kids last month, they were still quoting him. In his voice. Their impressions were impeccable. Doug was also Managing Editor of Booth, and a big reason why our poetry game stepped it up these past few years. And now he’s enrolled in the Ph.D. creative writing program at the University of Southern California, no doubt entrenched in page upon page of theory and poem alike. Despite this, he was gracious enough to take some time to share with us how he writes. And this is how it goes: Continue reading
Women’s poetry unites Butler community
During A Celebration of Women’s Poetry, the first open-mic reading in the short history of the Conversations @ Efroymson series, the forum matched the content. As much as the words off the page were empowering, so too was the sight of tenured professors trading notes with undergrads about which poetry collection to pick up next. Continue reading
Lerner interviews poet Aaron Belz
MFA nonfiction student Susan Lerner‘s interview with Aaron Belz “Cartographer of Word Galaxies” is up on The Believer‘s (a McSweeney‘s affiliate) online presence, The Believer Logger. Lerner and Belz touch upon the absurdity of words, the inherent ironies of consumer product marketing, Belz’s balance (or lack thereof) of poetry and comedy, and his complete and total disinterest in writing fiction. Belz writes, “I don’t see why fiction is necessary when we have real life.” Despite that smackdown, the interview is recommended reading for poets and prosers alike. Continue reading
An evening of women’s poetry
Co-sponsored by the Butler English Department and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies,
A Celebration of Women’s Poetry will open the Conversations @ Efroymson series on September 24 at 4PM. The event is open-mic, so all Butler students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend— and especially to share.
Readers are asked to share a favorite poem written by a woman, prefacing or following it by speaking briefly about the piece; perhaps the poem’s impact, or how it moves them. I reckon it’ll go a little something like this:
I bought Vol. 9 of Ninth Letter on a lark. I had no prior experience with the mag, it was a buy-one-get-something deal that charmed me. Cracking open the magazine, it was gorgeous. I paged through it without actually reading, stopping at what I can only describe as the ‘splash page’ for a series of seven poems by Paisley Rekdal: odes to Mae West. What a neat concept, I thought, so I dug in. I was immediately smitten with Rekdal’s langauge, the risky verve with which she composed, the message behind her work—espousing all that is quintessentially Mae.
The first poem, “You’re,” speaks of young girls emulating West’s mannerisms, but the final poem, “Confessional,” finds a more mature speaker instead internalizing West. It’s frank, free, an unapologetic sort of manifesto. It opens (each poem does) with an epigraph courtesy of Miss West: “The only good girl to make history was Betsy Ross and she had to stitch up a flag to do it.”
What gal is safe from being slut, tether of lies that leash
a pretty girl through life? Shamed in school by those who claimed
we’d each undone the captains of our football teams—
Shunned, despised, how, like dogs, we learned to heel.
How we cringed and whined; how we pissed ourselves
pretending to be good. O, but to insist beneath the artificial rules,
a realer artifice named “I” might thrive, one capable as Mae
of jokes so bright they’d split the world to its brutal truth.
It wasn’t that we were vile; we weren’t sluts enough. Reader:
I should have taken that boy out back and fucked
the life out of him. Forget it. I’ve another forty years to go.
I plan to be filthy. I plan to be low. (Laugh, reader,
so that “I” can last.) I’m writing the story of a life. Listen.
It’s about a girl who lost her reputation. And never missed it.
A Celebration of Women’s Poetry is slated to run from 4-6PM on September 24 at the Efroymson Center for Creative Writing. If you’re interested in reading, sign up with Efro-Master Chris Speckman (cspeckman@butler.edu) as soon as possible. If you’d like to pass around the electronic event poster, it is available here.
New MFA student to share stage with Indiana poet laureate
First-year MFA poet Claire McGuinness will be giving a reading this Thursday, September 19 at her alma mater, Earlham College, as part of The Borderlands Project. Personally curated by Indiana poet laureate Karen Kovacik, The Borderlands Project will bring together Hoosiers and poets from states sharing Indiana’s north, east, south and west borders to “share poems about immigration, migration, borders or home.”
The eastern reading will feature Hoosiers and Ohioans. Claire will be reading alongside a long list of great writers, including David Baker, Don Bogen, Michael Brockley, Jayel Kato, Jim Cummins, Mary Fell, Shari Wagner, and Karen Kovacik herself.
As many of us know, between graduation and Dialogue readings, giving a public reading among friends is nerve-wracking enough. For many writers and poets, the craft is a private, solitary activity. Now take that formerly private poem or piece of prose, place yourself in an unfamiliar crowd in the middle of a set list that includes the Indiana poet laureate, and tell me your palms aren’t already getting a little sweaty.
Speaking of poems, Claire was nice enough to furnish the poem she will be reading at the event, called “Indiana, at Night.”
I got lost.
Nothing but damn cornfields
outside this city,
and then, still lost,
I get stuck behind
a colossal John Deere
and my last slip
of patience
flits out the open window.
Then I see the hay bales
casting plump shadows
and I remember what it means
to be from here,
to tease the tourist,
yeah, you always say,
it just grows that way.
If you see Claire between today and Thursday, be sure to wish her well, and if you are oh-so-very inclined to show your support, the eastern reading will be held at Earlham College’s Meetinghouse on Thursday, September 19, at 7. No pressure.