Followers

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Kansas City Literary Festival

Saturday - May 19th
Country Club Plaza
Kansas City Literary Festival

Monday, May 14, 2007

As If There Wasn't Enough Going On Tuesday Night

Two More Locals read May 15th (Tuesday Night)

The site of this reading is The Johnson County Central Resource Library at 87th & Farley in Overland Park. Starts at - 7pm.

The poets reading:

Patricia Cleary Miller, professor of English and chair of the Humanities Division at Rockhurst University. She has published three books and dozens of poems in various venues. Her poetry collection, Starting a Swan Dive (BkMk Press) won the Daniel S. Brenner Award for Scholarly Achievement. In 1986 she founded the Rockhurst Review: a fine arts journal, which she continues to serve as editor-in-chief. From Harvard University she received the Hiram Hunn Award and the Harvard Alumni Association Award for distinguished service, and a Bunting Fellowship in poetry for a post-doctoral sabbatical year.

Walter Bargen,who has published ten books and two chapbooks of poetry. The three most recent books are, The Body of Water, from Timberline Press (2003), The Feast, from BkMk Press-UMKC (2004), which was awarded the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award, and Remedies for Vertigo from WordTech Communications (2006). His poems have appeared in appear the Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East, Seattle Review, and New Letters. He was the winner of the Chester H. Jones Foundation prize in 1997, a National Endowment for the Art Fellowship in 1991, and the William Rockhill Nelson Award in 2005.

My little Poetry Manifesto

I find taking a pen in hand and giving myself the freedom to resist a prescribed text can be a very cathartic experience. Allowing the pen to be taken, not on some planned outing but to follow instead the arbitrary journey of the mind in motion, as opposed to a set mental moment— this gives poetry a life of its own. Not so much any specific meaning, but the very essence of the poem’s existence, the point at which it becomes something unto itself. That is so liberating. It is the birth of a separate creation from one’s self. Once established, its meaning is no longer up to me.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Allowing Art to realize its purpose in us

"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him." ~ Carl Jung

Friday, May 11, 2007

Yeah Friday is here!!!

I know this site has been around for a while but I really gave it a good look over yesterday and decided it is well worth a plug. So if you haven't already, go check out Poetry Thursday (here).

Had a positive experience with a new poem draft yesterday. I love it when that happens. I'll try to polish it up over the next few days.

Sent five poems out this week to a venue I had never tried before. I believe I have 13 submissions I am awaiting responses on.

I have what I believe will be an exciting interview coming up soon. Just to wet your appetite a bit. Not giving any details here, but I haven't done any interviews for a while and I am wanting to bring readers more of this in the near future. I am planning to bring back the Wednesday Poet Series at least one Wednesday a month and it will likely be to introduce a poet's work and provide readers an interview as well.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007