May 19th, 2012
Kristen Dupard of Ridgeland, Miss., performs at the 2012 Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. Photo by James Kegley.
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of being one of the judges for the national finals of “Poetry Out Loud,” a competition for high schools students from around the country who study, memorize and recite poems. It all begins in the schools and then on up to the state and, finally, the national levels.
According to the sponsors, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation — both, by the way, funders of the NewsHour’s arts and poetry coverage — some 365,000 students took part.
The winner at the end of it all was 18-year-old high school senior Kristen Dupard from Ridgeland, Miss., who received a $20,000 award. I spoke to her earlier today by phone:
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May 19th, 2012
I remember the Hershey candy bar years ago When it only cost a nickel and we loved them so
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May 17th, 2012
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May 17th, 2012
The Irish Times – Wednesday, May 16, 2012
JENNIFER RANKIN
MOSCOW LETTER: A SLENDER young man is performing an impassioned rap poem to an applauding crowd. A group engrossed in card games ignore the show, while someone is strumming a folksy tune on the guitar. Welcome to Occupy Abai, Moscow’s street sit-in.
Activists have been camped out on a leafy Moscow boulevard for more than a week, a small but unusual protest in a country where demonstrations must be agreed with the authorities in advance, and the spring evenings are cool and rainy.
Occupy Abai takes its name from the monument to a hitherto little-known Kazakh poet, Abai Kunanbaev, where protesters have gathered, as well as a dose of inspiration from the anti-capitalist movements that have “occupied” public places from Dame Street to Wall Street. But the cause is local.
“The main idea is to change the government and to change the minds of the government,” says Kirill Melamud, a 42-year-old translator, seated on a yoga mat by a fountain.
The camp sprang to life last week after Vladimir Putin was sworn in as Russia’s president for six years. On the eve of his inauguration, more than 400 people were arrested as peaceful demonstrations against his return to the presidency ended in violent clashes with police. In the days that followed, images of riot police beating and kicking unarmed protesters went viral on the internet, while people reported being detained simply for wearing white ribbons – the symbol of Russia’s protest movement.
The crackdown prompted a new kind of protest. At Occupy Abai, people do not chant slogans or wave placards; instead they talk politics, play chess and read poems. Numbers wax and wane from a few thousand to a few dozen. Part hipster camp, part open-air literary salon, Occupy Abai has also been an impromptu stage and lecture club.
Volunteers dole out tea and biscuits. A whiteboard advertises lectures: “what to do if you are arrested” is followed by a talk on anti-fascism. A theatre company dropped by on Monday to perform BerlusPutin, an outlandish satire that mocks Vladimir Putin and his friend, the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Opposition leaders, trailing TV cameras, give informal press conferences. Kseniya Sobchak, the socialite best known as Russia’s answer to Paris Hilton, visited and tweeted against the authorities’ decision to move the portaloos.
“I came down to socialise and meet people,” Mikhail Volkov, a 33-year-old manager, says. “This is a good idea. People don’t have many other opportunities to express their opinion.”
“I’m very satisfied to see this. Freedom cannot be bought for any money,” Galina Polikova (75) says after unloading bread and sausage from her shopping trolley to help feed hungry participants.
The high point in numbers came last Sunday when an estimated 10,000-15,000 people went on a “test walk” around Moscow that ended near the Occupy Abai camp. The walkers set out to prove that Muscovites can stroll around without being arrested.
“The goal of the test walk is easy to understand – you should be able to walk in your own town without permission,” Alexander Kumarin, a 28-year-old TV producer, said, pushing his toddler daughter in a pink buggy.
The protest movement shows no sign of abating, with a “march of millions” planned for Russia’s national day on June 12th.
The persistence of the Moscow protests presents President Putin with with a dilemma. If he cracks down on the protests, he risks alienating international opinion and driving his opponents to extremes. By allowing the protests to continue, he gives space to the opposition to grow into a viable force to seize power.
This is Vladimir Putin’s difficult choice, Ilya Ponomarev, a member of the Russian Duma and opposition leader, has written. “As we have seen, the authorities are going down the path of confrontation. But nevertheless they keep returning to one big and very important question: to compromise or not.”
Despite the earlier show of force, authorities have allowed the sit-in to continue, although yesterday a Moscow court ordered the police to remove the protesters. A court spokeswoman said it would be carried out “immediately”.
The persistent protests might explain Putin’s surprising decision to skip the G8 summit, which begins on Friday at Camp David, ostensibly so he can organise his cabinet. Putin is sending Dmitry Medvedev, who as prime minister is nominally in charge of organising the government.
Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Centre think-tank, dismisses the idea that awkward encounters with western leaders deterred Putin from the summit. He points out that fewer people attended the protest in May than an earlier demonstration before the elections. “The [May 6th protest] march had no effect on Putin’s inauguration and was overshadowed on the world scene by the French and Greek elections that same weekend,” Trenin wrote in Foreign Policy.
The protests underscore how Putin has lost the support of the middle class in Moscow, where more than half the population voted against him in March’s election. The test is how long he can rule without the support of the capital.
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May 17th, 2012
Mumbere, who traveled to Washington, D.C., for Tuesday’s finals, describes the experience to The Burlington Free Press ( http://bfpne.ws/K2Qp19) as “an amazing, amazing day.”
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May 15th, 2012
On May 19th, Wake up Smell the Poetry will be honoring the art of poetry, story and songwriting with Dot Walsh author/chaplain of The Sherborn Peace Abbey, singer-songwriter Joe Fredette and performance poet Neiel Israel.
Open Mic to follow. Doors open at 10 a.m., program begins at 10:30 a.m..
This event is hosted by Cheryl Perreault. Free admission, free coffee and scones.
Please call or email to ensure a seat: 435-8638 or go to www.hcam.tv/wakeup
HCAM Studios located at 77 Main St, Hopkinton.
Neiel Israel
Neiel Israel, Boston native, is a poet, artist, expressionist, vocalist, and playwright. New to the art of Slam, in less than a year’s time, she became both a member of the 2011 Lizard Lounge National Poetry Slam Team and representative for the Lizard Lounge at the 2011 Women of the World Poetry Slam.
Neiel has featured and performed in many venues across the United States including: Bowery Poetry Club, Literary Café, African American Literature and Culture Society, Verbalization, Gallery 55, Pierre Menard Gallery, Wally’s Jazz Club, Berklee College of Music, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Massachusetts College of Arts. Her work has been commissioned by both The City of Cambridge, and The City of Boston. www.facebook.com/neiel.israel
Dot Walsh
Dot Walsh sees herself as a Peace Chaplain and as an educator for nonviolence. Her spirituality has been the foundation for her life’s work, allowing her to be open to the gifts of compassion and to dedicate herself to the service of others.
Walsh served as a lay team member in prison chaplaincy in the Massachusetts prisons and developed and implemented many programs over the course of 20 years. In her community work, she trained volunteers at Rosies’s Place and served as STEP Program Coordinator.
On June 4, 1988 she spent a day with Mother Teresa in the prisons, which then connected her to work at The Peace Abbey in Sherborn. She has continued to work there as chaplain and program coordinator and also serves as an intern supervisor for Harvard University students and a board member for the Lionheart Foundation.
A documentary film was created by Beth Balaban and Eric Gulliver that focuses on Dot Walsh as one of two Boston-area women who strive for peace in their work and daily life and can be viewed on http://peaceandthequiet.com/trailer
Joe Fredette
Joe Fredette is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from the Boston area who released his debut CD “Simon Leahy’s Daughter” in 2006. Conceived as a fictional allegory, this CD contains 10 original songs, each sung from the perspective of the protagonist as she experiences a spiritual awakening and embarks on a “hero’s journey,” ultimately becoming a symbol of the love, unity, and desire forfreedom that binds us all, and of the endless possibilities for human transformation.
Joe is currently his second CD as well as a new music website.
In addition to recording and performing his own songs, he frequently collaborates with other
local musicians, lending innovative blues and rock guitar riffs to their arrangements.
Joe is proud to have 10 percent of all CD proceeds go to Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots Foundation (www.rootsandshoots.org that provides educational outreach to children all around the world, and whose mission is: “To foster respect and compassion for all living things, to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs and to inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, animals and the environment.”
A sample of his live performance can be found on
http://www.csnchicago.com/pages/new_landing_bulls?blockID=159596&tagID=49801
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May 15th, 2012
Words That Burn, a poetry app, includes audio and video from the late writer Josephine Hart’s Poetry Hour at the British Library. Beginning in 2004, Hart devoted an evening each month to a poet or two, “introducing and setting their poems in the context of their life,” and staging readings of the work from actors like Dominic West, Harold Pinter and Elizabeth McGovern.
The idea, Hart said, was that understanding “‘the life and philosophy of the poet illuminates the poetry,” which “readings by some of our finest actors then ignite.” In a video introduction, Hart contends that poetry is “the highest form of language, without a doubt.”
Words That Burn features 15 poets, and many more pairings: Dominic West reads Percy Shelley and Robert Lowell; Juliet Stevenson reads Emily Dickinson; Ralph Fiennes reads W.H. Auden. Harriet Walter reads Sylvia Plath; Charles Dance reads Elizabeth Bishop; Elizabeth McGovern reads Lowell and Marianne Moore; and so on. And the app is free, created by the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation in her memory.
Alongside each recording, the text of the poem appears. Occasionally, while reciting, an actor will add or modify a word, changing the meaning of the text slightly, causing the listener to reflect on the difference between the original and what has been spoken. Some read quickly and brusquely, others languorously.
Dominic West inserts an extra “I” in Lowell’s “Man and Wife.” Harold Pinter is all force delivering Philip Larkin’s “Vers de Sociéte.”
Outside the simple poetry layouts, the graphics are both wonderful and ridiculous. The main navigation screen, presented as a library, features a crackling fire, mounted animal head, and ornate gold portrait frames filled with an overlarge italicized font.
The aesthetic of this room powerfully calls to mind a strange sugar plantation whodunit game that I played in the early ’90s. Other aspects of the design are more evocative of New Yorker caricatures or Monty Python.
Getting around can be tricky. Move a balloon to the center of the screen and click just once on it to select a poem. Make sure not to confuse the app into thinking you want to read the poet’s or actor’s bio yet again. I would provide more guidance here, but I don’t want to mislead you. I still get lost, myself.
Juliet Stevenson’s rendition of “I Heard a Fly Buzz — When I Died—” is particularly lovely — slow and melodious, with pauses where I didn’t expect them, underscoring the gravity of Dickinson’s verse in a whole new way.
Hart herself, as the critic Emma Garman has said, “believed in three major destructive powers: erotic obsession, grief and envy. In her six novels, she anatomized each with an unflinching boldness that was, and remains, unparalleled.” The poetry showcased here tends to reflect those and other dark preoccupations.
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May 13th, 2012
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YORK, Maine — Creative energy buzzed through Coastal Ridge Elementary School on Friday, when second-grade students showcased poetry they had written for peers, parents and friends.
Small, mixed groups of students and their chosen special invited guests gathered to hear a variety of poetry, including free-verse, haiku, shape poetry and what second-grade teacher Michael Harris described as “big-feeling poems.”
“It gives the students a chance to share what they’re learning, and the parents get to experience what they’ve been doing. It’s very good for the home-school connection,” Harris said.
Second-grade student Ryan O’Connell brought his mother, Susan, as his special guest and said he was excited to show her what he had been working on in school last month.
“I like reading my poetry to my mom. It was a lot of fun writing it,” O’Connell said, adding that his favorite poem was about degus, pets similar to a chinchilla-squirrel mix, of which they have two at home.
Susan O’Connell added, “It’s exciting to see things at home inspiring him to write poetry. The poems were very well-thought-out.”
Across the hall, teacher Colleen Welock said she enjoys seeing the children get excited to play host for their invited guests. “The kids get to choose who comes in. They each have one special guest, and watching them line up at the door as they wait for their person to arrive is so fun.”
Daniel Cammarota invited his father, Mark, as his special guest and was most excited to share a poem titled “Mikey,” named for his brother.
Cammarota said he invited his father because he enjoys spending time with him.
“It was great to see all of the second-graders enthusiastic and excited about poetry,” Mark Cammarota said.
Rose Rago, grandmother of second-grader Isabella Rago, attended the event to support her granddaughter and see her classroom.
“I thought it was wonderful. I love the school. It’s the first time I’ve been able to visit her classroom,” Rago said.
Isabella said she invited her grandmother “because I love her.”
Also stopping in to visit the classrooms and support the students was Principal Sean Murphy.
Murphy said the poetry event is timed nicely around Mother’s Day and showcases skills and confidence acquired by the students throughout the school year.
“It’s great for the teachers to host this, especially this time of year,” he said. “The creativity of the students comes through.”
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May 13th, 2012
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On the Web: Watch video from Broken Mic at
spokesman.com/video.
If your image of a poetry reading is a quiet, genteel affair, you’ve obviously never been to a Broken Mic reading.
The weekly open-mic event in downtown Spokane operates by different rules. People eat and drink and clank silverware. No one turns off their cellphone, and they talk if they feel like it. The audience hoots, hollers and heckles – all officially, heartily endorsed behavior.
“If you heckle, heckle loud,” says Mark Anderson, the impresario of this poetry circus, and the audience obeys enthusiastically.
The raucous, barroom spirit is just one of the ways that Broken Mic – held every Wednesday night at Neato Burrito – is setting itself apart. It’s also grown into a standing-room-only portion of the city’s literary scene, and marks a small but thriving presence for performance poetry in Spokane.
“The group of people who come down here to read are willing to be berated,” said Travis Naught, a poet and writer who’s a regular at the reading. “Not in a bad way.”
Anderson is Broken Mic’s organizer, emcee, lighting director, donations collector and guiding spirit, as well as one of the chief poets. Like several of the regulars, he’s a performance poet – reciting from memory, emphasizing the spoken rather than written nature of the work. It’s not unique to these readings or Spokane – the spoken-word form shares a long history with slam poetry, coffeehouse readings and hip-hop traditions – but the genre seems to be undergoing an intense, if relatively small, resurgence.
“It’s sort of like a fraternity of poets,” said Jade Sylvan, a traveling performance poet who was the featured guest on Wednesday. “If you’re a working performance poet, there will be at least one night (in any city) where people come together. … There is actually a very ravenous audience for performance poetry. It’s smaller than for music, but they’re very passionate about it.”
In Spokane, Anderson is the center of that particular universe. A graduate of Eastern Washington University in psychology, the 24-year-old Anderson is living with his folks and devoting himself full-time to writing, performing and organizing poetry. His own work is surprising and funny, darting from the smart to the strange in unexpected ways. He’s also – for someone who strikes you initially as quiet and perhaps shy – a clever, extroverted performer.
He says he’s been writing, in one form or another, for about as long as he can remember.
“Off and on, I’ve written since I was a little kid – since I learned how to write, in first grade or second grade or something,” he said.
He became more serious about it around age 19, and he started attending the “Anarchy Slam” open mics at the Empyrean coffee house. When the Empyrean closed and that reading lost its home, he began looking for a way to carry it forward.
At some point, he and others found themselves meeting at Neato Burrito – the small, eclectic burrito shop that sits in front of the small, eclectic Baby Bar on West First Avenue – to discuss possible locations, when it dawned on them that they might be sitting in one. The owners were amenable, and Broken Mic started there in January 2011.
From the beginning, it had a core of regulars and its own ragged spirit, poets say. But in recent months momentum has been building; the number of people who sign up to read is rising, and those raucous crowds – those heckling, burrito-eating, beer-drinking crowds – are growing.
“It’s halfway between a normal poetry reading and a rock concert or something,” Anderson said. “Part of the spirit of it is you go and listen and you get to cheer on these people.”
On Wednesday, there were more would-be readers than Anderson could fit into the schedule. The crowd was heavy on young creative types – lots of flannel and intentional facial hair, lots of piercings and thrift-store fashion, lots of black – but there was also a wide variety of readers and readings. The work ranged from sentimental to sarcastic, from straightforward to oblique, from traditional to experimental, and while that audience did indeed heckle loudly on occasion, the spirit of the thing was supportive, not mocking.
“I get very excited about reading in front of people every week,” Anderson said. “It’s really very much about the spirit of the audience.”
And the spirit of the audience, at least judging by Wednesday night, is good.
“So many of Mark’s constituents call it their church,” said Naught.
Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vestal13.
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May 11th, 2012
Matching A. E. Stallings's poem "Fairy-tale Logic" with an article about fairy tales appearing on television and in films.
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