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North Carolina Writers & Books: August, 2007
Each month North Carolina Writers & Books showcases work by North Carolina writers of poetry, prose, and literary translation. Here, too, you'll find news, interviews, and features related to North Carolina's literary community and links to other literary Web sites of interest.
We'd appreciate your feedback and ideas. --
Language MattersNorth Carolina's poet laureate, Kathryn Stripling Byer, writes essays titled "Language Matters" that appear serially in newspapers around the state. This month we're happy to share with visitors to this web site the one that circulated in May. You'll find other editions of "Language Matters" archived here. Child’s Play Soon school will be over for the year. Students will leave their classrooms and bound out into a summer day, feeling free, at least for a little while. But free to do what? These days our children’s lives are so filled with activities that they’ve hardly time to sit and feel the expanse of summer around them, that magical time I remember opening up like a day dream. And daydreaming is what has been on my mind lately. We think of it as wasting time, but for most of us, especially the young, it is nothing less than making time. Making time for our own mind play. And play has everything to do with language. [ More... ]
'Zines
–K.S.B.
The poem What better way to open the second edition of a journal devoted to North and South Carolina poetry? This year's judge, Peter Meinke, selected three winners from a final field of twenty, which editors Richard Allen Taylor, Beth Cagle Burt, and Lisa Zerkle winnowed from more than 800 submissions. Anyone who ever thought being an editor is a cakewalk needs to think again! The three winning poets, Steve Lautermilch, Allan Wolf, and Rebecca Warren, have excellent work in the issue, to be sure, but I myself was drawn just as strongly to Kathryn Kirkpatrick's "News from Midlife," Britt Kaufmann's "Corn," Hilda Downer's "Wiley Coyote Takes T-Shirt Inventory," Roy Jacobstein's "Invocation," and Catherine Carter's unforgettable "Vegetable Drawer, Black Mold, " written for poet-friend Mary Adams. The final poem in the anthology, Mark Smith-Soto's "Things Sweeten Toward Their End,” is one of the collection's best, and closes out this gathering with the frisson that all good poetry generates. (I still remember how the hair on the nape of my neck danced when I read young poet Emily Smith's poem, "Interview with the Past," in last year's anthology.) This book contains many poems that will sweeten the reader's day, including some by special guest contributor Alex Grant, who won the Kakalak 2006 Poetry Prize. Their work deserves all the readers they can get.
Worthy of NoteAugust, 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road. Lowell, Massachusetts claims Kerouac as a native son, but he spent quite a bit of time in Rocky Mount, visiting his sister, Caroline. For more about that, click here.
Photo of Kerouac from 1957 Times review For a You-Tube clip of Kerouac reading from and talking about his book on “The Steve Allen Plymouth Show” in 1959, click here and scroll down to New York Times writer Dwight Garner’s blog, “When Jack Met Steve.” Just below on that site, in the blog titled “Hey, Jack Kerouac,” you’ll find links to reflections on Kerouac and his novel, including the September 5, 1957 Times review by Gilbert Millstein, which Garner considers “probably the most famous book review in the history of this newspaper.” For more about Kerouac’s life and work—including the thirty essentials of his “Spontaneous Prose” literary method— click here.
Poetry
Art by Pamela Babusci 100 Bridges: Haiku North America 2007 This month—from Wednesday, August 15, to Sunday, August 19—Winston-Salem hosts Haiku North America, one of the largest gatherings of haiku poets in the United States and Canada. This is the first time that the Haiku North America (HNA) conference has come to the South. It’s a rare opportunity to see and hear some of the best haiku poets writing in English! Haiku North America is a long weekend full of papers, panels, workshops, readings, performances, book sales, and much socialization with fellow poets, translators, scholars, editors, and publishers. Established and aspiring haiku poets, as well as curious readers, are welcome. HNA 2007 will have more than 50 presenters—many of the best haiku poets writing in English—from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Special guests include Sonia Sanchez and Kalamu ya Salaam. –Lenard D. Moore, Bob Moyer, and Dave Russo On the Air "Nothing chafes a true haiku poet more than the persistent assumption in American culture that writing haiku is as simple as counting out the 5-7-5 syllable pattern." On August 10th Haiku aficionados Dave Russo, Kate MacQueen and Jim Kacian joined host Frank Stasio on WUNC Radio's "The State of Things" to discuss the art of haiku and the Haiku North America 2007 conference, this month in Winston-Salem. Click here to listen. Haiku by North Carolina Participants in the Conference
Photo by Lila Forro
Dave Russo's haiku have appeared in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Acorn, and other journals. He is included in big sky: The Red Moon Anthology 2006 (Red Moon Press, 2007) and the latest New Resonance anthology from Red Moon Press. Russo is the Webmaster for Haiku North America, the North Carolina Haiku Society, and Red Moon Press. Of the poems that follow, "vernal pool" previously appeared in Snapshots Calendar: 2007; "sweaty flea market," “reading haiku,” and “dirt road moon” appeared in Simply Haiku: Winter 2006, vol. 4 no. 4; "news of the war" appeared in HSA Member's Anthology for 2006.
sweaty flea market reading haiku dirt road moon news of the war
Photo by Dave Russo
Robert Moyer is the director of Shakespeare Lives!, a professional development program for teachers based at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London; slammaster of the Winston-Salem Poetry slam; theater artist-in-residence at the Arts-Based Elementary School in Winston Salem; and director of the United Stage, an arts-in-education story theater company. In 2006, the one-woman show None of the Above, which he directed and co-authored, won Best Solo Show at the National Gay and Lesbian Theater Festival. Of the poems that follow, “tram doors appeared in Acorn, “saturday’s paper” appeared in Frogpond, “her little foot” appeared in Simply Haiku, and “vacation cabin” appeared in the 2005 Red Moon Anthology. tram doors saturday's paper her little foot vacation cabin
L. Teresa Church, a member of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective, is a playwright, freelance writer, arts consultant, quiltmaker, poet, and library professional. She was born and raised in rural Virginia and lives in Durham. Ms. Church is the author of numerous poems, several articles, and other writings. She has presented quilt-talks at venues such as public libraries, local schools, and the women’s prison. Her quilt collection has been featured in exhibits at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina and St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Of the poems that follow, “bullfight” and “drill sergeant” appeared in Valley Voices: A Literary Review (Mississippi Valley State University, Volume 6, Fall 2006: 35). “beehive” and “chastening rod” appeared in The Chapel Hill News, 25 April 2007. Bullfight drill sargeant beehive chastening rod
Thomas Heffernan
Photo by Dave Russo
Thomas Heffernan was a founding editor of the Okinawan haiku magazine Plover/Chidori. He received the 2006 Kusamakura Grand Prize for international haiku and since 1985 Mainichi and other awards for haiku in English. Heffernan's haiku chapbook White Edge, Curling Wave and Christmas Gifts in South Japan, haibun/haiku essays, appeared in 2002 and 2003. After teaching in Japan for a number of years, Tom has served since 2005 as visiting professor at St Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg. Of the poems below "equinox" appeared in the Kusamakura International Contest Bulletin and on the North Carolina Haiku Society website; "the heat..." appeared in the 10th Mainichi Awards, Tokyo, 2006; "winter sun shining" appeared in the 9th Mainichi Awards, Tokyo, 2005; and "mannikin's fur coat" appeared in the 2002 and 2007 editions of White Edge, Curling Wave.
Equinox the heat... winter sun shining mannikin's fur coat
Kate MacQueen
Kate MacQueen has been writing haiku and related forms for ten years. Her work has been published in The Heron’s Nest, Acorn, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and Contemporary Haibun & Haiga, among others. She has lived in Chapel Hill since 2001. Of the poems that follow, “spring morning" and “pulled from sleep” appeared in the September, 2006 edition of The Heron's Nest. (“spring morning” was reprinted in big sky: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2006.) "half way across" has appeared in Frogpond (XXII: 1, 1999) and "storm's end" appeared in Acorn (No. 6, Fall 2001).
pulled from sleep half way across storm's end
Photo by Curtis Dunlap
Lenard D. Moore is Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society; founder of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective (CAAWC), and winner of a Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award for his contribution to the fine arts of North Carolina. He teaches English, creative writing, and journalism at Mount Olive College. Moore has been writing and publishing haiku for 25 years. His haiku and other poetry have appeared in more than 40 anthologies, including The Haiku Anthology (Norton, 1999). Lenard is a three-time recipient of the Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award (2003, 1994 and 1983). He won the Poet of the Year Award given by The Heron's Nest, for haiku written in 2004. All of the poems that follow appeared in Valley Voices: A Literary Review (Vol. 6, Fall 2006: Mississippi Valley State University, Itta Bena, Mississippi).
his camera flashes summer dusk again the whirr
This month I'm delighted to feature these two very different poets. Their work will engage you and make you eager to continue reading the poetry we’ll feature during the rest of the months left in 2007.
Lou Lipsitz
Seeking the Hook with its barbed point digging [ More... ]
Sarah Anne Loudin Thomas, a native of West Virginia, lives near Asheville with her husband and three big dogs. She holds a BA in English from the University of South Carolina/Coastal Carolina College and currently serves as the director of development and public relations for the Presbyterian Home for Children in Black Mountain. In her free time, she teaches creative writing classes for the children at the Home and is trying to learn to play the cello. She also writes for Mountain Homes and Now & Then magazines. Her poem “Mountain Mama” is scheduled for publication in Now & Then next year.
Stranger Friend When the trail gave us up, Propping the door open No, but never mind, it was just No introduction, [ More... ]
Prose
The North Carolina Arts Council offers various forms of assistance to artists in many disciplines. Every other year we invite writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, literary translation, plays, and screenplays to apply for fellowships. We award these $8,000 grants on the basis of artistic merit to support the writers’ work and to help sustain the contribution they make to North Carolina’s creative environment. The fellowships are fiercely competitive. This year, for example, we received more than 300 applications in all genres for the twelve grants offered. Many splendid writers live here. Recently the Council announced the award of fellowships to four of them: two playwrights and two screenwriters. Samples of their work are linked below. A three-member panel made the selection: Louis Buttino , head of the film studies program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; Angela Flynn-McIver , producing director of the North Carolina Stage Company, in Asheville; John Harris, professor of theater history in UNC-CH’s Department of Dramatic Art and former artistic director of the outdoor drama “Pathway to Freedom.” In subsequent months this space will showcase work by the writers who receiving 2007-08 fellowships for prose.
Miriam Angress
Miriam Angress is a playwright and poet who works at Duke University Press, in the acquisitions Editorial Department. She lives in Durham. Miriam started in theater when she was thirteen, and was cast as Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank. She acted and directed for the next fourteen years (highlights included playing Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and directing Harold Pinter's The Lover), until she gave up acting and directing to write. In 1996 her first play, Nothing, was chosen to be part of Duke's New Playwrights Festival and Durham's Coalition for Battered Women commissioned her to write a play for one of their benefits. In 2000 Flying Machine Theatre Company presented a staged reading of her play Sometimes I Hang Out My Laundry in the Rain; in 2004 Chicago's Collaboraction Theatre Company produced her short play Incoming in their Sketchbook Festival and in 2005 workshopped How Water Speaks to Rock. She is an alumna of Duke University and studied playwriting, as an adult, with Erin Cressida Wilson. She has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do but is now focused on yoga and meditation. About her work she writes: Because I seem to think most clearly in dialogue, I write plays. Although my plays almost always focus on a particular family’s history and dynamics, and I never abandon the realm of intimacy, I also like theater to participate in world-making, the way novels and movies often do and plays generally don’t: imagining alternate realities, crafting worlds that are both different and the same as our world. I am interested in writing plays that are character-driven, mystical, political, dark, sometimes funny, redemptive, grounded fairy-tales or myths. My sense is that all real transformation starts internally, in the imagination or in dream, and then later is mirrored out in the world, and I always write about this in some fashion. I also tend to write about how human beings fail themselves and other people (or other beings) and then how many of them discover a way to heal things, at least somewhat. When I write a play, the answers or questions or intelligence of the play often develop beyond what I consciously understand about people or could articulate off the page. I love that I frequently don’t know what I know (or who I know) until I write. About the excerpt presented here of her play How Water Speaks to Rock she writes: A few years ago I workshopped a much earlier version of How Water Speaks to Rock with a company in Chicago, and afterwards the company's artistic director said something like, "This play has so much going on that your audience is going to be pleading for a background summary. They'll need something along the lines of 'Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away...’ scrolling down the screen." So, Jen's monologue, where she looks back (years later) at the events of the play, is one piece of my response to his suggestion, and one piece of the mystery that unfolds in the play.
Roger Franks
About his life and work Roger Franks writes: I was born April 22, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee. Growing up, I always had a love for the movies, which led me to write short stories in school. My English and literature teachers encourage me to write. I married early, started a family and moved to Delaware, my wife’s home state. We lived there for seventeen years, until 1993, when a job change took me to North Carolina. We now call Benson home. Our children are grown and I decided, six years ago, to try my hand at writing. I attended a pitch festival in Los Angeles and from that was born a script, The Last Goodnight. I shopped it to several major production companies and it was well received, but didn’t sell. I have continued to write, finishing ten scripts on spec. I attended another pitch festival this year and the response was overwhelming, with more than a dozen companies requesting scripts or a synopsis. The North Carolina Arts Council grant has proved useful in financing the trip to Los Angeles. I also plan to shoot a digital short or feature here later in the year. I will shoot from a script that I will write and work to enter in local and out-of-state festivals. To any writer I would say, make your next script better than the last. Grow as a writer, concentrating on character and plot. These are the driving forces of a script and far outweigh anything else. About the excerpt presented here of his screenplay The Last Goodnight, he writes: As a young child, Tyler Curry witnessed his brother’s death, by what he believed was a monster. Years later, emotionally damaged by the event, Tyler remembers nothing of it but suffers from a morbid fear of the dark. He has become a brilliant police detective, able to solve crimes on just a hunch. But he is also a loner whose only connections to normality are his partner, Cliff Stewart, his wife, Beth, and his young daughter, Amanda. Pursuing a suspect in an abandoned factory, Tyler is locked in a dark room. Frightened, he realizes something is in the room with him, something from his past. When Cliff gets him out, Tyler’s memory of what happened that night with his brother begins to emerge in flashes. With the help of a police psychiatrist, Katherine Riley, he begins an investigation of his past and soon realizes that not only his brother but also other children have died in their sleep of what appeared to be choking, and that these deaths continue to occur.
Nichole Gause
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