Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Afternoon/Evening Sessions, March 31

[Note: The opening reading this morning, & the readings by the featured authors, including the Grand Finale, were held in Estep Auditorium. At other sessions throughout the Festival readings were held simultaneously in Estep, in the Regents Room, & North Lounge. Each of those sessions included 2 to 4 readers. Thus by attending a reading one would miss the other authors reading in other rooms — these were difficult choices.]

V: Estep Auditorium

Cullen Whisenhunt read mostly from his impressive chapbook of poems & photos Among the Trees (Fine Dog Press), including “What I Hope We Will Remember” (a COVID poem with scissortails & red bud trees), “Visions of Durant, OK” riffing off Allen Ginsberg’s phrase “visionary Indian angels who where visionary Indian angel,” & a sequence of Haiku & tanka titled “Statuary Sequence.” At the end he read a poem for his teacher Hank Jones (who was also reading here at Scissortail) “Meaningless Harmonies,” & ended with the "Obligatory Scissortail Poem.”

Jordan Mackey’s writing confronted her native (Comanche, in their language Numunuu) heritage, & was about her family turmoil resisting their native heritage. Her poems, & prose memoir were titled “No Longer Numbers” (about the Comanche people & their myths), “Mirror Mirror,” “Motherland,” & “This is America.” The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, OK. This was her first time at Scissortail & I hope she comes back in the future.

Brady Petersen comes up from Texas each year for Scissortail, & I’ve enjoyed hanging out with him & his wife Barbara at dinner & lunch. He read what he described as “all COVID poems. “Sand Creek” looked back to Jordan’s poems on native history; “Sitting on the Steps of Tor House” described old soldiers; “doing once useful things each day” is what his poem “What Counts” was about. Others were titled “Using a Whetstone,” “Dinner,” “The Apple,” & “Love & Avocados,” which I seem to remember from one of his books from previous Festivals was his first published poem.

Lyman Grant came to the Festival from Harrisonburg, VA. He read from his new, long, poem “2018” which is based on A.R. Ammons’ book-length poem “Tape for Turn of the Year” that was written on a roll of adding machine tape. Like Ammons, Grant’s poem uses short lines, his selections are philosophical pondering, observations, thoughts on them (“just little observations on life”), notes on a performance of Mahler, on Trump on FOX (said he was avoiding in this reading many of the poems on Trump), on immigration, other new stories, a dream of a high school love, with pages of footnotes.

VIII. Estep Auditorium

Tom Murphy, the 2021 - 2022 Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi, TX is a regular here & I’ve enjoyed his poetry for years. He began with poems from a forthcoming manuscript, including a political piece titled “Corpus Christi” that he pointedly did not read at the Poet Laureate ceremony, these poems in stacks of words, or phrases, like Beat notebook entries. Then on to poems from the crisp letterpress chapbook Snake Woman: The Avebury Bride Cycle (El Grito Del Lobo Press, 2021) produced by Clarence Wolfshohl (who is also a regular reader here). From Pearl (2020) he read a piece imaging Muslim poets in old Spain talking to each other; “Fall” in Appalachia; & a poem inspired by the Iliad “Wedding Dress.” (Later, I discovered that Tom & I both have an affinity for the work of the black, Buddhist, Beat poet Bob Kaufman, perhaps why I felt so close to Tom’s stacks.)

Steven Phillips, Associate Professor of Mass Communication, & moderator for this session, read his charming rhyming poem “Thanksgiving.” 

Joan Canby is another of the poets from Texas; this was her first time at Scissortail. She read from her recent (March, 2022) collection of poems Cascade from Assure Press (Cedar Hill, TX) inspired by a freak boating accident caused by a rogue wave that resulted in the death of two children and their grandfather with repercussions for a marriage. The pieces she read were descriptive, moving, in an an oblique narrative.

X. Estep Auditorium

After a dinner break we were back for the first of the Festival’s featured authors.

But Scissortail is not just about older, working, academic, published, MFA, poets. ECU also sponsors & facilitates contests for younger, beginning writers, both undergraduates at ECU, & a statewide writing contest for high school students.  

Tonight, before the featured author, an undergraduate student, Chloe Le Fevre, had her moment - perhaps the first of many - to read to the audience of fellow writers. She read 2 poems, one titled “It’s a Wonder” (not about the bread), & another titled “Either/Or.” Perhaps she too will be back reading at Scissortail in the future.

Tonight’s featured reader was novelist Lou Berney, his most recent the crime fiction November Road. He talked with humor about his writing process, then read the first chapter from a new novel just finished in January, said it was the first time reading from it — but if he said the title I missed it, sorry. 

[Biographies of each of the readers can be found at https://ecuscissortail.blogspot.com/2022/01/2022-scissortail-biographies.html]