Community write-in on peace and justice

At a recent workshop at Egress Studio, Anita K. Boyle introduced the idea of the self-directed writing workshop. The idea is that rather than working under the guidance of an instructor, participants work independently, responding to prompts and to the site.

Riffing on this idea, World Peace Poets invites your participation in the five-week-long World Peace Poets Community Write-In on Peace and Justice, September 21 through October 26, 2019. Drop in for a few minutes or an hour or more; join in as often as you’d like. It’s self-directed!

Free and open to the public, the Community Write-In provides sites around Bellingham where participants can sit and create poems, essays, short stories, or artwork. Bring your own writing materials. Some inspiring words will be available and a volunteer will be on hand at each site. Additionally, each site will create a “fusion poem” to which participants can add a line of their own.

Click here for a chart of participating venues and times (PDF). Note that new venues and times may be added, so watch for updates on World Peace Poets on Facebook. If you think you will participate on one or more days, please register by sending an email to worldpeacepoets@gmail.com in order to help the organizers prepare.

The write-in will culminate in the free World Peace Poets Read-In at St. James Presbyterian Church in Bellingham on Saturday, October 26, 2019, with a 3-minute-per-person open mic for writing and music related to peace and justice. Doors open at 5:00pm, a soup and salad supper will be served at 5:30pm, and side dishes will be provided by you, potluck.

book launch, etc.

David Ossman, perhaps best known for his work with the Firesign Theatre, writes poems. Egress Studio Press publishes exceptionally beautiful hand-stitched books.

This Saturday, August 17, 2019, Egress Studio will host a book launch party for Ossman’s new Egress-published collection, The Old Man’s Poems. In addition to a pre-reading potluck supper, the event will include a performance by Seattle’s Band of Poets, a music and poetry group featuring John Burgess, Anna Jenkins, Jed Myers, Ted McMahon, and Rosanne Olson. (Parking is limited and carpooling is encouraged.)

For more information, here’s a post by Anita K. Boyle, and here’s the event on Facebook.

there’s still time…

There are four remaining spots in each of the Egress Studio workshops scheduled for the afternoon of Saturday, March 9, 2019. Raúl Sanchez and Jed Myers will each offer a two-hour workshop on the theme of Mixing Poetry & Politics, held at Egress Studio in Bellingham. See the complete workshop descriptions, poet bios, and enrollment information on the Egress Studio blog. And if you plan to sign up, don’t delay!

tonight at Greene’s Corner

Listen in as the every-Wednesday poetry series at Greene’s Corner in Bellingham features the hard-working, bountifully-creative Anita K. Boyle.

Proprietor of Egress Studio Press, Anita is an accomplished poet and artist who creates handmade books, collage, paintings, prints, and fine works in many other media. Currently, her artwork is on view at Fourth Corner Frames as part of “Rising,” a group exhibit of work by 13 women who have been meeting and supporting each other’s creativity for many years.

She has three books of poetry, including Bamboo Equals Loon, The Drenched, and What the Alder Told Me. Another book is forthcoming from MoonPath Press in 2019.

Music begins at 7:00pm, with several sets of poetry to follow. JP Falcon Grady will emcee.

Today in Kirkland!

There’s still time to get on over to BookTree in Kirkland, Washington, for today’s highly recommended workshop, reading, open mic, and music featuring poet/musician/psychiatrist Jed Myers.

The free workshop, “Putting Your Heart on the Line,” 4:30 to 6:00pm, will integrate some talk, some writing, and possibly some reading of what participants write. Then from 6:15 to 8:18pm the poetry reading and open mic will feature Jed Myers and the Band of Poets — Ted McMahon (percussion), Rosanne Olson (harmonica, guitar), Anna Jenkins (harp), John Burgess (various effects), and Jed Myers (guitar).

You’ll have a chance to see (and purchase?) a copy of the gorgeous, brand new book by Myers, Between Dreams and Flesh, published and handmade by Egress Studio Press.

Go!

book launch

Celebrate the art of poetry and the poets who make it happen on Friday, July 20, 2018, as Village Books hosts a book launch and reading.

Award-winning poet Jed Myers will read from his new book, Between Dream and Flesh, a handmade limited-edition publication from Egress Studio Press. He will be joined by poet and fiction writer Lana Ayers (founder, publisher, and managing editor of MoonPath Press) who will read from her illustrated handmade book, The Moon’s Answer (Egress Studio Press), as well as other poems. James Bertolino will read selections from a variety of his poetry publications.

Moon*

In honor of today’s total eclipse, we are re-posting Moon, by Zachary Masterson, who was in the third grade when his poem was selected as a Boynton winner in 2008.

2008 Merit Award
By Zachary Masterson, Third Grade

The
Moon floating like a big
Circle
Firework
Waiting for
Someone
To
Light the
Fuse but
It waits and waits

*Copyright 2008 by Zachary Masterson. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Revising revisited

This is a guest post by Richard Widerkehr.

I enjoyed reading Bethany Reid’s blog that mentioned Dylan Thomas’s 67 revisions of “Fern Hill,” a poem I’ve loved for a long time. I remember hearing a story told by the poet Erin Belieu, who said that her husband, a writer, looked through her drafts of a poem and said, “I think you had it at the seventh draft, not the twenty-seventh.” It can be hard to tell at the time, and if you can tear yourself away from trying to get it just right, let some time pass, you can sometimes see more clearly what changes need to be made. Also, one change can lead to other ideas, if you let it.

The most helpful thing I heard about revision in the last few years is what Joe Stroud said: If you find yourself grinding away at a poem and can’t get it right, try reworking it in prose, which can give us sensory details we leave out. Since my first drafts are often telegraphic and leave out things the reader needs to know, putting in more can be helpful. If we’ve been to workshops, people will often tell us what can be cut. Sometimes, the hard part is seeing what we left out. We hide the Easter eggs, as Annie Dillard said. She said she asks herself when she thinks she’s done, “What did I leave out?” If it doesn’t go in this poem, it can lead to the next one.

One example of how I did this is how I worked on my long poem, “Her Story of Fire.” Someone told me Alberto Ríos had given an assignment to write one poem and then write the reply or opposite of that poem. What I did was use two speakers with different voices — one was a mentally ill woman, and the other speaker was her brother. One spoke; the other replied, though they often talked past each other. This exercise became the long title poem of my book Her Story of Fire (Egress Studio Press).

I liked Bethany’s suggestions to rewrite a poem in a different form or using different line lengths or stanza patterns. Sometimes I’ve tried that, and I’ve also tried using different pronouns (you, he, she, we) for the narrator. Often I’ve changed the verb tense from past to present if I want more immediacy.

One thing I do in revising that I haven’t heard many other poets do is find a word that sounds like or rhymes with a word that doesn’t work. Yeats changed “a mass of shadows” to “a mess of shadows.” But then I tend to write using sound and rhythm to lead me to what I want to say, so that works for me and helps me discover or uncover the meaning as I go along, which I like to do. When I wrote my novel, Sedimental Journey (Tarragon Books), it started as a short story about a geologist in love with a fictional character. Later, I made plot outlines but didn’t follow them. It took me nine years to finish the book and another fifteen years to find a publisher.

What did I leave out of this short piece? How to persist and keep writing. One thing I’ve done is switch genres when I got frustrated or bored with what I’m doing. My novel started as a fun break from my serious poems, though it changed and became funny-sad as it grew. My new book of poems, In The Presence Of Absence, will come out in September from MoonPath Press, but I don’t know what comes next.

. . . . .
Richard Widerkehr’s new book of poems, In The Presence Of Absence, will come out from MoonPath Press in 2017. He earned his M.A. from Columbia University and won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan. He has two collections of poems: The Way Home (Plain View Press) and Her Story of Fire (Egress Studio Press), along with two chapbooks. Tarragon Books published his novel, Sedimental Journey, about a geologist in love with a fictional character. Recent work has appeared in Rattle, Floating Bridge Review, Gravel, Naugatuck River Review, Cirque, Arts & Letters, and Mud Season Review. He has worked as a writing teacher and, later, as a case manager with the mentally ill.

. . . . .
image

Good one!

There’s no shortage of options for National Poetry Month, but this one should definitely be on your list: a selection of readings by Egress Studio Press authors. Poets include Richard Widerkehr, Ann Spiers, Sheila Sondik, Susan J. Erickson, Anita K. Boyle and James Bertolino. See you there: Village Books, Bellingham, 7:00pm, Wednesday, April 8, 2015.

Possum love…

If you’ve been enjoying the weekly postings of the beautiful Egress Studio placards of this year’s winning poems from the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest, you may be interested in this project.

Some of the placards are illustrated by Angela Boyle (some by Anita K. Boyle, and yes, the last name is no coincidence). Angela, along with a select group of 2014 graduates of the Natural Science Illustration certificate program at the University of Washington, is putting together a natural science comic anthology, Awesome Possum, and funding it on Kickstarter.

With a modest goal in sight, they’re well on their way to full funding, but over-funding means the artists will get paid (!), so definitely have a look at this fun and informative enterprise. Visit Awesome Possum on Kickstarter and see more Angela Boyle illustrations and comics here and on Flying Dodo Publications.