Announcing Fall Lines Vol. X Winners and Launch Date

May 19th 2:30 pm Richland Library

The Jasper Project is delighted to announce the winners of our Fall Lines Volume X poetry and prose prizes, our newest prize for a South Carolina writer of color, and the date of the Fall Lines Volume X book launch and reading.

Please join Jasper on Sunday May 19th at 2:30 pm in the auditorium of Richland Library as we welcome the 10th volume of Fall Lines – a literary convergence to the world. Previously announced accepted contributors are invited to read from their published work and copies of Fall Lines will be available for further distribution throughout the state. Contributors and guests are invited to attend.

Congratulations to the following prize winners.

Alyssa Stewart, winner of the Combahee River Prize for a SC Writer of Color for her poem “a black boy dreams of water” sponsored by the SC Academy of Authors.

Liz Newall, winner of the Broad River Prize for Prose for her short fiction “Red Hill Fans” sponsored by the Richland Library Friends and Foundation.

Brian Slusher, winner of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry for his poem “Improv 101” also sponsored by the Richland Library Friends and Foundation.

This year’s judges were Jennifer Bartell Boykin, poet laureate for the city of Columbia, SC (Combahee River  Prize), Ed Madden, Fall Lines co-editor and former poet laureate for the city of Columbia SC (Saluda River Prize), and Cindi Boiter, co-editor of Fall Lines and Jasper Magazine (Broad River Prize).

In writing about “a black boy dreams of water” by Alyssa Stewart, Boykin says, “It is not a coincidence that the winner of the Combahee River Prize is a poem overflowing with water. Water can be healing. Water can be dangerous. But what is water to a Black boy? What is the role of water in the Black psyche? In “a black boy dreams of water” Alyssa Stewart explores these questions and more. She pens a well-crafted poem in which the Black boy experiences water in a pool, in a pond, a river, a broken fire hydrant and infuses them with memories of the Atlantic Ocean and the Middle Passage. Boykin continues, “There is joy in the water that ‘has the power / to make his auntie’s hair curl’ and danger in water that can ‘turn hardened men into narcs.’ This poem deals with the legacy of water and Blackness, the not knowing how to swim (‘we do not go in’) and water as a path to freedom. It’s a call and response that beckons us to dream with this Black boy and to dream of/in water.”

Ed Madden, who is the Jasper Project’s literary editor, having selected poetry contributors to Fall Lines since our begging, writes about adjudicating the Saluda River Prize for Poetry. “While I love the meditative language of Randy Spencer’s "Reading Ann's Poem..." and the unemotional attention to the things we do in Worthy Evans’ "Blues Song...," and the humor of Debra Daniel’s "Studies in Reproduction"—all that to say this is a tough decision—I decided on Brian Slusher’s "Improv 101" as the winner of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry this year. While there is so much to love in all of the finalist poems, this poem has such a playfulness that almost-but-not-quite distracts from its serious lessons, every instruction for improv comedy also resonating with so many other possibilities. Say yes and....  Why don't we just let it go?” Madden continues, “The wild pacing of the poem suggests the wild pacing of improv--as if to suggest that poetry itself is a kind of improvisation. (And isn't it?) And that last double simile is so so delightful.”  

For Boiter, it was an honor, though also a challenge, to read and adjudicate this volume’s prose submissions. “As a prose and creative non-fiction writer myself, I find that I always learn something from reading the widely varied contributions to Fall Lines. In Suzanne Kamata’s ‘Community Building,’ for example, I vicariously learned about the awkward enthusiasm of actively participating in a culture foreign to one’s own. As a person who had once felt so out of touch with the portion of my peer group that valued conformity, Evelyn Berry’s “The Home Party” reminded me of the darker days of my early thirties and the frustration and shame of trying to fit in among people for whom I had no admiration and little respect. I think many readers will commiserate with the satisfying sense of personal growth I felt, and Berry’s main character begins to feel, at having extracted oneself from the kind of dangerous women Berry writes about and ensconced oneself in a community of forward-thinking artists and progressives. But it was in Liz Newall’s ‘Red Hill Fans’ that I was most carried away by the storytelling and the plot twists that have always inspired me both as a writer and a reader. For that reason, and more, I selected Newell’s ‘Red Hill Fans’ as the winner of the Broad River Prize for Prose.” 

The Jasper Project wants to thank Richland Library, Lee Snelgrove, One Columbia for Arts and Culture, Xavier Blake, the South Carolina Academy of Authors, Wilmot Irving, Mary Beth Evans, Ed Madden, and Jennifer Bartell Boykin.

Congratulations to Liz Newell, Alyssa Stewart, Brian Slusher, and all the accepted contributors to this historic issue of Fall Lines – a literary convergence.

 Mark your calendars!

Sunday May 19th 2:30 pm

Richland Library

1431 Assembly Street, Columbia, SC

Congratulations to the Accepted Contributors to Fall Lines - a literary convergence, volume X

On behalf of the Jasper Project, we’re delighted to announce that the following literary art was selected for inclusion in Fall Lines Volume X, releasing in spring 2024. These contributions were selected from several hundred poetry and prose submissions, and we couldn’t be happier to include them in this milestone tenth volume of Fall Lines – a literary convergence.

In early 2024 we will announce via the same website where and when we will hold our annual Fall Lines reading and awards ceremony, as well as the winners of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry, the Broad River Prize for Prose, and the Combahee River Prize in Poetry and Prose for a South Carolina Writer of Color.

Until then, congratulations and thank you for sharing your talents with the Jasper Project and allowing us to share them with the world.

Paul Toliver Brown – Digging to China

Allen Stevenson -- Shep’s Story

Bryan Gentry – Some People Never Change

Ruth Nicholson – The Red and Blue Box

Suzanne Kamata – Community Building

Evelyn Berry – Home Party

Randy Spencer – Next Day Now

Liz Newell – Red Hill Fans

Debra Daniel – Eve Purchases an Apple Watch

Shannon Ivey – As I Went Down to the River to Pray

Eric Morris – Straight Down Shadows

Lonetta Thompson – The Differences

Napoleon Wells – The Court of Thieves

Tshaka Campbell – Pews

Ann-Chadwell Humphries – Urban Eagle

Jacquelyn Markham – The persistence of limited memory  & Storage

Brian Slusher – *Improv 101 & What else for you darlin?  

Worthy Evans – *Blue Song for Bringing the Body Home & Blues Song for Never Having What I am Relative to Everybody Else

Rhy Robidoux –*Whereas

Nadine Ellsworth-Moran – *Nasturtium grows lush

Susan Craig – Migration & Treating our mother's last living friend

Heather Emerson – Divorce & Ceilings  

Joshua Dunn – Clearing House

Candice Kelsey – Chainsaws  & Renewable Energy

Terri McCord – Following a Blast

Randy Spencer – *Reading Ann’s Poem & In Passing

Debra Daniel – *Studies in Reproduction

Loli Munoz – Liminal

Frances Pearce – Strawberries

Ann Herlong-Bodman – One More

Jo Angela Edwins – A Neighbor Calls a Cool June Evening a Miracle

Kristine Hartvigsen – What I’ll pack for the apocalypse  & Inagaddadavida

Al Black –*Meditations on the Lawh-i-Aqdas & Midnight Call to Prayer

Tim Conroy – Journeys

Jessica Hylton – Space

Amanda Warren – Divination Road

Danielle Ann Verwers—How was your day

Libby Bernardin – Ode to the Santee Delta & Ramble of thought as I read an article in the New York Times

Ellen Blickman --The Mystery of Pomegranates

Allison Cooke – Whippoorwill Elegy

Julie Ann Cook --  Into blue

Bryan Gentry – Hail, Fuse

Kelley Lannigan – Aubade

Gilbert Allen -- T**** IS PRESIDENT

Jane Zenger – Choices

Anna Ialacci – Ruined

Nicholas Drake – The Space Beside Her  

Graham Duncan --  Exceptionalism

(* indicates finalists for the Saluda River Prize for Poetry)

Fall Lines - a literary convergence is made possible through a partnership between the Jasper Project, One Columbia for Arts and Culture, Richland Library, and the Friends of Richland Library.

Deadline for Fall Lines Extended to August 14th! Whew!

It’s not too late to submit your poetry and prose to the 2023 Fall Lines - a literary convergence journal and competition. 

Because at Jasper, we know how it feels to juggle art and life, we’re extending the deadline for submissions to 2023 Fall Lines volume X until midnight Monday, August 14th.  

This gives you two weekends to create a poem or some flash fiction, or to finish and polish that short story you’ve been building in your mind, if not on the screen or paper.

Don’t forget that this year we’re offering Three Prizes! 

The Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose, sponsored by the Friends of the Richland Library, as well as the Combahee River Prize for South Carolina writer of color in either poetry or prose, sponsored by the SC Academy of Authors.

 

So relax. You have plenty of time to burnish your words and send them on to Jasper. 

We can’t wait to read what you’ve written!

SC Academy of Authors Sponsors Jasper's Combahee Prize for a SC Writer of Color in this year's Fall Lines

The Jasper Project is delighted to announce that the South Carolina Academy of Authors will be the sponsor of the 2023 Combahee Prize for a SC writer of color in this year’s Fall Lines – a literary convergence journal.

Founded in 1986, the South Carolina Academy of Authors (SCAA) is a nonprofit organization which recognizes distinguished South Carolina writers, living and deceased, through induction into the Academy. It also supports developing writers with its Coker Fellowships and Student Prizes in Poetry and Short Fiction. 

"The SCAA is very pleased to join with The Jasper Project in supporting the Combahee River Prize,” says Marybeth Evans, chairman of its Board of Governors. “The Academy is dedicated to nurturing and supporting South Carolina’s literary talent. It deeply values the multicultural diversity displayed in the work of all the extraordinary writers in our state."

The SC Academy of Authors joins the Friends of Richland Library in sponsoring these three prizes: the Broad River Prize for Prose, the Saluda River Prize for Poetry, and the Combahee River Prize for a SC Writer of Color in Poetry or Prose. Each prize offers $250 cash and publication in Fall Lines - a literary convergence, volume X.

The deadline for submitting your work for consideration in this year’s Fall Lines - a literary convergence is July 31, 2023.

Submit to Fall Lines volume X here.

Jasper Announces New FALL LINES Literary Prize for SC BIPOC Writers

Announcing the Combahee River Prize, a new prize for SC Writers of Color who submit their prose or poetry to the Jasper Project’s annual literary journal, Fall Lines – a literary convergence.

Approaching its 10th volume, Fall Lines – a literary convergence is a journal of poetry and prose presented by The Jasper Project in partnership with Richland Library and One Columbia for Arts and Culture. The Combahee River Prize will join the Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose. All contributors will be asked to indicate if they are members of the BIPOC community when they complete their Cover Letter Template to submit their Fall Lines contributions. BIPOC writers will be eligible for the Combahee River Prize as well as the Saluda and Broad River prizes. Like the existing prizes, the Combahee River Prize is a cash prize of $250 and a framed commemorative certificate.

The title for the Combahee River Prize was selected to honor the freed woman and Underground Railway engineer, Harriet Tubman, whose raid at the Combahee Ferry on June 2, 1863 during the American Civil War resulted in the rescue of 750 enslaved individuals

Fall Lines will accept submissions of previously unpublished poetry, essays, short fiction, and flash fiction from April 15, 2023 through July 31, 2023.

ENTER FALL LINES 2023

Fall Lines 2023-2024 Submissions Are Open with a New Format and a New Award!

Fall Lines – a literary convergence is a literary journal presented by The Jasper Project in partnership with Richland Library and One Columbia for Arts and History.

Fall Lines will accept submissions of previously unpublished poetry, essays, short fiction, and flash fiction from April 15, 2023 through July 31, 2023.

ENTER FALL LINES 2023

While the editors of Fall Lines hope to attract the work of writers and poets from the Carolinas and the Southeastern US, acceptance of work is not dependent upon residence. Publication in Fall Lines will be determined by a panel of judges and accepted authors will be notified by December 31, 2023, with a publication date in early 2024. This year we are offering three cash prizes of $250 each. The Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose sponsored by the Richland Library Friends and Foundation as well as the Combahee River Prize which will be awarded to a SC writer of color in either poetry or prose.

See last year’s winners and contributors.

2023 Entries

After filling out the submission form you will receive an email with instructions for submitting your work.

Poetry

• Up to 5 poems may be submitted in a SINGLE WORD FILE.

• No single poem should exceed four 6 x 9-inch pages

New This Year- To ensure the integrity of the poet’s spacing, it is best that poems be formatted to appear on a 6 x 9-inch page with I-inch margins. If submitted in a larger format, we cannot guarantee your poem will be printed with the spacing you desire
We have created a template that should make this easier: Fall Lines Poetry Submissions Template

Prose

• Up to 5 prose entries may be submitted in a SINGLE WORD FILE.

• Entries should be 2500 words or less

ALL ENTRIES SHOULD BE TITLED.

There is no fee to enter, but submissions that fail to follow the above instructions will be disqualified without review.

Simultaneous submissions will not be considered. Failure to disclose simultaneous submissions will result in a lack of eligibility in any future Jasper Project publications.

 __

 The Columbia Fall Line is a natural junction, along which the Congaree River falls and rapids form, running parallel to the east coast of the country between the resilient rocks of the Appalachians and the softer, more gentle coastal plain.

Jasper Presents Fall Lines - a literary convergence Volume IX at Richland Library

Join the Jasper Project on Saturday, March 25 from 2 - 5 pm for the release of Fall Lines - a literary convergence Volume IX at the Main Branch of the Richland Library on Assembly Street.

Poetry and prose accepted for publication in this year’s Fall Lines journal include the following

Fruit – Gil Allen

The turning – Ken Autry

The last battle in Alabama – Ken Autry

Bachman's Warbler – Ken Autry

Bird – Libby Bernardin

with spoiled fruit – Evelyn Berry

Dear Raphael – Al Black

Porcelain doll – Al Black

If I were a man – Cindi Boiter

Prudent – Cindi Boiter

Seamstress – Carolina Bowden

Signs that say what you want them to say (not signs that say what someone else wants you to say) – Lucia Brown

Before we turn on the table saw – Lucia Brown

walking a half-marathon through your hometown – Lucia Brown

Members of the backyard church – Tim Conroy

Nasty Bites – Tim Conroy

How to cut up a chicken – Susan Craig

Touching Wyse's Ferry Bridge – Susan Craig

The Older Poet Yearns to Carpe the Diem – Debra Daniels

Dream Three – Heather Dearmon

Bring Me Something – Heather Dearmon

Across the River - Marlanda DeKine

talking to themselves -  Marlanda DeKine

For my cat, every Sunday afternoon – Graham Duncan

Ghosts in Poems – Jo Angela Edwins

Stricken – Jo Angela Edwins

Nana Lencha – Vera Gomez

You don't know what you don't know – Vera Gomez

Coattails – Kristine Hartvigsen

River – Kristine Hartvigsen

A Quiet Love – Jammie Huynh

A ghazal to my father – Jammie Huynh

Bad Idea Boyfriend, or White Jesus – Shannon Ivey

D. – Suzanne Kamata

Red Bird / Blue Bird – Bentz Kirby

Hunter's Chapel Road – Len Laurin

I love you 3000 – Len Lawson

Crown – Terri McCord

Space – Terri McCord

For a 20% Tip – Rosalie McCracken

"Yes, please" – Melanie McGhee

Cycles – Joseph Mills

Office hours – Joseph Mills

Those of us with bushy white beards – Joseph Mills

So long, Greenie – Eric Morris

Chopin all over her – Eric Morris

Old photos (for Ahmaud Arbery) – Yvette Murray

Thundering shadows – Frances Pearce

Gone to the birds – Glenis Redmond

"Praise how the ordinary turns sacred" – Glenis Redmond

Strangers in a Strange Field – Aida Rogers

Pre-Columbia Intersections – Lawrence Rhu

Meaningless – Michael Rubin

Small things I notice – Randy Spencer

Next Day Now - Randy Spencer

Above the poplars – Arthur Turfa

For the Love of Mz. Joe – Ceille Welch

The Broad River Prize for Prose this year goes to Tim Conroy for his short fiction, Nasty Bites and the Saluda River Prize for Poetry goes to Jo Angela Edwins for her poem, Stricken.

Carla Damron was the adjudicator for the prose prize and Lisa Hammond judged the poetry prize.

Both contributors and the public are invited to attend. Contributors are also invited to read from their included works during the event in the order in which it is published.

Thank you to Carla Damron, Lisa Hammond, Richland Library, the Friends of Richland Library, One Columbia, and Muddy Ford Press for their support of this project.

Fall Lines Release Event Rescheduled for March 25, 2023 2-5 pm Richland Library

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the release of Fall Lines Volume IX has been rescheduled for Saturday, March 25, 2023 from 2-5 pm at the Richland Library Main Branch on Assembly Street in Columbia, SC.

Authors are invited to attend and read from their Fall Lines contributions in the order in which they are printed.

The Jasper Project thanks you for your support and patience.

What? Was that June 30th that just FLEW RIGHT BY? Lucky for us, FALL LINES is FLEXIBLE!

FALL LINES DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JULY 5TH!

At Jasper, we know how hard it is to keep deadlines in our headlights and out of our rearview mirrors!

And while we are thrilled with both the quantity and quality of the submissions we’ve received this summer, we have no reason not to take a deep breath and invite our beloved SC wordsmiths to do the same, take pen in hand once again, and send us even more poetry and prose for Fall Lines volume IX.

That’s right, you have until July 5th midnight to send us your first batch of work if the deadline passed you by.

OR, if you scrambled to get your submissions in on time, we invite you to send us another batch to double your chances of being published this year.

Same rules as the first time around - just an extended deadline.

How’s that for independence?

We Got Your Fall Lines Submission Guidelines Right Here.

Fall Lines Call for Poetry and Prose is Open

Fall Lines – a literary convergence is a literary journal presented by The Jasper Project in partnership with Richland Library and One Columbia for Arts and History.

Fall Lines will accept submissions of previously unpublished poetry, essays, short fiction, and flash fiction from April 1, 2022 through June 30, 2022. While the editors of Fall Lines hope to attract the work of writers and poets from the Carolinas and the Southeastern US, acceptance of work is not dependent upon residence. 

Publication in Fall Lines will be determined by a panel of judges and accepted authors (ONLY) will be notified by October 1, 2022, with a publication date in January 2023. Two $250 cash prizes, sponsored by the Richland Library Friends and Foundation, will be awarded: The Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose.

Ø  POETRY: Up to five poems may be submitted with each submitted as an individual WORD FILE.
Include one cover sheet for up to five poems. Submit poetry submissions and cover sheet to FallLines@JasperProject.org with the word POETRY in the subject line.

Ø  PROSE: Up to five prose entries may be submitted with each submitted as an individual WORD FILE.
Include one cover sheet for up to five prose submissions. Submit prose submissions and cover sheet to FallLines@JasperProject.org with the word PROSE in the subject line.

COVER SHEET should include your name, the titles of your submissions, your email address, and mailing address. Authors’ names should not appear on the submission. Do NOT send bios.

ALL ENTRIES SHOULD BE TITLED.

There is no fee to enter, but submissions that fail to follow the above instructions will be disqualified without review.

Simultaneous submissions will not be considered. Failure to disclose simultaneous submissions will result in a lack of eligibility in any future Jasper Project publications.

 __

 The Columbia Fall Line is a natural junction, along which the Congaree River falls and rapids form, running parallel to the east coast of the country between the resilient rocks of the Appalachians and the softer, more gentle coastal plain.

Writer Carla Damron is More Than a Writer and a Social Worker - She Uses Her Art to Shine a Light on Some of Our Greatest Social Woes Including Homelessness and Human Trafficking

“I didn’t realize” were words I often heard in my work. They applied to me, too, back when everything I knew about human trafficking came from episodes of Law and Order. My first awakening occurred when asked to be a guest lecturer at a local college. I mentioned the beginnings of our anti-human trafficking advocacy when a student raised her hand and said, “You mean, like that girl they found in the trailer a few miles from here?”

Carla Damron, author of The Stone Necklace and the upcoming The Orchid Tattoo

I first met Carla Damron when I was working with the Richland Library and One Columbia to grow the One Book/One Community program in Columbia, SC. My personal goal for that project was to always choose a South Carolina writer for our community to read and I had lots of reasons why.

First, I believe it’s important for communities to recognize and support the truly talented among us in any way we can. But second, it’s incredibly important for us to see our friends and neighbors who accomplish major goals and be encouraged by them. Ride their mojo and use it to your own advantage!

The book we chose for our community to read, in conjunction with The State news which published the manuscript in part, was Carla’s 2016 novel, The Stone Necklace, set in Columbia, SC and published by the University of South Carolina Press’s Story River series, curated by the late Pat Conroy.

(I’m not sure what happened to the One Book/One community project since I’m not involved anymore, and neither is the Jasper Project. But, as an aside, I’d love to see it come back to Columbia and I’d love to see it adhere to the loose protocol developed by the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library when the project was initiated in 1998. Hit me up if you’d like to work on getting this beautiful community project back up and running and are willing to work on it yourself. It’s a relatively easy project if you have a few volunteer hours in your pocket that you are willing to share.)

I’ve written about Carla Damron a number of times since we first met, and we’ve worked on projects together. She is quite a specimen of humanity in her goals and priorities, and I’m fortunate to call her my friend, writing sister, and fellow Columbian.

Today I want to direct you to two (more) outstanding contributions to our culture that Carla has so generously shared with us.

The first example is a recent essay Carla wrote on the issue of human trafficking and posted on her website. The title is “I Didn’t Realize — The Story Behind the Orchid Tattoo.” You should know that the Orchid Tattoo is the title of Carla’s upcoming novel, releasing on September 6th, 2022 from Koehler Books. This essay is linked above.

But secondly, Carla shared a piece of prose writing that I was delighted to share in the most recent issue of Fall Lines - a literary convergence. For your reading pleasure we present, “Breaking the Surface.”

Breaking the Surface

by Carla Damron

The olive green 1967 Mercury Marquis station wagon bulged with suitcases, bedding, groceries, floats, and our family. My father drove, my mother beside him, a Virginia Slim squeezed between two pink-nailed fingers. Crammed in the back seat: my teenage sister Susan, engrossed in a Nancy Drew novel, me, age nine, in the middle, and my eight-year-old satanic younger brother Freddy to my right. It felt like the drive to Surfside Beach took centuries, though really it took less than three hours. I smiled as we passed the bright blue billboard with the cartoon dolphins leaping into the air. It advertised the best store on earth, known for its pet fiddler crabs and mammoth shark’s teeth that could be purchased for less than my allowance. Every vacation to Surfside included a day at the Myrtle Beach pavilion and a visit to the beloved “Gay Dolphin.”  

            Freddy squirmed like the worm that he was, a bony elbow catching me in the ribs. “Quit elbowing me. Mom, Freddy’s elbowing me again,” I complained, for all the good it did me. I had a permanent concave space under the right side of my ribs.

            “She’s hogging up too much space with her fat butt,” Satan said.

            “Y’all behave. We’re almost there.” Mom let out a loud sigh as she flicked on the radio.

            “You said that a half hour ago.” Susan peeked up from her book, eyebrows arched in criticism.

            Mom tipped the ashes of her cigarette out the partly opened window. Smoke circled the inside of the car and found its way into my nose. I coughed.  

            “Here comes a VW,” Dad said.

I struck first, a quick-knuckled punch on my brother’s arm. “Punch buggy! No take-backs!”

“MOM!” he bellowed, as if I’d hacked him with a machete.  

“Arnold, seriously?” Mom tsked Dad. “Why do you encourage them?”

I spotted Dad’s sly smile in the rearview mirror.

“I’m going swimming as soon as we get there,” I said.

“Not until we get everything unloaded. And that means all of you helping.” Mom flicked the cigarette out the car, a pale torpedo barely missing the back window.

            I settled back in my seat, gaze fixed out the window, and counted speed limit signs. How many until Surfside? Twenty? A hundred?  I had reached number seventeen when another smell filtered through the windows: the unmistakable odor that meant Georgetown.  

            “I smell an egg fart! It’s probably her!” Freddy elbowed me again.

            “I wish they’d do something about the paper mills,” Mom said, like she did every time we came.  I didn’t care about the stink. Because if I closed my eyes, the Sulphur odor faded, and the distinct fragrance of salt, tanning lotion, and sea air filled my mind. I almost tasted my ocean.

***

            Finally, blessedly, we pulled up to the yellow wooden beach house perched on stilts. The checkerboard linoleum-floored kitchen had the basics: single sink, stove, refrigerator, and oven. Susan helped Mom unload the groceries, while Dad did the heavy lifting and Freddy and I fought over bedrooms—simple rooms, with no air conditioning, and generic paintings of seashells over white-washed dressers. 

            Mom tasked me with putting linens on the beds while my brother stocked the bathroom with soap, toilet paper, and towels. We both moved with lightning speed so we could scurry into our swimsuits and flip-flops and head down to the beach. Dad halted us at the screened porch.

            “Nobody swims until your mom or I are ready. So plant your fannies in those chairs and wait.”

            Wait. The hardest word for a kid, and one we heard many times a day. I pushed back and forth in the squeaky rocker as I stared out at sea-oats rippling above sand dunes. The quiet pounding of waves and squawk of seagulls called to me, but I had to WAIT.

            Inside, voices swelled in an argument about missing extra towels. “Really, Arnold. I ask you do to ONE thing,” Mom said.

            “One thing? Who loaded the wagon? Who gassed it up? Who DROVE us here?” Dad didn’t yell, but sort of laughed it out, like Mom was being ridiculous, a tone that might infuriate her and further delay hitting the beach.

            Freddy and I both stopped rocking. No response from her. Good.

Finally, the rest of my family emerged, Susan in her new bikini, Mom in a black one-piece and floppy hat, and Dad in trunks and an unbuttoned shirt, with an embarrassing stripe of white stuff over his nose which was prone to sunburn.  We jumped from our chairs and banged through the screen door, all a-bundle with towels, chairs, rafts, suntan lotion, playing cards, plastic buckets, and a thermos of Kool-Aid. Another container peeked out of Dad’s pocket: silver, small, and shiny, something he rarely went without.

The narrow board walk carried us over the last sand dune and I saw it: a blue-green expanse, white froth in stuttered lines across it. The sky a bold blue that stretched forever. Freddy and I dumped our belongings, kicked off our flip-flops, and dashed to the water. Susan remained with our parents, stretching herself on the blanket and slicking on suntan oil.

Waves crashed over me, surprisingly cold. At our salty feet, the undertow signaled a waning tide. It didn’t matter. Satan splashed me, and I splashed back, and we laughed and dove into a cresting wave. 

When we emerged, sputtering, soaked, and sandy, Dad met us ankle-deep in water. He handed us an inflated raft. “Take turns with this one until the other one’s ready,” he said.

Take turns, he said, like sharing was remotely possible. Freddy grabbed the raft, held it over his head, and trudged out to where the waves were breaking. When a big one surged, he hurled himself on top of the canvas float and rode it to shore like a cowboy on a bucking stallion. “YEEESSSS!” he yelled, as he climbed off.

“My turn,” I said.

“In a minute!” He sneered at me and hurried back to where the waves were cresting, no easy feat with the smaller waves slapping against him.

Another spectacular ride, and my jealousy erupted. When would I get a turn? When Dad finished blowing up the other raft? I glanced at the beach to find him engrossed in a card game with Susan, as though my uninflated float had no importance AT ALL.

“MY TURN!” I bellowed.

Freddy wagged the float at me, and I would have jumped on his head and dunked him if he’d been close enough.

            His third ride was a letdown, a smallish wave that fizzled a few feet from where he started. He stood up and shook sand from his swim trunks.
            “Ha!” I laughed at him.

He tossed the raft at me. “See if you can do better.”

I would do better. I tugged the raft out beyond the foamy sea caps, determined to find the biggest, most powerful wave which I’d ride like a rodeo champion. As the first few rolled under me, I looked further out, and saw it. A giant, magnificent wave rolling in.

I hopped aboard the raft and paddled as hard as I could, hoping to be just ahead of where it broke.  I timed it perfectly. It peaked, white froth exploding against the backs of my legs.

The raft took off like a Thoroughbred. I held on with all my might, holding my breath against the salty water splashing my face. Maybe my family watched this courageous ride, but I all I saw was the roiling foam.

My mount betrayed me. The raft swiveled, the back end pushing forward so that I was lying parallel to the wave. I stroked against the current, desperate to straighten, but it flipped over.

The force of the water pulled me under. I had no air in my lungs. My feet felt for the bottom, but instead felt the unmistakable tug of undertow pulling me out to sea.

I sank as low as I could, touched sand, and pushed, my hands pointed above me. For just a second, my face felt air and I sucked in a deep, frantic breath before another wave pounded me down.

Underwater again, I did my best to swim in what I hoped was the direction of shore. The undertow was a hungry force. My arms and legs ached against its power, but I kept on. When I bobbed up for another gulp of air, another wave knocked me under. And once again, I swam.

When I surfaced again, I saw the shore. Almost there, but not quite, and I felt so tired. A hand gripped my arm. I almost fought it, but I had no fight left in me, and the hand pulled and guided me until I stood on sand, safe, chest-deep in water.

“The float came in without you,” Freddy said, releasing my arm.

I nodded, unable to speak, as my air-deprived lungs sucked in breath.  

On the blanket on the beach, my mom thumbed through a magazine. My sister dealt cards to Dad, who sipped from his little container. 

“Maybe we should go up?” Freddy asked.

I shook my head. I trudged through the water to the shallowest part and dropped, my heels sinking into the wet sand. My brother sat beside me. The abandoned raft rested on the beach behind us. Three pelicans flew by, skimming the surface of the water.

“Hey, look!” Freddy said.

I tried to see what he was pointing to in the endless green water. It was less friendly than before. “What?”
            “Wait just a second. There!” He grabbed my hand and aimed it towards the descending sun. 

            Two gray lumps emerged, breaching the surface and arcing high above the water before submerging again. Two dolphin.

            “Whoa,” I whispered, not wanting to my voice to scare them away.  They erupted twice more, magic silver beings in a synchronized water ballet, before vanishing into the horizon.

            “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” I asked.

            Freddy didn’t answer.

Voices cut through the sea air from behind us: an argument between Mom and Dad about dinner arrangements. I let the pounding of the waves drown them out. For the next six days, I had the sand, my ocean, and one of two inflated rafts.

I would keep steady vigil, in case the dolphins came back.   

~~~~~

 Carla Damron is a social worker, advocate, and author of the novel The Stone Necklace, the recipient of the 2017 WFWA Star Award for Best Novel. Damron also authored the Caleb Knowles mysteries as well as numerous essays, and short stories. Damron’s careers of social worker and writer are hopelessly intertwined; all of her novels explore social justice. Currently Damron volunteers with Mutual Aid Midlands, League of Women Voters, and is the president of a local Sisters-in-Crime chapter. She works for Communities in Schools and Rutgers University. 

http://carladamron.com/

Featured Fall Lines Contributor: ERIC MORRIS and his Short Fiction, THE GIFT BEFORE

Eric Morris - photo credit Susan DeLoach

Throughout the year we like to feature some of our literary artists whose work appears in the Jasper Project literary journal, Fall Lines - a literary convergence.. Today, we’re featuring a piece of short fiction from Eric Morris, author of Jacob Jump, USC Press, 2015.

A native of Augusta, Georgia, Eric Morris is a production designer for the stage and teaches at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Jacob Jump, a Story River Book selected for publication by USC Press editor-at-large, the late Pat Conroy. Morris holds an M.F.A. from Western Illinois University and a B.A from Augusta College. His professional work includes productions for dance, theatre, opera, live music stages, and trade shows. Morris writes and records as one half of the musical duo Classes of Dynamo. He lives with his wife and son in Columbia, South Carolina.

The Gift Before

By Eric Morris

            This child dances as she learns to walk, because dancing is the first thing. It is the first thing and it will be the last. This child taught no light of fire is needed to dance and neither speech.

            Her grandmother lay in bed silent and not opening her eyes. Her hair now loosed from her bun in tributary about her head as white as the heart of fire. She did not open her eyes or speak for two days, as if to tell, I am tired and it is time to rest now, and all of you can do this without me. The child stood alone in the room at her grandmother’s bedside, almost a teenager, becoming stronger every hour, tall and learning by legacy, fast within her growing body the unspeakable language of art. The third day when her grandmother wakened they looked upon each other viewing in brimming pools the same clear gray eyes they had been born into.

            “Take my hand, baby.”

            Their hands thin and elegant and of the same nature and intelligence, though two generations apart. Hands of a selfsame history and destiny, reaching one for the other, layered in embrace a last time.

            “Yes, Gran.”

            “You know y’all are going on without me.”

            “Yes, Gran.”

            “Baby, you know what to do, now. You know the gift, don’t you?”

            “Yes, Gran.”

            “I know you do. And you will always respect it, won’t you.”

            “Yes, Ma’am.”

            “I know you will. Because you know why.”

            “Cause--”

            “Ah.”

            “Because. You said it is what I have, and I will always give it, and it is my way of helping.”

            “That’s right baby. When they see the truth of it in you, they see something about themselves. And that is how we help one another along. I have seen you and I have watched you, and you are the one. It was taught to me and I taught it to your mother, and when she teaches it to you I can see you are the one. And that is a precious thing. And why.”

            “For within our gift resides all there ever was or will be.”

            “That’s right, baby. That’s right. Now, you can remember this, yes?”

            “Yes. I will remember this.”

            “I know you will. Alright, baby, you go get them now.

            “Ok, Gran.”

            This blooming child goes to her Grandmother’s walnut chest and kneels to open the third drawer. She knows these shoes and has held them many times. The rosin taken from a lightning struck yellow pine still staining the platforms, pleats and soles, the ribbons yet stitched to the bindings, sewn the morning of Mary’s final performance.

            “These are yours now. To keep right along.”

            “I love them.”

            “Yes, baby.”

            “Thank you, Gran.”

            “You knew they were already.”

            “I know.”

            “Alright, baby. Now I want you to go and get your mother and your father and any who want to come. This will be the end of it.”

            “Oh, Gran.”

            “Now, no. Don’t, baby. You know better than this, we talked about this.”

            “But can’t I cry.”

            “Yes, you can. But after, then you can cry, after. Like we said. Like we agreed. You cry then you stop crying. I don’t want to see that pretty face sad. I want to see your light. You do that for me. Now call them in.”

            When they returned to her grandmother’s room, the body of her family stopped and attended. Mary had risen from the bed and she was away from it in the center at the footboard. She stood without aid from human or device and she made a slow dance at the cheval mirror in her bedclothes and bare long feet with her hair spilling loose, white as the heart of tumbling fire. This elegant woman speaking a last time the unutterable language of truest art in the moment of its creation. She danced slowly turning with her arms aloft, and her aged body making a final figure, the same posture as statues and paintings from the ancient world cast in unknowable times, the form that is telling of things to come because a woman’s arc is the most beautiful thing made, then and now, and too is the most enduring, the truest, the most heartbreaking. The most unreachable.

            Her grandmother danced slowing, a final turn with her twin mirrored, her arms assuming en bas down by her side, the line of her core easing, giving to the end of her days.

            Alright,” she said softly. “You all can help me now.”

            And they took her and returned her to bed.

            “I’m closing my eyes now,” she said to all of them, taking each of them in, and finishing at her granddaughter. “I’m closing my eyes now, Maryanne baby, but I will see you. I will see you.”

Featured Fall Lines Contributor -- Glenis Redmond

My poems come from my core. Then, I pour what percolates onto journal pages. They are hot-inked scribblings, handwritten epiphanies that morph and manifest into soul driven colloquial anthems. My poems stand up – sing and dance of lineage or lack thereof. They come from a deep-seated oceanic need to know about my heritage. What I cannot answer, I imagine. - Glenis Redmond

Glenis Redmond performs spoken word poetry as the Keynote Speaker for the Greer SC Arts Council

In January, the JASPER PROJECT released a combined double issue of volumes VII and VIII of Fall Lines - a literary convergence, our annual literary journal. In the weeks to come we will be highlighting some of the contributions to the journal by featuring the author and their work in ONLINE JASPER.

This week, we’re featuring one of South Carolina’s treasured poets, Glenis Redmond.

A 2020 recipient of the South Carolina Governor’s Award for the Arts and an upcoming inductee into the SC Academy of Authors, Redmond considers herself a poet, a teaching artist, and an imagination artist. From her website we learn that, “Glenis Redmond is nationally renowned award-winning poet and teaching artist traveling the world sharing and teaching poetry. She writes about the strength of her Afro-Carolinian roots, while exploring their weighted and palpable histories. Glenis is a literary community leader. She is dedicated to coaching and uplifting youth poet’s voices. She co-founded a literary program called Peace Voices in her hometown of Greenville, SC from 2012-2019. Glenis is also  Kennedy Center Teaching Artist and a Cave Canem poet.

Her work has been showcased on NPR and PBS and  has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, the North Carolina Literary Review, Obsidian Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, StorySouth, About Place and Carolina Muse. 

She has recently won awards for her poems featuring Harriet Tubman (conductor of the (Underground Railroad) Harriet Jacobs (enslaved woman who hid in attic 7 years to escape her owner, then turned abolitionist and writer) and Harriet E. Wilson (first African American novelist). These poems will be published in Glenis’ upcoming chapbook, The Three Harriets and Others  by Finishing Line Press in 2021.  Her latest book, The Listening Skin will be published by Four Way Books in 2022. 

During February 2016, at the request of U.S. State Department for their Speaker's Bureau, Glenis traveled to Muscat, Oman, to teach a series of poetry workshops and perform poetry for Black History Month.

In 2014-18, Glenis has served as the Mentor Poet for the National Student Poet's Program to prepare students to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House. The students now read at the Library of Congress. 

Author and T&W Board member Tayari Jones selected Glenis Redmond’s essay, “Poetry as a Mirror,” as the runner-up for the 2018 Bechtel Prize. Teachers & Writers Collaborative awards the annual Bechtel Prize to the author of an essay that explores themes related to creative writing, arts education, and/or the imagination.  

Redmond’s “Dreams Speak: My Father’s Words” was chosen for third place for the North Carolina Literary Review’s James Applewhite Prize and “Sketch,” “Every One of My Names,” and “House: Another Kind of Field” will be published in NCLR in 2019. These poems are about —Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of the underground railroad; Harriet Jacobs, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist, and the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and Harriet E. Wilson, who was held as an indentured servant in the North and went on to become an important novelist, businesswoman, and religious speaker.

Glenis believes that poetry is a healer, and she can be found in the trenches across the world applying pressure to those in need, one poem at a time.  

Visit Glenis at www.glenisredmond.com 

She Makes Me Think of Houses

For Ruth Noack

I.

I lived in many house. 13 by age 13.

This year, I circle back to my first.

The place where I was born: Sumter, South Carolina.

My birth certificate classifies me: Negroid.

On Shaw AFB. My sister Velinda

7 years my elder cannot attend the school on base.

My father writes a letter to the base commander

for his first daughter to attend.

She’s her own version of Ruby Bridges

Unescorted. Chased by white boys with sticks.

Everyday called, Nigger.

II.

This year I drive 2 ½ hours South

to take my grandson, Julian

to a family fun day

on a black-run horse farm.

We both ride on a horse named, Blue.

Julian’s favorite color.

Bessie Smith sings the hue.

On the way back home,

I see a sign to my birthplace.

I tell Julian I want to drive by.

Visit 57 years later.

Apartments. Projects. Hood.

Sub-standard housing,

a crack-riddled man stumbles towards us.

I have eyes all over my body

I assess the cracked windows

and duct taped doors.

Two dark-skinned girls play

in the street. Double Dutch.

I tell Julian to stay in the car.

I take pictures.

When I tell my daughter

I went there: 45 Birnie Circle.

She says, “This house, not home

does not define you.”

X marks my port of entry.

I see all the angles.

Drive back to my home on Endeavor Circle.

Purchased with poetry money.

I’ve indeed come full circle ‘round.

 

Fall Lines - a literary convergence vols. VII & VIII Releases Sunday Jan. 23 with a 2 pm Reading at Drayton Hall

Attention Fall Lines Contributors and Readers: If you are unable to attend the reading and release of Fall Lines on Sunday, please visit the Jasper Project Facebook Page where the event will be live streamed.

After too many Covid-related postponements, the Jasper Project is delighted to release the combined Volume VII and VIII issues of Fall Lines- a literary convergence on Sunday, January 23rd at Drayton Hall on the campus of the University of South Carolina. The event will begin at 2 pm.

Strict Covid protocols will be in place. Masks are mandatory except when reading. Only vaccinated contributors and guests are invited to attend.

Contributors to the 2020 and 2021 issues of Fall Lines are invited to choose one piece of their own poetry or prose from the dual-volume journal to read to the public.

Drayton Hall is located at 1214 College Street. Street parking is available. The public is invited to attend.

~~~

The Jasper Project shines a light of appreciation Columbia-based photographer Crush Rush, whose powerful portrait of a Black Lives Matter demonstration graces our cover.

from the One Columbia site above …

Crush Rush is a photographer/photojournalist living and working in Columbia, South Carolina. His photographic eye is keen on identifying and capturing the critical finite moments of ever moving human emotion and the natural world. Rush is self taught but was extremely lucky in his opportunity to work and play along with some of Columbia’s greatest photo makers which helped him hone his skills and gain a deeper appreciation for the craft.

 Known as a social chameleon, Rush constantly engages different types of people from different walks of life to find a common denominator in the grand scheme of things, which he feels allows for him to draw inspiration from very non traditional sources.

Artist Statement:

I feel like the best display of emotion is one that can be felt or portrayed with no words involved. My camera grants me the ability to take a person back to a moment in time by simply showing them a picture. I almost feel as if I have the power to steal grains from the sands of time. For me the love of editing is just as exciting as making the photo and I strive everyday to be a better storyteller.

Crush Rush - artist Easel Cathedral

Fall Lines Volumes VII and VIII FINALLY Releasing on Sunday January 23rd, at 2 pm at Drayton Hall

After too many Covid-related postponements, the Jasper Project is delighted to release the combined Volume VII and VIII issues of Fall Lines- a literary convergence on Sunday, January 23rd at Drayton Hall on the campus of the University of South Carolina. The event will begin at 2 pm.

Strict Covid protocols will be in place. Masks are mandatory except when reading. Only vaccinated contributors and guests are invited to attend.

Contributors to the 2020 and 2021 issues of Fall Lines are invited to choose one piece of their own poetry or prose from the dual-volume journal to read to the public.

Drayton Hall is located at 1214 College Street. Street parking is available. The public is invited to attend.

~~~

3 Easy Ways to Be a Bigger Part of the Jasper Family

The Jasper Guild

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Join us today!

Fall Lines 2021 RESCHEDULED for January 2022 Due to Covid

As per the directive of Richland Library,

the release and reading for

Fall Lines Volumes VII & VIII

has been rescheduled for

Sunday, January 23rd at 2 pm

in the auditorium of the

Main Branch of Richland Library.

All contributors are invited to read ONE piece of their work from the combined volumes.

As per the request of the Jasper Project, all attendees should be vaccinated.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Fall Lines 2020 Saluda River Prize for Poetry Winner LISA HAMMOND talks with Jasper & Shares a New Poem

Hydrangeas 

by Lisa Hammond

They plant them in trailer parks. I am standing

between the topiaries and the statuary, mossy urns

hiding me from the women’s view. Fragrant hoops

and balls, rising spires of rosemary—they do not

know I can hear them, back behind stone fountains

splashing, zen temple bell, the little St. Francis.

Poor Hortensia, with her matronly name, flowers

I mostly see now run rampant alongside fallen fences,

old foundations, old fashioned, blowsy pink or blue.

At home I have the county extension agent’s flyer,

Change the pH of Your Soil, and I remember

how the grandmothers buried tin cans at the roots,

to bring out their blue eyes. I loved the fat conspicuous

blooms, thick-barked stems, how they’d overtake beds

when your back was turned. One neighbor poured hot

bacon grease on roots to kill hers—come spring they’d leg

themselves right up over her sorry fence again. Standing

in the nursery next to the pot feet, those two old ladies

so like that cranky neighbor, I remember the spring

I planted mine, my first year in the new house, how

I hoarded catalogues, Ayesah or Annabelle, Blue Bunny

or Snowqueen, how the first years it struggled, every

winter I thought it dead, every spring it crept back

a bit, a lone small nosegay budding, nothing like

the wild oakleaf outside my old bedroom window.

I had thought them so Southern Living, lacecaps

and mopheads trailing with grapevine over the silver

and linen. I carried them at my cousin’s wedding,

thirsty bouquet drooping alongside the sheer ribbon

before well before the toasts, photographs hurried.

O Dear Delores, O Silverleaf, O Brussels Lace,

here your solitary representative, a potbound pink

Everlasting tucked away behind begonias, object

of scorn. O Endless Summer, unhurried maiden,

I wait months for your snowballs, each heavy flower

spreading open to the wind, minding her own business.

~~~

Lisa Hammond

Earlier this summer Jasper announced the winners of the Fall Lines 2020 Broad River Prize for Prose & the Saluda River Prize for Poetry and shared some of winner Randy Spencer’s prose and process.

Today we’re delighted to talk with Lisa Hammond, winner of our poetry prize.

Welcome Lisa!

JASPER: For the Jasper followers who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you yet, please tell us a bit about how you got to where you are now. For example, where did you grow up and go to school, and how and when did you make your way to Columbia?

HAMMOND: Cindi, thank you so much for the chance to meet some new friends through Jasper! I’m originally from South Carolina, born in Florence, and I’ve lived in South Carolina most of my life. I was a first-generation college student at Francis Marion and then went to graduate school at the University of Alabama. I felt like such a country girl on campus (well, I was such a country girl!)—it was a big, exciting university, amazing faculty and writers, beautiful architecture, a great library and natural history museum. When I finished my PhD, I taught for two years at Michigan State University. I loved the fall in Michigan, but winters seemed endless. I was very fortunate to find a job at a small university in Lancaster, South Carolina, close to my family, and I have been there ever since.

JASPER: Call you tell us about your work as a professor as USC Lancaster? What do you teach and what is your area of research?

HAMMOND: Most of my teaching is first-year composition, general education courses—so ENGL 101 and 102, Intro to Poetry, that sort of thing. I enjoy teaching those courses because I remember so well what it felt like to be a new college student who had no idea what to expect from college. I love helping students learn to see from different perspectives, to understand their preconceptions and to test those—do they always hold up? how does new information change your first way of thinking about and seeing a question? how do you present your ideas in a persuasive way? You hear a lot these days that college professors indoctrinate students—goodness, sometimes it feels like a victory if I can get them to do the reading! I think what we are actually seeing is students beginning to understand new ways to read, interpret, analyze. Those processes, fully engaged, change your thinking and your life.

Most of my research falls under the broad category of gender issues in American literature and culture. I’ve done a good bit of research on teaching with technology—I taught my first online women’s studies class in 2000, which is hard to believe now. I’ve written a great deal about Ursula K. Le Guin, one of American’s most talented and powerful writers. I study contemporary American women’s memoirs about motherhood. And I gave a talk at a conference about a year and a half ago called “What We Did in the Resistance: Public Poetry, Political Response, and the Women’s March” that I should really finish up as an article, but the political landscape is changing so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with. I’ve lately focused more on writing and publishing my own poetry as my scholarly work, but I like to stay in touch with my academic research areas too—my interest in one area informs my work in the other. Sometimes that means it takes me a long time to finish a project, but I think the work is richer for the connections.  

JASPER: Does your work at the university inform your writing much? How so?

HAMMOND: Grant Snider, the artist of the Incidental Comics series, has this great comic called Day Jobs of the Poets. I am pretty sure that if I won the lottery and suddenly could write full-time, I wouldn’t want to. I’m very lucky to have a professional life with a lot of range, many interesting projects and colleagues and students, so I often stumble across ideas at work that plant writing seeds. One drawback to my work for my writing life, though, is that I write a great deal for my job; the larger part of my job the last few years is my work as Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Research at USC Lancaster. I write a series of large reports every year. I just finished our annual state agency accountability report for the Governor and the General Assembly. Writing a university reaccreditation compliance document and writing a poem are two very different projects, but they both use my writing brain. So when I’m on deadline for large work writing projects, my own writing really dwindles in those periods.

My teaching, though, often brings me back to my own writing. Teaching any kind of writing keeps you close to your own writing, I find. In the last few years, I’ve been teaching more upper-level courses writing courses. I teach a senior-level business writing class that is fascinating—so much analysis of your audience there, understanding how to direct a message. I’m teaching an internship class right now, helping students learn outside the classroom; those students work in all kinds of organizations and businesses, so I have the opportunity to learn more about their careers and interests and am always running across interesting new ideas as I respond to their writing. I occasionally get to teach a 300-level creative writing class, which I LOVE because I write alongside my students. I write so much more in the semesters I teach that class because I stay in a daily writing practice with them. I find that writing a little every day means that I rarely finish a first draft of a poem in a sitting, but I write more over time. If I waited until I have big blocks of time, I’d never write another poem again.

JASPER: Are you primarily a poet, or do you practice prose writing as well?

HAMMOND: My prose writing is largely strategic planning documents! I am working on a prose poem series right now, which is something of a surprise for me, because I have always been in love with the poetic line and stanza form. Where does the line break? How does using couplets change the rhythm of the poem? The prose poem is an interesting challenge because you can’t rely on the line break to help you signal the importance of a word, for example. It’s also freeing; sometimes I spend so much time worrying a poem over stanzas and lines, but with the prose poem, you just start and keep going. The rhythm of a prose poems is different too, more accumulative, sometimes faster, so there’s an interesting opportunity to find ways to vary those rhythmic patterns. I’m finding these poems great fun to write, although I sometimes have to stop myself stewing over a line that ends with of, for example, or the—it’s not really a line, I have to tell myself. But often I tweak the spot that’s bugging me to shift the end word anyhow.

My mother took me to the library every week, usually when we came into town to the laundromat. She tells me I was an old soul early on

JASPER: Are you a life-long poet or did you begin writing later in life? What was the impetus for you to start writing?

HAMMOND: I can’t remember starting to write, so I’d say that qualifies me as a lifelong poet! (That sounds like a grand title, doesn’t it?) I come from a family of storytellers. My mother took me to the library every week, usually when we came into town to the laundromat. She tells me I was an old soul early on; I remember a second-grade teacher who made a deal with me—as soon as you finish your work for the day, you can skip recess and read the rest of the day. What a great year that was! I teach students who want to be writers that first they must read, often and widely. It may be that writing just runs in the family, though. One of my cousins is a poet, and so is my daughter. My daughter is at least as good a poet at twenty-five as I am now after a lifetime’s practice. Maybe better, if you consider that she won this same prize in 2018. I have a dear artist friend who says that it takes three generations to make a real artist. Now, having said that, let me hasten to add—talent is not inborn. What makes a writer is writing. Practice and persistence and putting the pen to the page, the fingers to the keyboard. 

JASPER: Who has influenced your writing and who are some of your favorite writers?

HAMMOND: I mentioned Ursula K. Le Guin above; one thing I love and admire about her writing is that her books can be so different from each other. When people ask me what Le Guin they should read, I say, well, if you like myths and fairy tales, The Wizard of Earthsea. If you like politics, The Dispossessed. If you like exploration, The Left Hand of Darkness. I love how she challenges her readers and herself. When The Left Hand of Darkness was published, she faced criticism for using male-gendered pronouns to describe an androgynous race. She defended her thought experiment and found it good—and then she came back several years later and said, wow, wasn’t I defensive? and I was wrong. She wrote an afterword for a later edition acknowledging her critics’ and imagining other ways she could have written the book. She changed the pronouns in three different chapters—three different approaches to the pronoun problem—so readers could see how the change affected their perception of the characters. She couldn’t rewrite the book, but she never stopped seeing it again either. I think she would have loved to see the current moment when the third person pronouns have been accepted by major style guides. What a gift, to watch a writer grow and change over such a long and amazing career.

I read a great deal of contemporary poetry, keeping a stack of books in rotation on my desk when I am writing: Claudia Emerson, Camille Dungy, Louise Glück, Kevin Young. Chelsea Rathburn, Tina Mozelle Braziel, Li-Young Lee, Eavan Boland, Nikky Finney. I tend to stay close to the lyric exploration of ordinary moments, so I love Linda Pastan, and Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things is a special favorite. I am also fascinated by how we understand history through poetry—Robin Coste Lewis does amazing things in Voyage of the Sable Venus. And Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin, wow. I love poetry anthologies as a way of meeting new poets and finding things outside of what I might normally first reach for. Sandra Beasley’s Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Sam Hamill’s The Erotic Spirit: An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love, and Longing. Sandra Gilbert’s Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies. You can while away quite a few lovely quiet hours with food, sex, and death.

And once you see something a new way, you can’t unsee it.

JASPER: You are the winner of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry in this year’s Fall Lines – a literary convergence for your poem, Hydrangeas, with which we opened this post. What can you tell us about the roots, if you will, of your poem Hydrangeas?

HAMMOND: Hydrangeas come in so many beautiful varieties, with all these amazing names.  Some names suggest the flower itself, like Brussels Lace, while others have these old-fashioned people names like Hortensia. The names are a song by themselves.

Hydrangeas seem to embody the contradictions of the South, lovely and vexed all at once. As part of the traditions of Southern entertaining, they suggest wealth and elegance, but some see them as common pests. I’m not sure they are actually classified as invasive plants, but some people do seem to see them that way. And they can change colors, like magic! How can the same plant mean such different things? But this is true throughout the South, with the many ways we tell our histories. The same wedding venue through one set of eyes is a gracious home, but through another, it is a haunted gravesite of enslaved people whose names have been erased. And once you see something a new way, you can’t unsee it. I can’t imagine wanting to. Hydrangeas grow in elegant Charleston gardens, but they also grow in ditches. In our grandmothers’ gardens, Alice Walker might say.

I was working on this idea at a retreat and went one afternoon to a greenhouse in Pawley’s Island, where I did actually overhear the first line of the poem. In some respects, this poem feels unfinished to me, perhaps because as Le Guin did, I am always learning to see things a new way. I don’t think the poem says everything I want to say. But at a certain point, the poem is done. You have to go write another one. And I’m still not very good at growing hydrangeas, although I do have a big beautiful bunch of them dropping those little blue speckles all over my desk right now.

JASPER: What do you do with yourself when you aren’t writing, teaching, or doing research?

HAMMOND: I’m a photographer and I love to draw. My poor family—I am always taking photos of them and writing poems about them. Art is another way of seeing, and my poetry and art are deeply connected, but for me the visual arts feel more like play. When I travel, the first thing I do is find the local museums and bookstores and art supply stores.

I don’t think our world will go back to what it was, and I don’t want it to—this moment is teaching us how we can change. But whoever said change is hard was seriously not kidding.

JASPER: How has COVID-19 affected you and your ability to practice your art?

HAMMOND: Artists are struggling, as we all are. Most people I know have either lost their jobs or are working harder than they’ve ever worked. One minute things seem ordinary, and the next you realize you left your mask in the car. Someone you know is sick or dead. The anger boiling in this country, George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and who knows who will be next. The protests that we march in, or are afraid to march in because we are at risk. Well, we are all at risk. We pass some horrifying marker, 100,000 dead in the United States, 150,000, and we’re approaching 200,000. How do we even understand these numbers? I can’t read anymore—books from before seem very much from before. The real world is as frightening as any apocalyptic novel now.

I’m lucky, I know, to be in the camp of folks who are working harder than they’ve ever worked, though some days that luck feels like hard luck—helping my students navigate the transition to online learning, working with several faculty one-on-one to help them with their classes, working on our university-wide reaccreditation. I’ve written exactly two poems since March, and that I finished anything feels like a miracle. I don’t usually write in the moment—I would love so much to be able to write and publish a poem in Rattle’s Poets Respond! Instead I keep journals and I draw. I note a thing or two each day that in a year I will come back to, will try to see again. I read as best I can and to have faith that I will come back to the writing as we settle more into this moment, the next. I don’t think our world will go back to what it was, and I don’t want it to—this moment is teaching us how we can change. But whoever said change is hard was seriously not kidding.

Sometimes you write your life, and sometimes you live it.

JASPER: Do you have any hints or recommendations for other poets on how to get through this strange period in all of our lives?

HAMMOND: I am doing several things to try to take care of myself.

A big piece of this is managing how I follow the news. The early days of the pandemic, we were all refreshing our newsfeeds constantly. That continuous exposure to changing circumstances meant constant adrenaline, constant anxiety, for me and I believe for many. I am not great at not looking at my phone first thing in the morning, but I do try. I have cut way back on my social media—this makes me a little lonely, but it gives me more time and lets me choose when I can take hearing the day’s bad news. I subscribe to a daily email summary from a small handful of trusted news outlets. I’m grateful for Heather Cox Richardson’s daily Letters from an American, but I have no idea how she writes that and teaches and sleeps. I can’t wait for the day I can read that collection and remember this time, and it will be history.

I feel a great need to do something to help, so I have chosen a few causes and significantly upped my donations. I certainly am saving a lot of gas money working from home, and it makes me feel I am making some small difference. I wish it were a bigger difference, but maybe together all our small differences will make the bigger change.

And I try not to beat myself up, for not being ok, for not getting through everything I need to do, for not having the energy some days to even text a friend. I would never talk to a friend the way I talk to myself in my head, but I have to remind myself of that pretty regularly. Of course you didn’t get through all those papers to grade today, of course you will write again.

I’m a slow writer in normal circumstances—I recommend Louise DeSalvo’s The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity. Time is so strange in this moment—fast and slow, the markers we normally use to note the progress of our days and years gone or fundamentally changed. It’s ok to take time to sit with this grief and wonder. When you are ready to write again, write a little every day. It’s ok if it’s bad. It’s ok if you don’t finish. A little every day will take you places, when you are ready.

Sometimes you write your life, and sometimes you live it.

~~~

Elizabeth Warren Dreams of Kissing Babies

by Lisa Hammond

It is good and over, the long campaign, debates, VP

speculation. Would you say yes? Yes. I would help any way

I can. He called himself to tell me, of course. He’s a

decent man. Another disappointment, but not a

surprise. All those pinky promises and all those little girls. The

Zoom convention, a soft cornflower blue sweater,

balancing careful scripted banter with hope. Kamala is

making history. All my plans long ago pulled down from

the headquarters wall and recycled, Empowering

American Workers and Raising Wages, Strengthening

Our Democracy, My Plan to Cancel Student Loan

Debt on Day One of My Presidency. Whether or not I

smile enough. Only the election left, and in truth, there’s

some relief—they cannot blame me for what is

coming. The reporters yelling from the sidelines, will

you be a key player in the new administration? We both

want the same thing. The reporters and the crowd surge

forward, I know it is before because the mothers push

their babies towards me, no one masked, no one

distancing, no one knowing what is coming. Dream big,

the mama says, fight hard, the children reply. I can’t stay

in this crowd and I want to say it again but don’t, I am

running for president because that’s what girls do. The choices

left now. We want this country to work and we want it to work

for everyone. Smiling or strident. Either way my face

hurts.

Corona Times - Sharing Randy Spencer's Fall Lines-Winning Short Fiction, New Poetry, and Interview with Jasper

Author & Retired physician Randy Spencer

Earlier this summer, Jasper announced the accepted contributors to this year’s Fall Lines - a literary convergence, now in its 7th year, but opted to hold the release of the book until our community of writers can safely gather together for a reading and celebration. But we won’t make you wait any longer to read the winning entries of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose.

In this edition of Jasper’s Corona Times Blog Series, please meet Randy Spencer, winner of the Broad River Prize for Prose. You can learn a bit about Spencer, and check out both his winning short fiction as well as a new pandemic-related poem debuting on the Jasper Project website below.

Days by Days

                                                H.R. Spencer

                                                8.5.20

 

Flying is easy. It's hovering that's hard.

Watch the hummingbird

how effortlessly he flies

from plant to plant

and how much more difficult

to remain stationary in the air

wings beating three thousand

times a minute

or the osprey circling

and struggling to balance himself

keep an eye on his target

until in a blink

he plunges into the water

as if he were a sharp stone

pulled down only by gravity.

 

We are hovering now

this last half year or so

marshalling all our energies

only to stand in place

unable to flit gracefully plant to plant

or dive forward like the osprey

unable even

to make the days count

caught in this miasma

this ancient warp of "bad air"

this terminal inertia 

our frantic wingbeats

our desperation

our grim paralytic fear. 

 

Today's agenda:

open my eyes, think hard

is this Wednesday or Thursday

or maybe did I skip Tuesday altogether

have I slipped unannounced

from July into August without noticing

or have I inadvertently

announced that August is about arrive

our days by days gather us in

relieved only by a late-day shower.

~~~

Thank you, Randy, for agreeing to share your work and a bit about yourself with Jasper. You have a fascinating background so let’s start with that.

JASPER: For folks who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you yet, I can share that you are a retired physician, right? But can you please elaborate on this – how long did you practice and what was your specialty? And, while we’re at it, where are you from – did you grow up in SC or did something bring you here?

SPENCER: I was born and grew up along the James River in Virginia and went to college 20 miles from home at William and Mary. I came to South Carolina in 1972 to do a 2-year fellowship in Child Psychiatry and have remained here since that time. I retired several years ago, but for 45 years I practiced primarily in a number of Community Mental Health Centers here, but also as a consultant for the Department of Social Services and, back in the eighties, for the juvenile justice agency. I also helped develop the S.C. Continuum of Care for Emotionally Disturbed Children.

JASPER: And now you live on Lake Murray, right? How long have you been there?

SPENCER: We've been living on a quiet cove on Lake Murray since 1986.

JASPER: When did writing become a part of your life?

SPENCER: This question is easy. When I was a junior and senior in high school I was one of the editors of the school magazine and things took off from there, and I studied playwriting and short story writing in college. In medical school, maybe for obvious reasons, creative writing took a back seat. I went back to college at U.S.C., at first just a few classes under James Dickey and later to enter the M.F.A. program in Poetry.

JASPER: Who have been your influences as a writer?

SPENCER: People always ask whose work influenced you the most, and the truth is that influences from other poets constantly changed over different periods in my life. I can look back now at who I was most influenced early, Robert Lowell, and wonder "why." But Theodore Roethke has been an early favorite who has stuck with me. Early on, I studied with Jim Dickey, a remarkable class out of which came a number of remarkable published poets and which really stimulated me to write. Right now, today, my favorite poet is David St. John. If you read a lot of my poems, most of which are unpublished, you'll see a number of poems in tribute to or elegies for poets or visual artists I felt a kinship toward.

JASPER: We know your work has appeared in several Jasper and Muddy Ford Press publications A Sense of the Midlands and Limelight (MFP) as well as in a number of additional anthologies such as The Art of Medicine as Metaphor and the South Carolina Collection and journals, Borderlands and Yemassee. Can you tell us about The Failure of Magic and What the Body Knows?

SPENCER: Like many poets starting out (and later, too) I would go to workshops to study under already successful writers and The Failure of Magic came out of a writers conference at Winthrop and they published it. What the Body Knows was published out of the Poetry Initiative at the University of South Carolina. Both were smaller chapbooks. Revised versions of a few of the poems in the second chapbook are in my full-length The Color After Green. Getting to discuss that book on SCETV's By the River has been the highlight of the year.

JASPER: In 2019, Jasper had the honor of writing about your publication, The Color After Green in our magazine. How long did you work on this piece of writing and what was the origin of these poems?

Spencer: The Color After Green was a themed book and all of the poems were contemporary nature poems, or what is called "ecopoetry," or poems about the environment in some fashion or another. To put together an entire volume of poems with a similar focus meant using some older poems written as long as twenty years ago along with some which were very recent at the time the manuscript was submitted, plus all the time in between. There are a lot of poems with coastal settings, sometimes in Virginia where I grew up and others in South Carolina, where I've lived since 1972. There's a poem about Hurricane Hugo, for example, which was first written probably 10 years after the storm. There are other poems reflecting the frightening changes in our environment as related to various species, from barnacles to monarch butterflies to horseshoe crabs and birds.

JASPER: You’ve also created the stage work, Becoming Robert Frost. Can we hear more about this piece?

SPENCER: It started as just a few short poems, then grew into a three-act verse drama, and now has been submitted as a hybrid verse-prose novel. It meant a lot to see several staged reading of the work as a play, and I got to read almost half of it at Piccolo Spoleto paired with another to read the dialogue. It has been worked and reworked over years and I like the way it reads now, but I've also broken various characters out as short stories, so we'll see where it goes. The play/ poetry/ novel/ short story is the imagined last day in Robert Frost's life in the hospital in Boston and the fictional conversations he carries on in dreams with deceased family members and the two characters from his poem, "Home Burial." I studied playwriting again at U.S.C. and playwriting has had a tremendous influence on the germination of my poetry. Writing for the stage forces you to write in the multiple voices of different characters, and in my book I write poems in the voices of Thomas Jefferson, John James Audubon, Georgia O'keeffe, and in one poem, a fable, have animals conversing with one another. You so often hear about "finding your own voice" as a poet, but it has always seemed more challenging and "fun" to me to deliberately steer in the other direction.

JASPER: Congratulations on winning the Broad River Prize for Prose in this year’s Fall Lines literary journal. Given that we’re sitting on the release of the journal until we can gather all the writers to celebrate together, we’re stepping out of the box and publishing your winning story, Ghost Ship, below. Set that story up for us, please. Where did it come from and what meaning does it carry for you?

SPENCER: "Ghost Ship" is part of a continuing project to bring to life a fictional group of characters living on an unnamed island in the Chesapeake Bay, not too different, I suppose, from Tangier or Smith Islands. These few remaining inhabited islands are threatened with annihilation both simply from chronic erosion, but also by sudden, catastrophic storms. A story from that same cast of characters was in Fall Lines 2019. I grew up close to the Chesapeake Bay and have visited Tangier Island. I would stress, though, that the characters are totally fictional. Winning the Broad River Prize is a great honor.

JASPER: We also opened this post up with a new poem from you, highly pertinent to where so many of us find ourselves today. Can you talk a bit about the origins of this piece, too, please?

SPENCER: "Days by Days," I hope, would resonate with all our frustrations with the tedium of isolation and lack of social contact, trying to stay healthy and keep others healthy. It certainly reflects my own feelings toward a life that seems to simply hover in one place and yet use up or waste tremendous energy. At the end of the day you feel physically and emotionally exhausted, but haven't done anything.

JASPER: So, as a physician and an author, what’s your advice for the rest of us on how we can get through this pandemic and the political turmoil that we find ourselves in?

SPENCER: I would say "Do as I say and not as I do," that is, don't watch the news obsessively. Instead immerse yourself in a hobby or something creative. Read, although I know if I said to "read poetry," that would truly fall mostly on deaf ears. I'd say, "Don't follow all the conspiracy theorists to convince you of the real truth." and "Take the vaccine when it's available. No one in going to inject  you with alien proteins that take over your brain." We can get through this, however painfully.

~~~

GHOST SHIP

Randy Spencer

            "It was a dark and stormy night. A pissy dark and stormy night."

            Sarah didn't like it when I said that--making jokes at a time like that. But she's young. Hess understood. Sometimes you make bad jokes to hide when you're scared. Hess and I grew up together--had been through it before. A hurricane riding up the Bay and flooding the island like this. Anna didn't grow up here, but she got the joke--the need to laugh when things seem the most desperate.

            But it's funny how the mind works times like that--

            What I was thinking about--at that time--back in the church--the four of us huddled together, feet soaked, water sloshing over the cushions in the pews, rising  almost up to the pulpit--the wind tearin' at church windows--shutters slamming and still four hours until the peak tide. Not knowing anything--feeling helpless. Totally helpless.

            And, God, through it all I couldn't stop thinking about how it was when we were children, at least when Hess and I were. And thinking of Ollie and Ted, and Roland, too.

            And we were there earlier last night, and only a few hours later, wading--swimming--out of the church, and climbin' up onto Roland's empty old break-away boat, a Godsend, a miracle floating up out of nowhere--a ghost ship--then huddled aboard her when it seemed like the church would have collapsed around us. The last chance we had.

            Hess said she thought this one was worse than the others. I was thinking, too, all things considered, this might be a pretty shitty rescue vehicle. Terrified--that piece of rust  might tear loose again, float off--sink--capsize--and you knew we were fuckin' screwed any whichaway.

            And so I just sat there telling the others how forty years ago--Christ--our childhood I'm telling them about, and they could care less--we could have all been drowned by morning. I can say that now. It was Anna's idea that we keep talking. Tell stories, anything--it was a low bar--just try to stay awake.

            We were in so much shit--but I only wanted  to talk about re-living being a child..

            You know what I kept remembering--this vivid image coming to me back in the church. Us being invited into Roland's bedroom one night--in this total darkness--where he kept that big aquarium. I asked Hess if she remembered?

            She did. "I remember--full of creatures he brought home."

            And that night he swished his hand into the water and the whole room lit up when he brushed against comb jellies he had collected. Tonight when I looked down in the aisle at the church--in the total darkness--and I ran my hand under the water and jellies would light up-- LIGHT  UP--fuckin' light up in the total darkness in the sanctuary, and I panicked--I don't think the others realized it. I didn't scream out loud, but I panicked just the same--like I was trapped in this giant aquarium.

            Then Ollie's drownin' came back over me. I panicked inside--inside, my breath cut off, my heart racin,' where I felt darkest--and I could feel Ollie grabbin' at my ankles under the water --I could look down and see his face all crowned over with seagrass--his hands reaching out from  it --tryin' to pull me under. I never felt anything like that since he died--and I'm thinkin'--he's here--he's right here--in this water--this is where he drowned--

            I knew he wasn't there--far from it--but I  couldn't stop thinking he was.

            That's why I tried to think about how it was when we were children, the three of us--Hess and me and Roland, had such good times--how kind the water seemed then--before all the shit that came after--and tonight just topped it all off--and I think about it,

            So I just told these happy stories, and blocked everything else out.

But it was Anna trying to figure out how we could survive. She left us, wading--half-swimming--in water up past her waist and headed toward the front door.

When she pulled it open, the water surged in and she yelled at us there was a large boat of some sort out there. All dark, but big as life. And when lightning struck again, she hollered it was Roland's old abandoned supply boat, all forty foot of her. It was so dark and she couldn't see anybody onboard. It seemed to be stuck on the bottom, shaking, but not really rocking up and down in the waves. And the waves are coming pretty hard, pinching through the church door and knocking her off her feet.

You don't know prayer honestly--real, heartfelt prayer--until you're in a spot like that, and the wind is howling around the church and through the open door and we're breathing nothing but salt spray, and Anna screamed at us to work our way along the wall to stay out of the swells and come toward her.

Anna keeping us in her direction, her voice yelling louder than the wind and I hear her say the boat is only about fifteen feet away, and between us and the worst of the storm and there's debris piled up where we can maybe crawl on top of it, climb on the platform at the stern. She's calm like there's nothing to it and we just need to trust what she's telling us. The water wasn't cold. Not warm exactly, but warm enough. I'm having to grab the end of each pew and inch myself along. And halfway along the wall I touch the bronze plaque. The one that honors all the crabbers lost in storms and accidents, and I stop for a moment and run my fingers across the raised letters and the last name is Ollie's and I start to cry, didn't  want to leave. Then I hear Anna speaking, closer now.

            You could see the lines hanging limply from the starboard side, like she had been tied up and torn free afterwards by the wind. We climbed on,  bunched there, the four of us--all women-- inside on the main cabin. It was still dry and the large boat--steel-hulled--a former ocean-going tug  refitted to carry passengers and ferry supplies. It was stuck on what should have been the West Ridge, opposite the church and seemed to be impervious to the storm.

            The wind whistled around the pilot house. Made a banshee-like sound like nothing I had ever heard. We were soaked and hungry, but just crouched there listening to the storm, knowing in our hearts the wind was going to split her top open and the rain to pour inside. But everything held together and we just waited. Hess had a watch, said it was 1:30 and we had at least three and a half hours before we could see outside. Sarah made her peace with God and was asleep off and on. I tried not to, but I think I dozed off from exhaustion, five, ten minutes at the most. I never saw Hess close her eyes.  Like she was our nurse, on duty to the end.

            The water was still rising. If we had stayed in the church we would not have any way out.  We would have all drowned.

            There were loud, creaking, hollow sounds that were are terrifying. Then a lurch. Then we pitched wildly and heeled over toward one side. Then broke free. You could actually hear timbers underneath us cracking and releasing us, the whole sequence over in less than a minute.  We  thought for a moment the boat might  tip over. I knew the Margaret Ann to draw about six feet of water, and we were floating again. She seemed to regain her balance, rocking back and  forth like an unsteady drunk, but not falling too far. And we were moving. The winds, the high-running surf breaking over the island, carried us away from the island, a rudderless meandering, a sickening motion that could end up to no good. We were crying, momentary relief and fear bound into one emotion..

            That night on the boat I didn't really sleep. Crumpled there, almost getting too drowsy where I couldn't control it, but never giving in. We talked a lot. When there was a lull we told stories.

            I talked about soft crabbing, just Roland and I. I was probably eight or nine and he was two years younger. We would push a dip net through the eelgrass, dropping soft crabs into the floating crab box he had hammered together. Those were times when the island was easily a hundred, maybe two hundred yards wider all the way around than it is now. There were shallow shoals outside the spartina where the eelgrass was so thick you had to struggle your way through it. I can step out my back door now and walk fifty yards and on a king tide be up to my knees in water.

            Back then we used to sell the soft crabs to the wives of hard potters, and they loved getting them like that, still fresh and kicking. "I still remember your mother, Hess," I told her, "You don't know this. I was ten, and I had never cleaned one of those crabs and she told me she was too busy and she wanted me to clean them for her and she would pay me extra, so I did what I had seen my own mother do when they had been in the cooler, only these crabs were alert and feisty and when I took the kitchen shears and tried to cut their faces off they raised a ruckus and I can still remember that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I never sold, offered to sell, your mother another crab. That's the truth."

            Then there would be a sudden jolt and we'd all pitch forward and sprawl out on the deck and stop, then suddenly started moving again. Then we struck hard against the bottom. Stopped for a bit, then the whole thing all over. No one knew what was going to happen. Whether the hull would rip open. Whether we'd sink or even capsize if we really got blown out over deep water. It was 3:30 in the morning when we really seemed to break free. Pitch dark. And the real fear, the dread, even hopelessness took over. We were drifting west, but none of us knew how far it would be to the other side.

            When it started to get brighter out I stood up. The wind had stopped. The water was calm. We thought we had blown to the west side of the Bay, but had hardly drifted anywhere. Maybe a few hundred yards from where we started. 

            I could look east when the sun broke between clouds and I could really know why we had to leave the church. It had caved in. You could see a section of wall with one stained glass window light up in the early sun. Everything was gone. I could see it was gone, the whole island just wiped away. A few slight smears of sand creasing the surface, water lapping at jumbles of  marsh grass. Houses simply gone. Debris everywhere, as far as I could see. Boats sunk. Crab shanties marked by a few stark poles supporting a broken cross joist or two. A few nets draped over the surface.

            When I glanced over the side, a crab, a large jimmie, swam next to us--that peculiar sideways crab swim, the one where you think it can't look ahead, can't see where it's going.

~~~

by Cindi Boiter

Cindi Boiter is the editor of Jasper Magazine and ED of the The Jasper Project.

To support the work of Jasper, including articles like the one above,

please consider becoming a member of the Jasper Guild at www.JasperProject.org

Announcing Accepted Submissions for Fall Lines & Winners of Fall Lines Awards

The Jasper Project, in conjunction with Richland Library, Friends of Richland Library, and One Columbia for Arts and Culture, is proud to announce the authors whose work has been accepted for publication in the seventh edition of Fall Lines – a literary convergence, as well as the recipients of the 2020 Fall Lines Awards for the Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose.

Congratulations to Randy Spencer whose short fiction, Ghost Ship, was selected from more than one hundred prose submissions as the winner of the Broad River Prize for Prose, and to Lisa Hammond, whose poem, Hydrangeas, was selected from more than 400 submissions as the winner of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry.

Judges for this year’s awards were Barrett Warner for fiction and Julia Wendell for poetry. 

Barrett Warner is the author of Why Is It So Hard to Kill You? (Somondoco Press, 2016) and My Friend Ken Harvey (Publishing Genius, 2014. He has won the Salamander fiction prize and his short stories have appeared in The Adroit, Phoebe, Crescent Review, Oxford Magazine, Berkeley Fiction Review, Quarter after Eight, and elsewhere. He has also won the Princemere, Liam Rector, Luminaire (Alternating Current), and Cloudbank poetry prizes; and the Tucson Book Festival essay prize. In 2016, he was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award for his personal essays on farming and the rhythms of farm life. He used those funds to move to South Carolina. In May, 2019 he received the nonfiction fellowship at the Longleaf Writers’ Conference. Recent efforts appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Disquiet Arts, Sou’wester, and Pirene’s Fountain. 

Julia Wendell received her B.A. from Cornell University, her M.A. in English and American Literature from Boston University, and Her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa, Writer's Workshop.  She is the author of five full-length collections of poems and three chapbooks. Her most recent book of poems is Take This Spoon (Main Street Rag Press, 2014). Additionally, she is the author of two memoirs, Finding My Distance (Galileo Press, 2009) and her recent Come to the X (Galileo Press, 2020). A Bread Loaf and Yaddo Fellow, her poems have been widely published in such journals as American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Antioch Review, The Missouri Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Nebraska Review, Crazyhorse, and many others. She is the Founding Editor of Galileo Press since its inception in 1979. She lives in Aiken, South Carolina, with her husband, editor and critic, Barrett Warner.

While the annual release of Fall Lines is typically accompanied by a reading and celebration, this year, due to restrictions accompanying COVID-19, the editors have opted to reveal the names of the authors whose work has been accepted for publication, but delay the actual release event and book distribution until the writing community can safely gather together to share and celebrate.

Fall Lines – a literary coalition is edited by Cindi Boiter and Ed Madden, with assistance from Lee Snelgrove and Tony Tallent.

Congratulations to the following authors:

Ann Humphries – Kite Boy from Bangladesh, To Think I almost Missed These Paintings, and The Bench

John Gulledge – Forgetting Pop

Al Black – Night Watchman, Pandemic Meditation on the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Passing

Lisa Hammond – Hydrangeas *

Lawrence Rhu – Amends

Lisa Hase-Jackson – Her Wild Self, Privilege

Derek Berry – landscape with ritual superstition, on the morning I tell my father

Jennifer Gilmore – Flecks of Gold

Debra Daniel – Why the Rabbit Died, As we Move On

Nathalie Anderson – Lamp-Lit

Betsy Thorne – For the Love of Pete, View from Office in a Small City

Ruth Nicholson – Spring Safari:  Hartsville, SC, Overdue

Ellen Malphrus – Refusing the Flood, Premonition: January 2, 2020

Eric Morris – Medicine Game, They, and The Gift

Rachel Burns – mortality tastes Like key lime pie

Dale Bailes – Time/Travel, Columbia to Pawley’s, After the Hurricane

Arthur Turfa – unfinished Kaddish

Betsy Thorne – New Restrictions

Danielle Verwers – The Governor Issues an Executive Order Before the Evening News, 1993, and Horseshoe Falls

Randy Spencer – Quarantine, Ghost Ship

Susan Craig – The Way We See a Goldfinch

Libby Bernardine – Ode

Kristine Hartvigsen – Sleepover

Tim Conroy – Balances

Bo Petersen – Little Gleams

Ceille Baird Welch – The Inevitable Unfriending of Merrily Thompson, Merrily Thompson Remembers

Jon Tuttle – hush

Francis Pearce – Retreat

Fall Lines Volume VI Announces Winners - Kimberly Driggers and Derek Berry!

Jasper is delighted to announce the winners in this year’s competitive Fall Lines categories.

Congratulations to Kimberly Driggers whose poem, IMAGINE THE SOUND OF WAVES, is the winner of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry and to Derek Berry whose prose piece, SASQUATCH, is the winner of the Broad River Prize for Prose.

Both literary artists will be published in Fall Lines - a literary convergence, Volume VI which launches on Sunday, August 18th from 2 - 3:30 with a reading and awards ceremony at Richland Library. The event if free and open to the public.

Fall Lines is sponsored by the Jasper Project in partnership with Richland Library and One Columbia for Arts and Culture. The two winning authors will each receive a check for $250 sponsored by the Richland Library Friends & Foundation.

Judges for this year’s contests included Judy Goldman (prose) and DeLana Dameron.

~~~

Additional authors whose work will appear in the 2019 volume of Fall Lines include:

Teresa Haskew

Ellen Malphrus

Loli Molena Munoz

Libby Bernardin

Len Lawson

Susan Craig

Lawrence Rhu

Worthy Evans

Curtis Derrick

Terri McCord

Al Black

Ruth Nicholson

Heather Dearmon

Randy Spencer

Tim Conroy

Suzanne Kamata

Frances Pearce

Bo Petersen

Jon Tuttle

Kathleen Warthen

Kristine Hartvigsen

Gil Allen

Andrew Clark

Kevin Oliver

Yvette Murray

Ed Madden

Ray McManus

Nathalie Anderson