As sports fans approach Superbowl 46, Meijer and Johnsonville Sausage are teaming up to sponsor a pigskin poetry contest on Facebook.

“The contest invites participants to go to the Meijer Facebook page and create a fun football-themed poem in 30 words or less through Feb. 4 for a chance to win the ultimate fan package.”

Read all about it:
 http://t.co/aymacciB

West Virginia Writers Inc. has announced its 2012 Annual Writing Contest. Over $6,000 will be awarded at the WVW Annual Conference at Cedar Lakes on June 9. Entry deadline: March 15, 2012; late entries accepted until March 31.

Thirteen adult categories include stage play, nonfiction, children’s books, poetry, short story, and fiction or nonfiction book-length work. Special categories are available for emerging writers (those who are unpublished and who’ve never won a cash award in a previous WVW contest), Appalachian theme, humor, and genre fiction, as well as the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. Adult entry fees are $10 per category ($12 for book-length); late entries require an additional $2 fee per manuscript.

Students should submit a story or poem using one of six provided prompts. There are no fees to enter the student contest, which is divided into three age groups (grades 1-5, 6-8 and 9-12). Cash prizes are given for first, second and third places in each category. Additional rules and fees may apply for out-of-state entrants. For more information, entry forms and official rules, visit http://www.wvwriters.org/contest.html or contact contest coordinator Teresa Newsome at 304-601-2460.

–Cat Pleska, president of West Virginia Writers Inc.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -– Fairmont poet and playwright Steven Anthony George will be featured with Morgantown Poets at 7 p.m. Thursday, January 19, 2012, at Monongalia Arts Center (MAC). An Open Mic follows immediately thereafter.

Steven Anthony George earned a BA in Honors English Writing at Fairmont State University and has worked as a poetry editor for Kestrel. His work has appeared in Angelic Dynamo, Apollo’s Lyre, and Eclectic Flash: The Best of 2010. He is currently writing an autobiography which focuses on the differences in perception of those on the autistic spectrum. His short plays, “Neurotic Medieval Custom” and “The Burning of Mary” were presented as part the New Mystics Arts Center’s Emerging Playwrights Series. In addition, he is a contributing writer on the Lotus Effects Art and Culture webpage.

Public parking is available near the MAC in the parking garage at the corner of Pleasant and Chestnut Streets and at the city lot behind 142 High Street (enter off Spruce). The MAC is accessible to individuals with special mobility requirements; schedule ahead at least two days prior to the event by calling 304-292-3325, or write to  info at monartscenter.com.

Morgantown Poets is an informal not-for-profit, all-volunteer community group that meets 7-9 p.m. the third Thursday each month at the MAC, providing literary enthusiasts in north-centralWest Virginia the opportunity to express themselves, share their work, network, and to connect up-and-coming writers with more established authors. New writers are welcome. Join on Facebook by entering “Morgantown Poets” in the search or join the mailing list at  morgantownpoets at gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (@MorgantownPoets) or watch videos of past events on our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com).

– from Scott Emerson, Morgantown Poets

Just tweeted this — check it out at WVU Today:
Truth, justice and the poetic way: Law professor/writer marries his two professions at WVU http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2011/12/20/tru… via @wvutoday

“American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict….We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare.”
— Muriel Rukeyser: The Life of Poetry (1949)

Robert Hass, former U.S. poet laureate, writes in The New York Times about his experience at Occupy Berkeley:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinio…

Nikky Finney has won the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry.

Listen to this best-ever acceptance speech (16 minutes and 17 seconds into the Ustream clip):

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18565428

Buy and read her latest work – “Head Off & Split”

top shelf

The new issue of Appalachian Journal has an interview by Bruce A. Dick and Forrest Yerman with Frank X Walker.

The journal also has a John Hennen essay on “truth-telling” in poetry, reviews by Edwina Pendarvis and Sara M. Gregg, and more, including a piece by Tracy Turner Jarrell on sheep farming.

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free poems

Leaves of Grass [Kindle Edition] $0.00

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misc. news flash

DUBLIN (AP) – Poet, rights activist Michael D. Higgins wins Ireland’s presidency with 56.8 percent of votes.

 

…
By the way, and I don’t think AP mentioned this — Higgins was born in the town of Limerick. He is the subject of the song “Michael D rockin’ in the Dáil” by the Saw Doctors, an Irish rock band. The Dáil is the lower but principal chamber of the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas.

Here’s the president-elect’s acceptance speech:

Barbara A. Smith, of Philippi, W.Va., will take on the riddle of “What Under the Sun Is a Poem” at the West Virginia Book Festival, Sunday, Oct. 23, 11:30 a.m., at the Charleston Civic Center, Room WV105.

I asked her what she would be up to in that session. She said she will bring examples of poetry — the good, the bad and the ugly, showing what a good poem might be and what it might not be…focusing on “why the good ones are good and the bad ones are bad.”

Smith said these days poetry “has to be imagistic, and that means it has to appeal to all of our senses and to the emotions first, and then to the intellect. It used to be the intellect was first…. ”

Her idea of a good poem is “one that exhibits the characteristics that have traditionally been associated with lasting poetry.”

Favorite poets? She mentioned Kentucky poet Albert Stewart, and said his “Arbutus” is first-rate. Current poets Maurice Manning and Billy Collins are her two favorites right now. Ted Kooser? “Yes. William Stafford has always been one of my favorites too.”

Smith will bring copies of her collection of poetry called “Demonstrative Pronouns” and some of her other books, including “On Golf: And Other Sports & Non-sports”.

She is the co-editor of the excellent anthology “Wild Sweet Notes : Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999″ with Kirk Judd, published in 2000.

Tomas Tranströmer has won the 2011 Nobel Literature Prize. Back in 1975 while I was a student at WVU, I first read his work translated by Robert Bly in a book called “Friends, You Drank Some Darkness, Three Swedish Poets: Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelöf & Tomas Tranströmer,” from Beacon Press. It’s all about the psyche’s hidden side, delivered with strong images, powerful metaphors. Bly’s Seventies Press published Transtromer’s “20 poems” in 1970, but Tranströmer, a psychologist who worked with juvenile offenders, became much less obscure here after “Friends, You Drank Some Darkness” was published.

For more Tranströmer info, click here.

Here’s one of his poems translated by Samuel Charters:

NOVEMBER

The executioner is dangerous when he’s bored.
The burning heaven coils.

Knocking is heard from cell to cell
and space streams up out of the ground frost.

Some of the stones shine like full moons.