19th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Friday Afternoon/Evening, April 5

During the lunch break, poets seemed to scatter, & we found some at the Brickhouse on Main St., where Ron Wallace shared some of his “cat fries” with me, otherwise known as “Prairie oysters” or “Colorado oysters”, depending where you are; I wonder what they call them in the Adirondacks?

Back to the readings, & I opted for the 3 readers at the Regents Room, all new writers to me.

Heather Levy is a born and bred Oklahoman and graduate of Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth MFA program for creative writing. She read a couple chapters from her forthcoming novel Hurt for Me, 1st selection from chapter 1 in which the protagonist, a woman named Echo, is on the run & shops for pre-natal vitamins. The 2nd selection was from later in the novel where Echo is undercover to help track down a sex-trafficing ring. Readers can follow her on X and IG @heatherllevy and explore her website at www.heatherlevywriter.com

I had met Cody Baggerly in earlier sessions, he was wearing a keffiyeh & I shared with him a copy of the Veterans For Peace newspaper Peace & Planet News with its articles on the destruction of the Gaza & the Palestinian people. He is a graduate of East Central University, where he received his degree in English and Literature. He read from a work-in-progress that might be called "Somewhere Between." He said that his biggest influences are the farm & house he grew up in, & the music that has influenced him. He read 2 pieces inspired by the Scissortail Festival, a piece just written from his memory of last year's festival, & another titled “This Morning” written last year about his mother (who was here today in the audience). As for the inspirations from music, he read his “most rejected poem,” “Rock’n’Roll Prairie Fire,” another on Summer in Oklahoma inspired by Bob Seeger, “Summer Fire” (John Fogarty), “Camp Fire Fortunes,” & 2 poems inspired by Sam Cooke’s songs. One poem not in his book was inspired by the attack on Gaza “Where Our Eyes Can’t See.”

Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He started with 2 walking poems, the 1st a love poem/memoir, the 2nd about his back spasm he named “Sparkie,” as if it were a dog. His pantoum titled “An Image” (which was of a statue of Adam & Eve) was about being trans, while a poem in the form of a golden shovel about the ending of a relationship used a line from Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a fly buzz …), & others. Again, it’s another reason to come here to be surprised by the work of writers I had not yet heard.

The last afternoon session (but not the last of the day) was in Estep Auditorium, for 3 veteran writers from Scissortail Festivals in the past.

Rob Roensch teaches at Oklahoma City University. He read from an early section in his novel, In The Morning, the City is the Prairie (Belle Point Press, 2023). The narrator is a high school dropout & the setting of the episode was a protest by teachers at a state capitol in 2018, vivid descriptions of the swirling crowds & the chaos that often happens at such events.

Cullen Whisenhunt, another graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA program, read from his new book Until Air Itself is Tinted (Turning Plow Press), a flock of poems about birds, geese, juncos, vultures, hawks, & even the Scissortail fly-catcher (of course!). Among others, he read an ekphrastic poem, a tornado poem, even a poem about a pig pasture, as well as a genre unique to Oklahoma, “the McAlester poem.” A total Oklahoma experience.

I first met Rilla Askew here at a Scissortail Festival when she & her husband Paul Austin were splitting their time between Oklahoma & Woodstock, NY; they’re now in Oklahoma full time. Rilla is the author of 5 novels, as well as books of shorter fiction. But today, for the 1st time at Scissortail she read her poetry. She began with “They Tell It Wrong” in the persona of Eve, & a poem on a related theme (i.e., snake) “Work.” She read poems on a rodeo, on immigrant workers (“Shadow Work Force”), a poem set in New Mexico, & “As If We Knew” reflecting on the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Prose, poetry, all good writing is putting one right word after another.

After a dinner break we were back in the Estep Auditorium for the reading by the featured reader, novelist Steve Yarborough. But 1st, a reading by this year’s winner of the Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest, Glory Curda, from Oklahoma City University, about driving through a snowstorm, “7AM Outside Gallup, New Mexico.” The judge of the contest was Denise Tolan, another graduate of The Red Earth MFA program. I hope to see Glory reading here in the future.

Mark Walling introduced Steve Yarborough, who is currently a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. One can find a detailed bio on the Scissortail Festival blog. He read from his most recent novel, Stay Gone Days (Ig Publishing, 2022), a section set in the segregated schools in Mississippi. A big part of the charm of this reading was Steve’s voice, a sonorous Mississippi accent. I don’t know if there is an audio-book version of the author reading, but if you see one you should check it out.

One can find bios of each of the readers at the festival at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Blog.

19th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Friday Morning, April 5

Once again, choices, choices, choices — 

I opted for the readers in Estep Auditorium for my 1st stop of the day. Benjamin Myers was the 2015-2016 Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma and is the author of four books of poetry. He read from his most recent, The Family Book of Martyrs (Lamar University Press, 2022), starting with “Decoration Day,” then the discursive, detailed “Listening to Reggae at the Nashville Airport" (that he dedicated to fellow poet Hank Jones, who was also here at Scissortail). As one would expect from the title of the book there were a string of poems about the older generation, such as “My Grandfather’s Fake Rolex,” & a trio about his father, ”My Father on the Diving Board,” “Storm Cellar,“ “What Peter Looked Like Walking on Water.” Ben is another poet that I met at my first Scissortail in 2011, & he continues to scribble out good, reflective poetry.

R. Anjum, center; S. Rhoades, right; D. Wilcox, left

Rubeen Anjum, from Dallas, TX, by contrast was new to me, & her work was quite different stylistically from most of what I’ve been hearing at this festival — more fragmented, less discursive, string of images & words. She began with a poem/essay “Blue Diamonds” about COVID-19, then on to a more recent piece describing a man in hospice. Some of her poems were from her full-length collection My Photo Album (Finishing Line Press, 2023), such as the sonnet “Journey” (with words from Robert Frost in her head). “Dervish from Dallas” was her
thoughts on a plane, like a list of words & images, & she ended with the brightly musical “You Dance with Me” (which I did the next day).

On to the next session, across the courtyard, to the Regents Room, where Josh Grasso was the MC. 

Andrew Geyer is a prose fiction writer, another whom I’ve heard read at previous Scissortail Festivals. He introduced his short story as from a cycle titled “All that is Holy,” with characters he said we have heard before; the story was titled “The Rainbow is Salty and Smells of the Sea,” from the point-of-view of character Anna about her near-death experience — it was like a riff on the story of Persephone.

Joey Brown is a fun person with whom to hang out at Scissortail — & elsewhere, I suspect. Her first poem titled “Making a Hand” is an expression that was new to me, it means one has done a good thing. Her poems were very much of place & the people living in it, “Drought” about an old house shifting; “Black Jack After a Fire” (a kind of oak); a poem about love, “Tributary;” & “Old Home Week,” about memory, Oklahoma towns & how/why she got there. She introduced a poem about a company meeting online by saying she was “reading a poem I probably shouldn’t.” And even though the eclipse was still a few days off she read “Missing the Eclipse” (she will be coming home from work). 

For the final session of the morning I was back at the Estep Auditorium. 

John Graves Morris lives in Lawton, OK & is a Professor of English at Cameron University, & is a regular at Scissortail. His poems often had long titles, some, as in his first poem, “This Is a Reply to an Internet Troll…” were longer than the poem (& longer than I could transcribe on one hearing), & all were descriptive meditations on the topic at hand. For example, a poem about long-term memory recalling faces, “All the Words There Are,” & an eco-poem about a severe drought & heat wave, “Bodies Littering the Floor Southwest Oklahoma, 2023” (imitating the poems of Arthurs Sze, who was a featured reader here in 2022).   There were poems for/about his father & a couple about birds, one responding to a line from a student, “Never say yes to a gas station Moon pie” — hmm?

I had mentioned Jessica Huntley earlier as a co-author with Britton Morgan of the mini-zine Cross Timbers (2022). She read a series of ekphrastic poems, often abstracting her emotions, a couple from Cross Timbers, “Still Life with Horse in Window,” & “Graduation into Surrealism” based on a Dali painting. Others with titles like “Lotus Blooming Under an Eclipse,” “Jungian Shadow,” & the rhyming “Rain Dance.” The thing about a good ekphrastic poem is that one does not have to see the art to dig the poem.

Quinn Carver Johnson is the author of The Perfect Bastard (Curbstone Press, 2023), a poetry collection about queerness and class in the world of professional wrestling. They began with a “perfect bastard” poem, then a grim description of of a declining city “Cheap Heat Action City.” I know that I’ve never heard any pro-wrestling Haiku but Quinn read 3 new "Death Match Haiku." Another new poem was titled “Dinosaurs,” in which the extinct creatures were capitalists, & “Ode to the Pink Cowboy Hat” was a response to the hit song “Boys Don’t Cry” & a tip of the hat to the wrestler Cowboy Bob Horton. Quite a wild ride indeed.

19th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Thursday Afternoon, April 4

Back from lunch, a long table of poets at The Blue Moon Restaurant in the North Hills Shopping Center, I always look forward to their exquisite fried green tomatoes, I opted for the reading in the Regents Room.

Marc DiPaolo was the 1st reader, another transplant from New York, an Italian from Staten Island, that I am certainly familiar with from my single days in NYC. His work draws upon his youth but he included a piece titled “The Rose Withered in Concrete,” about a black student in his class when he was an adjunct at a New Jersey private college. Then a piece about being Italian in Oklahoma during COVID, “When I Had 5 Senses,” & the richly humorous “The Smallest Ass at the Family Reunion” from Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography with Pseudonyms and Some Tall Tales (Bordighera Press, 2021).

Sharon Edge Martin is a much-published Oklahoma writer who hosts a monthly poetry reading at Tidewater Winery in Drumright, OK. Her reading followed her own adage that “poetry has no boundaries” with poems on a variety of topics. “The Grandmothers Gather” was a response to the Russian attack on Mariopol, Ukraine; “How the World Works” was about poets v. politics; “Lucky Me” on being blessed with poetry & music, others. She included a segment from a biography in verse, “You Don’t Know Jack” about her husband’s father.

Britton Morgan is an active member of Oklahoma’s music & poetry community. Among the poems he read were a cluster from his handmade, mini chapbook (with poet Jessica Huntley who read later in the festival), Cross Timbers, “Trespassing,” “A Forged Oracle,” “Automatic Poem from Tarot,” & the title poem in the persona of a wolf. He also read what he described as the 1st poem he wrote, an essay titled “Harlan” about an ancient mound in the lake in Wagoner, OK where he lives.

I stayed in the Regents Room for the next session as well, of which the host was Cody Baggerly.  I had noticed him earlier because he was wearing a kaffiyeh (I gave him a copy of the Veterans For Peace Peace & Planet News with its stories of the ongoing assault on Gaza).

Shaun Perkins is the founder/director of the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry — who knew?! Her reading was focused on powerful women, witches from history & in myths & stories. In addition she not only encouraged us to cackle in response to her poems but got an enthusiastic audience response. Her poem “Mother Shipton” (1488 - 1561) was in the voice of the character herself. Others included “Hermione,” “Wicked Witch of the West,” & “Nasty Women” (the witches of MacBeth), & one about a male witch, “Listen to the Dead.”

Paul Austin has been a perennial reader at Scissortail, & is another transplant from NYC (& Boston). He has been an actor, director, and teacher for all his professional life in the theatre. One of the pieces he read was titled “How to Play Pinter’s Pauses & Silences.” But the killer performance was a piece with a long title I couldn’t catch that began “The Simple Riff…” which was profound in its simplicity, a cacophony of rationales, “Me, Me, Me” from all sides of the political spectrum delivered as only a master thespian could, or would dare.

The final reader was another ECU professor, Joshua Grasso, who writes speculative fiction stories. What he read this day was a strange, fascinating story titled “Doma Boy” about a house-hunting couple confronted with a property they love that comes with a house-spirit. What would you do? 

Featured reading

After a break with a leisurely time for dinner, we gathered back at the Estep Auditorium for a reading by Kai Goggin, host of the Wednesday Night Poetry open mic in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. She was lavishly introduced by ECU professor Steve Benton.

Kai Goggin is the author of the just-published poetry collection, advanced copies were available for sale after the reading, Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). She began with a poem, “Priest of the Invisible,” inspired by a quote from Wallace Stevens. The on to a couple of morning poems, “Coming to a Poem” & “Petals.” There were many, descriptive, mediative poems about birds, each of which she tried to give the proper scientific name, even when they were torturously difficult, & a poem (“I’ve Been Feeding a Monster”) about a caterpillar. Love, even when not the direct topic, was very much in many of the poems, including those of the birds. Her poem on the common blue violet was for Sappho & titled “Lesbian Flower,” & she read a list poem titled “Things I Love About this Generation of Queer Kids.” It was a wonderfully affirming reading of lush poems filled with the beauties of, & affection for the natural world.

After a book-signing we all adjourned to one of Ada’s fine establishments, Polo’s Restaurant, for a relaxed reception of poets & writers once again enjoying food, drinks & conversation. 

More of Scissortail to come.

19th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Thursday Morning, April 4

I was last here at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma in 2022 & was very glad to be back. I was first here in 2011, returning every other year until 2019, then back in 2022. Glad to be back for the poets I’ve met before & for the new poets to meet now.

Scissortail is two & a half days of often over-lapping readings by writers in poetry & prose. Each day started with a reading in Estep Auditorium in the ECU Campus Center, followed by readings in 2 to 3 locations during the afternoon, followed by a break for dinner, then a reading & book-signing by a featured reader back at Estep Auditorium. Meanwhile throughout the festival is a string of tables with books for sale by the readers, the tables staffed by volunteers from ECU.

The beloved ringmaster of this writing extravaganza is Ken Hada, Professor in the Department of English & Languages at ECU, whose welcoming comments & introduction this morning were done in a torn shirt, which to me was a signal of success & a call to buy a lottery ticket (i.e., the day has got to get better).

Estep Auditorium

In his comments Ken noted that the festival this year had 19 new authors reading, & this first segment started off with young writer Ky George, a graduate of the Red Earth MFA program at Oklahoma City University. Their poems invoked a female coyote (“Coyote Calls”), “Madonna Whore” (words she will teach her daughter), social justice eco-poems, & “Riding Bikes with Kids on the Res.” A most auspicious start to the Festival.

I first met Alan Berecka on the first day of my very first Scissortail Festival back in 2011.  I was surprised to hear that he grew up near Utica, NY, I enjoyed his poetry, & invited him to read at Poets in the Park in Albany, NY later that same year. Today, he read poems in a mix of topics, including baseball (e.g., “The Crack,” “Reconciliation,” “Why Barry Bonds Belongs in Cooperstown”), his parents, on being an English major (“Angling with D.H. Lawrence”), among others. He ended with a poem for his wife that he likes to end with, “Why Matter Might Matter.” 

Mark Walling is also a Professor in the Department of English & Languages at ECU & has long been associated with the Scissortail Festival. He read from his short story collection I Can Hear Everything from Here, recently published by Turning Plow Press, a story about a man alone wanting a Dalmatian then finds one he names “Disco.” He then noted that Ken Hada never reads at this festival & invited him to read 3 poems selected by students from his new book, Come Before Winter (Turning Plow Press, 2023), the poems “Blue Jay at Dawn,” “In the End,” & “When Happiness Comes.” Good to hear Ken's fine work again.

Then on to the inevitable conflicts — my travel companion from Albany, Sally Rhoades, was reading across the courtyard in the Regents Room, but since I hear her read frequently in Albany she gave me dispensation to attend another session. I opted to stay in Estep Auditorium to hear 3 writers I had never heard, or heard of.

Mark Walling did the introductions for this session. 

First up was Nikki Herrin, an ECU alum who is now a high school teacher & softball coach. She was resplendent in a red hat that she wore in memory of the late poet/activist Dorothy Alexander who was a regular here at Scissortail. She began with an impassioned poem on teaching, “Oh But We Get the Summers Off,” & then on to mostly short, intense dramatic poems about relationships, many sounding like sticky notes venting to her boyfriend. She ended with a poem about going home after a Scissortail Festival — it made me wonder how many others in this & past audiences had written poems after being here.

Wendy Dunmeyer read mostly from her recently published full-length collection My Grandmother’s Last Letter (Lamar University Press). She introduced her reading by saying “our subject matter chooses us,” her subject matter being the physical abuse as a child at the hands of her father, a chilling image of her surrounding her bed with her toys that would wake her. But her reading included some healing poems not in the book, finding the connections she needed in Nature, other poems about finding hope in her new, different self. 

Mark introduced one of his students as the next reader, another example of how our subject matter chooses us, in Ben Payne’s case the subject matter was his own family & what he learned working in their plumbing business, & Ben’s life as a student & a young man falling in (& out) of love. His poems included also a tribute to “English Professors,” & “Backup Plan” was a funny piece about how there is no money in poetry.

I had made the correct choice finding wonderful voices I’d never heard before.

You can find bios of all these fine poets & everyone else on the schedule at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival site.

Salon Salvage, March 30

This was #19 in this monthly series! There were 4 poets reading this night, 1 local, the rest from out-of-town, & 4 hosts, if one counts concluding comments by Matthew Klane. 

Steven Alvarez

Amie Zimmerman got the night going with a general welcome, then Michael (introduced as a “guest host”) introduced the 1st reader Steven Alvarez, who read 3 poems from 3 different books, not identified, but the pieces seem to be interrelated, & were read fast, almost pressured speech. The 1st seemed to be set in 2008 & depicted the scene in Times Square; the 2nd was apparently a connected story & titled “Land of Red Daylight 2;” the 3rd was a memoir of his father’s 11 months ago.

Shira Dentz

Amie introduced the 2nd reader, Shira Dentz, who is local. She began with the title poem from her 2020 book from PANK Books, Sisyphusina, a piece about women aging. Then on to a series of newer, eco-poems, pieces titled “Small Things” (micro-plastics), “Custom Made” (with the line “we need birds & blue sky”), “Greenway,” “Sparks,” & others. She concluded with a family memoir of the Bronx, “Black Flow” saying “this poem has scribbles in it” which she represented by crumbled paper.

Jenna Hamed

Hajar Hassaini, who, with Amie Zimmerman, is one of the co-coordinators of Salon Salvage, introduced the next reader, Jenna Hamed who read a piece of “instant poetry” printed out on a roll of pin-feed paper, titled “3/30/2024” — how instant is that! — a meditation on the war on Palestine, read quietly, in a flat voice, a string of automatic writing, some in Arabic, then on to a related issue, a link on her Instagram to a fundraiser for “HEAL Palestine,” which you can find @heal.palestine

Kamalya Omayna Youssef

Hajar introduced the final reader, but first called for a “palate cleansing” moment of silence. Kamalya Omayna Youssef took some time setting up her stacks of texts, read from a small press chapbook some political/revolutionary meditations as if they were fragments, then on to another stack of papers, an intensely introspective piece, perhaps a love poem, &/or on poems & language. She ended with “an old poem,” also fiddling with the booklet, to her family, titled “There’s a Hole in It.”

A grand, moving mix of themes & images, & even of the forms of production, the kind of thing Salon Salvage is known for. The curators are Amie Zimmerman, Matthew Klane, & Hajari Hussaini. You can find the event each last Saturday of the month at Weathered Wood in downtown Troy, NY, at 13 Second St.; the 7:00PM time seems to be the time they open the door. One can find information about the upcoming reading on the Facebook page, & on the Instagram page, salonsalvagetroy 

Third Thursday Poetry Night, March 21

Back in June, 2006, the Lark St. Bookshop where I had been holding the Third Thursday Poetry Night since February, 2004 closed. I approached the Director of the Social Justice Center, Victorio Reyes Asili, to ask if the storefront space there was available for the monthly open mic. Interestingly enough, Victorio had been a featured reader at the Bookshop in April 2004; welcomed us to the Center’s space as the Third Thursday home & that continued to today, with the featured reader this night the very same Victorio Reyes Asili, Ph.D. 

But before we got into the open mic list, I invoked our Muse for the night, the gone American poet  Jayne Cortez (1934 - 2021) by reading her poem “Find Your Own Voice” from her book Jazz Fan Looks Back (Hanging Loose Press, 2002); Cortez was in Albany twice to read her work, first in February, 1989 at the NYS Writers Institute, then again in October, 2010 at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, in Troy.

The first open mic reader on the list was Mia Morosoff, who is Victorio’s mother; she read a sad, longing poem about a man waiting for a train, leaving. Sally Rhoades read her poem “I Can’t Hear You,” that she wrote at her first time the Scissortail Creative Festival in Ada, OK, about a native chief inviting her to find her own voice (included in her just-published poetry booklet Where Light Falls). 

Ray Drumsta, here for the 1st time, had been the 1st to arrive & helped me to set up; he read a piece titled “Another Plane,” a portrait of a combat veteran needing to go back. 

Out featured reader, Victorio Reyes Asili, read largely from an unpublished chapbook, beginning with a poem titled “Erasure Re-Mix 1994 After Biggie” based on the text of Juicy, a famous hip-hop piece by The Notorious B.I.G. (1972 - 1997), the poem preserving the last 2 syllables of each verse, the poet giving the classical prosodic names for the feet. A major he piece he read/performed was from an incomplete “Crown of Sonnets,” (see the footnote below) 9 sonnets, in the language, style, & content of hip hop, the lines short as in song lyrics. He concluded with 2 short sections from a verse novel, 2 Hispanic characters in dialogue, talking about brujas (witches/healers). Victorio’s performance was a compelling mix of hip-hop infused with the academic tradition of analysis. 

After a short break we returned to the open mic list, & I led off with my poem about an astronomical phenomenon (no, not an eclipse) but “The Transit of Venus.” David Gonsalves followed with a short piece, as are many of his poems about teenage grand kids.

Austin Houston read a tender poem titled “Pillar” about his father. Maria Sohn’s piece titled “Endless Summer” was about a relationship.

The final performer was Victorio’s sister, Taina Asili, singer/songwriter, she recited the lyrics of a song on economic democracy, with the line that “liberation is on the horizon.”

It isn’t always such a family affair here (although poets are perhaps family), but you can join us each month on the third Thursday for a featured poet & an open mic for community writers, at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY, 7:30PM (sign-up anytime after 7:00PM) — your donations support poetry events in Albany & the work of the Social Justice Center.

The footnote:

A Crown of Sonnets is a sequence of sonnets usually addressed to a person or concerned with a single theme; each successive sonnet uses as its first line the last line of the preceding sonnet. The final sonnet ends with the same line that begins the first sonnet, thus completing the circle. An advanced form is called a heroic crown made up of 15 sonnets, but the final binding sonnet is made up of all the first or last lines of the preceding 14 poems.