poetry

New MFA student to share stage with Indiana poet laureate

Posted by MS

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.”Butler MFA Indiana Poet Laureate poetry reading Earlham College The Borderlands Project

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.

The art of chapbooking

Posted by MS

forhan mugPublished by Los Angeles-based Silver Birch Press, Butler MFA instructor Chris Forhan’s new chapbook Ransack and Dance is in many ways not new. In fact, most of the chapbook’s 24 poems were penned between 7 and 10 years ago, before Forman met his wife (fellow poet and Butler faculty member) Alessandra Lynch and moved to Indy. When Melanie Villines reached out to Forhan, hoping to include his poem “The Church of the Backyard” in Silver Birch’s Summer Anthology, he had a few more poems to offer, but perhaps not enough for a full book. In short, this was the conception of Ransack and Dance. If you’d like to read the full story and catch a sample poem, head to Butler’s Newsroom.

What I’m actually here to do is sell you on chapbooks. Forhan calls the chapbook “a quick, intense experience.” Compact, with thematic unity. I would call them underutilized. Say you’re a fairly young – or fairly inexperienced – poet, or prose poet, essayist, or… short-storyist. You may not have enough work to fill a book just yet, and you certainly don’t have a body of work from 7-10 years prior to draw upon at your leisure. But, say you have about 30 pages of work you’re proud of.

For you, a chapbook is surmountable. It’s a starting point. A stepping stone. A hook to hang your hat on. A chance to see your work – and your work alone – featured either in print or in a digital package, ready to be consumed by others. And conveniently, many presses who publish chapbooks are especially friendly to neophytes. What’s even better, because chapbook print runs tend to be on the small side with equally small distribution, many publishers will allow work previously published in chapbooks to appear (when the time arrives) in your full-length book.

forhan coverYou’re probably thinking I can’t sweeten this pot any further. Chapbooks are chaptastic, you get it. But wait, there’s more: Contests! Cash prizes! Finally making your parents proud of your decision to write (mileage may vary)! Random example: BLOOM runs a yearly contest and selects winners in poetry, prose, and nonfiction. Black Lawrence Press also has a well-established yearly contest that accepts poetry and fiction. For poets, this list will be of interest. And of course, there’s always NewPages for a comprehensive contest listing, but you should be checking that site regularly anyway.

Point is, you may not be Chris Forhan, but if you’re reading this post, which is located on an MFA program’s blog, chances are good that you are a newish writer with an itch to get published. Just remember that it doesn’t have to be either a lit mag or a book. Chapbooks are a totally valid and more accessible way to get your writing, and your name, out there.

The art of chapbooking

Posted by MS

forhan mugPublished by Los Angeles-based Silver Birch Press, Butler MFA instructor Chris Forhan’s new chapbook Ransack and Dance is in many ways not new. In fact, most of the chapbook’s 24 poems were penned between 7 and 10 years ago, before Forman met his wife (fellow poet and Butler faculty member) Alessandra Lynch and moved to Indy. When Melanie Villines reached out to Forhan, hoping to include his poem “The Church of the Backyard” in Silver Birch’s Summer Anthology, he had a few more poems to offer, but perhaps not enough for a full book. In short, this was the conception of Ransack and Dance. If you’d like to read the full story and catch a sample poem, head to Butler’s Newsroom.

What I’m actually here to do is sell you on chapbooks. Forhan calls the chapbook “a quick, intense experience.” Compact, with thematic unity. I would call them underutilized. Say you’re a fairly young – or fairly inexperienced – poet, or prose poet, essayist, or… short-storyist. You may not have enough work to fill a book just yet, and you certainly don’t have a body of work from 7-10 years prior to draw upon at your leisure. But, say you have about 30 pages of work you’re proud of.

For you, a chapbook is surmountable. It’s a starting point. A stepping stone. A hook to hang your hat on. A chance to see your work – and your work alone – featured either in print or in a digital package, ready to be consumed by others. And conveniently, many presses who publish chapbooks are especially friendly to neophytes. What’s even better, because chapbook print runs tend to be on the small side with equally small distribution, many publishers will allow work previously published in chapbooks to appear (when the time arrives) in your full-length book.

forhan coverYou’re probably thinking I can’t sweeten this pot any further. Chapbooks are chaptastic, you get it. But wait, there’s more: Contests! Cash prizes! Finally making your parents proud of your decision to write (mileage may vary)! Random example: BLOOM runs a yearly contest and selects winners in poetry, prose, and nonfiction. Black Lawrence Press also has a well-established yearly contest that accepts poetry and fiction. For poets, this list will be of interest. And of course, there’s always NewPages for a comprehensive contest listing, but you should be checking that site regularly anyway.

Point is, you may not be Chris Forhan, but if you’re reading this post, which is located on an MFA program’s blog, chances are good that you are a newish writer with an itch to get published. Just remember that it doesn’t have to be either a lit mag or a book. Chapbooks are a totally valid and more accessible way to get your writing, and your name, out there.

D.A. Powell ushers in Fall VWS

Posted by MS

DAPowell

San Francisco-based poet D.A. Powell is Butler’s first Visiting Writer of the fall series, which kicks off September 10 at 7:30 PM in the Clowes Memorial Hall Krannert Room. With five books of poetry under his belt, Powell’s latest, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012.

The International Poetry Library of San Francisco writes that “Powell has a talent for expanding the lyric form into the experimental and metaphysical realm while simultaneously writing with an accessible, ‘everyman’ tone.”

In this way Powell allows his readers – or in our case, his listeners – to proverbially have their cake and eat it too. While the lyric form lends itself to volleys of wild, surprising, often unsettling imagery, Powell’s distinct “everyman tone” grounds his poems firmly. He is somehow both avant-garde and approachable. Even for the most reticent readers of poetry, those who balk at the first sign of a symbol, Powell provides secure footholds.

This of course means even those more firmly entrenched in prose have no excuse but to attend! But for those not sold, let’s take a look at “sprig of lilac” from Powell’s Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award-winning fourth book Chronic.

in a week you could watch me crumble to smut: spent hues
spent perfumes. dust upon the lapel where a moment I rested

yes, the moths have visited and deposited their velvet egg mass
the gnats were here: they smelled the wilt and blight. they salivated

in the folds of my garments: you could practically taste the rot

look at the pluck you’ve made of my heart: it broke open in your hands
oddments of ravished leaves: blossom blast and dieback: petals drooping

we kissed briefly in the deathless spring. the koi pond hummed with flies

unbutton me now from your grasp. no, hold tighter, let me disappear
into your nostrils, into your skin, a powdery smudge against your rough cheek

Powell’s language is luscious and daring, but evocative and resolutely clear, even on a first read. You can taste the heartsickness. Here, the speaker is the titular lilac sprig, spent and rotting, infested with insect eggs and dieback, its pollen no more than remnant traces of dust on the lapels of an old love. It speaks of a capricious spring romance, a broke-open heart turned to pluck, and two conflicting desires: one, to at once be ‘unbuttoned’ from the ache of the lover’s grasp, and the other, to have that intimacy restored, to be wholly consumed.

If you find yourself aching for more, admission is free, the event is open to the public—no tickets required. September 10. 7:30 PM. Clowes Memorial Hall Krannert Room. Be there, or be pluck.