Sherry Chandler

To ‘cast or not to ‘cast

At DMX Zone, Linda Goin asks the question, Why Use Audio in Your Blog?

In the context of her article, she makes these observations:

To hear a poet read his own words is like watching an artist explain all the elements and principles of design in a painting or illustration.

. . .

Unless poetry can be made accessible through sight and sound, poetry and the poet could easily slide into oblivion, marking modern and historic poets less accessible than fossils.

Linda highlights several blogs and web sites where poetry and audio are joyfully melded, and I might mention that she gives a very nice plug both to Sheri L. Wright’s radio broadcast From the Inkwell — I love this statement about Sheri:

Her blog doesn’t reflect her poetry as much as her trains of thought – and some of those trains are powerful, with locomotives that could push you back a few feet with the blow-back from their passing.

— and also specifically to my interview with Sheri, which is available in the archives. In that interview, I talk about my enthusiasm for poetry podcasts.

And, by the way, you can find some audio files of me reading poems linked from my poetry page. Here for example, and here, and here, and one of my favorites here. And leave us not forget my own reading at qarrtsiluni (see below).

Linda also provides several links to how-to files on creating podcasts, so I suggest you click on over and give her article a read.

You might also want to read Dave Bonta’s Literary podcasting made simple with WordPress.com

Dave is an editor at qarrtsiluni, an online magazine that publishes a podcast along with the text of the poems they feature. Lately, he’s been reading the print edition of their Economy issue, and he fell to contemplating the effect of hearing those poets read:

I continue to feel that the combination of text and audio players on the same virtual page is a wonderful thing, even if not every author is the best interpreter of her own work. . . .

I might not have remembered every nuance of every poem and story in the Economy issue, but to my surprise and amusement I did remember many of the poets’ voices, and heard them in my head as I read through the print edition. Of course, a Scottish accent is pretty memorable for a Yank like me, but I found I remembered the accents of many of the other poets too: Alex Cigale’s precise consonants, Tom Sheehan’s age-mellowed Boston accent, Eileen Tabios’ hilariously seductive reading of “Post-Coital,” Monica Raymond’s world-weary, vatic cadence in the closing piece, “Economies.”

I think the fact that I was still able to conjure these up a year later is a pretty strong testimony to the power of audio to focus attention. The [Christian Science] Monitor article mentions Socrates’ dismissal of written language in passing, as a way to call into question the seriousness of these new criticisms of electronic media, treating it as self-evident that Socrates was just a conservative old fart. But Socrates was right, as any number of studies of contemporary oral societies have shown: dependence on writing systems has harmed our memories and fundamentally altered our ability to listen and thereby internalize language. Heard speech is alive in a way that printed words are not, though our ability to record and now digitize it does alter its ephemerality, if not quite its relationship to time. The druids too opposed literacy, for much the same reason as Socrates, but they took a huge gamble in doing so and essentially lost: what we know of them today is largely what was written down by their enemies. And would anyone remember Socrates if not for Plato?

Dave draws no conclusion here as to whether slow reading or micropoetry is the salvation of humankind. Like me, he samples all of it and finds different joys in the different media. One thing I really like about internet publishing, as I mentioned in my interview with Sheri Wright, the one that Linda Goin was kind enough to recommend, is its capacity to present a reading of the poetry with the text.

A couple of other places where poets are using audio in creative ways:

Mike Snider is podcasting poems from his book manuscript Other Voices. Mike works in form and you’ll find some rare ones in this collection, like the rubliw.

Brenda Clews is a Canadian poet and dancer who experiments with audio multitracking and video to produce some fascinating performance poetry.

Celebrating Kestrel 23

In the Penthouse of Wallman Hall, Fairmont State University, April 23. What better way to celebrate the Bard’s birthday.

Editor-in-chief, Donna Long:

Ry Collins:

Lesley Wheeler:

Poetry Editor, Elizabeth Savage:

Sherry Chandler:

Sally Rosen Kindred:

Kentucky Writers Day and other Stuff

The official celebration of Kentucky Writers Day, sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, takes place on April 23 at 10:00 a.m. in the rotunda of the Capitol Building in Frankfort. The event is free and open to the public. Featured readers will be current Kentucky Poet Laureate Gurney Norman and past Poets Laureate Jane Gentry Vance, Sena Jeter Naslund, Joe Survant and Richard Taylor. The first and second place winners of Kentucky’s Poetry Out Loud competition will also perform.

A reception will follow on the Capitol mezzanine. Wonderful chance to schmooze.

And I just discovered that KAC has a site featuring videos of Kentucky poets laureate reading at Kentucky Writers Day in years past, including some of James Baker Hall at what I believe was his final Writers Day reading after he was very ill. The same page has teacher’s resource materials for our laureates. A fine service from KAC.

The 14th Kentucky Writers Day Celebration at Historic Penn’s Store at Gravel Switch will take place on April 23, 24, 25. Follow this link for a schedule and this link for directions.

On April 21 at 7 p.m., The Heartland Review will present a reading by contributors to its annual Joy Bale Boone Prize issue, including first (E. Gail Chandler), second (Olga-Maria Cruz) and third-place (Libby Falk Jones) winners and this year’s judge, Leatha Kendrick. The reading will take place in the Morrison Gallery of the Administration Building. This event is free and opened to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

On Thursday, April 22, Hazard Community and Technical College is holding their 17th annual Evening with Poets (add a comma and that might make a nice painting “Evening, with Poets”) and celebration of Kudzu 2010. The evening begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Stephens Library on the HCTC Hazard campus. Jim Webb and Bianca Spriggs are featured readers. A little bird tells me that E. Gail Chandler won first place in the annual Kudzu poetry prize as well as in the Joy Bale Boone prize competition.

You’ll find an nterview with Dorothy Sutton at Public Republic, Charlie is My Darling. The Charlie of the old Scots ballad was Bonnie Prince Charlie, I think, but Dorothy has another Charlie in mind. Which one? Read the interview.

Vote For The 2010 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere

This from The New Yorker: Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business?

I’m not sure how much I should rejoice when one monopoly trumps another. Because I don’t intend to buy a Kindle or an iPad and because I write poetry, books of which no one buys anyway, I’m not sure this cataclysm will cause much of a wave in my little backwater.

Kestrel reading

This Friday, 23 April, Kestrel celebrates its spring 2010 issue with readings by contributors Sherry Chandler, Ry Collins, Sally Rosen Kindred, and Leslie Wheeler in the Brooks Gallery on the Fairmont State campus.

Refreshments and conviviality begin at 6:30 p.m., followed by readings.

All comers are also invited to an after-party (likely at The Waterfall Restaurant in Fairmont).

For more information, contact Donna Long at dlong@fairmontstate.edu

Ry Collins is a poet and fiction writer. She has published in several literary magazines, including Hayden’s Ferry Review, DIAGRAM, and The Southeast Review, among others. She has a chapbook of poetry, Orpheus on toast, forthcoming from Imaginary Friend Press. Her story, “White girl/boy angst,” was a finalist in The Southeast Review’s World’s Best Short Short Story Contest. A chapter from her novel, Little pink babies, is forthcoming in Blood Lotus. She has also received an Academy of American Poets award.

Sally Rosen Kindred is author of Garnet Lanterns, winner of the 2005 Anabiosis Press Chapbook Contest. She has received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council and a residency at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2009, Poetry Northwest, The Journal, Potomac Review, and Blackbird.

Lesley Wheeler is the winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize for Heterotopia (forthcoming in 2010). Her previous books include Heathen and Voicing American Poetry, and her poems have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

We read

We had a wonderful time last night at Alan MacKellar’s 25 Year Retrospective photography exhibit and poetry reading at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Thanks to everyone who came out. You were a wonderful audience.

Those who weren’t at our reading I hope were either at the Morris Book Shop listening to Maurice Manning read from The Common Man or on their way to the Southern Kentucky Bookfest.

And thanks to TR for taking copious photographs. I thought it might be fun to share a few.

TR, who is a veteran, says this was one of the better readings he’s been to, with 4 strong featured readers and a strong set of open mic readers. I have some photos of those folk too that I’ve put up here on Flickr.

First,the star, Alan MacKellar reading from his first collection of poetry, Chasing Shroedinger’s Cat.

And then the supporting players:

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer:

Jan Isenhour:

and me, myself, and I:

A Retrospective

To start National Poetry Month, let’s take a look back at 25 years of Alan MacKellar’s photography, an exhibit that is going up at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning this month.

To celebrate, the Carnegie Center will host a gallery reception from 5:00 – 8:00 pm on April 16, during the Gallery Hop.

AND

beginning at 8:00 with an open mic, the Center will host a reading to celebrate National Poetry Month and the release of Alan’s new Finishing Line chap, Chasing Shroedinger’s Cat. The book is available as a pre-publication right now and copies hot off the press will be available at the gallery reception and at the reading.

Other readers include Jan Isenhour, Director of the Carnegie Center. where she also teaches writing workshops. Her essays have been published in Wind and The Voice and The Quarterly of the National Writing Project. She is one of the KaBooM! writers and I’m here to tell you that her short story in the KaBooM! anthology, When the Bough Breaks, is a joy to read.

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer is a poetic force in Lexington. She is the founder and organizer of poetry and prose workshop groups, which meet regularly in Lexington, Kentucky, and recently celebrated their two-year anniversary. She serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the international multimedia journal Public Republic, and the host for Accents – a Radio Show for Literature, Art and Culture. This is a weekly program on WRFL 88.1 FM, Lexington, 2-3pm every Friday. She also owns the recently launched Accents Publishing, with the mission to promote brilliant voices in an affordable publication format, and to foster an exchange of literature among different world cultures and languages. Katerina is author of The Air Around the Butterfly. She also has a Finishing Line chap, The Most, available as a pre-publication order.

To round out this Finishing Line night, Sherry Chandler — that’s me — also has a Finishing Line chap, Dance the Black-Eyed Girl that is still in print and I promise to read some poems from it. For the rest of my bio, more than you’ll ever care to know, see the About page here.

Alan MacKellar wears many hats. He is professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Kentucky, and award-winning photographer, and a poet. I have known and worked with Alan the poet for about a decade now and I admire his work very much.

Here, in keeping with my tradition of posting Kentucky poets during National Poetry Month, is a sample.

I Fall in Love with a Sparrow

                      why not
an icy winter has relented
             cleared               for the day
        my windows
          opened to
a lone colorless bird
   on the fence outside

            he fills my room
              with notes    riding through
           on   a perceptible breeze—

like many-flavored kayaks
                           bobbing
on an awakened stream—

his octaves
       startle my
                           papers

       saturate my palette
            with Prussian Blue
                      Emerald Green
                  Pyrrole Red

— Alan MacKellar, reprinted by permission of the author

Dorothy Sutton

Women writing in Kentucky today share two themes.

One is a loss of culture. Not nostalgia precisely, though it can look a little like it. Rather an urgency to record what was of value about the older skower ways before they disappear.

The second is an honoring of our elders, a need to record the extraordinary heroism of their ordinary lives (a phrasing I think I may have stolen from my friend Georgia Green Stamper).

In Backing Into Mountains (Wind Publications, 2009), Dorothy Sutton explores these themes with extraordinary grace, whether it be the Appalachian schoolbus drivers and mechanics of the title poem:

Your life depends on brakes and lights
up here in these Kentucky hills.
The school bus whines and groans to climb
through hollers, with creek-beds the only roads.
. . .
We try to maintain machines that can roll
without crashing, hold the young ones
back from the edge . . .

or Uncle Lester in “No Man’s Land”

One day he was husking the corn,
feeding the greedy, muddy pigs,
. . .
the next day halfway around the world
in Paris with the prostitutes of Pigalle
. . .
The next day mired in confused
trough trenches of muddy slop
. . .
the next day back in Pike County
slopping the hogs, begging the world
to stop . . .

This selection shows not only Sutton’s great compassion but also her craft: the circling around the sounds and images of pigs and slop in a way that is both humorous and heartbreaking.

Sutton explores far and wide in the matter of Kentucky, from Gorgeous George and Casey Jones to Robert Penn Warren and George Keats.

“Casey Jones” is one of my favorite poems in this collection. Having grown up in a singing/strumming family, as many of us here in Kentucky did, I love the play on the theme of this most famous of all train ballads (not to be confused with the Grateful Dead’s Casey Jones) .

We’re the children of “Casey” Jones
from Cayce, Kentucky. In 1900,
Casey Jones died trying
to find the time he’d misplaced somewhere
between Memphis and Mississippi.
. . .
They dug him out, one legend says,
one hand on the throttle, to increase his speed,
the other hand firmly gripping the brake.

Here is the central dilemma of the theme of loss of culture. We tend, us older folk in Kentucky, to come from timeless sorts of places but now we are very much caught up in the rush of time. Our roots are in the folkways, our branches embrace Richard Dawkins and Picasso.

And right about now, Uncle Lester is crying “Whoa, damn you,” not just to the mule of the twentieth century but also to that last metaphor. Both of ‘em kind of got the bits in their teeth and took off.

Here’s a much better extended metaphor, from the Richmond Register:

Dublin poet Eileen Casey said recently of Sutton’s work: “The title poem of this collection pays tribute to the tenacity of the bus drivers of Appalachia, a cultural region in the Eastern United States, forced to breathtakingly negotiate very difficult terrain. In the same way, Dorothy Sutton takes each poem (and us) from one imaginative location to another, by the sheer force of her deep and intimate knowledge of what it is to be human. The poems are exquisitely crafted, steering through words, like those Appalachian bus drivers, trying to maintain machines that can roll without crashing, hold the young ones back from the edge, carry them all the places they need to go. These poems are a joy to read, in terms of capturing the cadences of lives lived and voices heard in the Kentucky of her childhood, different and yet the same as mine in Ireland. An emotional bridge is formed between Kentucky and the rest of the world, indeed a breathtaking reading experience.”

Dorothy Sutton is reading this Tuesday, March 9, at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning‘s Kentucky Great Writer series. It’s an evening to celebrate Wind Publications. Her fellow readers are J. Stephen Rhodes, author of The Time I Didn’t Know What to Do Next (my remarks here) and Normandi Ellis, author of Fresh-Fleshed Sisters. The festivities begin with open mic signups at 6:30, featured readings begin at 7:30.