Sherry Chandler

Contest deadlines

A reminder of some local contest deadlines.

The Kentucky State Poetry Society offers prizes for poetry in 29 categories. Postmark deadline June 30. Complete guidelines here.

Accents Publishing 2010 Poetry Chapbook Contest, contest deadline July 31. Complete guidelines here.

By the way, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, owner of Accents Publishing, and Leatha Kendrick are doing a Saturday Seminar at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning here in Lexington on the subject How to Create a Chapbook Manuscript. The date is June 19, 10:00 a.m. to Noon, fee $25. You can register here.

The Betty Gabehart Prizes of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference is still accepting entries in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction , which must be postmarked by July 15. Think of this contest as a merit-based scholarship program to the conference, awarding free conference admission for two, $100, and an opportunity to read from your work during the conference. Contest guidelines are here.

New Southerner lilterary contest in three categories, poetry, fiction, nonfiction. Contest deadline October 1. Complete guidelines here.

You can get the New Southerner 2008-2009 anthology for a bargain $10 at lulu

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:

Kathleen Driskell

Next Tuesday, as part of the Kentucky Great Writer Series, Jim Tomlinson, Cecelia Woloch, and Kathleen Driskell will read at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Last night at Leatha Kendrick’s Eclectic Living Room, we discussed the works of these writers. Jim’s Nothing Like an Ocean, Cecelia’s Carpathia, and Kathleen’s Seed Across Snow, from which we discussed the poem “To the Outdoor Wedding.”

I was reminded of this YouTube video of Kathleen reading the latter as part of the InKY Reading Series. I thought I’d put it up here today as a preview of coming attractions. It’s the last poem in this set.

Thanks to the folks at InKY for their video series, who are having an open mike night for National Poetry Month on April 9 — that’s Friday night. Check it out. Go read.

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.

Eclectic Living Room

The Eclectic Living Room meets at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning one week before every Kentucky Great Writers reading to discuss and “celebrate” the work. The discussion is led by Leatha Kendrick, who is a wonderful appreciator of other people’s work and who, as a friend just said to me, reads like a writer. Most of those who attend the discussion are also writers. So, participants have an opportunity not only to explore the work that they will soon be hearing but also to hone their own writing skills. Each session ends with a writing prompt or exercise.

The Morris Book Shop is there to give participants a chance to look at and buy the books in question.

And sometimes, as last night, the group is privileged to have the publisher present to add his insights to both the writers and the publishing process.

At last night’s session we discussed the work of Normandi Ellis, Dorothy Sutton, and J. Stephen Rhodes, all three of whom have books out from Wind Publications and all three of whom will be reading next Tuesday, February 9, at the Carnegie Center as part of the Kentucky Great Writers Series (funded by LexArts). The featured readers begin at 7:30; the open mic begins at 6:30. Local folk, mark it on your calendar.

That address is 251 West Second Street, Lexington.

I consider all three of these fine writers personal friends and I have featured work by Steve, Dorothy, and Normandi here on the blog. I can attest that they are all great readers. It will be a fine evening.

I guess this reads a little bit like an infomercial, and I guess that’s all right. Who can you praise if you can’t praise your friends?

Some kudos

In an e-mail, Michael Czarnecki of FootHills Publishing mentioned that 2010 marks their 25^th year of publishing. In that 25 years, FootHills has brought some great chapbooks into the world, including mine and Helen Losse’s, which are #s 4 and 5 in their Poets on Peace series. I see that they have just released POP #14. FootHills chapbooks are fine handstitched examples of chapbook art.

Michael will also turn 60 in 2010. A banner year for Wheeler Hill.

I also need to announce the advent of a brand-new press here in Kentucky, Accents Publishing. Launched by owner/editor Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,

Our mission is to promote brilliant voices in an affordable publication format, and to foster an exchange of literature among different world cultures and languages.

And ambitious plan. I’ve talked to Katerina about her goal, which is to produce small attractive books that sell for about $5. It’s a sort of micro-marketing strategy of publishing and I wish them well.

We at Accents Publishing believe that readers should be able to afford the books we publish. That’s why we’re committed to providing books that offer great value at a reasonable price.

The Press will have a premiere event to launch its first book on February 4 at Common Grounds Coffee House, 343 East High Street, Lexington, from 7:00 – 10:00 pm.

Last but not least, I want to mention that one of my very favorite places in Central Kentucky, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, received an honorable mention for the MetLife Innovative Artist Space Award for 2009. More than 30,000 people visited the Carnegie Center in 2009 to participate in their literacy programming. I was one of them.

The abstract of their MetLife application reads

In 1990, Lexington’s mayor created a committee to discover a reuse for the vacant Carnegie library building; from that group, the idea for a community learning and arts center was born. The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning helps people find joy in writing, reading, and learning new things. In addition to offering a gallery and performing arts events, the center’s emphasis on writing and promoting books by Kentucky authors has made it the literary hub of Kentucky. The building is also home to learning and arts organizations, an author, and writing/book discussion groups. It is also the site for other non-Carnegie events, including the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

The Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington

There’s still time to participate in this activity in celebration of the National Day on Writing. Lexington author Ed McClanahan (O The Clear Moment) will write the starting paragraph. Between 7 AM -5 PM, add 1-250 words at one of the sites listed below:

7 AM- 9 AM
Starbucks – Chevy Chase

9 AM-11 AM
Starbucks-downtown
Third Street Stuff and Coffee
Eagle Creek Library
The Carnegie Center

11 AM- 1 PM
Barnes and Noble- Hamburg
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Carnegie Center

1 PM-3 PM
The Morris Book Shop- Southland Drive
Waldenbooks- Fayette Mall
Northside Library
The Carnegie Center

3 PM- 5 PM
Village Branch Library
Central Library
Common Grounds Coffee
The Carnegie Center

The Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington, which will be authored by numerous people on National Day on Writing, will share a snapshot of Lexington and people’s lives on this day. Join the stellar line-up of local celebrities contributing to the community piece, including Ed McClanahan, Bobbie Ann Mason, Marcia Hurlow, Leatha Kendrick, Milton Toby, Steve Vest, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Kirby Gann, Rena Baer, Neil Chethik and Jan Isenhour, with many more literary icons sure to make their mark.

The story will be written on butcher paper and segments of Lexington’s Longest Short Story will be taped up inside the Carnegie Center to create an official Learning Zone. Excerpts of the completed work will be published online in the National Gallery of Writing and other sources.

At 5:30 PM, the day-long events will culminate with a CELEBRATION at the Carnegie Center and the public is invited to attend this free event. First Lady Beshear will serve as our keynote speaker.