March 28, 2012
by: SuperRed
“To do nothing is the way to be nothing.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne
A couple of Tuesdays ago at the Artists' Union Gallery (AUG), I recited a piece of poetry I'd written a few years ago. I re-worked the poem, Last Sunday, by adding a few lines and taking away a few. There is quite a difference between standing up in front of an audience and performing a piece created by someone else and reading my own work. When reading or performing another author's work, such as performing in a play or reciting to a class, I express the emotion of the character, or act out the emotion I interpret to be there, but I can be distanced emotionally in my mind. When reciting my own work, the emotion is mine. I'm not only representing myself to the audience, I'm putting my own ideas and work out for others to listen to and, hopefully, enjoy. It is an intimate, exciting, and a little bit frightening experience. Fortunately, Tuesday night at the AUG is a friendly atmosphere. The poets want to see each other succeed.
After the open mic was completed and many wonderful poets shared their work, we had the post-reading gathering. During this part of the evening everyone worked together to put away the chairs, clean the coffee pots, and of course, eat up the last few cookies and brownies, while they talked. Since I started coming regularly to the AUG meetings a couple of months ago, I watched as first the other poets looked at me with indifference, then interest and after "putting myself out there" in performing my poem, they greeted me as one of their own. I'd "made my bones" as Sonny Corleone would say. I can now say that of this group of strangers I'd met, many of them are fast becoming friends. Next week I am actually becoming a member of the AUG. I AM A POET :-)
In addition to presenting the poem to the audience, my fellow Intelligent Design Arts Collective (IDAC) member, Mr. Wao (Wow!), also recorded it. Mr. Wao does an awesome job putting together video for posting on You Tube. I was surprised at how easy it was to post: create an account and upload to You Tube. Simple, right? I felt trepidation. This was different than reading in front of 20 poets--this was the world. My finger shook slightly as I clicked "upload".
I am so happy to have done the reading and the video. I feel liberated after crossing this new challenge and now standing safe on the other side of it. I plan to do a lot more writing, reciting and posting. If you have something you love to do and it is positive for the world, share it! Don't hide that light under a barrel. Let it shine, baby, let it shine.
Here is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF9x1vlVFCI
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
A Night at the Gallery - March 13, 2012
March 13, 2012
By: SuperRed
TUESDAY NIGHT POETS
INT. ARTISTS’ UNION GALLERY – VENTURA, CALIFORNIA
– MARCH 13, 2012 -EVENING
POET 1
What is the
difference between a poem and a song?
POET 2
A guitar?
POET 1
No,
(beat)
a million
dollars.
While it is true that hardly anyone can earn a significant
amount of money writing poetry, Tuesday after Tuesday poets gather at the Ventura Artists’
Union Gallery with their binders, notebooks and folded scraps of paper. They
are drawn together, not by dreams of avarice, but by other desires. Words are their
currency, traded on the stage. Along with the Tuesday Regulars, there is also a
featured poet, and last Tuesday was an exceptional experience.
The format
for the Tuesday gatherings is simple. The featured poet reads his or her poems first
for about 20-25 minutes. This is followed by the open mic. The open mic has
rules: each poet can share one poem and NO, I repeat, NO EPICS are allowed.
Apparently, Doris will put the hurt on you if you go too long ;)
The featured
poet this week was Carol V. Davis (bio
below). Ms. Davis shared poems from her new book Between Storms (available at amazon.com).
Ms. Davis is a very pleasant woman, with an engaging smile and an easy laugh. This
Fulbright Scholar and T.S. Eliot Prize winner is currently teaching at Santa
Monica College. She seemed at ease in front of the audience, and I was
surprised when after reading two poems she mentioned that she was nervous when
she first started reading. Ms. Davis also shared that Between Storms is a bit of a “darker” work, and I felt that in poems
she shared with us. In the second stanza of the title poem, a storm is
building:
A sweep of clouds darkens the sky,
On either side of the traffic
the canyon walls are growing.
The heavens could open now,
lightning bounce from the cheekbones of rocks
Scrub acorns sprout from the hillsides,
its stubble of beard sways unsteadily.
Ms. Davis’
work has been called “stark” and able to “conjure up the beauty amid the
terror” (Enid Shomer), but she also shows us a humorous side in Singer and His Sewing Machine. This poem
is about Isaac Merritt Singer, the inventor of the sewing machine, who lived a
life in direct opposition to the products he created. “Model 7463 is called
Confidence. Model 7436, Ingenuity. I’ll take one of each.” I found both her and
her work wonderful. As Phil Taggart advised, and I agree, “Buy the book, buy
the book.” If not for a million dollars, at least for a song.
Davis,
Carol V., Between Storms, Copyright ©
2012 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 tsup.truman.edu
http://www.venturaartistsunion.org/
Carol V. Davis is the
granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia. Her fascination with Russia,
aided by a Fulbright grant, drew her to St Petersburg in the mid 1990s. Over
the next decade, she divided her time between the US and Russia, where, as an
American-born Jew, she was an outsider in Russian society.
Carol now lives in Los
Angeles, California. Her poems have appeared in magazines in the US, Ireland
and Israel. …In 1994 she received one of the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for
Poems on the Jewish Experience (USA) and also won the Reuben Rose Poetry
Competition in Israel. In 1995 she won the Black Rock Press Broadside
Competition, The Book Arts Press of the Univ. of Nevada. She is the author of a
chapbook, Letters From Prague, (Paper Bag Press, 1991) based on
the letters of Franz Kafka to his fiancée. She spent the 1996-97 academic year
as a senior Fulbright scholar in creative writing in St. Petersburg, Russia,
where she taught modern (19th and 20th century) Jewish literature at Petersburg
Jewish University and wrote. Her book, It’s Time to Talk About…,
was published in St. Petersburg, Russia in November, 1997, in a bilingual
edition. In May, 2000 Ireland, she received the Strokestown Poetry Award, 2nd
place, Co. Roscommon, Ireland.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)