Open Mic at the Winchester every Tuesday

Winchester Music Tavern
12112 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Call for submissions for The Cleveland Orchestra program book

From our friends at The Cleveland Orchestra:

The Cleveland Orchestra is accepting poetry submissions in response to its presentation of Verdi’s Otello and two associated concerts. The accepted submissions will be included in the festival program book / playbill, as well as potentially other spaces (which may include the Orchestra’s magazine, website, and other platforms).

About the programs:

On May 21, 26, and 29, The Cleveland Orchestra will present a concert performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello, based upon Shakespeare’s play Othello. In association with the opera, the Orchestra will present two programs (May 27 and 28) informed by the themes of Otello and the idea of otherness and outsider-ness that courses through it. Many of these works are also informed by poetry, from the works of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Whitman to Vedic chants and African American spirituals.

Information on the concerts:

Otello in Concert: May 21, 26, 29  

Program I: May 27

Program II: May 28

More information on the specific works that appear on each of the concerts follows.

Call for Submission:

We are looking for poetry submissions that respond — explicitly or implicitly — to the compositions that are being presented from May 21 to 29 and the theme of otherness and outsider-ness. The poem does not need to respond to the entire scope of the presentations, but should find resonance with one or more of the works being performed and/or the broader themes at play. 

·         Previously written or published pieces are welcome, please indicate if the piece has been published elsewhere and is subject to any copyrights.

·         Length should be one page or less.

·         Multiple submissions are welcome – please submit them within the same email submission.

·         Please send submissions to aangel@clevelandorchestra.com.

·         The Cleveland Orchestra will provide a $200 honorarium for selected works.

·        
Deadline: Thursday, April 14, 2022.

·         Notification responses will be sent by May 13, 2021

 

List of works that will be performed, with links to references:

Otello in Concert: May 21, 26, 29  

·         Giuseppe Verdi’s            Otello

Program I: May 27

·         Jüri Reinvere’s                 Norilsk, the Daffodils

·         George Walker’s             Lilacs (for voice and orchestra), texts from Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd”

·         Sofia Gubaidulina’s        Light of the End

Program II: May 28

·         Charles Ives’s                  From the Steeples and the Mountains

·         Dmitri Shostakovich’s    Passacaglia from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (version for solo   organ)

·         Sofia Gubaidulina’s        Light and Dark (organ only)

·         Philip Glass’s                    Finale from Act III of Satyagraha (version for solo organ)

·         George Walker’s             Sinfonia No. 4 (“Strands”)

·         Samuel Barber’s             Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra

 

Tongue-in-Groove Poetry Jam Returns to the Fillmore September 19th

Cleveland, it's time to celebrate the return of Tongue-in-Groove! Hosted by Heights Poet Laureate Ray McNiece (Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award Winner) with Al Moses on guitar, Nick Marino on bass, Michelle Clark on percussion and Tim Lachina on harmonica at the Millard Fillmore Presidential Library at 15617 Waterloo Road in the North Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland. The Poetry Jam happens at 6 p.m. starting on Sunday, September 19th. This month's featured poet is Renay Sanders. An open mic with the band will follow.

About the feature:

S. Renay Sanders learned to love the spoken word amidst a family of Appalachian storytellers and musicians. She secretly wrote poems for years, but came out of the poetry closet with a piece in the Hessler Street Poetry Anthology in 2010. Her poems have been included in anthologies published by the Writing Knights and Poet's Haven. Her work can also be found in ETERNAL SNOW (Nirala Publications, 2017), a worldwide anthology. Renay received a third place award for her poem, "Awakened to Bear Witness of Sweet Atrocities" in the 2012 Hessler Street Poetry Anthology. "Noteworthy Travelin" was the title poem of a broadside published by NightBallet. Her work was selected to be included in the 2016-2017 Women of Appalachia project "Women Speak." Most recently, Sanders is the author of DANCING IN PLACE: POEMS (Nirala Publications, 2020). A native Clevelander, her poems are inspired by the characters she encounters in life, her male-dominated family, husband, sons, grandsons and the beauty of the Cuyahoga Valley, where she now resides.

Return of the Deep Cleveland Trio, March 20th in Lakewood

Art on Madison
13703 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
419.345.8980

Poetry+ Upcoming Readers: https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com/calendar.html

Ornette Coleman and the NY School of Poets

Ornette Coleman (1930-2015), Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Andrew Epstein

This morning brought the sad news that the groundbreaking jazz musician Ornette Coleman has passed away at 85.  There will surely be many obituaries and testimonials to Coleman’s importance and legacy, but I wanted to just note some the important points of contact between Coleman and the New York School and the postwar avant-garde.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Coleman became a central figure in the downtown avant-garde scene, beginning with a legendary ten-week residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York, which was a regular hangout for Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones), Frank O’Hara, and other young New York poets. Coleman’s landmark 1961 album Free Jazz famously featured a painting by Jackson Pollock on the cover, underscoring the connections between experimental jazz and avant-garde painting.  

Coleman became friendly with the young Baraka and other writers in Baraka’s lively bohemian circle, which included O’Hara and other poets of the New York School.  O’Hara was taken with Coleman and his music, referring to him in his letters and including a reference to him in the experimental film he made with Alfred Leslie, The Last Clean Shirt (which includes the exclamation “Ornette!” at one point) (at 32:15 to be precise).

The most detailed treatment of these intersections can be found in Michael Magee’s excellent article “Tribes of New York: Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, and the Poetics of the Five Spot” (which can also be found in Magee’s book Emancipating Pragmatism).  Here’s an excerpt in which Magee writes about Ornette Coleman, O’Hara, and Baraka:

O’Hara was very excited about Ornette Coleman. Part of the occasion for that excitement was the affair going on between Coleman and O’Hara’s friend Diana Powell. In a letter telling Don Allen about the affair, O’Hara underscores Coleman’s name as “ORNETTE COLEMAN!!!” and in a contemporaneous letter to Vincent Warren he notes seeing Coleman at the Five Spot, prompting Warren’s memory by describing the group as “the one with the little trumpet [Don Cherry’s pocket trumpet] and sax.” While the references are typically gossipy, and while O’Hara’s interest in Coleman included his usual lack of distinction between the artistic, the personal, and the sexual, they lead in the direction of a provocatively different version of O’Hara than the one commonly invoked.  As Baraka has recently explained,

Frank dug the music, went to the 5 Spot often. We were all hit with the heavy impact in G[reenwich] V[illage] of Ornette C[oleman]. He was a New Thing, in that era of new things … Jazz was New York! It was urban, new, hot, revelatory, &c, it was the anthemic back and foreground of the art denizens of the then and there. Like language and city sounds … Frank was always looking for inspiration. The music inspired him. (Letter)

Baraka goes on to suggest what it was about Coleman that would have inspired O’Hara: “Jazz is Democratic in form, it basically is collective improvisation. It is about singular and collective spontaneity, and composition, both formal and mise-en-scene.”

As Baraka suggests, Ornette Coleman was “a New Thing, in that era of new things,” and his bold and exciting music had an indescribable impact on Baraka himself, on O’Hara, and on the shape of jazz, and so much else, to come.

 

 Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets

Alex Bevan and Rachel Brown

Songwriting is a form of poetry, too.

"I have no wings... I have no wheels…
only these dreams I fasten to my heels…
I have no wings… I have no road…
only these songs to sing before I go…"

--Alex Bevan

 

Alex Bevan and Rachel Brown: 2 of Cleveland's best storytelling singers unite for a songwriters night

• Alex Bevan
• Rachel Brown

Music and Words for Peace - May 14th in Cleveland

The Cleveland Non-Violence Network presents Music & Words for Peace, a coffeehouse fundraiser for the 10th Annual Labor Day Peace Show, with music by Deborah Van Kleef, Ian Heisey and the Cleveland Hip-Hop Club, and poetry by Kate Sopko, Phil Metres, Kazim Ali, Dianne Borsenik, John Burroughs and Sammy Greenspan.

Free will donations accepted at the door. Baked goods & fair trade coffee. Parking on Franklin Boulevard and adjoining streets. More info: www.clevelandnonviolence.org, 216-932-8546, engagepeace@gmail.com

It all happens Saturday, 7 p.m., at St. Paul's Community Church, 4427 Franklin Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio. (Click on the image for a printable flier.)

Humble beginnings...

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Music has been instrumental in writing my poetry. Ahh, I can see the head nods in agreement because it may be true for you as well. I remember the first time I heard The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five…

Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge
I’m tryin’ not to lose my head ah huh-huh-huh-huh
It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under…

The Message made me want to go out and testify its truth. Instead, I opted to write my thoughts in a notebook designated for math homework. Screw math. I had life on my mind and the best thing I learned in math class was how to count money. I wouldn’t call what I’d written poetry, but I knew it was something…different. Unlike anything I’d ever seen, but definitely like something I’d heard before. Déjà vu?

Fast forward quite a few years and memories find me in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame soaking in the hip-hop exhibit. Missy Elliot’s bubble suit was rather large, but the only thing that truly caught my attention was hand-written lyrics of Brenda’s Got a Baby by the late, great Tupac Shakur. There it was again… The need to write something down, yet, at the time I understood it had a name: inspiration. I knew there were times when I wanted to write something grand, life-changing even, and absolutely could not. But I was poetically immature and didn’t understand that I couldn’t evoke something so profound all by my lonesome. As I got lost in the sheets of notebook paper ‘Pac scribbled over, I realized he and I had something in common: poetry. What he put to the perfect rhythm, were thoughts I actually lived. It was that moment, and it alone, that solidified my entrance into the realm of poetry and understanding music was fuel for my words.

I want you to travel down memory lane and think about how your involvement in poetry came about. I’m also interested in reading about things that inspire you to write. Please share.

Stay peace

Darnetta ‘Genesis’ Frazier

Songwriters & poets

Anyone who has listened to any amount of altrock over the past decade has certainly heard a tune or two by Our Lady Peace. The Canadian band, perhaps best known for the song "Superman's Dead," among others, is fronted by Raine Maida (left), who as it turns out, professes his love for poetry. So much so, in fact, that he has morphed some of his work into a new solo album called "The Hunter's Lullaby."

Yeah, it's almost cliche for a songwriter to boast his poetry roots, and frankly, after Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, and Henry Rollins, not to mention the entire genre of rap, who can compete on the same level? But for the sake of argument, who in your experience writes great songs and great poetry? Can you name a song that is really, truly great poetry? For starters, I'll throw out Medicine Hat by Son Volt. I'll be very interested to hear what you come up with.