Here's a pic of this year's Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest winners.

Honorable Mention Kevin Frederick Smith - 4th place S Renay Sanders - 3rd place Nancy Nixon - 2nd place Carla Thompson - 1st place B M Stroud.

The cat is out of the bag.

From Greg Pincus - Outting all us poets

Hessler Reading Wednesday!

Heads up, everybody!  The readings for the Hessler Street Fair poetry contest are coming up this Wednesday, 7pm, at Mac's Backs in Coventry!

This will be an impressive evening of Cleveland's top poets-- Neopoets has the line up:

• Vicki Acquah
• Lynne Albert
• JP Armstrong
• Mickey Bey
• Dianne Borsenik
• Jeffrey Bowen
• Steve Brightman
• C.M. Brooks
• Skylark Bruce
• John B. Burroughs
• Shelley Chernin
• Joanne Cornelius
• Catherine D. Criswell
• Katie Cutshaw
• Lisa Dabrowski
• Christine Donofrio
• Kaolin Fire
• Elise Geither
• Michael Goldstein
• T.M. Göttl
• Anita Herczog
• Dwain Higgins
• Christine Howey
• Steven Isenberg
• Clarissa Jakobsons
• Azriel Johnson
• Jacob King
• Mark Kuhar
• Geoffrey A. Landis
• Melissa Rose Leach
• Cate Mullen
• Nancy Nixon
• Marilyn Oliveras de Ortiz
• Jen Pezzo
• Tina Puckett
• Michael Salinger
• S. Renay Sanders
• Kevin Frederick Smith
• Wanda Sobieska
• J.E. Stanley
• Dave Stringer
• BM Stroud
• Carla Thompson
• Sarah Tolfo
• Mary A. Turzillo
• Paige Ward
• Batya Weinbaum
• Eva Xanthopoulos

That's one heck of a poetic line-up!

Readings will be held on the evening of Wednesday, May 9th @ 7pm at Mac’s Backs Books on Coventry. About 20 minutes after all poets have read, the winners will be announced and prizes will be handed out.

Can't make the reading Wednesday?  The winning poets will read at the Hessler Street Fair main stage on Sunday May 20th.  And, all the poets listed will have their poems in the 2012 Hessler Street Fair anthology-- get your copy at Mac's Backs, or at the Mac's Backs booth at the fair, for only $8.00-- a bargain!

The Hessler Street Fair adds: "Special thanks to Joshua Gage and Vertigo X. Xavier for putting the 2012 Hessler Street Fair Anthology together and conducting the reading. Our sincere appreciation is extended to Suzanne DeGaetano at Mac’s Backs for hosting the reading and her ongoing support of the Hessler Street Fair."

Round Four: Dictionary Game

The word for this round is "actazerity."

Consulting the New Oxford KretZikan Dictionary is strictly forbidden.

Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry

Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry

Like many of the rural members of Mirman Baheer, a women’s literary society based in Kabul, the girl calls whenever she can, typically in secret. She reads her poems aloud to Amail, who transcribes them line by line. To conceal her poetry writing from her family, the girl relies on a pen name, Meena Muska. (Meena means “love” in the Pashto language; muska means “smile.”) 

Meena lost her fiancé last year, when a land mine exploded. According to Pashtun tradition, she must marry one of his brothers, which she doesn’t want to do. She doesn’t dare protest directly, but reciting poetry to Amail allows her to speak out against her lot. When I asked how old she was, Meena responded in a proverb: “I am like a tulip in the desert. I die before I open, and the waves of desert breeze blow my petals away.” She wasn’t sure of her age but thought she was 17. “Because I am a girl, no one knows my birthday,” she said.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/magazine/why-afghan-women-risk-death-to-write-poetry.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Lessons to a (Young?) Poet

               I was recently allowed to substitute for a creative writing class, and discovered that the teacher taught the class a series of forms as their entrance into poetry. I found this curious because the students faced the same struggles I faced as a young, undergrad writer--filling the form with the content. Now, there are those who can argue that, at eighteen, nineteen, twenty plus years of age, one has lived enough that their daily lives and history can provide fodder for poems. However, that leads burgeoning poets to the navel gazing that seems to populate so many literary magazines currently. It also leads me to question whether or not these young writers have the craft skills to take the content of their lives and hone it into these forms.

               So, the questions I ask readers are as follows:

• What are the essential skills that a poet needs, and are they teachable? If so, how?
•  If you were to teach a poetry writing course, how would you design it? What lessons would be important?
• Going back to PWLGC days, what sorts of lessons do you feel you can teach other poets? What do you find missing at open mikes and wish more poets would attend to? How would you teach them?
• What do you wish you could do better as a poet? Whose poetry do you admire and what lessons would you like to learn from them?

A lot of this assumes that the readers of this blog have an interest in helping each other, which I hope to be true, but that there's also a way or method to help each other beyond presence and support. I'd hope that this could develop into an informal project of blog entries that we could use to help teach each other our particular skills and strengths, but that might be jumping the gun a bit. Right now, I'm just curious to know what lessons we have to offer each other.

A Chronicle of Borsenik

Dianne L. K. Borsenik, poet, publisher, and impressario of (among other things) Lix 'n Kix, is interviewed as Writer of the Month in American Chronicle:

Writer of the Month: Dianne Borsenik

A.C.: Things I can do without:
DLKB: Negativity. Prejudice. Ignorance. Closed minds.

A.C.: Things I cannot do without:

DLKB: A piece of paper and a pen. Music. Dogs. Hugs.

Round Three: Dictionary Game

The word for this round is "eromancer". Have fun!

National Poetry Month Program at Lakewood Public Library 

Thursday, April 26th 2012 at 7 pm in the Auditorium

Featuring Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Patchen

Presented by: Editor Allen Frost and biographer Larry Smith

The program will include a video on Patchen's life and work, a powerpoint program on the many correspondents in this large collection, and a focus on Patchen's Cleveland connections with photographer, filmmaker, rights advocate Jasper Wood. Frost and Wood will share the letters between Wood and Patchen.

Books and DVD will be available.

Round Two: Dictionary Game

Not sure whether each round begins with a new post, but here goes:

The second word is: Futharc

Poets Haven Presents

Those of you who follow the poetry feeds listed in the sidebar may have noticed that we had the "Saturday Night With The Poet's Haven" podcast series listed. Vertigo X, the impressario of the Poets Haven reading series, notes that while he does intend to resume that series at some point in the not too distant future, to include open-mic performances recorded through this year, he has "at long last" launched a new podcast series. It's structured a bit differently (there aren't "episodes;" instead each show has its own title, like music and comedy specials on cable tv, and it has its own separate RSS feed, "PoetsHaven Presents"

If you like live poetry podcast, check it out at PoetsHaven Presents.

The Dictionary Game

The "original" dictionary game goes like this:

Materials: pencils and paper for everyone; one dictionary.

Rules: The first player selects a word from the dictionary and writes the definition on a piece of paper, and marks it with his or her name. The word is then read to and spelled for the group. Each player writes his or her definition on a piece of paper, and marks it with his or her name. The selector then arbitrarily numbers each definition and all the pieces of paper (including the real definition) are put in a container from which the selector of the word draws them one by one and reads them aloud, except for the names.

Play: Each player then writes down which definition he or she believes is the genuine dictionary definition, indicating by number, key word, or quotation. When all players (except the selector, who, of course, knows) has written down his or her selection of the genuine definition, the selector reveals the genuine definition.

Scoring: One point for each player who correctly identifies the genuine definition. One point for every vote that it was the genuine one goes to the creator of each wrong definition that got a vote as the genuine definition.

Strategy: Ideally, one would oneself identify the genuine definition while having written a definition which gets everyone's vote but one's own.

The Online Version:

Clearly, this game is not transferable to cyberspace, not because anyone would cheat but because everyone would -– except philosophers, of course, who are above such sordid behavior, but thin on the ground no matter where you look. If they'd eat more, they would be neither so thin, nor unable to stand up, nor so few.

The basis of the game online, then, is to entertain ourselves by creating interesting definitions and reading others' interesting definitions of words which we are all perfectly free to look up so that we can appreciate each others' ingenuity in creating plausible or witty or funny or offensive or any other kind of definitions -- so long as they are wrong -- or mostly wrong, or at least wrong enough that we know you didn't just crib it from the dictionary.

The word-picker is obliged to judge the entries in as entertaining (and therefore often as whimsical and even capricious) a way as possible, and report on the result to the group, in the process reviewing the other entries in as entertaining way as possible, and then naming the unlucky winner, along with the Coveted Second Place Award, and many others that the judge may invent on the spot. Or after reflection so that they'll be reasonably entertaining. Since I'll be picking the first word and the first unlucky winner, I'll have to do the first judging, which will, of course, be a model of wit and invention that you'd be wise to try to emulate -- though you will, naturally, fail.

Winning is a mixed blessing since the winner becomes the new word-picker, and is then obliged to keep track of the new entries, and to judge them, with commentary, for the entertainment of all.

When a round of play is over is entirely up to the word-picker of that round, but the judges are implored to get on with it, and threatened by the prospect, if they let their round drag on, of having to judge multiple entries as the natives, always restless, start to mutter and post definitions disparaging the judge and questioning whether his or her family life is entirely on the up-and-up. So if there is a rule it is to be entertaining and, if you have the brains god gave giraffes, to come in second -- or even last!

If you should have the misfortune to actually win, you are obliged to immediately choose another word and start keeping track of the entries, or beg off AT ONCE so the former judge can wipe the smug smile off the face of that giggling second-place person by assigning the top spot to him or her. Oh, be quiet -- when I split an infinitive, it STAYS split.

If, in the judgment of the Judicial Board (that is, me) too much time has gone by between words, or in closing off entries for a particular word, or for any other reason, the Board reserves the right to issue, capriciously and whimsically, an arbitrary and binding judgment and either issue a new word or choose a "winner" from the current entries, thus obligating someone else to do the work of judging.

So, to summarize The Non-Rules: Be entertaining and be quick or be quiet.

The Zatoichi Presumption: That if two entries are alike, the second one was invented just as honorably as the first.

The 12"Razormix Non-Rule: That if the winner of a round of play doesn't pick a new word pretty much right away, and can't be reached back-channel to prompt them to post a new word, the smug smile will be wiped off the face of the unlucky holder of the Coveted Second Place Award, and he or she will become the winner of the round.

The Multiple Entry Amendment: There is no Multiple Entry Amendment, except as individual judges decide, with special attention to whimsicality or capriciousness, to create one for their own purposes. Fore-warned is fore-armed -- and fore-armed is what you get if you're a rookie in the NBA.

For adjudications and arbitrations of disputes about Non-Rules and Shady Practices, it's just barely possible that I might be persuaded to scrape my fingers off the cocoa-encrusted table and, raising my bleary, chocolate-reddened eyes to the screen, navigate to whichever file it is in which I've stored THE NON-RULES in order to issue a judgment -- attached to a provocative note which will shock your significant other and astonish your neighbors.

And the first word is: AMPHIBOLY

Taylor Mali coming to Oberlin tomorrow (Thursday 4/5/12) night!

https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/events/189136854531466/

Cinquain: Triad

Triad

These be

three silent things:

the falling snow...  the hour

before the dawn... the mouth of one

just dead.

--Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914)

---

what is a cinquain?

• Theory of the cinquain
• 28 cinquains from Adelaide Crapsey's Verse
• Cinquains

with a nod of thanks to Adelaide Crapsey

Congrats to Phil Metres!

The Massachusetts Review just announced the Phil Metres, writing professor at John Caroll, won their Anne Halley Poetry Prize. Congrats to Phil!

From the Massachusetts Review:

PHILIP METRES AWARDED THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW’S 8TH ANNUAL ANNE HALLEY POETRY PRIZE

Date: Wed, 03/14/2012

The editors of the Massachusetts Review are proud to announce that the winner of this year’s Anne Halley Poetry Prize is Philip Metres for his poem “Home/Front,” published in the journal’s Casualty Issue.

Philip Metres grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He graduated from Holy Cross College in 1992, and spent the following year in Russia on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, pursuing an independent project called "Contemporary Russian Poetry and Its Response to Historical Change." Metres went to Indiana University, where he received a Ph.D. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, both in 2001. Since then, his writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. He is the author of a number of books, including To See the Earth (Cleveland State 2008), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (University of Iowa Press, 2007), Instants (a chapbook, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006), Primer for Non-Native Speakers (a chapbook, Kent State 2004), Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (Ugly Duckling 2004), and A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (Zephyr 2003). He has received fellowships from Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Ledig House, and the Ohio Arts Council. His writing has been translated into Polish, Russian, and Tamil. Currently, he is an associate professor of English at John Carroll University, where he teaches American Literature and Creative Writing.

On Wednesday, March 28 at 7:30 PM Metres will present his work at the annual prize reading, hosted this year by University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. A broadside of the winning poem and copies of the issue in which his poem appears will be made available.

Poet's Journal

My daughter is an anthropologist doing research in western Kenya on AIDS transmission. In January, we went to visit her and our grandchildren. As a writer, I knew that I'd want to keep a journal. While we did some traditional "tourist" stuff, we also were in the homes of Kenyans, and drew curious stares from locals who were unused to seeing mzungu like us.

I have been in third world countries before, but I had forgotten the emotional impact. As a result, I put aside prose, and my "journal" became a collection of poetry. Is poetry the language of emotion? What do you think?




Here's a "safe" poem that grew out of a walk on Crescent Island:

Twiga*

What is so odd
that you look
at us
over the
acacia
where you lick
green leaves
off thorny branches?
Do you wonder
how we eat
with only
two legs
and
so short-necked?



*Kiswahili for giraffe

seeking submissions seeking

Green Panda Press is accepting submissions of art and poetry. send 1-7 poems or jpgs to greenpandapress@gmail.com with 'submit' in subject line.

Bloggers wanted!

We need new blood! The clevelandpoetics blog-- yeah, this here blog, the one you're reading right now this very second-- is looking for some new contributors. It's been three years since we last added any fresh names to the blog team, and, well, ya know, so maybe we're getting a little stale. I've seeing a lot of new faces in the Cleveland poetry community, and it's time we opened up the blog to some new voices to see what you have to say.

You got opinions about the Cleveland poetry scene, about poetry, about writing, about our rust-enshrouded, poem-encrusted city? Or, maybe you hate what you see here, and tell all your friends "I could write better 'n that, why don't they let me in?" You think you might wanna join the quixotic collective of lovable misfits that we call "the clevelandpoetics staff infection"? Well, we want you! Yes, you! Now's your chance! Let's see what you got!

If you'd like to join the blogging team here at clevelandpoetics, we're open: leave a note in the comments, or drop me an email at clevelandpoetics@ironangels.net and say so!

No rules, no hours, no salesman will call, no pay. Join the team!

Reality, take it or leave it

"What is reality anyway! It's nothing but a collective hunch."

--Jane Wagner

"Reality is what you can get away with."

--Robert Anton Wilson

"L'imagination est la seule arme dans la guerre contre la réalité."

--Jules de Gaultier*

"Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?"

--Edgar Allen Poe

‎"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Philip K. Dick

*"Imagination is our only weapon in the war against reality." --Gaultier

Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest!

The Hessler Street Fair has just announced their 2012 Hessler Street fair poetry contest!

Submit up to five original poems by the deadline of April 14th, 2012 (Shorter poems of one page or less will be favored.) The finalists will be printed in the Hessler Street Fair poetry book, and get a chance to read their poems on the evening of Wednesday, May 9th, at 7pm at Mac’s Backs Books on Coventry. The first, second, and third place winners will then read on May 20th at the Hessler Street Fair.

Best thing about it? No entry fee, and cash prizes! Win everlasting fame (well, locally, anyway). Check the full rules at the Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest page.

And, don't forget to mark your calendar for the May 9th reading at Mac's, and the Hessler Fair itself the weekend of May 19-20. For more, check out the Hessler Street Fair Facebook page. Or the poetry contest Facebook page.

Mary Turzillo reads at the 2011 Hessler Street Fair

Good poetry is boring.

Okay - Geoff's post below got me to thinking.

How much does the audience come into play while you are writing. Do you write with the idea of how your listener (readers) will respond to the work?

How important is it to you that your writing be entertaining?

What are some of your pet peeves from other poets offerings, written and or performance-wise?

The Atlantic Tells us "Why Poetry Should Be More Playful"

The Atlantic sez, Why Poetry Should Be More Playful

Is it really true that "As verse becomes increasingly dry, it's getting more and more irrelevant"?

Is verse becoming increasingly dry?

Well, maybe so. Says Noah Berlatsky in the Atlantic:

"...there doesn't have to be an absolute division between serious poetry and lighter verse. And yet, in practice, the two traditions have diverged radically, as the serious, high-art poetry tradition has retreated into the halls of academia, closed the doors, and then triple-locked them. Even New York school poets like Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara, who put a premium on wit and humor not that far divorced from someone like Ogden Nash, do so in a way designed to alienate as large a public as possible."

(... on the other hand, maybe Berlatsky should go to a Lix 'n kix reading some time, or maybe check out tonight's Deep Cleveland reading, to cure him of thinking that poetry is "increasingly dry.")

Poets promoting Poets

For those of you who are Facebookers, you might want to check out the Poets Promoting Poets group.

Good place to find out what's going on in local poetry, and for poets to promote poets.

Oprah's List of Best Books of 2011

Oprah.com has published a list of the best poetry books of 2011--all five of them, answering the question "Who are today's best and brightest new poets?"

Space in Chains
By Laura Kasischke
Copper Canyon Press

Devotions
By Bruce Smith
Phoenix Poets

Core Samples from the World
By Forrest Gander
New Directions

The Chameleon Couch
By Yusef Komunyakaa
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Kingdom Animalia
By Aracelis Girmay
BOA Editions, Ltd.

Now, while I don't want to knock any of these poets, to claim that any of them are "new" poets is a little misleading. No bother...the purpose of this post is not to knock Oprah.com's misappellations, but to propose a discussion experiment. Would anyone be up for reading and reviewing, book group style, these five books publicly? Not only would this help churn up some discussion, but also might prove to be educational as well. I've ordered Space in Chains from the library; there are three in the Cuyahoga system, half a dozen in OhioLink and SearchOhio equally, so plenty for a group discussion. Who's up for reading a book of poetry a week and discussing it publicly?

Poets of the Cosmos

Exploring the Cosmos, a new trifold brochure of "minimalist" science poetry, edited by David C. Kopaska-Merkel, is now up on the Science Fiction Poetry Association's web page. 19 super-short poems commenting or celebrating science:

"Some of the science poems in Exploring the Cosmos are scifaiku, some are not. Collectively they explore scientists, scientific discovery, the nature of humanity, and (of course) the future.”

I should mention that there are two local poets represented, me with one poem, and Mary Turzillo with two. (Some of the earlier SFPA trifolds, like The Universe in Three Lines, have featured other area poets, including J. E. Stanley, dan smith, and Joshua Gage.)

Print out a couple of copies (double sided, of course); give them to your friends; trade them with collectors; leave them in your local coffeehouse!

Collect the whole set!