Split This Rock — Friday Action, April 20

At each Split This Rock festival there is a political action at one of the branches of government. Over the years we have been at them all, but most often at the White House -- after all it is the most stinky seat of power. This Friday morning we were back in Lafayette Park across from the White House on the day of a student walkout to commemorate the shootings in Columbine, CO 19 years ago today. We take our inspiration from the students & Split This Rock organized Louder Than a Gun: a Poem for Our Lives.

A stage was set up but due to regulations there was no step to get up on the stage so a willing stage hand lent a, well, a hand to each of us. A Cento is a poem composed of lines from other poems, each reader was asked to read a line of no more than 12 words on the theme of ending gun violence, either their own or by someone else, the lines gathered by a volunteer, & the finished Cento to be posted on the STR website.

We took our turns on the stage, then joined students who were gathering nearby in the park. After brief speeches, the students laid down on the grass under the trees, or sat & held each other for 19 minutes of silence for the years since Columbine & all the dead students since then.

There are no famous poets here, just the students, rising up, creating change. Which is what Split This Rock fosters.

Split This Rock — Thursday Reading, April 19

The evening readings at Split This Rock are open free to the public & are the only events where all the conference attendees gather together. Danez Smith (member of the STR Board of Directors) & Dan Vera (one of the planners of this year’s festival) had fun hosting the night’s reading.

Another feature of the readings is the inclusion of a poet from the DC Youth Slam Team & tonight Dani Miller wowed us with a poem that listed all the reasons why she was tired of writing poems on oppression (aren't we all!).

Each year, whether or not it is a festival year, Split This Rock hosts what is now called the Sonia Sanchez - Langston Hughes Poetry Contest & the winner gets to read at the featured reading. The 2018 winner of the contest was Jonathan Mendoza who read his winning poem “Osmosis” that begins with a description of the death of Prudencia Martín Gómez, who came from Guatemala & was trying to cross into California, the poem playing on water & “ICE.”

Another tradition is to play a recording of one of the gone poets & tonight it was of the Central American poet Claribel Algería, a great activist as well.

The first of the featured poets was Camille T. Dungy who began with an anti-war poem from 2003 “Daisy Cutter” (the deadly anti-personnel bomb), then one of her poems from the Split This Rock section in the April issue of Poetry “this beginning may have always meant this end.” In her poem “What We Know I Cannot Say” she thinks about the trees after the fires in the West, while “On Angel Island Immigration Station” dealt with the incarceration of immigrants here. She ended with 2 poems about children, “Frequently Asked Question #7” (on a plane with children) & a poem about her 1st year of having a child, life as a mother, poet & activist.

Javier Zamora’s poems were about being an immigrant, he having crossed the border in 1999. He began with “To Abuela Nellie,” later also a poem for his grandfather, & in between “2nd Attempt Crossing, for Chino.” He wrote about the homeless in Nogales, “Citizenship,” & a medical exam “Doctor’s Office 1st Week in this Country.” He ended with “Instructions for My Funeral.” He too has poems in the April Poetry.

Sharon Olds had been scheduled to read at the 1st Split This Rock, but she had had to cancel, & how here she is 10 years later. She also had poems in Poetry but saved a reading of one of them for later in the festival. Tonight she read from her 2016 book Odes, beginning with a poem inspired by the poet Evie Shockley “Ode to Whiteness.” Then on to some wonderfully sexy, titillating, but also tender, poems “Ode to the Hymen,” “Ode to the Clitoris,” & “Ode to the Penis,” with “Amaryllis Ode” tossed in. She ended with “For You” a poem that begins quietly enough describing her morning tray with coffee, her phone, then a bird outside, a martin, leads her to think of Trayvon Martin, everything is connected.

I could have left & come back to Albany at the end of the 1st day of Split This Rock, I felt so filled with the spirit of the festival, but there were 2 more days to come, I had to stick around.

Split This Rock, Thursday Workshops, April 19

It’s like returning home. Split This Rock Poetry Festival happens every other year & I look forward to it, but this year it fell exactly during Albany’s WordFest, including the Third Thursday Poetry Night that I host, but I had to be here. It was the 10th year of this festival of “provocation & witness,” & I’ve been to all of them.

As soon as I walked in to this year’s site for the festival at the National Housing Center, I saw folks I know & cherish from past festivals, Melissa Tuckey, Yael Flusberg & Susan Scheid, & lo & behold! another Albany poet, Dawn Marar. I settled in with the program booklet to plan my time, but this year I had already picked out possible workshops & panels on the new Split This Rock! mobile app. Each day there were 3 sessions with anywhere from 5 to 8 possible places to be for any session, on a variety of poetic/social justice topics. It is exhilaratingly over-whelming.

Tributes to Poets Lost since Split This Rock 2016 was my first stop, & it was hosted by Sarah Browning, STR Executive Director. She set the tone with a line from gone poet Monica Hand “We are like Lucille trouble in the waters can’t kill us,” written on the white-board, Monica one of the “poets lost,” the Lucille being Lucille Clifton.  It was an informal gathering, with folks speaking up as the spirit moved them, including reading poems by the gone poets. Sarah, Ann Arbor, Ellen Bass & John Rosenwald did a group reading of Ursula Le Guin’s “Fragments from the Women’s Writing,” others read poems by Monica Hand, & Sam Hamill’s “True Peace.” Sam had just died last week & didn’t make the list of gone poets in the festival program.

I was also shocked & saddened to hear from Ellen Bass that the NYC poet Jackie Sheeler had died, at the end of March as I found out later. Jackie had featured at the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany in February 2011. Among the other poets mentioned in the workshop, from the sadly extensive list in the program, were Claribel Alegria, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Mari Evans, Zahara Heckscher, Lucia Perillo, & Derek Walcott. Another mentioned was peace activist Mary Helen Snyder. I paid tribute to Gerrit Lansing by reciting his line, “All things go underground with glee.”

Ghost Fishing Book Launch: Reading & Discussion
Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (The University of Georgia Press) was just released, said to be “the first anthology to focus solely on poetry with an eco-justice bent.” It is edited by STR co-founder Melissa Tuckey. This session included 10 readers from the anthology,

Camille Dungy, “A Massive Dying Off;” Elizabeth Jacobson, “Almonds;” Purvi Shah, “After 2/3 of a Village is Papua New Guinea Is Decimated by Natural Disaster;”

Javier Zamora, “Saguaros;” Nancy K. Pearson, “Brazos Bend;” Katy Richey, “Recovery;” Tiffany Higgins, “Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses;” Gretchen Primack, “The Dogs and I Walked Our Woods;” Danez Smith, “summer, somewhere (excerpt);” & Melissa Tuckey, “Requiem.” My poem “Water” is also included in the anthology, although I wasn’t one of the readers. Get your copy through your independent bookstore.

Translators as Activists, Curators, and Cultural Interpreters
While I haven’t done any serious translations, I read a lot of writers who have been translated into English (& a recent Writers Institute reading by Rosa Alice Branco with her translator Alexis Levitin raised issues about moving a poem from one language to another). Katherine Young was the panel moderator; each of the panel members gave a prepared presentation on the project(s) they were working on, then the discussion opened up for the audience, which focused on gender bias among scholars & translators, about controversy over revelations about revered poets, & the necessity of translators providing cultural context to their subject’s work.

Francisco Aragón talked about the controversial revelation of letters he translated indicating that the beloved Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton was gay, or at least had a homosexual relationship. Aviya Kushner talked about translating the work of a working-class poet writing in Hebrew. Olga Livshin described the relationship of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova & the artist Olga Glebova Sudeikina, based on translating Akhmatova’s poetry. Finally, Ilya Kaminsky talked about translating poets as varied as Lyuba Yakimchuk, Paul Clean, & Venus Khoury Ghata.

A full start to the first day of Split This Rock 2018, with the evenings readings to follow.

Albany WordFest — A Night of Features, April 16

This was the only one of the week-long WordFest that I would get to, since I spent the rest of the week in DC for the semi-annual Split This Rock Poetry Festival. But this was a great way to start the week, with a cross-section of local writers here at the Hudson River Coffee House. Brian Dorn was our gracious host.

Not all the readers had arrived yet, but it was time to start. Harvey Havel read from his just released novel Mr. Big, a sports thriller about an injured football player & corruption in the NFL.

Joe Krausman read a string of short, sometimes rhyming, often funny poems, many on the theme of aging, such as “Losing It” (on forgetting), & “I Got Arythmia.” Some of his poems were inspired by stories in the newspapers, others by as ordinary things as bacon & eggs, or walking down the canyons of New York City streets. In “Picture at the Shaker Museum” he ponders the irony of the cult’s religious rules being the demise of the cult itself, & the poem “Limitations” was about the dilemma of making choices.

Danielle Pouliot was the one poet here tonight that I hadn’t heard read previously. She began with a tour-de-force “Punctuation-a-thon” then the buzzing “Barehanded Beekeeping.” For some reason she felt it necessary to say that her poem “What I Was Taught as a Girl Growing Up” was “not feminism” while it depicted the experience of many young girls growing up confronted by a patriarchal society.

This is exactly the topic that Liv McKee works so well on. By way of intro she sang her way into her anthem of poetry, then jumped into poems from her self-published/DIY chapbooks, poems full of women with honey dripping from their teeth, childhood memories in a synagogue, a trip to Palestine, Stormy Daniels & sex workers. Sprinkled in & about were haiku on sex & politics, a poem on sexual assault, & she ended with her satirical “Letter to the Hippy Man…”. She can be somewhat preachy but she gets her message across.

Speaking of which, some have called Poetyc Visionz “the Preacher of Positivity.” His first piece was an homage to Prince, & to performers & their audiences. Then on to familiar pieces such as his “9th cloud” piece & the 7 chakras. He puts himself out as as one of those personal development motivational speakers, spinning off images from pop etymologies, weaving in black history & apparent African proverbs. He also spun in a few haiku. He ended with a new piece on dreams & reality & the Disney super-hero myth of Watanga.

& WordFest was off & running. A Night of Features occurs even when it is not WordFest (or National Poetry Month) on an irregular basis at the Hudson River Coffee House on Quail St., in Albany, NY.

New Books - Local Authors, April 15

Once again, for April, for National Poetry Month, the Rensselearville Library scheduled a series of events throughout the month, including the Poem-a-Day project (coordinated by Tom Corrado) — no, not a poem-a-day to write, but one to read. But today there was a reading at the library by 4 women poets with recent books of poetry. Kim Graff, the Library Director, introduced the poets, Dawn Marar, Linda S. Miller, Katrinka Moore, & Dianne Sefcik, all poets I have seen & heard read before in such venues & at open mics.

Dawn Marar read 3 poems from her just released chapbook Efflorescence (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a book that focuses on her personal connections to the Middle East. “A Bit of Mercy” was set in Morocco, while the poem “Mayday Mayday Mayday” begins in Turkey & ends in the USA. For the reading of “Fusion Approach to Gathering” she asked Katrinka Moore to join her for this multi-voice poem.

Linda Sonia Miller’s book is briefly, briefly (Kelsey Books, 2017) from which she read a generous selection, on the themes of Time & Love, including “Disappearance,” “Preparing for the Revolution” (basketball), the childhood memory of the Bronx “Ends with a Bang,” “After the Attack,” “The Weight of Birds,” & a trio of poems about Rensselearville, “The Made World,” “Wise Neighbor,” & “Walking Up Pond Hill Rd.” She ended with a new poem, not in the book, on grief & change “Lost & Found.”

Katrinka Moore’s book is Wayfarers (Pelekinesis, 2018), includes not only poems but also black & white photos of ephemeral objects such as dried twigs, nutshells, broken pottery laid out on a dark background. The first poem she read was “Cosmogony” appropriately enough the speaker present just before & after the Big Bang; others on similar themes were “Leonids” & the postcard from the Moon “Luna Lura.” “Remnants” was a list poem of broken, torn, battered things. There was also a trio of what she called “wayfaring at home poems,” “Celebrate,” “Falling Sometimes” & “Scatter.”

Dianne Sefcik’s book Red Ochre was the most unusual of the 4 books offered here, a hand-made “pre-production Poetry Month edition” also illustrated, hers with photos of ancient petroglyphs & cave paintings — no ISBN or bar code. Her poems were centered on her native, first people roots, starting out with the title poem about the colors used in the cave paintings. “Vision Quest” was for Crazy Horse (& includes a quote from Rilke), “Hovenweep” was about visiting the national monument & hearing the sound of oil wells. The ironically titled “Pipe” is a political poem walking the trail of history. More personal was “Indigenous” (about her grandmother) & a personal encounter with “Bear II.”

I came away from this reading with a deep sense of an afternoon well-spent awashed in the words of these 4 women — & with a stack of books to keep that going.

W.O.M.P.S.: Thom Francis, Rebecca Schumejda — April 12

This monthly series continues at the ArtBar Gallery in Kingston, this night 2 of my favorite poets & people on the planet, introduced by the host of the series, Teresa Costa.

Thom Francis, el presidente of AlbanyPoets.com, is a guy who makes things happen in the world of poetry in the Capital Region. He is a modest poet, not making grand statements, instead making his point by describing the everyday world around him. He read mostly new poems, beginning with one with the poignant line “… my father lives 15 minutes from me … might be on another planet.” From a series of poems on people watching he read “Telling Other People’s Stories,” then read “Running Away” inspired by an online picture, then "Waiting for the Weekend” about a girl at a bar, & “Obey.” Ending with a couple of older pieces he read “Watching You Crumble,” then “April 1st” the only poem he wrote for the poem-a-day challenge in 2016 — hey, better to write one good poem than 30 days of shitty ones.

Rebecca Schumejda, like Thom, writes poem from her everyday/workday experience. She has 3 full-length collections out (not to mention a couple of chapbooks). She began with 2 poems, “The Idiot Pill” & “After Her Shift” from Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press, 2014), based on her experience working at the Olympia Diner in Kingston. From her collection of poems about owning a pool hall, Cadillac Men (NYQ Books, 2012), she read “Bobby Balls in Hand.” Her latest collection is Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books, 2017) from which she read a couple pieces, including “Do Not Enter” that included a local poet whom some of us know, but who was not in the audience. She ended with a poem from a new series on mental illness &incarceration “In Search of Winged Creatures.” As always, I was in love.

We took a break, then on to the open mic. Judy was first up with 2 poems for a friend whose son had died, “Riding in Paradise” & “As a Mother.” Teresa had announced a theme, “Dead Poets” for those who wanted to read poems by others, & Richard read 3 poems by Saul Elliot, short, philosophical, sometime aphoristic poems. Teresa followed with 3 poems George Montgomery, “Brooklyn Born Angel,” another about a Woodstock girl, & “Thinking of You.” The Patriarch Donald Lev read a string of short poems (some very short), such as “Fucking Off” about becoming a poet, “Ping Pong,” “Aluminum,” “Pieces,” “Rusted Out” (his oil tank), & “Policy”.

Photo by Dayl Wise

I sort of followed Teresa’s Dead Poets suggestion by reading my poem/essay “Believe, Believe” based on Bob Kaufman’s poem of the same title which I also read. Ralph Carusillo read from his chapbook The Grand Facade a poem in rhyme titled “Mire.” Fred Poole read a couple of memoir pieces, the first about the peace of childhood, his twin, & of “darkies,” the other about riding in Arizona. Suze Bottigliero's choice was Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” (her name), which she read for her “crazy love” (Joe) who had died recently, then a couple of her own pieces about him, “The Night I Missed Him & Watched Vertigo,” one called simply “Vertigo,” & some lines about watching classic movies in the early AM “White Wine & Licorice.”

Dayl Wise, who was also taking pictures, read a couple of odes, remembering his days in the military, “First Cut: Ode to the Military Barber” & “Ode to the P-38” the small (it could fit on the
chain with your dogtags) can-opener necessary to be able to open the C-rations. Gary Siegel rounded out the night with a trio of poems, “A Love I Never Knew” about sex & being clueless & sad, “Porcelain Prophet” about a character encountered in the Men’s Room of Grand Central Station, & a funny piece in half-rhymes what he called “a little poem from the morning.”

W(ord). O(f). M(outh). P(oetry). S(eries). takes place on the 2nd Thursday of the month at the ArtBar Gallery, 674 Broadway, Kingston, NY, with a featured poet (or 2) & an open mic for the rest of us.

The Rev Reading Series, April 4

This was the final reading in a semester-long series at the Sage College in Troy, NY, coordinated by Matthew Klane. It was held this day in the Bush Memorial, re-configured to give it a more informal feel & so the readers would not have to be hidden behind the huge pulpit that is like something out of the beginning of Moby Dick, behind which some many poets previously had shrunk.

The first reader was Donika Kelly who read mostly from her book Bestiary (Graywolf Press, 2016), but she began with a poem about driving to Utah “Out West.” Her poem “4th Grade Biography” was about her Dad, in LA post-riots after the Rodney King verdict. Then on to the poems about the mythological figures, short poems each titled in this fashion: “Love Poem: Chimera,” The other figures were Pegasus, Centaur, Satyr, Mermaid, Griffin, Dinga & Minotaur. This being an institution of higher learning, & Donika Kelly being a teacher, she carefully described the commonly depicted characteristics of each. However, she stated that she was trying to figure out what these mythological figures were “really” like, an odd thing to say since they are, by definition, not real. Oh well, it make for fun poetry.

Danielle Pafunda is Albany-born & grew up in Altamont, she now lives in the West.  She began with pieces from The Dead Girls Speak in Unison (Blood Books, 2016), short, grim poems, including “The Chorus,” “The Chant,” others, a poem about the Devil that is also a love poem, & “a poem of threats” that she said there are lots of in this book. She then read a from a new series of memoir poems, apparently titled "The Book of Scabs," cast as letters to her parents, even one set at SPAC talking about True Love as a character, poems that perhaps could be labeled “speculative fiction,” full of self-involved teenage angst, sex, & death. By way of an explanation, perhaps, she said at one point, “as an artist I think about aesthetics” — don’t one.

One can only hope that that this interesting series continues next semester & beyond. Look for them on Face Book https://www.facebook.com/russellsagereview/