“We write because we can’t not write. We want to make music out of our breath; we want to be under the power of an art that toys with us and could destroy us, but which allows us to get a glimpse of what’s real.” — poet Gary Young
Click here to find out more about Gary Young, recently named the first poet laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.
WVU’s Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts & Sciences present a reading by Mary Ann Samyn, author of “Beauty Breaks In,” 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 9, at 130 Colson Hall. Reception and book signing to follow.
Samyn has four other collections of poetry: “Purr,” “Rooms by the Sea,” “Captivity Narrative,” and “Inside the Yellow Dress.” She has won a Pushcart Prize and numerous other awards, including Outstanding Teacher at WVU.
Click here to sample her poems at Verse Daily.
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David Bottoms, poet laureate of Georgia, will read at Huntington Museum at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 11. Bottoms has published eight books of poetry, including “Waltzing Through the Endtime” and “Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump.”
He holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University.
Also, Mark Brazaitis and Mary Ann Samyn will read from their work at Marshall’s Memorial Student Center at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 21.
Frank X Walker will be in Morgantown on Monday, Feb. 15. He is scheduled to speak in the Rhododendron Room of WVU’s Mountainlair at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. The program is co-sponsored by WVU’s Center for Black Culture and Research and the Appalachian Culture Committee-Office of Multicultural Programs.
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Lucille Clifton, award-winning poet, dies at 73
BALTIMORE (AP) — Lucille Clifton, a National Book Award-winning poet and Pulitzer finalist, has died. She was 73.
Clifton’s sister, Elaine Philip of Buffalo, N.Y., said the former poet laureate of Maryland passed away Saturday morning at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.
Philip said the cause of death was unclear but Clifton was hospitalized for an infection last week at a hospital in Columbia, Md., before being transferred to Baltimore.
The native of Depew, N.Y., won the National Book Award in 2000 for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000.” She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1988.
Survivors include three daughters, a son and three grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.
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Frank X Walker — Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
By Vic Burkhammer
Gazette news editor
Notable African-American writer Frank X Walker returns to Charleston this weekend.
The West Virginia Center for the Book and the West Virginia Division of Culture and History will celebrate Black History Month with an appearance at 7 p.m. Friday at the Culture Center Theater by Walker, who also will be featured at other weekend events.
He will present his lecture “Some of Appalachia is Black” and address the definition of Affrilachian, a word he coined that is now in the Oxford American Dictionary. He also will read poems.
Some of his books, including “Affrilachia: Poems,” “When Winter Come: The Ascension of York” and “Black Box,” will be available for sale during a reception in the Great Hall following the lecture.
Walker also will be an instructor Saturday morning at the annual Writers’ Toolkit, an intensive creative writing workshop that encompasses poetry and fiction. Also on the program was W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney, but she cancelled her appearance. Doug Van Gundy will take her place, along with Anthony Viola, Rob Whetsell and Kaite Hillenbrand. The program runs 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Culture Center.
Both events are open to the public.
Finishing out the weekend, Walker will read at Bluegrass Kitchen, 1600 Washington St., on Sunday as part of “Love Jones Poetry,” hosted by Crystal Goodwoman with a Sade listening party at 7 p.m.
Frank X Walker — Photo from video by Vic Burkhammer and M.K. McFarland
FRANK X WALKER’S COMING TO TOWN. Next Friday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m., Frank X Walker will be a guest lecturer at the Culture Center in the Capitol Complex, Charleston. He is hosted by the West Virginia Center for the Book as it celebrates Black History Month. More on that on the next few days here at MountainWord and in Thursday’s Gazz, the Gazette’s entertainment section.
He will present his lecture, “Some of Appalachia is Black.”
Walker also will be a faculty member at the annual Writers’ Toolkit, Saturday, February 13, from 9 a.m. to noon in the Culture Center. Both events are open to the public.
The Celebration of Black History Month and the Writers’ Toolkit are co-sponsored by the West Virginia Center for the Book, a program of the West Virginia Library Commission, and the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, under the supervision West Virginia of Education and the Arts.
For biography and/or photographs of Walker, please click here.
Click here to read about the West Virginia Center for the Book.
And here’s a link to the Web page Susan Hayden is developing for WVLC.
Crystal Good says Walker will be at Bluegrass Kitchen on Feb. 14…details to follow….
DEATH OF A HERO POET. Here’s a report from IFF Network Blog about the death of Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever.
On Jan. 23, Joseph Berger of The New York Times wrote:
“Abraham Sutzkever, one of the great Yiddish poets of his generation who evoked the nightmare of the Holocaust with images of a wagonload of worn shoes and the haunting silence of a sky of white stars, died Wednesday in Tel Aviv. He was 96.”
CIVILITY DISCUSSION. My wife Nancy Miller Burkhammer tells me the Rev. Jim Lewis, author of the blog “Notes from Under the Fig Tree,” participated in a civility discussion put together by Washington and Lee University, his alma mater. The comments were summarized in W&L: The Magazine for Washington and Lee University Alumni/Fall-Winter 2009. It’s the cover story and it begins on Page 20.
W&L is also the alma mater of Joe Wilson, the congressman who screamed “You lie!” at Obama during the president’s health-care speech to Congress last fall.
WHAT ABOUT WEST VIRGINIA’S 14 HATE GROUPS? Most poets are gentle souls who see hate as alien to poetry.
Oddly, more often these days, I hear on talk radio and elsewhere — it’s ubiquitous — people shaking their rhetorical fists at the powers that be, President Obama particularly, over issues they would’ve praised W for.
Did you know, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 14 active hate groups in West Virginia?
What do you make of this? Please, add your comments.
CRAIGSLIST HAIKU. Read about the how and why of haiku that show up on Craigslist.
A POET AND HIS MAC. With all the buzz about the iPad these days, it’s worth noting that poet Gary Snyder has a poem about his Apple computer: “Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh.”
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Award-winning author Mark DeFoe will be featured with Morgantown Poets at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, at Monongalia Arts Center (MAC). The event is free and open to the public. The MAC is at 107 High Street, downtown Morgantown (beside Hotel Morgan).
Gazette Life Section
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