Announcements, etc.
May 12 – Menil Twombly Gallery
Scattered Blossoms Reading on May 12th, 2013, 2 pm at Cy Twombly Gallery
Scattered Blossoms: Poems Inspired by Cy Twombly
Please join us for
A Poetry Reading at the Menil Collection
Sunday, May 12th, 2 pm
Cy Twombly Gallery
The Menil Collection
1515 Sul Ross
Houston, TX 77006
Featuring these poets:
Joseph Campana
Jane Creighton
Christa Forster
Peter Hyland
Jonathan Moody
Laura Mullen
Robin Reagler
Fran Sanders
Charlie Scott
Randall Watson
Tria Wood
Dom Zuccone
The Houston Public Library and the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs are pleased to announce the newly-established
HOUSTON POET LAUREATE PROGRAM
2013 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS/NOMINATIONS
DEADLINE: March 8, 2013
Mayor Annise D. Parker announces the application/ nomination process for selection of Houston’s first Poet Laureate. Submissions are welcome from persons nominating a poet for the position of Poet Laureate or from individual poets who are seeking the position. Only online applications will be accepted.
Houston Laureate_Form_
The Orange Show + Stephen Gros + Make.Play.Speak. present
KerouacFest: Poetry Show + Fundraiser
Sunday | 2.10.13 | 2pm to 4pm
Brazos Bookstore
2013 marks the premiere of Houston’s first Kerouac Fest
The Beats are getting warmed up at this fun event at Brazos Bookstore. Please join us Sunday, February 10, 2013 from 2pm to 4pm. 15% of sales during the reading will go to support the success of Kerouac Fest.
Poetry Performances by
JANUARY 2013
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
To Attend click here.
DECEMBER 2012
Montgomery County Literary Arts Council
|
Annual Emily Dickenson Birthday Celebration
 Thursday, Dec 13 3pm LSC Montgomery 7pm at the Corner Pub Annual Gathering of PoetsMap/Directions |
| © 2006 Montgomery County Literary Arts Council Site by The Design Sourcery |
|
Montgmery County Literary Arts Council Writer In Performance Series became a 501(c) 3 non profit corporation in 1993. The organization was founded by Poet/Creative Writing Instructor Dave Parsons, Montgomery College Dean, Dr. Kenne Turner, and Montgomery County Library Director, Mike Baldwin with the support of grants from Montgomery College, Conroe Commission on the Arts & Culture, and Texas Commission on the Arts. The mission statement is to bring the most distinguished minds and their bright visions to the citizens of Montgomery County. MCLAC programs have hosted over a hundred of the most distinguished writers and poets including several Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and national and state Poet Laureates. All board members and staff volunteer their services. All funds generated go to programs, which, usually number an average of 8 readings and annual celebrations of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman’s birthdays. |
|
||||||
|
|
NOVEMBER 2012
Dmitri Baltermants, Attack—Eastern Front WWII, 1941, gelatin silver print, printed 1960, the MFAH, gift of Michael Poulos in honor of Mary Kay Poulos at “One …
MFAH Writers Workshops: WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY
|
Saturday, Nov 17, 2012
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
|
Law Building |
  |
Ekphrasis, literally “to speak out,” is a genre of writing about art in any form: poetry or prose, critical or creative. Join Houston-based and internationally celebrated writer Van G. Garrett for three workshiops on different aspects of the exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. These workshops take place on November 17, December 29, and January 26.
“Instigators & Triggers”
Conflict is inevitable. In politics, war is considered legitimate only as a last resort. After failed civil conversation and tense negotiation comes instigation. At home, there are marital spats and sibling rivalries. In schools and workplaces are bullies and power plays. Can writers objectively answer questions such as “Who started it?” “Who is right or wrong?” and “Is this fight worthwhile?” Or are emotions an immutable influence?
Registration
- $40 for MFAH Members; $50 for general public.
- Registration is limited to 20 participants.
- Registration includes access to the WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY exhibition; gallery discussion; lunch of gourmet sandwiches, beverages, and snacks; and one-on-one conference with Garrett.
- Please bring a notebook and pencils. (Pens are discouraged in the galleries.) Or bring your iPad, netbook, or other laptop.
- A limited number of scholarships are available for students currently enrolled in full-time undergraduate or graduate programs. E-mail lectures@mfah.org for information.
- In the event that you cannot attend once registered, please contact lectures@mfah.org as soon as possible.
About Van G. Garrett
Houston-based and internationally celebrated literary artist, Van G. Garrett, has had poetry and essays published in journals and anthologies based in the United States, England, Switzerland, Turkey and numerous African nations. He has received noteworthy awards and fellowships, served as a judge for the National Poetry Slam and The ARTlines Competition (co-sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Public Poetry), and refereed for the International Journal of the Asian Philosophical Association (IJAPA). Garrett earned an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Houston-Victoria, BA from Houston Baptist University, and a Certificate in African American Studies from the University of Houston. vanggarrettpoet.com
first friday
poetry reading series
November 2 Oscar Peña
Houston’s oldest open reading series,
hosted by Robert Clark since 1975
usually on the first Friday of every month
at Inprint House, 1520 West Main,
one block south of the Menil Collection,
one block east of Mandell,
in the Museum District of Houston,
always free, open to the public
always an open reading after the featured poet
doors open at 8:30 p.m.
FMI e-mail houstonfirstfri@aol.com or HPFest@aol.com,
or visit www.inprinthouston.org and click on “Community Events”.
POEMS FOR A QUARTER CENTURY – Saturday, November 3, 7:00 p.m.
Readings about Art, Marking the Menil’s 25th Anniversary
Curated by Sasha West
Introduced by Franci Crane
1533 Sul Ross, 77006 A free public program
Houston, October 22, 2012 – Three years ago, the Menil Collection presented an exhibition of paintings and drawings by the artist Marlene Dumas. Also a poet, Dumas encouraged the Menil to host “a poetic response” to the exhibition. That extraordinary program, organized by Sasha West, a poet and PhD graduate of the University of Houston Writing Program, has inspired Poems for a Quarter Century, a free public program celebrating the Menil’s opening in 1987.
The program, which takes place at the intersection of the visual and the verbal arts, brings together a group of distinguished poets to read work (their own, as well as that of others), exploring art and artists in the Menil Collection.
Poems for a Quarter Century begins with readings by Houston elementary and secondary school students, who have come to know the collection through the museum’s acclaimed education program, Writing at the Menil. The next five readers form a group of American poets at significant stages in their careers.
For centuries poets have used visual art as a tool to explore the world. The Menil’s program of what is called ekphrastic poetry—poems that respond to art—will include work from such great poets as Rainer Maria Rilke, Kevin Young, Alice Fulton, John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, and Frank O’Hara.
The evening’s range of poetry promises to suggest new ways of looking at art at the Menil.
Writers include: -Three students from Writing at the Menil: third, fourth, and eighth graders whose poems have been inspired by works of art in the Menil Collection.
-Tomás Q. Morin teaches literature and writing at Texas State University. His debut collection, A Larger Country, won the American Poetry Review Honickman First Book Prize.
-Jennifer Grotz, poet and translator, teaches creative writing at the University of Rochester. Her books include Cusp, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters’ First Book Award, and The Needle.
-Dean Young Dean Young’s books include Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Fall Higher. He teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the William Livingston Chair of Poetry. -Stanley Plumly co-founded the University of Houston Writing Program. He teaches at the University of Maryland, and received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
-Terrence Doody teaches courses in modernism, the novel, and contemporary literature at Rice University. He is working on a book to be called Streets of Strangers: Some Aspects of the City in Literature, where Frank O’Hara is right at home.
Sasha West holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins and the University of Houston. She has served as Managing Editor and board president of Gulf Coast, Houston’s journal of literature and the arts. Currently, she teaches writing at UT Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. Next year HarperCollins will publish her first book of poems, which was a winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series.
Franci Crane was a trial lawyer with Susman Godfrey for more than twenty years. Her focus turned from law to community volunteerism, with a particular passion for the arts. She sits on the boards of the Menil Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston Grand Opera, and Inprint, and is founding board chair of the Houston Cinema Arts Society.
Photo: Courtesy Sasha West
For more information write to press@menil.org or call 713-535-3170
 |
|||
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
OCTOBER 2012
An Evening of Poetry with Kathrine Soniat & Eva Skrande
Thursday, October 11 at 7:00pm at Brazos Bookstore
(Click image to enter.)
2012 Houston Poetry Fest
Oct. 12-14, 2012
9/27 web note: Reading schedule of Juried Poets is now listed.
Visit the Schedule page.
a celebration of poetry and its makers
Directions and map
Inprint is proud to present Red, White, and Blue: Poets on Politicsin Houston. The event will feature Sandra Cisneros, Tony Hoagland, and Benjamin Alire Sáenz, each presenting examples of political poetry and then engaging in a panel discussion with moderator Alice Quinn, Executive Director of Poetry Society of America. A book sale and signing will follow.Red, White and Blue is a national series presented by the Poetry Society of America and its regional partners featuring poets in conversation about politics in their work as well as in that of their poetry predecessors. The series runs in tandem with the election year, with main events in Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, DC. The Houston edition is curated and presented by Inprint and PSA, in association with Nuestra Palabra.
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros has written extensively about the Latina experience in the United States. She is best known for The House on Mango Street, published in 1984, which tells the story of a young Latina woman coming of age in Chicago; the book has sold more than two million copies. She has published several collections of poetry, including My Wicked, Wicked Ways and Loose Woman. Her other books include Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, which creates an impressionistic portrait of life on the United States/Mexico border; the novel Caramelo, a multigenerational family saga; and a bilingual children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos. Her new book Have You Seen Marie, a tale of grief and loss, will be published this fall. Cisneros has received numerous awards for her work, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1995 and the Texas Medal of the Arts Award in 2003. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Tony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland writes with wit and insight about the dilemmas of modern life. His latest collection of poems, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, was published in 2010. His previous collections include What Narcissism Means to Me, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry; Donkey Gospel, which received the James Laughlin Award; and Sweet Ruin, which was chosen for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and won the Zacharis Award from Emerson College. His other honors include the Jackson Poetry Prize, the O.B. Hardison Award for excellence in teaching, and the Mark Twain Award for humor. He has also published a book of essays on poetry and craft, Real Sofistakashun, and two chapbooks of poems, Hard Rain and Little Oceans. Hoagland teaches in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and in the low residency MFA program at Waren Wilson College.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Benjamin Alire Sáenz served as a Catholic priest in the early 1980s in El Paso, Texas, and then he returned to school and earned an MA in creative writing. He received a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, where under the guidance of Denise Levertov he completed his first book of poems Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award in 1992. His other collections include Elegies in Blue and Dreaming the End of War, and in 2010 he published his fifth collection The Book of What Remains, which explores the contrast between the desert’s beauty and the brutality of border politics. He has also published four novels, including Carry Me Like Water, four young adult novels, and four children’s books. Sáenz teaches in the bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Alice Quinn—Moderator
Alice Quinn is Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts. She was poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987 to 2007 and at Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers, from 1976 to 1986, and she is the editor of Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop. Her articles on and interviews with writers, poets, and artists have appeared in Artforum, Canadian National Post, The Forward, Poetry Ireland, The New Yorker, and The New Yorker Online, and she is currently at work editing the journals and notebooks of Elizabeth Bishop.
SEPTEMBER 2012
The Archway Readers
meet the 3rd Thursday of the month
at the Archway Gallery on Dunlavy.
Readings start at 6:30 PM.
Refreshments are served.
Contact Donna Perkins at donnaperkins@att.net
Fall 2012
MONTGOMERY COUNTY LITERARY ARTS COUNCIL
WRITERS IN PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Please put these dates on your calendar today.
Whether you write fiction, non-fiction or poetry, this outstanding series is for you. Featured authors read from and discuss their work, followed by Q & A, refreshments and opportunities for book signing. All events are free and open to the public.
September 27th, Thursday, LSC-Montgomery Library, 7:00 PM
TONY DIAZ, “El Librotraficante,” is a novelist and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He is also an entrepreneur who brings together contemporary Latino arts, culture, and business in ways that have transformed Houston, Texas, and have now blossomed into the Librotraficante Movement. He is the founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say which oversees several successful approaches to the Latino experience in the U.S. These range from unique websites, to classic media such as the magazine Aztec Muse and the group’s weekly radio program.
Poetry Performance Workshop with Joseph “JoeP” Palmore
When: Saturday, September 8th, 2012
Where: The Ensemble Theatre 3535 Main, Houston, TX 77002
Time: 11am to 2pm
Fee: $60.00 ($20/hr)
Registration: Online registration available at www.iamjoep.com under the Workshops tab. Or email info@iamjoep.com for more info.
Workshop Summary: The workshop is designed to enhance your level of creativity with performing Spoken Word, with guided teachings in technique, stage presence, and voice. Instructed by Joseph “JoeP” Palmore, named as one of the Houston Press’ 100 Creatives of 2012, Poetry Performance is for anyone wanting to deliver their poetry on a higher level.
|
|||
|
|
||||||||||
|
 SUBMISSION PERIOD NOW OPEN:
Perugia Press Prize
for a First or Second Book by a Woman
Prize: $1000 and publication
Entry must be submitted electronically
or postmarked no later than November 15, 2012.
|
|
JULY 2012
4th Tuesday Poetry Reading Series Presents: Katherine Hoerth July 24, 2012 ~7:30 PM~ Webster Barnes & Noble – 1029 W. Bay Area Blvd. at I-45 Katherine received her MFA from the University of Texas Pan American. She currently teaches writing at South Texas College. Her work has appeared in journals including Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, BorderSenses, and Front Porch. Katherine is the Assistant Poetry Editor at Fifth Wednesday Journal, and reviews poetry books for Boxcar. Mouthfeel Press has published two of her chapbooks titled Among the Mariposas (2010) and more recently, The Garden of Dresses (2012). The Garden Uprooted (Slough Press, 2012) is her first poetry collection. Please support the arts on the Texas Gulf Coast and join us for an evening of great poetry. Guest MC: Jeremya Payne aka “The Fluent One”
Houston Poetry Fest 2012
October 12, 13, and 14, 2012.
The submission deadline has been extended to July 15.
Submission Guidelines
For a printable pdf version of the guidelines, please click here. (For less capable browsers in smart phones and tablets that cannot process a frame forwarded URL to a pdf file, try this link.)
JUNE 2012
4th Tuesday Poetry Reading Series
Presents: Juan Manual Perez\
The 2011-2012 Poet Laureate for the San Antonio Poets’ Association
June 26, 2012 ~7:30 PM~
Webster Barnes & Noble, 1029 W. Bay Area Blvd. at I-45
The 2011-2012 Poet Laureate for the San Antonio Poets’ Association, Juan Manuel Perez, a Mexican-American poet, is the author of “Another Menudo Sunday”; “O’ Dark Heaven: a Response to Suzette Haden Elgin’s Definition of Horror”; “WUI: Written Under the Influence of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr.” and six poetry chapbooks, including the horrifically acclaimed “Dial H for Horror”.
Juan, a ten-year Navy/Marine veteran and former Combat medic serving in the First Gulf War (1991), is now a successful public high school history teacher in La Pryor, Texas.
Please support the arts on the Texas Gulf Coast and join us for an evening of great poetry.
Guest MC: Dr. John Gorman
Cocktails, fun, and a little bit o’ fundraising
Thursday, June 21 6-8 pm at Hearsay (218 Travis).
10% of all proceeds go to WITS.
Open mic optional. Please join us!
–
MAY 2012
ThoughtCrime is a monthly poetry showcase and Q&A session with Houston’s top poets.
This is a venue where the best poets of our city are showcased in a manner that allows them to produce a deeper performance than any other poetry venue in Houston.
For the last two-years, ThoughtCrime has featured an unrepeated monthly line-up, so don’t you dare miss a show!
The format for ThoughtCrime is generally a 15 minute featured spoken word performances with a host-lead Q and A session after each performance. Audience participation is encouraged throughout.
THURSDAY, MAY 17: This month’s featured performers are:
Kevin Prufer
John Gorman
Z.M. Weiss
LitFuse at Kaboom Books, Thursday May 10, 2012, 7:30 PM, Free
Kaboom Books 3116 Houston Ave Houston TX 713-869-7600
|
For our last event of the 2011-12 season, LitFuse overloads the poetry meter with THREE fab readers – Nancy Pearson, Kimberly Magill, and Brandon Lamson!Nancy K. Pearsonmoved to Houston last summer after working as a cab driver and landscaper on Cape Cod, MA. Her first book of poems, Two Minutes of Light, won the 2009 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Pearson has received numerous fellowships and awards including a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and two seven-month poetry fellowships at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She teaches at Houston Community College and Writers in the Schools.Kimberly Magillmoved from her small agricultural town Salinas, California to Texas (her great grandmother’s mother country) to work on her M.F.A in Poetry at the University of Houston. She has taught writing and Spanish to some of Houston’s most disadvantaged youth in second chance charter schools and some of Houston’s wealthiest youth in private schools. When Kim is not teaching or writing, you can find her salsa dancing, picking random wild flowers and berries (some that cause rashes), cursing in yoga class, cooking black beans and barley, talking to plants, watching tele-novelas, eating tofu skin, and lately, forgetting to study for her Chinese class.Brandon Lamson graduated from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program in 2010, and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Houston Writing Fellows Program. His collection of poems titled Starship Tahiti won the 2012 Juniper Prize for Poetry and will be published in the spring of 2013. He is the author of a chapbook of poems titled Houston Gothic (LaMunde Press, 2007) and his work is forthcoming in an anthology titled Poets for Living Waters: An International Response to the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (Blazevox Press, 2013). A native of southern Maryland, he taught for three years at an alternative school on Rikers Island. His poems have appeared in many places, including Brilliant Corners, Nano Fiction, Pebble Lake Review, and Hunger.
|
Dark Matter is a new blog/journal for speculative writing. It is edited and produced by students at the University of Houston Downtown. We are currently open for submissions and would be very gracious for a shout out through Spoken Words. Dark Matter can be found at http://www.darkmatterjournal.org with guidelines and more information. You can also contact Brad Hoge, the webmaster for Dark Matter, at hogeb@uhd.edu.
APRIL 2012
4th Tuesday Poetry Reading Series
Presents: Dustin David Pickering
April 24, 2012 ~7:30 PM~
Webster Barnes & Noble, 1029 W. Bay Area Blvd. at I-45
Dustin Pickering is DIY publisher of Harbinger Asylum, Houston’s own poetry magazine for new and established voices. He is currently editing a book of poetry by Palestinians for Individual Sovereign University Press and he is the host of Coffee Oasis First Monday readings.
Dustin graduated from O’Connell High School in Galveston in 1999. He works part-time as a document shredder and office assistant for Denson Home Health and also works for Individual Sovereign University Press, an anarchist-capitalist university founded by Jim Davidson.
Dustin has been published by Writers on the Rio Grande and will be featured in “Texas Beat Anthology” edited by Christopher Carmona. He has read at various venues including Stephen Gros’ ThoughtCrime Showcase.
Please support the arts on the Texas Gulf Coast and join us for an evening of great poetry.
Guest MC: Stephen Gros
FMI: pena554343@aol.com
As part of a temporary bookstore/reading room/literary experimentation lab called Antena Books/Libros Antena, John Pleucker is coordinating a Read/Write Club at Project Row Houses beginning April 25. The Club is focused primarily on innovative literature by African-American and Latino authors. We’re beginning with Akilah Oliver’s A Toast in the House of Friends. For more info on the Club and the installation, click here.
MFAH/Poetry Salon: Joseph Campana’s “Natural Selections”
The Iowa Poetry Prize, awarded annually by the University of Iowa Press, is one of the leading national poetry awards. New and established poets are invited to submit manuscripts for consideration, and only two are selected. Joseph Campana is a poet and Rice University assistant professor of English whose collection Natural Selections was named a 2011 winner.
Natural Selections explores the lush and desolate beauty of middle America, taking inspiration from and engaging with the paintings of Grant Wood. A leader of American Regionalism of the 1930s, Wood developed a unique style for conveying the complexity beneath the surface of apparently simple rural life. Wood’s 1941 lithograph March, in the MFAH collection, graces the cover of Natural Selections and becomes the subject matter for Campana’s poems.
Join Campana and Emily Ballew Neff, MFAH curator of American painting and sculpture, for an engaging evening of art and poetry inspired by the perseverance of Middle America.
This event is open to the public. Admission is free, but space is limited.
Campana will sign copies of “Natural Selections”(University of Iowa Press, 2012) during the reception following the program. The reception is generously supported by the MFAH patron group American Art and Wine. For more information, please contact Emily Klim at eklim@mfah.org or 713.639.7594.
Submissions are currently being accepted for next year’s 2013 Texas Poetry Calendar. For information go to: http://dosgatospress.org/how-to-submit, or click here.
Event: Words & ArtLocation: Rice Gallery, Rice University
Free Writing Workshop: Saturday February 18th, 1pm – Rice Gallery
Submission Deadline: Wednesday February 29th, email to mswemple@gmail.com
Submission requirements: one page limit, must be based on or inspired by the current installation at Rice Gallery
Reading: Wednesday March 7th, 7pm – Rice Gallery
How to participate in Words & Art:
1. Visit the new installation by Joel Shapiro at Rice Gallery, Rice University, ground floor of Sewall Hall.
2. Write something based on or inspired by the art. Open to all forms: poetry, prose, essay, flash fiction, etc. One page limit. If you need help getting started, attend the free Writing Workshop at Rice Gallery, Saturday February 25th, 1pm.
3. If you would like to be a Words & Art featured reader, the deadline to submit is February 29th. Email submissions to mswemple@gmail.com.
4. Bring your writing and your friends to the Words & Art reading at Rice Gallery, Wednesday March 7th, 7pm. Refreshments and door prizes provided. Open to the public.
RSVP to the workshop and the reading at the Words & Art Facebook page.
The new installation’s opening reception will be Thursday, February 2nd from 5 – 7pm with artist talk at 6pm.
For more information see the Rice Gallery website:
Creative Writing Courses Taught by Sarah Cortez Class Descriptions, Spring 2012 The Poem Beyond: Composing a Chapbook In this course each student will write and revise five poems to cover a topic of his/her own choosing with a goal of the chapbook itself becoming “the poem beyond” or the sixth poem. Various strategies for arrangement and structure will be analyzed, discussed, compared and chosen for each booklet. The level of this class is intermediate to advanced. Please see “General Information” below for times and tuition. Dates: (Mondays) Feb. 27, March 5, 12, 19, 26, April 2, 9, 16, 23 (nine classes) Tuition: $250 Beginning Memoir: Telling the Story This class will focus on understanding and utilizing the techniques of narrative writing that the memoir writer uses to tell the stories from his/her own life. Expect to increase your facility in narrative skills such as pacing, characterization, tone, use of dialogue, use of resonant detail, and movement through time. Numerous cross-cultural examples will illustrate the options for creating a voice on the page—one of the most crucial first steps for the memoir writer. This class is geared to the beginning memoirist or to a more advanced writer who wishes to review the foundations. Please see “General Information” below for times and tuition.Dates: (Tuesdays) Feb. 28, March 6, 13, 20, 27, April 3 (six classes) Tuition: $175 The Spiritual Essay Philip Zaleski, editor of the Best American Spiritual Essays, has said that spiritual writing describes the indescribable. In this class, we will look at examples of spiritual essays that work (or don’t), while learning and practicing in some of the forms that the spiritual essay can take—the confessional, the polemical, the prescriptive, and the satirical. Students may write from a position of faith or one of doubt. Writers of every level and all systems of belief will benefit from this class. Please see “General Information” below for times and tuition. Dates: (Wednesdays) March 7, 14, 21, 28, April 4, 11, 18 (seven classes) Tuition: $200General Information All classes are taught from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at a Montrose private residence. Classes are limited to a maximum of six students. Please expect to complete written homework each week. Students will need to have internet access and an email account.
Please mail tuition for the class with your email address to: Sarah Cortez, POB 980579, Houston, TX 77098-0579. Any questions, please email cortez.sarah@gmail.com. Any class not having at least four students will be cancelled. Tony Diaz AztecMuse@aol.com (713) 867-8943 Websites: www.librotraficante.com, www.nuestrapalabra.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 2, 2012 THE LIBROTRAFICANTES CARAVAN COMING TO MESILLA Latino Studies has been banned in Arizona. But writers and activists are organizing a caravan to Tucson to smuggle banned Latino books back into Arizona! The Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan will leave Houston on Monday, March 12 arriving in Tucson, Arizona Saturday, March 17. A stop at the Cultural Center de Mesilla, home base of the Border Book Festival will take place on Thursday, March 15 at ten a.m. Librotraficante organizer Tony Díaz, and various writers will be present for a press conference and a Quick Lit Throw Down and reading. The caravan will headed to Albuquerque that evening for a Librotraficante Banned Book Bash at a location to be announced. The caravan will be filled with authors and activists who will be taking banned books back into Arizona, to give away. The bus will be filled with authors who were banned, new authors, as well as other advocates concerned with preserving First Amendment rights of Equal Protection and Freedom of Speech. The Caravan will be making stops in Texas, New Mexico, and, of course, Arizona. More stops will be listed as they are finalized. More will be added as funding permits. Banned authors have embraced the caravan and will participate throughout the week, including Sandra Cisneros, Dagoberto Gilb, Luis Alberto Urrea, and others. Donations can be given to Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say by visiting the website www.librotraficante.com The caravan is intended to: 1. Raise awareness of the issue. Some people still do not know that Latino Studies is being banned in Arizona. 2. P well enough. This is a chance to bring attention to their work. 3. Celebrate many cultures: Children of the American Dream must unite to preserve the civil rights of all Americans. For more information, contact the BBF at 575-523-3988, bbf@borderbookfestival.comOld Announcements from 2011 below:
Words & Art: reading at Rice Gallery, Wednesday November 30th, 7pm. Refreshments and door prizes provided. Open to the public.
Annual Emily Dickenson Birthday Celebration
Thursday, Dec 1
3pm LSC Montgomery Library: Brenda Wineapple
7pm at the Corner Pub
Annual Gathering of Poets
Directions to Montgomery College:
To Montgomery College from NORTH: – Take I-45 south to exit #79 (Needham Rd./Hwy. 242/College Park Dr.). – Turn right (away from interstate) and head approximately 1/4 mile. – Main college entrance is on the right.
To Montgomery College from SOUTH: – Take I-45 north to exit #79 (Needham Rd./Hwy. 242/College Park Dr.). – Turn left under interstate and head approximately 1/4 mile. – Main college entrance is on the right.
Directions to The Corner Pub
http://www.thecornerpubinconroe.com/
From I-45, take Hwy 105/W. Davis east to the Montgomery County courthose square. Turn right at North Main St. on the east side of the square. The Corner Pub is a block south at the corner of Main and Simonton, diagonally across from the court house.
######
Mutabilis Press debut reception for their new anthology, Improbable Worlds, an anthology of Texas and Louisiana Poets, edited by Martha Serpas, will be held on Friday, December 2, from 6 to 9 pm at the The Jung Center of Houston, 5200 Montrose.
2013 Texas Poetry Calendar
Submissions are currently being accepted for next year’s 2013 Texas Poetry Calendar. For information go to: http://dosgatospress.org/how-to-submit, or click here.
The 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar is out now and available from Dos Gatos Press.
How to participate in Words & Art: 1. Visit the new installation, Salon of Beauty, at Rice Gallery, Rice University, ground floor of Sewall Hall. 2. Write something based on or inspired by the art. Open to all forms: poetry, prose, essay, flash fiction, etc. One page limit. 3. If you would like to be a Words & Art featured reader, the deadline to submit is November 19th. Email submissions to mswemple@gmail.com. If you miss the deadline, you can still read at the open mic following the featured readers. 3. Bring your writing and your friends to the Words & Art reading at Rice Gallery, Wednesday November 30th, 7pm. Refreshments and door prizes provided. Open to the public. RSVP to the workshop and the reading at the Words & Art Facebook page.B. H. Fairchild
5:00 pm, October 18, 2011
Humanities Building Room 118
Rice University
B.H. Fairchild was born in Houston, Texas and grew up there and in small towns in westTexas, Oklahoma, and southwest Kansas. He is the author of The Arrival of the Future,
Local Knowledge, The Art of the Lathe, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower
Midwest, Trilogy, Usher, and a study of William Blake entitled Such Holy Song. His poems
have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Hudson Review, Southern Review, Poetry,
Yale Review, Sewanee Review, and many other journals and anthologies. He has received
the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Gold Medal in Poetry from the California Book
Awards, the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the
William Carlos Williams Award, the PEN West Poetry Award, the California Book Award,
and the Natalie Ornish Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Bobbitt Award from
the Library of Congress, and the Aiken/Taylor Modern Poetry Award from The Sewanee
Review for the body of his work.
This event is sponsored by the Cherry Lecture Series, Fondren Library, Rice University
Too Bad You Missed This!
Poet and Rice professor, Joe Campana’s workshop is an inspiring mix of people who have always wanted to write poetry, but don’t know where to start, practiced poets who want to hone their craft, writers who think they are blocked, and creative types looking to unleash their creativity thru poetry.
Joe is one deft juggler, keeping all these balls in the air. while spinning Ode, Elegy and Sonnet to the edification of all. This 8 week course was presented by our friends at Houston Public Library, at the downtown Central Branch.
Here’s what the library has to say about it: This workshop, taught by Joseph Campana, will focus on two questions: what inspires a poem and what shapes do poets create to express those inspirations? focuses on two questions: what inspires a poem and what shapes do poets create to express those inspirations? This eight week course will be divided into two four week units. Students are welcome to attend one or both of these units. In the first unit we will examine three traditional poetic forms, all of which are in use now but have centuries of history behind them. We’ll read examples of the sonnet, the ode, and the elegy and then participants will produce their own sonnets, odes, and elegies. In the second unit, we’ll look at three objects or triggers that have inspired poets to great accomplishment: paintings (or more generally works of art), the city (Houston, NY, and elsewhere), and people (historical personages, icons, celebrities, etc.).
RE: Poet Martha Serpas
Veins in the Gulf
April 27, 7:30pm, Aurora Picture Show, 1524 Sul Ross, 77006 713-868-2101
Photo credit: Lake County Discovery Museum/Curt Teich Postcard Archives
Join Shrimp Boat Projects, poet Martha Serpas and filmmakers Elizabeth Coffman and Ted Hardin for a screening of Veins in the Gulf, a documentary that traces the history of rapidly disappearing bayous, the environmental crisis of southern Louisiana, and the international impact of Cajun culture. Through interviews with fishermen, engineers, poets, and scientists, bear witness as Louisiana residents confront the mortality of their culture, and a community tries to solve its environmental crises. Join the Mitchell Center for fresh Gulf Coast shrimp and this exploration of southern culture, and discover where great American literature, music, seafood and oil have come from for the past century.
RE: Brazos Bookstore Poetry Picks
The Best of It: New and Selected Poems Kay RyanAvailable now, Grove Press, $24.00Coming to the Alley Theatre with Inprint on Monday, April 11 at 7:30 PM. Ryan’s recent appointment as the Library of Congress’s sixteenth poet laureate is just the latest in an amazing array of accolades for this wonderfully accessible, widely loved poet. The two hundred poems in Ryan’s The Best of It offer a stunning retrospective of her work.The Book of Ten  Susan WoodAvailable now, University of Pittsburgh Press, $14.95Brazos friend and Rice University professor Susan Wood’s fourth book of poems has been heralded as her best yet. Her previous books of poetry include Bazaar and Campo Santo, which was the Lamont Poetry selection for 1991 and won the Natalie Ornish Prize of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her third book, Asunder, was chosen by Garrett Hongo for the National Poetry Series.  The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American PoetryIlan Stavans (Editor) Available now, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $50.00During a century of extraordinary change, poets became the chroniclers of deep polarization. This brilliant, moving, and thought-provoking summation of the forking paths in Latin American poetry and politics invites us to look at an illustrious tradition with fresh eyes. In these pages the reader will experience the power of poetry to account for a hundred years in the life of a restless continent.  Horoscopes for the DeadBilly Collins Available now, Random House, $24.00The author of nine previous poetry collections and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Collins is smart, lyrical, and not afraid to be funny. With simple diction and effortless turns of phrase, these new poems extend his reputation as a poet who occupies a special place in the consciousness of the readers of poetry.  By the Numbers James Richardson Available now, Copper Canyon Press, $16.00Richardson, who specializes in short verse, was recently awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize by Poets and Writers Inc. for his “distinct, lively, and apparently effortless” work. His latest collection, By the Numbers, captivates with its range of line and movement, its microlyrics, crypto-quatrains, and “ten second essays,” its aphorisms that twist and snap. |
Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern PoetryDavid Orr
Available now, Harper, $25.99
Poem in Your Pocket for Young PoetsThe Academy of American Poets
Available now, Amulet Books, $12.95
JonArno Lawson & Sherwin Tjia
Available now, Boyds Mills Press, $14.95
Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire!Jane O’Connor & Robin Preiss Glasser
Available now, Harper Collins, $12.99
Barnyard Slam 
PoetreesDouglas Florian
Available now, Beach Lane Books, $16.99
You’ll see a cedar. Oak tree too.
Birch and banyan, pine and yew.
Palm and gum and willow tree,
Plus more you’ll love tree-mendously!
2 Responses to “Announcements, etc.”