what to do over the long weekend…

Forget the boat, the garden, the picnic, the barbecue. Don’t open the curtains or answer the phone. Sit down at your desk and click on The Great Taxonomy of Literary Tumblrs: Round Two.

In case you’ve been sleeping, Tumblr allows users to post text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos. It puts a visual face on just about everything and allows users to display their obsessions — er, interests — for all to see.

Over at The Millions, Nick Moran has put together the second list of his favorite literary Tumblr accounts. Organized into categories (humorous, publishers, bookstores, authors, libraries, etc.), this list of links takes you to Tumblr after literary Tumblr. It’s enough to inspire just about anyone and certainly enough to keep you out of the fresh air over the long weekend.

But just in case it’s not, you can always visit Nick Moran’s first Guide to Literary Tumblrs, assembled six months before the second.

Have a great holiday weekend.

busses for buses…

Once again, the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest extends gratitude to the Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) for posting the 25 winning poems from the 2012 contest in buses serving routes throughout Whatcom County. The poetry placards, designed by Egress Studio, will remain on display for a year, until they are replaced by the 2013 winning poems. Because each bus serves different routes, we are unable to pinpoint a particular poem on a particular bus, so…

ride the bus…read a poem!

Thanks, Bellingham Business Journal!

Thanks, BBJ Today!

Boynton Contest judge featured…

Betty Scott, poet, editor, writing instructor and a judge for the 2012 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest, is currently featured on the World Poetry Reading Series site. Have a look at Betty’s poem, All Aboard the Give It Up For, from her collection-in-process, A Courtroom and a Waterfall: Odes to the Spirit, and read more about the World Poetry Festival, held each May in Richmond, B.C., Canada.

poems and counting…

National Geographic says, “A bioblitz is an event that focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time.” Over the course of 24 hours, August 24-25, scientists, students and curious nature-lovers carried out the sixth annual bioblitz of Rocky Mountain National Park, in Colorado.

Along with the flora and fauna, this year’s bioblitz includes poems! Fifty Colorado writers each focused on a single species. The resulting works will be published by Wolverine Farm Publishing, but meanwhile, read Wood Frog (Rana Sylvatica) by David Mason, Bear Grace by Laura Pritchett and Clade, Landscape with Thamnophis elegans vagrans, Contopus sordidulus, and Homo sapiens sapiens by Jake Adam York.

new online…

The Tang of Nasturtiums, a collection of tanka, has been published by Snapshot Press in the UK as an e-chapbook — one of eight winners in the Snapshot Press eChapbook Awards 2011. Poet Carole MacRury is a 2012 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest Walk Award winner for her poem An Intimate Look at a Slug. View and read the winning chapbooks, including Carole’s, here.

on poetry…

A poem cannot be seen to strain after profundity; it must arrive like an astonished, unerring sleepwalker.
K.E. Duffin

to say, to see, to hear…

While you’re showing your end-of-the-summer houseguests the highlights of Bellingham, be sure to stop by Village Books.

In the Book Fare Café on the mezzanine, through the end of August only, Language & Form, selected works by four Village Books employees: Christina Claassen, Laura Picco, Jonica Todd and Cindi Williamson (Walk Award winner, 2011 and 2012). These mixed media pieces incorporate language and words in various forms, from altered books to watercolors to paper cuts and collage.

On the lower level, the Village Books Readings Gallery is showing Three Artists: A Collaboration. These 12″ x 12″ artworks were created in collaboration by Nancy Lou Canyon (painter/author), Lana Hechtman Ayers (poet) and Lin McJunkin (glass artist). Exhibit continues through September.

The Readings Gallery, by the way, is the site of the last-Monday-of-the-month Open Mic with Laurel Leigh. Sign up in advance at the main counter, come read for up to 7 minutes and join the appreciative audience to hear the latest from some of the region’s dynamic and creative writers.
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Sue Boynton Poetry Walk…

The Walk Award poems from the 2012 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest have now been installed in front of the Bellingham Public Library, 210 Central Avenue, where they will remain until summer 2013. See them there; read them here. Photo by Wendy McLeod.

poets at sea…

Little surprise that in these, alas, waning days of summer, poets should flee their steamy garrets and head for the water. Here are a couple of recent examples:

Poetilla is a “floating round table” that launches every Tuesday at 6:30pm from the Electric Boat Company dock (2046 Westlake Ave N #102) on the west side of Lake Union. Bring your gaff; there’s only space for the first ten (numbers eleven and up are encouraged to adjourn to the nearby Rock Salt Steak House). Aboard a 21-foot electric boat, the poets spend a couple hours on Lake Union reading and critiquing and, if the photos are any indication, hard at work. A modest donation is requested and they say “rain or shine,” so look to Tuesdays ahead. Next sailing, August 28. Read more about it.

Meanwhile, in southwestern Ontario, the Fish Quill Poets (and a guest musician) have completed their annual ten-day tour of the Grand River, giving readings in cafés, art centers and at historic landmarks along the way. “We canoe all day, arrive at the next town the Grand runs through, give a performance there along with a local author, then head to our campsite and rest our paddle-weary bones. Then we get up the next day and do it all again.” Read more about Fish Quill on their website and Like them on Facebook.
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