Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 6 -- Finale

Some of the Award Winners

One of the features of this Festival is the Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest in poetry & fiction for high school students in Oklahoma -- see the link for the list of winners. Traditionally the awards are presented to the students at the final reading of the Festival. Ken Hada served as M/C, with awards being presented by Dr. Wahling (fiction) & Dr. Grasso (poetry), with brief remarks by Dr. Fisher himself for whom the awards were named.

Walter Bargen was the Festival's last reader & he was Missouri's first Poet Laureate in 2008. He was also the only reader here to wear a tie (but that just to be contrary). He began by telling us about his interview with the Republican governor of Missouri before being appointed Poet Laureate, with the warning not to embarrass the governor. Oh well, we all know Poets (& Poet Laureates) can be embarrassing. He then read a love poem "Yet Other Waters" on a theme by Heraclitus. His other poems were about aging & vacation RVs ("Forced Busing"), a tornado, a trucking accident ("Trucking Confessions") & a poem combining references to Abbie Hoffman, The Who & Woodstock with a father & daughter both with broken ankles. He returned to his role as Poet Laureate with a funny story of a radio interview & the equally funny poem "Poet as Grand Marshall of a Fall Parade." I bought a copy of his book Days Like This Are Necessary: New & Selected Poems (BkMk Press, 2009) so I could continue to explore the work of this interesting poet.

And that was it, except for the extended, serial good-byes. I hope to be back again & in the meantime plan to delve further into the work of the great variety of writers I heard in the last few days, both new & old friends.

But I would be remiss in my reporting if I did not comment on one of the great charms (among many) of the Scissortail Festival: the book table. Filled with the mostly small press wares of the poets & other writers reading it is a literary smorgasbord for all tastes & sensibilities. The table is run as a service for the writers reading here, with the writers/publishers getting the full fare, with no consignment fee, by Dr. Eril Hughes & her flock of young students. For those represented by major publishers there is a separate end of the table run by a local bookstore. & of course after the readings there were lines to get books signed. I bought some books, as did everyone I talked to, & I signed some of my books bought by folks who had been at my reading. I was very pleased with my sales but more by the ease of the process, the friendly smiles from the young women at the book table & by Dr. Hughes' adept control over the whole process.

Thank you, ECU for sponsoring the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival each year -- go Tigers!

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 6

Last day of the festival & I opted for the readings in the Estep Auditorium, mainly to hear my friend Alan Berecka, but glad I did once I heard the other fine writers too.

Jessica Isaacs said she doesn't like to do intros for her poems & as a result she was able to cram in lots of poems. She began with a short series of poems about a woman in a hospital & nursing home, including "She Dreamed of Running…" (from the nursing home). Another chilling poem painted images of "little poinsettas in the snow…" as an aftermath of a school shooting. "Kitchen Moths" told of a woman going out at night in her nightgown. Another amusing poem told of a plan for sex on a trampoline ruined by stepping in dog-shit. She read a cluster of poems on World War II, including "Black Rain," & ended with a poem about exploring her heritage, "Black Dutch" (i.e., Indian). Good poems read in an expressive & intense spoken-word style that brought out the power of her lines.

The short story that George McCormick read, "The Mexican," was about a youth working loading ice into box cars filled with oranges, & I soon realized I had heard him read an earlier version of this story when I was here 2 years ago. It was/is a memorable story, the new version tighter, but more nuanced, & pleased to hear it again.

Jennifer Luckenkill had a quieter style of reading her poems than Jessica Isaacs. Many of her poems were about homes, about houses she has been in, with titles like "The House of Learned Empathy," "The House that Remembers," "Saying Goodbye to the House," & "Whispering Pines" (the name of a house her parents had lived in before she was born). The poem "Oceanfront Property in Oklahoma" was a satirical take on global warming & she pondered the afterlife in "Maybe This is All There Is."

Alan Berecka lives in the Corpus Christi, Texas area, but grew up in upstate New York outside Utica. After we became friends 2 years ago at Scissortail, I included him in the Poets in the Park series in July in Albany's Washington Park.  He began with the poem "Departures" from his book Remembering the Body (Mongrel Empire Press, 2011), then on to a couple of poems playing on religious themes from a new manuscript, currently titled "With Our Baggage" (for now). A couple poems were about working as a telephone operator, including "Nearly Gay Pride" when he was made an "honorary Lesbian." Another poem on how others perceive us, all told with ironic humor as many of his poems are, was about being called an "Anglo" at work, "Born Again Polish in South Texas." Other poems recalled baseball & a summer job on a garbage truck & his father heckling at hockey games, "Battle Cry."

Such is the great variety of ways of looking at the world & then writing it down & reading it to attentive listeners that is the pleasure of this Festival. But there is one more event to come -- or, as the Uncle Wiggly books used to say, "If global warming doesn't flood Texas & open up waterfront property in central Oklahoma, I will bring you the story of the Finale to the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival."

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 5 (Part 2), Afternoon & Evening Readings

Fortunately the scheduling of the readers in the next conflicting, concurrent sessions was such that I could catch my favorites in the first half of one & the second half of the other.

After the session I had read in I stayed in the Estep Auditorium to hear my friend Larry Thomas, a former Poet Laureate of Texas, & a great raconteur. He read a selection from his new book Uncle Ernest (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013)  The book is a narrative of 39 free verse poems in 3 to 5 syllable lines, set in the East Texas backwoods & the confines of an asylum for the criminally insane.

Elizabeth Raby is another fine poet (I bought her book of poems This Woman (Virtual Artists Collective, 2012)) whose work I first encountered here in Oklahoma 2 years ago, & was pleased to see her & her husband Jim again. Today she read from what she described as a 4-generation memoir, about why & how she ended up as a poet, Ransomed Voices (the title is from Emily Dickinson). One section was called "The Second Coming," about her wanting to be Jesus, trying to be a peacemaker. Another section was in the voice of her grandfather, teasing us to want to read the complete work.

From there I scooted over to the North Lounge. I caught the reading by Arn Henderson whose poems played on themes of architecture & descriptions of towns, then on to sad, tender poems about the recent death of his wife, who was also an architect & artist, poems of love & loss.

I have know Jeanetta Calhoun Mish the longest of any of the Oklahoma poets, in fact, she is the reason why I got here in the first place. She once lived in Albany, NY & her son Michael was born in Albany, a true "guy from Albany." But she is a native Oklahoman, & when we re-connected a few years ago she enabled me & Charlie Rossiter to get to still another Albany -- Albany, Oklahoma that is. Today she read from a book in progress, "How I Became White," mixing family tales, historical documents & her own imagination. She also read "A Letter to My Cousin" addressed to the wife of former vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, after reading W.E.B. DuBois on the slave question & racism. She ended with a piece, not her own, what she called "a gift," a segment of a prose fiction narrative written by her son Michael -- you know what they say about apples not falling far from the tree. I suspect we will be hearing Michael reading here at Scissortail some year.

After a break for dinner, we were back at the Estep Auditorium for a reading by Oklahoman novelist Constance Squires. She read from her novel Along the Watchtower (Riverhead Books, 2011), set in Germany at the end of the Cold War, a section where a young girl sneaks out to a rock concert with a punk-rock, Nazi wannabe G.I. She followed that with a short story about a female Iraq war veteran, "Unscheduled Stop," traveling through the world's largest McDonald's between Tulso & Joplin. Compelling, well-written story-telling.

Jonathan Isaacs plays before
Constance Squire reading

This was followed by a gathering at the Page One Literary Art Gallery, complete with great snack food, punch, sweet tea & jazz by The Moonlighters Combo. Arrayed around the room were poems & short prose on easels as if they were visual art, as indeed in the broadest sense they were. It was a chance to talk & hang out with some of the writers I've been hearing in the last couple of days in a relaxed, pleasant setting. A good way to end the day.

Full bios of the authors can be found here at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Blog.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 5, Afternoon Readings, Part 1

Again, an afternoon of 4 sessions, 2 each running concurrently. But my choice for the first session was made for me since I was one of the readers. & what a grouping it was, in the Estep Auditorium. If you are going to read with other writers, hope they are really good & have lots of friends & fans & then you'll have a really big audience too. I was lucky. More so, lucky being introduced by the lovely English instructor Rebecca Nicholson-Weir.

The first reader was Bayard Godsave with an excerpt from a longer story, "Tell Me About Your Brother." The story was about a graffitti artist who becomes a political terrorist, written in the style of magazine journalism, like an article from Rolling Stone. I'm looking forward to someday reading the full story.


I always try to consider my audience when I prepare my readings, & try to give unfamiliar folk a sense of my work & my themes. I started with a poem I wrote leaving here 2 years ago, "Oklahoma Sunday," then introduced them to the Albany poets with "Where Were the Professors." I included poems from my chapbook Poeming the Prompt (A.P.D., 2012), & a couple of new pieces, the political "Nurture or Shooter" & the whimsical "Living in Wilcox." What great fun, what a high to look out into the audience to see so many wonderful poets I respect & admire beaming down on me.

Steven Schroeder is another poet I met at the last Scissortail festival 2 years ago. He often works with his daughter Regina in creating unique books printed on homemade paper, & with other artists. He began with "A Lecture on Metaphysics" in which a cloud speaks as God, from a recent book, Turn. He continued on in that vein, funny, philosophical, term-twisting considerations of religion & religious images, with "A Work of the Hands" & a untitled piece written just yesterday, on Jesus ("he spoke with authority, for God's sake"). He ended with a poem in 7 parts on Mary the Mother of Jesus, "Seven Sorrows," short poems printed on card stock with prints by artist Neese Aquilar, connected by last lines, circular -- I just had to get a copy.

The final reader of the set was Jim Spurr, who runs a poetry open mic on the third Thursday of each month in Shawnee, OK. I told Jim that I never can get to his reading because I am hosting an open mic the same night in Albany, NY. Jim said that was alright, that he never could get to Albany for the same reason. He began with a poem that describes how he feels about his Parkinson's Disease, "Live Loud Live Long." Another poem on the same theme, a rant of a street poet, contains a line appropriated from the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, "pencil, paper, poetry is alive & it don't need no stinking permit." He read a poem about the end of World War II, thinking there would never would be any more war, & a poem, "Charlotte is the Name" in praise of an Oklahoma Girl. "God's Four Windows" was a dialogue between Spring & Winter. A few more poems, separated by amusing anecdotes, then the last poem about taking up Bible studies at his late age, about Time & searching for meaning, "Dante & the Nerd." Jim is another of the Oklahoma poets I had met on my first trip here & he remains one of my favorites (as he is for many here), & one of the Elders to follow on the path of Poetry.

More to come -- stay tuned.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 5, Morning Readings

This morning again there were concurrent sessions & I opted for the North Lounge, readings by a new friend & an old friend.

Susan Gardner is an artist & poet & editor at Red Mountain Press.  She began with a poem she wrote in Spanish, then its English version, "Caja de Luz/Box of Light." The remainder of the poems she read were from her book To Inhabit the Felt World (Red Mountain Press, 2013). "Garden Bench" & "Montserrat Revisited" were longer poems, images draw from the natural world, while "Atlantic Flight" was more sparse, tense word play. Other poems were "Sticks & Stones," "Deep Water," the sadness of "Trilogy for My Daughter," & "Snowy Day." Another longer piece, "Partita," was in 3 parts, on relationships, sex, disease & forgiveness. She ended with what she called her "love letter to the New York Public Library."

I had met Ron Wallace on my first trip to Oklahoma, with Charlie Rossiter, to the Oklahoma Labor Fest & our trip to Albany, Oklahoma (yes, there is one), & again later at Scissortail. The kind of guy (cowboy hat & boots, Kenny Rodgers beard, ponytail) that challenges my urban East Coast prejudices while speaking to me from our shared working class poet backgrounds. & what's not to like about a guy who writes a book titled Hanging the Curveball: An Olkahoman's Love Affair with Baseball ( TJMF Publishing, 2012). He read the title poem, then a poem for his son Matthew ("Revelation"), & "Moonlight Grahm Steps Off the Field Again" (based on the Field of Dreams movie). Then on to his book of poem I Come From Cowboys, "Two in the Morning Train," "War Horses" (on the poets who have influenced him), "Gifts" (for Wayland Jennings), & "Comes Winter to the Night" (which he introduced by saying "loving baseball I have to hate Winter" -- oh yeah!). Then ending with 2 poems in both books, "Eastside Boys, We Ran" (growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Durant, OK), & the wonderful coming of age poem "Learning to Speak Choctaw."

I took the next session off to go over my set list for my afternoon reading (see the next Blog).  With all these fine poets reading I didn't want to phone in my reading (not that is something I would ever do).  So I sat by the pool tables in the Cole Campus Center, watching students bend over the table, breaking, scratching, & sinking the 8-ball -- & reading over my poems.

The featured reader before lunch was Anna Myers, whom I'd met at the bar at Vintage 22 last night. She introduced herself as "Ben's Mom" (Ben Myers who read yesterday), but it was soon clear that indeed apples don't far from the tree. Anna is the author of a string of middle-grade & youth novels, often based on moments in history. But first she read from her forthcoming autobiographical picture book, Tumbleweed Baby, a charming, funny story of being "found" & welcomed into her family. She said she often goes into schools to talk about her books & takes on the persona of key characters, putting on a shawl or jacket & speaking in their accents. She gave us a sample from her book Tulsa Burning set in the 1921 race riots & from Time of the Witches, set in Salem, MA in 1692. She also gave us a taste of her unpublished novel for adults, Trashing Women, & funny stories of her grandchildren that she is turning into a chapter book.  Like I said, thrilled by writing that I never would have thought I'd be so entranced by, if I may be so un-grammatical in my enthusiasm.

Full bios of the authors can be found here at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Blog.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 4, Andrew Hudgins

In addition to the group readings spread throughout the day, one of the hallmarks of the Scissortail festival is the featured readings each day. These are generally regional writers in various genres who have their own slot to read & talk about their writing & get their picture on the Scissortail poster (Note: I snagged one of the big ones at the end of the festival & carefully rolled it up & then left it in the rental car when I checked in at the airport -- wonder what the next renter thought of that?)

Most of us know that there are many (a gasillion?) poets out there we have never heard of so one of the benefits of this festival is hearing writers I've never heard of before. One example is the poet Andrew Hudgins. He was introduced by ECU's Steve Benton, who quoted from a review that described Hudgin's work as "orderly, accessible poetry." Hudgins began by reading sections from his forthcoming memoir, The Joker, including a passage about trying to tell a joke to poet Richard Wilbur. Then he read a bouquet of poems from 2010 collection American Renderings: New and Selected Poems. Many of his poems had to do with memories from childhood, such "Came Back" (his mother), "Haircut" (his father cutting his hair, then he cutting his father's), "In" (about "fog trucks" & dancing "ecstatic in the poison"), & "Blur" (pollen season). "Out" was a poem about a boy being lowered into a well to retrieve the body of a dead dog. "The Circus" was built around surreal images while "Cadillac in the Attic" was the equally surreal revenge of a tenant. A relaxed, humorous reading with moments of tenderness & the sublime. A poet worth looking into if you don't know his work.

Later, there was a grand gathering of us writers & readers at Vintage 22 Wine & Dessert Bar just off the ECU campus, with plenty of good snacks & desserts, & great conversation with new & old friends, fueled by good drinks. Vintage 22 has an upscale, trendy decor & we could just as easily been in New York City as in Ada, Oklahoma. & this was only the end of the 1st day of the Scissortail Festival.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 4, Afternoon Readings

There were 4 afternoon sessions of readings, 2 each running concurrently so one had to make hard choices. For the first of the 2 readings I headed to the North Lounge.

The first reader was Carol Hamilton with a series of train poems & more broadly, poems of travel in general. The poems were drawn from her own travel experiences, traveling alone or with a companion. Her poem "Voice from the Darkened Plains" combined trains & the memory of a childhood flip-book. "Getting Small" evoked the experience of a child on a plane but became a metaphor for the way we see things, while the poem "Trail of Crumbs" was about following blazes while mountain hiking, like Hansel & Gretel. There were poems about being on a boat in the North Sea & on buses in Mexico ("Walls in Mexico"), walling ourselves out or in.

Joey Brown had us laughing through her essay about re-habing a house on her Sabbatical with her husband, "We Got a Guy for That…" taking us through a string of disasters, near-disasters, & the etiquette & politics of hiring a friend's handyman, of finding "a guy." Strangely enough, she had to later leave the conference early to get back to Missouri because she got a call that there had been a flood in the upstairs bathroom in her house -- talk about Life mimicking Art.

Jim Wilson was more serious, began with a personal essay, "A Study in Grey" about observing sandhill cranes at a sanctuary on the Platte River. He also read a chapter, "Beirut Spring," from his memoir about a 2011 trip back to Lebanon after 20 years -- pensive & meditative.

Clarence Wolfshohl had been the publisher of Timberline Press for 35 years until the end of 2010. He read from his book of poems, a collaboration with Mark Vinz (who could not be here), In Harm's Way: Poems of Childhood (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2013). But he began with a poem not in the book inspired by a compliment he got last year from a woman at the festival that brought up the memory of a girl from long ago, "Shoe Shine." He read Mark Vinz's poem "Saturday Matinee" then his own paired poem "Gunfight at the RKO Corral." Also poems about grade-school vaccination, about his mother & his uncle, & about having dinner at a friend's house, "Starved in the Barrio."

For the second afternoon session I headed back across to the Estep Auditorium in the Cole Campus Center to hear poet & activist Dorothy Alexander, whom I'd met a few years back at the Oklahoma Labor Fest, then we became FaceBook friends. Before the reading she told me about a long anti-fracking poem she has written, but too long to read here. She began with a tribute to Oklahoma artists, "State of the Arts in a Red State," then poems about her mother & father, & reading before electricity ("Lamplight & Literature"). She read a couple poems about typing, & "Early Ambitions" & "Leaving Cheyenne," about factory work, being in a movie, & being the first woman attorney in a rural county, "Undo Process." She is one of the Elders, still going strong in her red fedora & peace-sign necklace.

Brent Newsom's work stood out in contrast to Dorothy Alexanders's "non-fiction narcissistic narratives", his being fictive poems about a made-up town, Smyrna, in Louisiana. He called them "empathetic imaginations," a phrase that was repeated later in other sessions. Some, such as "Esther Green Plans a Funeral," were dramatic monologues. Others told parts of linked narratives, such as "Floyd & Patty" & "The Pecan Pie Takes a Week to Eat," about a womanizing auto mechanic. He ended with an interlocking "crown of sonnets" in the voice of the preacher's wife, the character Claudia Blackwood.

A.J. Tierney stunned us all with a non-fiction narrative she said "was 18 years in the writing," about her life as a high school senior in a home with her siblings & a bankrupt mother constantly scheming ways to get get out of debt. The section she read was about when she came down with Ball's Palsy while working a summer job in a law office, & defying her mother's attempts to get her to go for a job as a stripper.  Powerful stuff.

Phil Morgan, from Chickasaw Press, a last minute fill-in, read poems with powerful political & historical messages, such as "Today's History Lessons" about using profits from gambling to finance Social Security, & "Two Lane Highway" based on reading Washington Irving's biography of Mohammad. But by far the most moving piece was a series of linked poems based on Christmas Cards he sent to his brothers & his son, "Indian Man's Christmas Cards."

As the session ended & I headed out to rest & get dinner I was able to identify why I like this Scissortail Festival so much: there is no pretension, the poems are straight from the heart, from the gut, from the breath (& no big egos, as another poet pointed out), even when the work is clearly not directly autobiographical, it is still based on real people, on real emotions. As Ken Hada said later, "it's all about creativity, not competition." Amen.

Full bios of the authors can be found here at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Blog.