Poetry in the Woods

Poetry in the Woods

Tuesday November 19, 2013

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Bertram Woods Branch

20600 Fayette Road | Shaker Heights, Ohio 44122 | 216.991.2421

Kathleen Cerveny, poet and visual artist is the current Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. Since 1991 Kathleen has been the Director of Arts Initiatives for the Cleveland Foundation, the country’s oldest and first community foundation. She is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art and has exhibited her ceramics locally and nationally. From 1987-90 she was Cleveland Public Radio’s producer and broadcast journalist for the arts, winning more than 15 top awards and producing many features for National Public Radio. Her poems have appeared in the Southern New Hampshire University Journal: Amoskeag, the e-journal: Shaking Like a Mountain, and in journals published by Pudding House Press, among others. She is Cleveland’s former Haiku champion (2009-10) and is in the process of completing her MFA in Poetry from the University of Southern Maine: Stonecoast Creative Writing Program (July 2014). Most recently, a poem of Kathleen’s was selected for inclusion in an anthology published by Future Cycle Press: Poems for Malala Yousafzai.

Catherine Criswell is a poet who resides in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including the Great Lakes Review, Muse Magazine, and the Hessler Street Fair anthologies. She is a member of the Cleveland Puddinghouse Salon, a writer`s workshop group, and two of her poems will appear in its 2013 anthology produced by Kattywompus Press. In 2013, she began hosting the Monday at Mahall`s Poetry & Prose Series at Mahall`s 20 Lanes in Lakewood, Ohio, one Monday per month. She also annually hosts the Cleveland edition of the 100,000 Poets for Change global movement at Visible Voice Books. In addition, she serves as a guest contributor to Clevelandpoetics.com. She also performs her poetry at Mac`s Backs and The Barking Spider. Photo by Michael Spear Photography.

Brad Ricca was born in Cleveland and is a SAGES Fellow at Case Western Reserve University. His first book of poems, American Mastodon (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), won the St. Lawrence Book Award and was featured on A Writer`s Almanac by Garrison Keillor. It was also named a "Best of Cleveland" in 2012. He has also written a book about the creators of Superman titled Super Boys (St. Martin`s Press, 2013).

• Poetry in the Woods

Cleveland Collaborative Renga-- Start

autumn cemetery
what would the dead give to hear
leaves crumbling under feet?

       from the hilltop, through bare trees
     towers gleam in evening sun

          scarecrow 
          the chirrup of the squirrel's 
          silhouette 

              the rag-man's shadow
              echo of an old lover

                  jasmine incense
                  in a frost of moonlight
                  her discarded thong

                     cold, the smell of winter:
                     first snowflakes sparkle in the air

                          Public Square:
                          privatized
                          and empty

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• Next verse: continued on part 2

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Background info:

• Let's do renku 
• Do you know... renku?
• Let's do renku (2)

Poetry is the change we wish to see

What started as the one-time "Music 4 Meals" food drive four years ago has since been adopted by the poetry community and rebirthed as "Poetic Provisions."

This is our fourth year of collecting food donations for the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank (and in the last 2 years, also for Canton Sunday Picnic) at readings taking place during the month of November.

The highlight will be Friday, Nov 15, when The Poet's Haven unveils this year's "Vending Machine:  Poetry for Change" anthology.  Poet's Haven guru and Northeast Ohio's Slamministrator, Vertigo Xavier, came up with the idea of an anthology that we would exchange for food donations when I first pitched the food drive idea to him.  Since then, we've also been putting together an annual collection of poems inspired by the quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." 

"The Vending Machine:  Poetry for Change" show (featuring Vernell Bristow, Kazim Ali, and music by Zach--who first conceived the Music 4 Meals event) kicks off at 6:30pm at Karma Cafe in Canton (4339 Dressler Road NW, Canton, Ohio).

If you can't make it to the Vending Machine show, there will be other opportunities for you to contribute to Poetic Provisions. 

Be sure to check out Akron Night Murmurs on Saturday, Nov. 16 (Polymer City Records, 68 West Exchange Street, Akron Ohio 44308) and the Writing Knights "Poetry 4 Food" reading on Saturday, Nov. 23 (Mac's Backs, 1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118).

Let's do Renku (2): Ready to Start

Time to start our collaborative poem!  This one will be a Kasen renga, with the starting season autumn.

Here is how it works:
The poem will alternate three-line 5/7/5 stanzas ("haiku") and two-line 7-7 stanzas, until we reach a total of 36 stanzas (18 three line stanzas, and 18 two-line).

Anybody is invited to contribute a stanza!  Just post it in the comments.  No anonymous contributions, though--this will be a signed poem.  You can contribute as many times as you want, but you can't write two stanzas in a row *.

We won't be strict about syllable count, though I will insist on  three lines alternating with two. 

Josh just wrote a post with some of the lore and the rules of renga, but you don't have to memorize the order of seasons: I will post a note which season is appropriate (I will be using the template of seasons according to Higginson, Ideal Order of the Seasons in a Kasen Renku).   Note that a reference to the season can be implied, it does not have to be explicit, and not every stanza has to have an reference to the season (many are no-season stanzas).

Since Ray McNiece is the winner of the most recent Cleveland Haiku shoot-out, he is officially the Haiku master of Cleveland, and so I have invited him to contribute the hokku (the first stanza).  As "host," I will contribute the second stanza (the "wakiku").  Josh Gage, the haiku guru, will contribute the third stanza (the "daisan").

Ready yet?  I'll post the first lines tomorrow.

After that, it's up to you!

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*actually, in a couple of specific places one poet can write two stanzas in a row.  I will tell you when we reach those stanzas.

Do you know...renku?

At Haiku North America, I participated in a short renku class moderated by Kris Moon, co-founder & past president of  the Association for International Renku (AIR). As a class, we wrote four short renku of four links each, and began to explore the techniques involved in linking and shifting in a renku.

On the surface, renku seem simple. Start with a haiku, follow it with two  lines, then another haiku, then two lines, and back and forth until a long stream of linked pieces occur. However, it is not so simple, as there are many cultural rules that must be followed.

For example, the renku progresses seasonally, and follows a strict pattern of seasonal flow, as shown in the charts here. Furthermore, the fifth, thirteenth, and twenty-ninth stanzas MUST mention the moon, and the seventeenth and thirty-fifth stanzas must mention blossoms of some sort. On top of that, various stanzas are required to address the topic of love. Even more complicated, stanzas are not permitted to repeat key words or phrases from previous stanzas, so every new link must be fresh and poignant.

Because renku progress through the seasons, a good saijiki--collection of kigo, or season words--is recommended. William J. Higginson's Haiku World and Haiku Seasons are good resources to start with. Gabi Greve's World Kigo Database is extensive and online, but difficult for some to navigate. Kris Moon maintains a list of 500 Season Words that can be a good starting place for renku writers, but many of them are Japanese oriented, and not appropriate for Western readers. However, all of these saijiki, as well as the many others available, provide a beginning writer with a starting place on how seasons are organized and treated in traditional Japanese poetry.

Geoff Landis has recently started a Cleveland Poetics Renku,  which can be interesting due to all the chiboo kigo associated with Cleveland, so I strongly urge folks to participate. However, though experimentation and play are essential to the growth of poetry, I would encourage poets who participate to familiarize themselves with the form and its rules, and to read the copious examples available online. William J. Higginson's Renku Home is a good place to start, as is the archive for the Bernard Lionel Einbond Renku Award. I can't wait to see what sort of renku Cleveland comes up with.

Let's Do Renku!

Every poet knows about haiku, those three-line nature poems popular with minimalist poets and masters of zen.  Those of you familiar with the history of haiku also know that haiku were originally not poems intended to stand alone, but were the kickstarter first verse of a collaborative poem, called renga.

Tanuki
Photo by GL

What is renga?

Renga is collaborative linked verse.  It starts with the haiku master providing a verse of seventeen syllables (a "haiku")* to start with, which will suggest the theme and tone.  The next poet follows this with a couplet of fourteen syllables (making a tanka of 5-7-5 followed by 7-7)**.

Another poet then contributes a haiku based on the couplet, which is then followed by another couplet.  And so the renga continues, with three-line stanzas alternating with two-line ones. 

Each stanza will follow on from the previous, but does not continue from earlier stanzas-- the whole poem doesn't tell a story, but is allowed to wander.  Each stanza thus is part of two miniature poems-- one when read with the stanza before it, and another one when read with the stanza following it.

Renga do not tell stories in the usual sense. They connect thoughts and images suggesting an overall picture, theme, idea or emotion. A great part of the fun of renga is the surprise, the imaginative leaps and tangents explored along the way.

--Larry Gross

Or, as one poet phrased it, "The result is a constantly changing mosaic which discourages development of a logical, sequential narrative."

• Some renga

Of course, since it's Japanese, there are all sorts of further rules dealing with elegance and flow.  For example, each tanka evokes a season, and the seasons must progress in a particular order-- you can't jump from a spring stanza directly to winter.  And there are guidelines for not over-using images: for example, a reference to the moon can't follow directly after another reference to the moon.  And you can only mention plum blossoms so many times.

In Japan, writing renga was a social activity-- poets got together in person to have renga parties, passing around sheets of paper with the verses.  (Say, that might be a fun thing to do at a local poetry reading-- how about at Deep Cleveland?)

And, hey, the Haiku Society of America has a contest for renga.

So, here's my proposal: let's use the blog to write a clevelandpoetics renga-- a collaborative renga with a Cleveland theme.

Who's in?

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*actually, the first stanza of a renga is the hokku, not a haiku.  But that doesn't matter here-- it's identical to a haiku in form.
**yes, I know that English syllables aren't the same as Japanese, and Japanese don't write haiku in three lines.  For the purpose of this renga, though, let's go with the idea of a three line stanza followed by two lines.  We can be loose about seventeen syllables for the haiku and 14 for the couplet, but keep the idea that the haiku has a pattern of long-short-long, and the couplet has two longer lines.

 

What's the ideal day job for a poet?

In the Atlantic, Win Bassett interviews Amy Woolard, asking What's the ideal day job for a poet?  Well, she should be able to answer that: she's been a bartender, a restaurant manager, a teacher, and a lawyer.
"I think whenever you have to perform a couple of different identities within your life, each is affected by the other in some way. My job provides a nice counter-balance to the anything-goes world of poems—it’s still a persuasion-based job, but definitely in a rational, intellectual, responsible, real-world sort of way. This may sound terrible, but in my day job, I have to be a good person—and don’t get me wrong: I want to be and like being a good person, but poems give me a path to wrestle with the terrifying, difficult, absurd, imperfect, uncontrollable parts of the world in a much different but incredibly important way."

Some other people addressing the question:

• The Millions: Working the Double Shift:

"Most novelists have day jobs, even the published ones whose books get good reviews. Writing is my second career, and one of the very few things that it has in common with my first career—contemporary dance—is the necessity of maintaining secondary employment."

• Ploughshares: Writers and their Day Jobs:

"Enter the day job. For some, this is a job teaching writing, but for others it can range from office work to running hydration stations for runners training for marathons. As Chekhov wrote 'Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other.'"

• Try to be anything else
• Day Jobs of the Poets
• What's your Day Job?

Wilderness Tips

“Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift.
"Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open.”

―Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips

 

Halloween Poetry Reading Online

Once again, the Science Fiction Poetry Association is featuring their annual Hallowe'en Poetry Reading, a half-dozen poems read by the authors, featuring spooks and jack o' lanterns and candy, and available for free in audio form, with poetry by

• David Kopaska-Merkel 
• Shannon Connor Winward
• David L. Summers
• Adele Gardner 
• Dennis M. Lane
• F. J. Bergmann
• Mary Turzillo
• Liz Bennefeld
• & yours truly, Geoffrey A. Landis 

Looking for something to listen to on the evening when ghouls and children walk the night?  Check it out!

Photo by GL 2012

And, if you prefer to get out and do your celebrating with poets on Hallowe'en night, how about trick-n-treating over to the Hallowe'en show of Ray McNiece and Tongue & Groove at the Barking Spider?  8pm, over on 11310 Juniper behind Case-Western-- a good time is guaranteed.

Nikki Giovanni Comes to Cleveland!

D.I.Y. POETRY ANTHOLOGY

A Christmas holiday has not gone by in recent years without my parents giving me the current edition of Best American Poetry.  Anthologies serve a wonderful purpose of gathering a variety of poems by different poets and bundling them together into one convenient package.  

A drawback, however, is that I don’t always share the same taste in poetry as the editor of the anthology.  It is not uncommon for me to dig into an anthology with enthusiasm, only to find my mind quickly wandering and skipping poems, and then me snapping the book shut dissatisfied.

That is why when attending the Palm Beach Poetry Festival several years ago, one of the ideas shared during a poetry workshop resonated with me:  create your own.  Not an anthology that you compile and publish, but one more akin to your own personal poetry journal. 

The first step is simply to purchase a blank journal.  

Next, write down your favorite poems in the journal. The act of copying each poem by hand creates a special focus that will enhance your experience of the poem, as well as what you learn from it to enrich your own writing, not to mention that putting pen to paper is fast becoming a lost art in this era of technological advancement. 

The first poem that appears in my poetry anthology is a poem by Carolyn Forche titled, The Colonel.    This powerful poem was part of a workshop I attended in the late 1990s, and one I will never forget, nor tire of reading.  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180106

The last step?  Find a favorite quiet spot on those stressful days, grab your one-of-a kind anthology, and lose yourself in the poetry that makes your heart sing.  

World Zombie Day

Voodoo Museum, New Orleans

Don't look behind you, but World Zombie Day is coming up on Saturday October 12. Do you have plans yet?

open grave

the moonlight glistens

on coffin splinters

--Joshua Gage

If you don't, here's a plan for you: hide away safe indoors with a good book.  Let me suggest Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse, Joshua Gage's book of zombie haiku, out from Poet's Haven.

• World zombie day: survival tips.
• Examiner survival tips

Check in at World Zombie Day Headquarters on Facebook.

• Review by Diane Severson

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"open grave," from Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse, copyright Joshua Gage, used with permission

I'll Have a Poem With My Coffee, Please

To jump start our day, many of us need that cup (or a few!) of coffee.  It’s an addiction.  A habit.  Something we think we need to power through.  We wake up, feel more alert and alive--prepared to greet whatever comes our way.  Our healthier selves have other daily routines—brushing our teeth, eating fruits and vegetables, exercise.  And then, of course, there are the guilty pleasures—a cocktail, slice of chocolate cake, a cannoli.

But a poem a day is the best habit to form.  In this modern era, it’s also an easy, low cost addiction to fuel. 

In April 2006, during national poetry month, the website Poets.org started its Poem-A-Day project.  Simply sign up on Poets.org with your email, and each morning a poem will be delivered right to your electronic doorstep to savor as you start your day.  Another e-newsletter source for a quality daily poem, as well as interesting trivia about writers and moments in history, is Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac [writersalmanac.publicradio.org].

For those with an iPhone or Droid, there are many free poetry-related apps as well.  Some inspiring apps include Poem Flow and The Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Mobile App. [Share your other favorites in the comments below!]

Of course, there always is the tried and true traditional method:  visit your local library or independent bookstore and ensure your shelves and bedside table are stocked with volumes of poetry.  That way, you will have no trouble meeting your recommended daily dose of poetry.

What are you waiting for?  Start your poem-a-day habit today, and feel the positive difference a day makes!

"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."  ~ Carl Sandburg

Local Author Fair This Saturday