POETRY: Three More from Al Black

Poem Before Dying

Lorca wrote of roosters,

of eating cemetery grass,

of weeping little boys,

of snow, of guitars, of murder,

of women dropping off to sleep,

of a resurrection that will never come,

and he makes me weep.

I write of barking dogs and feral cats,

of trash on asphalt courts,

of weeping little boys,

of warm summer nights,

of thumping bass and staccato beats,

of blue light custodians of violence

who sweep streets for casings

to put in envelops and file away,

of women dropping off to sleep,

of the resurrection that came

as a thief in night,

and still I weep.

Who will write our vignettes of revolution,

let barking dogs and feral cats come inside,

gather trash in the park,

comfort weeping boys,

organize funeral processions

on country roads where bodies lie hidden,

sip liquor from red plastic cups

at candle lit memorials,

clean the house and feed the children

so women can sleep at night,

sing the songs of freedom,

live scriptures left half-open on the night stand

revealed on scraps of light

before the rooster crows, again,

and who will dry our tears.....we will.

 ~~~

In My Veins

In my veins,

my parents walk hand in hand

reading letters written

across the ocean of a world war.

I look out with my father’s eyes

remarking on the country he fought to preserve

and the sad state of his Grand Old Party

or with my mother’s eyes

to see what season it is

and what flowers and vegetables

she needs to plant.

I see with grandfathers’ eyes,

two farm boys pushed from the land

now gardening their backyards.

My father’s father talks of fishing

and how Lake Okeechobee

is a fisherman’s paradise.

My mother’s father sees again

after decades of being blind,

still blames FDR for the loss of his farm,

ignores the greed of his brothers

and that he was going blind.

One grandmother looks in a mirror

to see how tall I’ve grown

and offers pastries.

The other stares in a mirror

no longer angry or judgmental,

but I still don’t know what

or how she sees the world.

In my veins,

run my parents’ blood

and their parents’ blood

and their parents’ blood

on and on through generations

I can’t decipher

and only blood knows

 ~~~

Chain Link Fence

She lives on a corner, her back yard a chain link fence Walks alone each morning six times around the park Cocked arms pump right angles, rapid short steps, eyes ahead, speaks to no one I don't know her name; someone told me once But I am horrible with names and forgot

She goes in her front door, lets her dog out the back If he barks too much at walkers, she comes to the door Hollers his name, goes back inside What she does all day in her house I don't know

This morning, I thought I'd go stand at the fence Call the dog's name, tell him he will be alright But I am horrible with names and forgot

~~~~~

The Jasper Project thanks board member Al Black for generously sharing his poetry with our readers. Watch for more in the Al Black Jasper Project Poetry Series in days and weeks to come.

Al Black is a writer, poet, host, and social activist. He is the author of two poetry collections, I Only Left For Tea (2014) and Man With Two Shadows (2018) and he co-edited, Hand in Hand, Poets Respond to Race (2017) and his work has been published in several anthologies and periodicals. Contact Al Black at albeemindgravy@gmail.com.

POEM: How Zappa Met Suzy Creamcheese by Al Black & Our 1st BOOMERPEDIA Entry

You climb out of bed, put on a tee-shirt, sweat pants and a ball cap

Walk to the corner store, buy coffee in a Styrofoam cup

Lady at the counter tells you to zip up

Instinctively, you reach down and zip your pants

She barks you could have turned around to zip your pants

You reply she had already seen you unzipped

She calls you rude

Trying to keep peace, you turn to leave

She raises her voice - your Zappa shirt is ugly, too

You turn back around and ask if she ever washes her shirt

Halfway home, you realize sweat pants don't have zippers, go back

Tell her you're sorry that you argued over non-existent zippers

She says it'd been a bad day and she apologizes, too

You realize she is naked from the waist up and ask about her shirt

She tears up, says it was filthy so she took it off to make you happy

You take off Zappa, tell her to put him on

She turns it inside out, puts Zappa next to her skin

You laugh and say that will make Zappa smile

Hand her a napkin from the sandwich display to wipe her eyes

She says quietly she gets off at 8

Back in bed, you wake from your dream, get up

And look for Zappa in the dirty laundry on the floor

The Jasper Project thanks board member Al Black for generously sharing his poetry with our readers. Watch for more in the Al Black Jasper Project Poetry Series in days and weeks to come.

Al Black is a writer, poet, host, and social activist. He is the author of two poetry collections, I Only Left For Tea (2014) and Man With Two Shadows (2018) and he co-edited, Hand in Hand, Poets Respond to Race (2017) and his work has been published in several anthologies and periodicals. Contact Al Black at albeemindgravy@gmail.com.

BOOMERPEDIA: FRANK ZAPPA

Frank Zappa was a multi-instrument musician, singer-songwriter, producer, and filmmaker. A penultimate non-conformist, Zappa injected satire into his art as his musical virtuosity spanned genres and decades. The enigmatic artist often juxtaposed sophomoric humor against cerebrally complex musical compositions and was heavily influenced by the dissonant sounds of composer EDGARD VARESE who he idolized as a child. With his band, MOTHERS OF INVENTION, the self-taught Zappa released more than 60 albums. One of the greatest guitarists of all time (Rolling Stone ranked him #22/100 in 2011) Zappa gave us the concept of PROJECT/OBJECT, or CONCEPTUAL CONTINUITY which means that he connected musical themes and phrases across albums, essentially making the whole of his life’s creative output one large project. In a March 1986 episode of CROSSFIRE, Zappa warned that the United States was on the road to becoming a “fascist theocracy.” Zappa was married to Gail Sloatman Zappa from 1966 until his death from cancer at the age of 52 in 1993. Their children are Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva. - Cindi Boiter

POEM: Concrete Mary by Al Black

Concrete Mary

Against the chill of morning
I put on shoes and a warm jacket.
Robins and sparrows scavenge seeds;
Call back and forth from fence to ground

Squirrels in fur coats
Don't mind autumn's approach.
In high grass, a lone cricket
Chirps along the fence

Unafraid of the old man
With an empty coffee cup 
Four city deer snort and graze
On overgrown shrubs

Seven days remain of summer
One week, a quarter moon
Before earth tilts away,
Before solstice chases the sun.

As if she knows a secret, she cannot tell
Concrete Mary smiles her Mona Lisa smile
Practices yoga on the wall
And holds asana pose

Mary, when did you become holy?
Was it when they pulled you from the mold,
Loaded the truck, took you to a garden shop,
Tagged, sold and someone took you home?

Or was it the act of setting you on a wall where
Lichen took root and pulled substance from air?
How many tenants have you known?
Do you know movers come on Wednesday?

Sun peers through overcast skies
Warms Mary’s plaster gown,
Outstretched hands gather light,
Her face becomes a moon

Chipmunk chatters at plastic owl
Roosting on the patio wall
Red birdhouse in neighbor’s yard
Sits empty waiting for spring

Rain comes, drips from fingers
Concrete Mary holds her pose 
Somewhere Joseph
Holds the baby so nothing disturbs her peace

Rain comes, drips from finger tips,
Puddles at feet; she holds the pose 
she struck when she became an Italian citizen
And awaits her son’s reanimation 

The Jasper Project thanks board member Al Black for generously sharing his poetry with our readers. Watch for more in the Al Black Jasper Project Poetry Series in days and weeks to come.

Al Black is a writer, poet, host, and social activist. He is the author of two poetry collections, I Only Left For Tea (2014) and Man With Two Shadows (2018) and he co-edited, Hand in Hand, Poets Respond to Race (2017) and his work has been published in several anthologies and periodicals. Contact Al Black at albeemindgravy@gmail.com.

An Election Day Poem by Ed Madden

At the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge,

Columbia, SC, October 31, 2020

Across the parking lot, a man with a mic

is calling out drop, pop, and roll, and two

women just in front of us in line dance

along. It’s getting a little festive, a little

restless as we get closer to the door,

where they let in six or seven at a time.

One woman shuffles the heel-toe in fluffy

pink house shoes. They name the moves,

call out a few they don’t think quite right.

A golfcart bumps by with boxes of popcorn.

A church offers bottled waters at a table

where the line curls along the back fence.

It’s been a two-hour wait. We got here early

enough, but the line was already around

the building. Everyone is wearing masks except

a middle-aged white couple in black and

sunglasses, taking occasional deep pulls

on their electric cigarettes. Most of us look

at our cellphones as we wait, another

kind of social distance. The line wraps

around the building then coils around

an adjacent parking lot. An old woman

leaves crying because the county isn’t

providing provisional ballots for early voting

sites. I don’t know why. Once inside

we line up on the thick strips of gray

tape that mark off the floor. A poll worker

behind a plastic shield stares at my license

a bit—I can’t tell if she’s comparing

signatures or if it’s just the COVID hair. Finally,

she hands me a slip of paper, a cotton swab,

points me toward the wall of voting machines.

I use the cotton swab to touch the screen.

I get an “I Voted” sticker when I leave.

—Ed Madden

Ed Madden is the poetry editor for Jasper Magazine and Muddy Ford Press, a full professor at the Uof SC, the poet laureate for the city of Columbia, and the author of four books of poetry--Signals, which won the 2007 SC Poetry Book Prize; Prodigal: Variations; Nest; and Ark. His chapbook My Father’s House was selected for the Seven Kitchens Press Editor’s Series. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2007, The Book of Irish American Poetry, and in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, Poetry Ireland Review, Los Angeles Review, and online at The Good Men Project.

Muddy Ford Press Releases Second Collection in Laureate Series with Ann-Chadwell Humphries’ An Eclipse and a Butcher

“I'm in awe of the masterful clarity, the perfectly weighted brevity of Ann Humphries' poems. There's an immense comfort in her vivid scenes, her people and places so rich in presence, and her clear gaze. … A stunning collection!”

Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People's Poet Laureate

This month, local poet Ann-Chadwell Humphries is releasing her first collection of poetry with Muddy Ford Press as the second feature of their Laureate Series.

Muddy Ford Press is a family owned publishing company dedicated to providing boutique publishing opportunities particularly to, but not limited to, South Carolina writers, artists, and poets. The founders of the press, husband and wife team Bob Jolley and Cindi Boiter, created the Laureate Series with the goal of initiating relationships across South Carolina poets.

“We wanted to promote mentorship between established poets and beginning poets,” Jolley describes, “So we invite all the poets laureate in SC to choose an emerging poet who they are willing to work with, and the laureate then helps build and edit their protégé’s first book.”

The selection of poets for the Laureate Series is the decision of the South Carolina laureates. The first book in the series, as well as this upcoming collection, were both written by poets selected by Columbia Poet Laureate Ed Madden.

The first collection, Theologies of Terrain, featured poet Tim Conroy. Conroy ruminates that, through this series, Muddy Ford Press provides the guidance and care that only poet laureates can deliver to a poet's first collection.

“I am so happy that Muddy Ford Press selected Ann-Chadwell Humphries as the second poet in their Laureate Series,” Conroy shares, “Ann's poetry raises the bar for all to follow. Her award-winning poetry is lyrical, deeply observed, and sound haunted.”

Ann-Chadwell Humphries - photo courtesy of the author

Several years ago, Humphries was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition that caused her vision to get smaller and smaller until she could no longer see. However, while this was an obstacle, it carried with it a gift with which to see the world anew.

While always a lover of literature, Humphries, who had worked in the medical field, had never tried her hand at creative writing. Then, she started taking creative writing classes at the Shepherd’s Center with her friend.

“I remember where I was sitting,” Ann reflects on the day she was first introduced to Mary Oliver’s poetry, “and I thought, ‘I have to do this’.”

This emerging love for poetry became concrete when, in Fall 2016, Humphries audited a graduate poetry workshop with Nikky Finney at the University of South Carolina. This workshop was one of the first times Humphries had the chance to work so closely with her ideas and form.

“It demands careful attention, it demands truth, honesty, and essence,” Humphries remarks on the writing process, “It helps me find goodness.”

Since that workshop, Humphries has published poems in Jasper Magazine, Emrys, Indolent Books, The Collective Eye and more. When Madden and Boiter approached Humphries about the Laureate Series, she had a mix of surprise and pride.

“’What? Really? Me?’ a voice in my head said,” Humphries recalls, “But then I said, ‘Why not me’—I dropped self-doubt at 65.”

With an arsenal of poems and a constant thirst for writing, Humphries knew she had the materials to make a collection, but stitching them together into a book was a different story. Luckily, she had Madden by her side to edit the collection.

"Ann Chadwell Humphries is a poet of many eclipses—celestial, such as the unexpected 'metallic light' beheld with solar glasses, but also eclipses of vision as her sight was lost later in life to the ravages of a recessive gene. And though these poems beautifully document that loss and its attendant difficulties, An Eclipse is the record of a woman who sees with her entire being.”

Nickole Brown, author of Fanny Says and

Jessica Jacobs, author of Take Me With You, Wherever You’re Going

Madden says that when Humphries first sent him a selection of poems, his priority was to give her a sense of her voice and an idea of some overriding themes that were running through her work. Specifically, his work as an editor is a two-fold process.

“I divided poems into yes and no and maybe, and I started arranging poems around my living room in groups that seemed to work together, to speak to each other,” Madden reflects. “Ann was a master at revising, always attuned to line and sound and image, and I enjoyed working with her.”

What stood out for Madden in this collection were the poems about solar eclipses. Once he read them, he knew they could anchor the book, punctuating it with the seen and unseen.

“Thinking how one thing can eclipse another seemed such a resonant theme for her memory poems, her family and relationship poems, and her poems about coming to terms with blindness,” Madden shares. “Once I had those three anchor poems, the book seemed to almost organize itself, like iron shavings organizing themselves around the poles of a magnet.”

From her experience with Madden, Humphries learned valuable lessons, not just about this collection but herself as a poet.

“It was a willingness to say yes, and to put myself in the position where I allowed myself to receive kindness,” Humphries says of the experience, “It was better than I ever imagined. To be in the company of good writers who are helping me grow, I really flourished in that.”

Of course, there is more than just the poems. Humphries worked with her dear friend, Susan Craig, and her niece, Eleanor Baker, and together they crafted a cover, featuring an image from Humphries’ childhood on the front.

Once Madden and Humphries finalized selection of poems and a cover, it went to Boiter and Jolley for edits. Boiter copyedited, proofed, and built the book, then Jolley laid it out in In Design before sending it to the printer, where he ensured the final product was as it was supposed to be.

“Ann Humphries’ debut collection of poems, An Eclipse and a Butcher, is anchored by poems about the solar eclipse, which serve as the perfect metaphor for the blindness experienced by the poet.  But Humphries tells us that “blindness provides insight.” … Humphries is a survivor, and we are so lucky she has chosen to share her words and her wisdom.”

Marjory Wentworth, former South Carolina

Poet Laureate

Now, after months of work from all parties, a book, a collection of stories, recollections, dreams, and hopes has come together.

From the titular poem, “An Eclipse and a Butcher,” that recalls a July childhood day in 1963 to a reminisce of her own father’s birth to the experience of tracing the waves of Van Gogh’s art, Humphries’ collection takes the reader through the throws and thrills of life with a final promise to walk with you wherever you may go.

“It’s myself. It’s a piece of me. It’s an honest gift,” Humphries declares. “It’s a piece of beauty in the world where there’s a lot of ugliness.”

The launch event for An Eclipse and a Butcher will take place via Zoom on November 22nd at 4:00pm. Muddy Ford Press will not sponsor any public readings until after pandemic precautions in the area have been lifted. The book will be $15 and available for purchase via Amazon, BandN.com, and via the author.

By Christina Xan

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 - Guest Essay Curated by Ed Madden - Essential by Peyton Nielsen

Last spring, as South Carolina went into lockdown because of COVID19, I was teaching a creative writing course. Many of my students found themselves back at home, but some stayed here, working. A couple worked for Instacart. One student took over the homeschooling of her little brothers, another started helping out in his family's liquor store (alcohol, like groceries, ruled essential).

And for a few of them, the disruptions of their daily lives began to appear in their creative writing assignments, in poems, in essays. Peyton was an essential worker, wait staff at a Columbia restaurant that continued to offer curbside takeaway. This little essay captures the anxieties of those moments, the precautions we took (and are still taking), the careful attention to our environment and to those around us. With her permission, we're posting this to our "Corona Times" series -- a moment in the pandemic captured with precision.

-Ed Madden

Jasper Magazine poetry editor

Peyton Nielson is originally from the Chicago Suburbs, 21 years old, and a senior Public Health major at USC.

(photo courtesy of the author)

Essential

by Peyton Nielsen

lockdown, spring 2020

Twice a week each week, she gets a treat: to not spend every waking moment in the confines of the four walls of her townhome. Usually, waking up for work is a chore. But now she practically leaps out of the shackles of her bed and into the bathroom to put on makeup and look nice. It has been a while since she has brushed her hair. She cuts the chains off the door, skips to her car, which sits idle most of the time these days. The drive is the best part: windows down, sun hitting her left thigh, melodies bouncing around the car. It’s hard not to sing at full volume even if others look over. She sounds bad, but she feels free.

*

The chairs and stools are put up on the tables, only half of the restaurant is lit, and the bar is blocked off. Usually there are multiple coworkers setting up, cooking, cleaning the restaurant. This time, it is just her and her manager, who now works in the kitchen too, and in a pinch is the occasional dish washer. She picks up a pair of extra-large flour-dusted gloves – that’s all they have here – and wraps rubber bands on her wrists so they stay on. She sprays down every surface, prepares the to-go bags, and hangs up signs on the doors so people stay on the curbside. No one is allowed in anymore. But this is her temporary paradise from the stir-crazy she feels the other five days. This is the treat she gets, as long as everyone keeps their hands to themselves, coughs in the other direction (preferably into their elbows, but that is wishful thinking sometimes), and has prepaid online so she does not have to touch cash or a credit card.

*

The sunlight has slipped below the windowsills and into the ground, and she begins to count her tip jar out (with gloves on of course). She lays out each dollar denomination in their respective values and counts it out for herself: part of rent, light bill, water, groceries, and some money to help pay off the new shoes she bought before the shift cuts and layoffs. A decent shift – people are kinder these days. She immediately goes to wash her hands for the umpteenth time. Her hands are dry and beginning to crack from the hot water, soap, the flour from the gloves. She will remember lotion next time.

*

There isn’t any music on the drive home. She calls her mom, so her mom won’t have to call later at two in the morning in a panic wondering if her girl made it home safe. They talk about nothing really. There is nothing to talk about. The windows are up, it’s stuffy, and her work shoes are starting to make the seats smell. She won’t bring them inside when she gets home, that’s probably unsafe. The car is put back into park for another week and is Clorox-wiped before she locks it up.

*

Immediately the clothes are off and in a separate laundry bin to be safe, and she climbs into the shower. Her shins hurt from standing for twelve hours. The arches of her feet ache, and anxiety makes her chest tight, but at least she can pay her rent tomorrow. She dries off and starts over the two-week time clock to make sure no symptoms arise so that she can continue to go to work. She is young, she’ll probably be fine, right? That’s not what CNN said last night, maybe she should quit. At three in the morning, sleep finally finds her. The hum of her oil diffuser replaces the diminished white noise outside.

In observance of the 75th anniversary of the US use of atomic weaponry on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- A poem by Randy Spencer

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb and the atrocities of nuclear war. The United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, leading to the end of World War Two. The explosion in Hiroshima killed an estimated 80,000 people and thousands more would die as the result of exposure to radiation. Midlands poet Randy Spencer commemorates this anniversary with his poem, "Yasuhiko Shigemoto's Walk." No more Hiroshimas.

- Ed Madden

Poetry Editor, Jasper Magazine

The “Shadow” of a Hiroshima Victim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atomic Blast — Open Culture

YASUHIKO SHIGEMOTO'S WALK

                                                August 6, 1945

a curled red oak leaf

crab-walks across a flat stone

our summer will end soon

half my schoolmates and I

lunch in cool shadows beneath the bridge

an almost dry river bed

my belly exposed,

a white flash in the southern sky

blisters its soft skin

sudden, violent heat

as if something touches me

with hot tongs

in the bright light

inerasable shadows

where someone stood

on a wall, how could

empty space become shadows

light become dark

shadows that cannot

move with the changing sun,

trees leveled, no leaves

cicadas have hushed,

a silence waiting

the season to reverse

a huge jellyfish

a mushroom high in the sky

dust clouds

become a column

a pillar of fire rising

in the dark air

injured begin

to appear, walking along

the narrow river

from their outstretched arms

flesh hangs, sheets of skin drape

from backs, abdomens

if their arms drop

pain is overwhelming

screams shatter the calm

half of my classmates

were working in the city center.

are they dead? One calls

to me from the river

and I fall into the line

marching away

pink chrysanthemum

blossoms open their dark hearts

black rain is falling

Based on "My A-Bomb experience in Hiroshima," a speech given by Hiroshima survivor Yasuhiko Shigemoto on July 29, 1995 at the Plenary Session of "No More Hiroshimas Conference" at London University commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of W.W. II.

                                                            H.R. Spencer

                                                            hrspencer@gmail.com

Corona Times -- Cassie Premo Steele talks about poetry, pandemic, and love

“One of the things I’ve learned from all this is that there’s very little under our control as humans. We must work with each other and with the earth in harmonious, healing, and honestly, hard ways if we are to survive.”

—Cassie Premo Steele

Cassie Premo Steele - all photos courtesy of the artist

During these Corona Times the Jasper Project strives to continue to support and promote communication among artists and arts lovers. In this interview, Columbia-based poet Cassie Premo Steele shares what both her personal and professional life have been like since the onset of quarantine and we come to realize that there is little separating the personal from the professional these days, and what a gift that might actually be.

Here’s Cassie.

Thanks for sharing with us, Cassie. Let’s start with some basic info for the few people who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you yet.

JASPER: Tell us about your background, please – where did you grow up, go to school, and how did you come to live in the SC Midlands today? You live in Forest Acres, right?

STEELE: Thanks so much for inviting me. I was born in Detroit, where my grandfather, an immigrant from Czechoslavakia, was Henry Ford’s secretary, and my grandmother, the oldest daughter of Irish immigrants, helped take care of me while my mom was in college when I was a baby. I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Winona, Minnesota, before moving to Reston, Virginia, a progressive, planned community outside Washington, D.C., when I was 12. I went to high school at Immaculata on Tenley Circle, which was an all-female Catholic school run by the Sisters of Providence, an experience that is still very important to me today. I settled in Columbia after finishing my Ph.D. at Emory in 1996. I was married to a professor at USC and we raised two girls together, and I have lived with my wife in Forest Acres for six years now.

JASPER: How long were you in academics and what made you leave the academy to write full time?

STEELE: I taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels from 1991 until 2008 – in English, Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies Programs at several institutions. I love teaching and I still teach but in a different capacity now, working with women academics and educators from around the world through my coaching business.

As an adjunct for that many years, I had an insider’s view to the inequalities of power and the ways academe reinforces those, especially for women and people of color. I use this to help women academics navigate those treacherous waters and still do the writing and teaching that they care about.

JASPER: You have published quite a few books – can you tell us about them – a chronological listing of your publications would be fabulous.

STEELE: The ReSisters. A #1 bestselling LGBT YA novel about an indigenous teen who decides to try to kill the president after her mother is taken to a detention center, with art by Amy Alley. All Things That Matter Press, 2018.

Tongues in Trees: Poetry 1994-2017. Collected poems published since 1994, plus new poems with #resist and #metoo themes. Unbound Content, 2017.

Beautiful Waters. Poetry about lesbianism, love, and marriage. Finishing Line Press, 2017.

Earth Joy Writing: Finding Balance through Journaling and Nature. Experiential practices, ecofeminist reflections, and writing prompts. Ashland Creek Publishing, 2015.

Wednesday. Poems co-created on Facebook each Wednesday since 2010 with over 300 Facebook friends from around the world. Unbound Content, 2013.

The Pomegranate Papers. Twenty years of poetry about marriage, mothering, and creativity. Unbound Content, 2012.

This is how honey runs. Poetry based on work with clients using writing as a way of healing, finding balance, and empowering oneself creatively. Unbound Content, 2010.

Shamrock and Lotus. Novel set in Ireland, India, and the United States, about the way mothers and daughters can heal from histories of colonization and globalization through renewed connections to each other and the land. All Things That Matter Press, 2010.

Easyhard: Reflections on the Practice of Creativity. Thirteen lessons on overcoming doubt and fear and living a creative life. WordClay, 2009.

My Peace: A Year of Yoga at Amsa Studios. Lyrical essays on the connections between yoga practice and achieving healing and peace in life. WordClay, 2008.

Ruin. Poems about loss and recovery based on work using writing as a way of healing, which Marjory Wentworth, the Poet Laureate of South Carolina, called “A beautiful book: courageous, spiritual, and timeless.” New Women’s Voices Series by Finishing Line Press, 2004.

We Heal From Memory: Sexton, Lorde, Anzaldúa and the Poetry of Witness. A scholarly study of how the writing of Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa bears witness to and provides visions of healing from multicultural American traumatic histories, both individual and collective. Palgrave, 2000.

Moon Days: Creative Writings about Menstruation. An edited collection of creative writings and art about menstruation. Personal narratives, short stories, and poetry selections that move from reflections on first experiences to visions of spiritual celebration and reclamation. Summerhouse Press, 1999.  Distributed by Ash Tree Publishing.

JASPER: This is the place where we make you crazy by asking you to name your top one or two favorites of your books and tell us why you are most proud of them.

STEELE: It would perhaps surprise you to know that I think We Heal from Memory is my most important book. I trace the legacies of our national collective traumas in that book – colonization, slavery, and sexual violence against women and girls – and walk readers through how poetry can be a way of witnessing to and healing from these legacies. I think, even though it was published 20 years ago, that many people are just now able to begin hearing what that book had to say.

JASPER: From social media it looks like you and your wife, Susanne Kappler, have really gone back to the land. Did this start before COVID-19 or as a reaction to the pandemic? Can you tell us about your little Eden and how you’ve spent your non-writing time since March?

STEELE: Oh, my goodness, this is one of the things that brings me the most joy in life! We had chickens and a garden before the pandemic but we’ve basically doubled down on providing for ourselves since March. We don’t have a lot of land and we live in a very modest neighborhood, but we make the most of what we have with a vegetable garden in the front yard (our long-term vision is that we can grow enough that this can be a place where neighbors can harvest what they need), and three chickens in the back yard who give us fresh eggs, and the cutest dog in the world who sleeps next to me while I meditate and write and work every day.

I won’t say that being in quarantine has been easy, but it has been filled with joy knowing that we are cooking food from scratch and brewing beer using ingredients we harvested in our own yard and being grateful for what is here, right now, because we are alive and working -- and working in a way that upholds our vision of sustainability and gratitude for the abundance of the earth.

JASPER: What have you missed about the World Out There during our sheltering-in period?

STEELE: I used to love to go out to dinner! It was my go-to treat when I’d had a hard day or something was stressful or I just needed a date night with my wife. You know what? I didn’t really need it after all. We have found that when we’re both working from home and I can spend time cooking in the morning and she can brew on the weekends, then our dinners on the back porch are as fun as anything served to us somewhere else.

JASPER: Is there anything you have come to love tremendously during this time?

STEELE: I have come to love South Carolina in a new way. Every Friday morning, I take a drive with my dog to a state park or heritage preserve and we walk, mostly without seeing any other humans, up and down hills and next to rivers and through swamps and over creeks and sometimes off trail. The land here remembers so much. It’s beautiful. It has stories to tell.

Premo Steele with wife Suzanne Kappler

JASPER: Now, professionally, can you talk about how the pandemic has affected your work life? Have you been more or less productive? Are there any new projects you can tell us about?

STEELE: Well, honestly, I don’t like the word productive. We are not products. Art is not a product. I would say my writing methods are the same, but the intensity and depth of them is deeper.

I know I just said, “the depth is deeper,” and that bothered me, so I looked up alternate words for “deeper” and found these: bottomless, unfathomable, mysterious, serious, pressing, graver. I think that about sums up the multifarious ways this pandemic has affected my writing—and I’ve been writing both poetry and memoir this year.

And of course, I keep a journal and write by hand every day. I was recently looking through one of my journals from a couple months ago and I found an entry where I was heartbroken that the US had suffered 7000 deaths from Covid.

“Three times as many as 9/11!” I wrote. “And it’s as if no one cares or can really deal with it.”

Now we’ve passed 160,000 deaths. That’s what I mean by graver.

JASPER: What’s next for you as an author?

STEELE: Who knows, you know? One of the things I’ve learned from all this is that there’s very little under our control as humans. We must work with each other and with the earth in harmonious, healing, and honestly, hard ways if we are to survive.

I don’t just mean survive Covid. I mean life on earth, life in this nation, especially for people who are not white, Cis, hetero, males, is very, very hard, and we must be strong enough to find new ways to survive together or not at all.

I hope my writing helps people do that in some small way.

JASPER: Where can our readers find more of your work and where can they purchase copies of your books?

STEELE: All of my books are available online, and people can visit www.cassiepremosteele.com if they want to read excerpts. I also have a series of audio coaching lessons called Joywork that I made available for free on Insight Timer when the pandemic started. [The link for that is http://insig.ht/cassiepremosteele ]

JASPER: Is there anything we didn’t ask you that you’d like to share with our readers? Any advice or wisdom to pass along?

STEELE: Life is very beautiful, and very, very short. Who do you want to love? How to you want to live? What work do you want to do? What legacy do you want to leave? What brings you joy? Go do it. Now.

JASPER: Could we possibly prevail upon you to share a piece or two of your recent work with us?

STEELE: Sure! Here are two recent poems.

Butterflies on the Floor

I saw butterflies once on the floor,

swampy Sunday morning forest, startled

them as they were eating down below

and something dead was sweet

to them, they piled on the wet

carcass like children playing

with a cadaver as children

do when they are starved for

life and their hunger goes deeper

than the body into a kind of

morbidity and pornography

and I felt ashamed for even

seeing this as if it were my

guilt I carried inside me most

moments that had spilled

outside me and I wanted to turn

away or even pretend I had

not seen it but I couldn’t because

the woman I love was with me and

I heard her gasp, “How beautiful.”

What I Love About Lesbian

is the island of love in it, the Sappho and

fragments on papyrus, the skin of words

and the she. Moonlight, goddesses, spring

flowers, women’s bodies. The be in the middle

syllable. I will be. You will be. She will be.

They will be. Morphing and transforming

like menses and moon cycles and tides into

I be, you be, she be, they be, we be.

The we of it. The smallness that can only

be seen when you get skin to skin, eyelashes

fluttering, and you notice her lips get bigger

and darker as you come in for a kiss. The les

of the we. The let’s. The less patriarchy, less

male gaze, less misogyny, less gynophobia,

less frat boy drunken haze. The lez, and les,

with a French pronunciation, les girls,

les femmes, les sorcières, les poètes

les philosophes, les mères, les soeurs.

The lay of it, like eggs, like rugs, like soft

round things that lay themselves down

close to the ground, like thighs. Hers

and mine. And the final syllable, an—

as in an opening, an affection, an emotion,

an ideal, an uncovering. The word âne

in French also means donkey, as in ass,

as in what we show to those who disrespect

us as we walk away, and what we watch as

she sidles up to the bar or home base or the

podium or the microphone or the courtroom

or the boardroom or the surgery floor,

taking charge, giving orders calling shots,

making plans, changing laws, changing

lives, saving bodies and so much more.

Lesbian is woman and full and curve and

wave and the too muchness of moon

and earth and ocean pulling on each other

with love and gravity, and no wonder

it came from an island because we are

indeed separate and green and lush and

fertile with our sweet scent of possibility.

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

What Are You Reading? Kate Atkinson's Transcription, review by Cindi Boiter

“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

— Winston Churchill

I worked so hard to finish reading Kate Atkinson’s Transcription (2018) that I am damn well going to at least give it a quick and dirty review.

I chose this book from a magazine stand in some airport last summer because I had previously read Atkinson’s book, Life After Life (2013), and loved it. There was quite a bit of magical realism to Life After Life (a baby is born the same year she dies and continues to live and die time after time as the century progresses) which I love. I should have picked up A God in Ruins (2015) which I now understand actually continues the story of the Life After Life characters, but I did not. To cut to the chase, Transcription is nothing like Life After Life.

I didn’t want to finish this novel, but I have such a history of starting books and not finishing them. Remember Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013)? Having loved—no, adored—Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), which is a brilliant book, I couldn’t wait to read The Goldfinch, knowing it was about a painting and a mystery and hidden lives. I was so devoted to Tartt’s writing that I bought it in hardback and tried to devour it before we left for an extended trip. It was just too heavy to take on airplanes and trains and cart all over Europe. But I failed to finish it, took off for a month, came home and continued to read the paperbacks I’d picked up along the way, watching The Goldfinch gather dust on my nightstand and then, the kiss of death, get buried beneath other books.

My memory being unreliable, at best, too much time passed, and I realized I’d have to re-read the whole book (784 pages) to reacquaint myself with the story. After a while I heard there would be a film made about this 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning book, so I took solace in this news, looked forward to seeing the film, and passively abandoned the book.

Of course, the film bombed. We’re talking something like 23% Metacritic on Rotten Tomatoes, and I haven’t been able to make myself watch such a botched adaptation of a beloved author’s work. (Same for Ron Rash’s Serena, but luckily, I ate that book up like a chocolate croissant and hated to reach the final page.)

Having learned my lesson, I vowed to try my damnedest not to abandon a book again, which is why I worked so hard to finish Kate Atkinson’s Transcription.

Am I glad I did? In terms of making myself follow through, yes. Did I like the book? Sadly, no. Which is unfortunate given the subject matter.

In 1940 a young woman named Juliet is oddly recruited into MI5. There is nothing about this woman that makes her a good candidate to be the kind of spy we think of when we think of James Bond and other famous fictional spies. So why was she selected? Because the espionage she was to carry out looked nothing like anything Bond would ever do. It was boring. She was essentially a transcriptionist who listened in on a group of British fascist sympathizers and typed up what they said. After she had proven herself a fit transcriptionist, she was enlisted to do various other MI5 tasks, including going undercover with her own secret identity, but never anything truly surprising or exciting. The story continues that once you’re in MI5, you’re always in MI5, and there you go. The end.

I really wanted to like this book and I hate to give it a lukewarm review. Despite the tedium the book brought me I will argue that it gives the reader insight into the life of a lower level counter-intelligence agent during WWII who happens to be a woman. Metaphorically, I can see the alignment of Juliet’s conscription into this world of lies with the fully packaged roles many women took and take in the course of traditional womanhood.  But even when she has a Mauser in her purse, she’s still the person in the room who makes the tea.

~~~

In case I threw out too many titles in this less than quick but decidedly dirty review, here is a synopsis:

• Read Transcription if you are a fan of low-key, wartime, London spy novels and the many roles women play, emphasis on the word “play.” She gives us two pages of sources so no doubt the book is well-researched.

• Read Life After Life if you like British authors, also lots of WWII historical fiction but, this time, with humour, magical realism, and some pretty big thrills.

• Read The Secret History if you like to read because it will be one of the best books you’ve ever read in your life.

• Read A God in Ruins, and please tell me about it.

• And read The Goldfinch but, for the love of god, please just finish it

What Are YOU Reading?

Jasper Wants to Know!

Send your most recent book review to JasperProjectColumbia@gmail.com with “JASPER READS” in the subject line and the title and author of your book in the body along with your own quick and dirty review.

You can review your book anonymously or you can share your name and possibly inspire an online book discussion. The point is to share thoughts and viewpoints, turn other folks onto what you’ve been reading, and maybe take away a tip for the next book you want to read yourself.

Remember: We’re not looking for academic or professional reviews or anything fancy at all, although academics and professionals are invited to submit, as are butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers and everyone in between. If you’re worried about your writing our editors will try our best to tidy up any little messes and sprinkle fairy dust on anything that needs a little love

Need some help putting your review together? Fill in the blanks for any or all of the following statements:

• I recommend this book for people who like ___________.

  (Examples: adventure, romance, intrigue, travel, horror, LGBTQ+ lit, feminist lit, non-fiction, sports, essays, poetry, biographies, drama, history, historical fiction, fiction, period pieces, foreign stories, mystery, comedy, YA, prize-winning, your descriptor here.)

• If you liked ___________, you'll like this book.

• This book is about a ____ who _____ and ____ ensued.

• This story takes place (where) ____________ and (when) _________.

• The thing I liked best about this book was ____________.

• I liked/disliked this book because ________________.

• The main character(s) is/are _________________________. (Need help? Were they charming, annoying, sexy, smart, adventurous, clever, crazy, looking for trouble – no need for fancy descriptors, just tell us about these people we’ll be spending pages with.)

• While I liked/disliked the book my mom/partner/bff would hate/love it because ___________. 

• Or just use your own words — as few or as many as you want. 

The point is to share what you recently read with the rest of the pandemic pack of folks who suddenly have time to read but may not know what to read next.

Submit your Jasper Reads review to

JasperProjectColumbia@gmail.com

and we’ll share your words with the world!

Thanks!

What Are You Reading?

Jasper Wants to Know!

What are you reading? Not only does Jasper want to know but it seems like every other person on social media wants to know, too.

Maybe we can help.

Send your most recent book review to JasperProjectColumbia@gmail.com with “JASPER READS” in the subject line and the title and author of your book in the body along with your own quick and dirty review.

You can review your book anonymously or you can share your name and possibly inspire an online book discussion. The point is to share thoughts and viewpoints, turn other folks onto what you’ve been reading, and maybe take away a tip for the next book you want to read yourself.

Remember: We’re not looking for academic or professional reviews or anything fancy at all, although academics and professionals are invited to submit, as are butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers and everyone in between. If you’re worried about your writing our editors will try our best to tidy up any little messes and sprinkle fairy dust on anything that needs a little love

Need some help putting your review together? Fill in the blanks for any or all of the following statements:

• I recommend this book for people who like ___________.

  (Examples: adventure, romance, intrigue, travel, horror, LGBTQ+ lit, feminist lit, non-fiction, sports, essays, poetry, biographies, drama, history, historical fiction, fiction, period pieces, foreign stories, mystery, comedy, YA, prize-winning, your descriptor here.)

• If you liked ___________, you'll like this book.

• This book is about a ____ who _____ and ____ ensued.

• This story takes place (where) ____________ and (when) _________.

• The thing I liked best about this book was ____________.

• I liked/disliked this book because ________________.

• The main character(s) is/are _________________________. (Need help? Were they charming, annoying, sexy, smart, adventurous, clever, crazy, looking for trouble – no need for fancy descriptors, just tell us about these people we’ll be spending pages with.)

• While I liked/disliked the book my mom/partner/bff would hate/love it because ___________. 

• Or just use your own words — as few or as many as you want. 

The point is to share what you recently read with the rest of the pandemic pack of folks who suddenly have time to read but may not know what to read next.

Submit your Jasper Reads review to

JasperProjectColumbia@gmail.com

and we’ll share your words with the world!

Thanks!

Advice for Writers from our JAY Literary Arts Finalists Jon Tuttle, C. Hope Clark, and Ray McManus

by Adam Trawick

Each year The Jasper Project asks its readers and patrons to nominate candidates who have demonstrated excellence in their respective fields. The names are then handed over to a panel of experts who discuss each candidate and select three exceptional individuals out of the lot as finalists for Jasper Artist of the Year. This year The Jasper Project is pleased to announce its three finalists in the Literary Arts: Dr. Ray McManus, Dr. Hope Clark, and Dr. Jon Tuttle. The Jasper Project contacted each of these distinguished figures for a brief conversation on the profession and the craft.

Our question: Just how do the up-n-coming literary artists break out of anonymity and break into recognition?

Dr. Ray McManus is a poet among whose publications include “Angels Already Know” from Binder Summer, “Undertow” in Open-Eyed and Full Throated: Irish American Poetry, and “Finding Teeth in the Yard” out of Talking River, and much more. McManus’ advice is “be vulnerable.” This is a complex suggestion. Vulnerability is often interpreted as sentimentality. This is not Dr. McManus’ meaning. “Be honest with yourself,” McManus says. “Walk unafraid. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.” As a beginning literary artist, you will have to “go to readings, establish relationships—create your opportunity. [You will have to do all] the unsexy difficulty of asking for money, someone to help cover costs to get you started.” This is not a task for the sentimental. The vulnerability McManus speaks of is one that bears no shame in breaking out of the little ego that hinders most from breaking into social circles where networking and fundraising can be accomplished. But this vulnerability is also to be applied to the writing itself. He suggests reading the likes of Terrance Hayes, Sean Thomas Doughtery (who McManus calls a “gypsy punk poet”), Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs to “raise [your] emotional IQ” in order to render explicit that which you merely sense or intuit. Confront it. Put it down on paper. And let the world filter through you.

C. Hope Clark is a novelist having published a number of books including the two mysteries: Dying on Edisto and Edisto Tidings. Ms. Clark recommends one “be specific.” Clark recommends “[going] to the experts in your field. Not just any good writer…connect with the professional organizations of your genre.” Clark says, “Lisa Gardener, John Sanford, Raymond Chandler – I love his use of words – are among my go-to.” An emphasis on diligence and trajectory is Clark’s philosophy: “Read a lot. Take notes while reading. If [you] have not truly defined [your] genre, then read quality work that is entertaining. Don’t force-feed what you read, trying to become something you’re not.” Clark continues, “…write daily…allow criticism. Not all criticism is good and not all is bad. Accept it as [an] opportunity to glean nuggets of direction and improvement.” Break out of inconsistency and indecisiveness. Specificity begets direction. It facilitates refinement. It makes clear to the mind what it’s after and where to get it.

Dr. Jon Tuttle is a playwright. Among his publications are The Trustus Collection (which is an anthology of six plays that have premiered since 1994 at the Trustus Theater) and Boy About Ten, which was a finalist in the Screencraft Stage Play International Competition, and more. Dr. Tuttle’s suggestion is “be discerning.” Because of email “the competition is overwhelming.” This day and age “[it’s] difficult to even get rejected.” That’s because there is so much content being submitted that a large portion doesn’t even make it to a real set of eyes. “People spend the day unselectively sending out a submission and this clogs the system” and most of the time what’s being submitted are unpolished drafts. Tuttle fears this has enabled a lack of discipline in the scriptwriting process (and writing in general) for beginning writers, as well as blocked out a great deal of valuable scripts. Among Tuttle’s current go-to are Samuel French, Qui Nguyen (particularly her play She Kills Monsters), and Adam Rapp (notably, his play The Sound Inside). Get particular in what you are writing, what you’re sending out, and where you’re sending it. Discernment raises one’s standards. It aids in the production of quality work and gets it in front of the right eyes.

  ________ 

If you’re looking for a start, are a fan of these lexical wizards and wish to celebrate, or would simply like to hear more about the arts in Columbia from those immersed in it, come to The White Mule on Friday, January 31 at 7:30pm for the Jasper Artist of the Year Awards Celebration and Mardi Gras Ball. Tickets available here.

For more info on these artists and those nominated in other disciplines check out http://jasperproject.org/what-jasper-said/pne6ka386aep4xhlf9sf8ysne2arh6

CMA Writer-in-Residence Ray McManus Brings Top Names to Poetry Summit

The Columbia Museum of Art’s (CMA) Writer-in-Residence, Ray McManus, will be hosting his newest project this coming weekend: a Poetry Summit featuring three award-winning poets: Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Ashley M. Jones. During his residence last year, McManus developed the Write Around Series where local poets read ekphrastic work they write inspired by the CMA’s galleries. The Poetry Summit will be one half-day event that continues this tradition of celebrating the marriage of poetry and visual art.

The idea of a Poet Summit came to McManus from Kwame Dawes, back when the South Carolina Poetry Initiative would hold an annual event where poets came from around the state to both read and lead workshops at the CMA.

 “It was an amazing experience and helped to foster incredible comraderies that South Carolina poets still have today,” McManus recalls, “I want to try and bring that back.”

This summit is a workshop created for writers in any stage of their craft. Participants will work with each of the poets during the workshops, where they will gather ideas for crafting poems that push the boundaries of writing, especially in relation to art. Writers will ask themselves the questions: what do we feel when we are in the presence of art? How do others react to it? How do I put those concepts into words? And then, they will learn to generate their ideas so that both they, and others, can experience it.

McManus’ decision to bring in Brown, Jacobs, and Jones to lead this summit was not a difficult one, as he has been scheming of ways to bring these women to the city since he first encountered their poetry. He learned of Brown through her poem, “Fuck,” (a stunning read) and then met her in person during a reading in Nashville. McManus met Jacobs at this event as well, and “immediately ran out” to buy her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance.

“Both poets are just so inviting in their work and so generous with their spirit and kindness,” McManus expressed, “I knew if I could get them to Columbia, we would be better for it.”

He garners the same enthusiasm for Jones, who he met while doing a reading together at the WOW Symposium in Spartanburg. About her debut collection, Magic City Gospel, McManus most appreciates the way she “wrestles with place and the past” – two themes pervasive and pertinent in Southern writing.

Beyond his admiration for their work, McManus recognizes these poets as “seasoned, committed teachers when it comes to craft and pushing the boundaries of form.” As is apparent in their bios, they each have something unique and wonderful to bring to the table, some element within their souls to share to those who will participate – a way for all to grow together in their art.

Nickole Brown

Brown is the author of two books of poetry: Sister (2007) and Fanny Says (2015). The latter won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. Brown is currently the editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and teaches at two programs: the Sewanee School of Letters’ MFA Program and the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville. She currently lives in Asheville with her wife, fellow poet Jessica Jacobs. Brown released a chapbook, “To Those Who Were Our First Gods,” last year, and an extension of the ideas traversed in the collection will appear in a chapbook next year entitled “The Donkey Elegies.”

Jessica Jacobs

Jacobs is the author of two books of poetry: Pelvis with Distance (2015) and Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (2019). Her initial collection won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Jacobs is no stranger to teaching, having both led workshops and been a professor in multiple programs including UNC-Wilmington. She is currently the chapbook editor for Beloit Poetry Journal and lives in Asheville, NC, with her wife, Nickole Brown. 

Ashley M. Jones

Jones is the author of two poetry collections: Magic City Gospel (2017) and dark / / thing (2019). She has received a multitude of awards for her work including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, and the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, among others. Currently, Jones teaches at both the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Alabama School of Fine Arts. She is also the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, also in Birmingham.

Pretty impressive, right? I think McManus said it best – “Simply put, these three poets are some of the sweetest badasses I know.”

 The event takes place Sunday, November 3, from noon to 5:00 p.m. with a free public reading, book signing, and reception on Boyd Plaza at 4:00 p.m. Participation is $20 for non-members, $10 for members, and $5 for students with ID. Registration is required for the workshops, and the price of the ticket also includes admission to the galleries, including the new exhibit “Van Gogh and His Inspirations”. The public reading, book signing, and reception are free.

 For more information on how to experience what these poets have to offer, visit the CMA’s website: www.columbiamuseum.org. 

by Christina Xan

PREVIEW: Ceviche o No Ceviche - A Fresh and Zesty Stage Novela By Elizabeth Rosa Houck

Stories about people of color are far and few in between in the stage scene; stories featuring people of color in intercultural non-monogamous romantic relationships are unheard of. Ceviche o No Ceviche is a refreshing, tangy piece of theatre that inhabits a space outside of classic plays about love. Ceviche o No Ceviche is a modern-day novela through and through: it is seasoned with humor, camp, family drama, twists, and lots of love. 

The story’s main course is a relationship triad among Sol (Lucy Jaimes), Keith (James Frush-Marple), and Robert (José Luís Gallardo). Through their saccharine and silly interactions, the audience is brought into [insert today’s date] 2019: there is a mention of House of Cards and Queer Eye as the triad’s favorite shows, the current presidential administration, the topic of immigration and the path to citizenship being a trepidatious and nearly impossible one. Together, they try to figure how to support Sol on her path to United States citizenship at the end of her student visa, as she is originally from Colombia. Following some very brief discussion, Sol and Keith both decide to get married to kill two birds with one stone (or, matar dos pájaros de un tiro), at once committing their love to each other and solidifying Sol’s ability to stay in the United States. Even with this decision for Sol and Keith to be legally wed, the triad is certain that their relationship will remain the same. In the way of any feel-good rom-com about people from different backgrounds, hijinks peppered with humor and cultural clashes ensue. Throw in a Catholic priest and all the drama of planning any wedding, and we have ourselves something worth savoring.

Meeting Sol’s parents, Dulce and Jesús played by Julia Vargas Pardo and Marco Marmolejo respectively, via a Skype conversation (classic ringtone known by anyone who has tried to keep a close connection via modern technology included) feels authentic and warm. Vargas Pardo’s performance gives the feeling of a true Latina mother: opinionated, animated, loving, intense, dramatic. Her fire is met with the calm, cool energy of Jesús, and later, her cerebral, comedic sister Cuco (Mayte Velasco Nicolas). Sol and her parents’ Skype conversation also offers the audience a sense of the distance Sol must feel with her family. There is unconditional love but also a lack of understanding: Sol’s somewhat tedious explanation to her parents about the important of Queer Studies is just a microcosm of their traditional values, especially in terms of relationships. Upon Sol mentioning that she would be marrying Keith, a Protestant gringo, there are immediate, repeated assumptions that Sol is pregnant. Because if she is not pregnant, she would marry a Catholic instead. Despite Sol’s protestations and her parents’ reluctance to accept a Protestant groom, wedding bells will still ring. 

Familial relations remain a theme, though Keith and his mother, Linda (Betsy Newman), certainly have a more strained mother-son relationship. Upon Keith sharing his nuptial news with his mother, she shares her intense and bigoted discomfort with him marrying someone who is not a sweet tea-drinking, pickled sauage-eating Baptist white woman like herself. The conversation is heard through bitten tongues: Linda is as proper as she is ignorant in her views of people with backgrounds and beliefs different than her own. Admittedly, as a Mexican-American audience member, it was yet another reminder for me of how much hate someone can hold toward a particular group of people for no reason other than their existence. Ironically enough, this same sober, spiritually-minded mother falls for Sol’s uncle, Juan de Dios (Ysaul Flores), a Catholic priest who actually baptizes Keith and weds the couple. Star-crossed lovers, indeed.

The phrase “killing two birds with one stone” is mentioned three times throughout the play. The phrase is significant for its repetition but also because it serves as the impetus for the entire show. Sol and Keith get married for both love and to secure Sol’s path to citizenship. The play itself attempts un tiro to take on queerness, non-monogamy/polyamory, intercultural interactions where Colombia meets Columbia, religious differences, marriage traditions, and familial expectations (to name a few). Leaving no stone unturned even in its staging, Spanish-to-English subtitles of the dialogue are displayed on monitors to invite intercultural interactions, which is especially important as much of the show is in Spanish. I was impressed to learn that the play owes its charm to its writers who are no other than the very actors who bring the story to life. While I enjoyed the exploration of seldom discussed topics, the story spills out a little beyond its edges. Somewhere between all this, I felt the compounding of identities and storylines but also the challenge to wrangle all of these identities, even further complicated by a collaborative voice in the play. Tropes and stereotypes surrounding queerness, Latinidad, and the South rear their heads inconsistently and land somewhat awkwardly on attentive ears. Still, the heart of the show is pure and good, and the labor of Love’s work emanates from it. And we could all use a little more love.

Get your fill on Friday, September 13 at 8:00 PM, and Saturday, September 14 at 3:00 and 8:00 PM at Trustus Side Door Theater.

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

Friends of Ed Congratulate the Academy of American Poets Fellow

Ed Madden, Poet Laureate of Columbia, South Carolina - photo by Lester Boykin

Ed Madden was raised in Newport, Arkansas. He received a BA in English and French from Harding University, a BS in Biblical Studies from the Institute for Christian Studies, an MA in English from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in literature from the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent collections include Ark (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), Nest (Salmon Poetry, 2014), and Prodigal: Variations (Lethe Press, 2011). He is a professor of English and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches Irish literature and creative writing. Madden, who will receive $50,000, plans to launch “Telling the Stories of the City,” a project that will incorporate local and youth voices, build on community-based workshops, and create an interactive storymap of the city.

Yesterday was a great day for one of the Jasper Project’s own – our Ed Madden, Columbia city poet laureate, Jasper Magazine founding poetry editor, and hard core Friend of Jasper, learned that he has been awarded one of only 13 of the first ever major fellowships from the Academy of American Poets. The fellowship, which is accompanied by a $50,000 honorarium, will allow Ed to launch, “Telling the Stories of the City,” a project that will incorporate local and youth voices, build on community-based workshops, and create an interactive story map of the city.

At Jasper, we were thrilled, proud, and absolutely giddy with the news of this award – but we were not surprised.

It wasn’t long ago that this writer told Ed I expected a MacArthur Genius grant to come his way soon – Ed would probably argue that this is better.

According to an announcement from poets.org, “These thirteen poets who serve as poets laureate of states, cities, and counties across the U.S. will receive a combined $1,050,000 in recognition of their literary merit and to support civic programs, which will take place over the next twelve months. 

 These new fellowships are made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and, in total, are believed to be the largest awards provided to poets in the U.S. at any one time by a charitable organization. They are also in keeping with this spring’s national poetry programming theme of Poetry & Democracy offered by the Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 20 organizations working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.”

I’ve had the pleasure of being a Friend of Ed and a frequent partner in projects for a long time. Having witnessed his enthusiasm and dedication to a project in action, I am fortunate to know well that when Ed Madden sets his mind to accomplishing something it is best to consider it done. As a friend, colleague, administrator, boss, activist, and fellow instigator, Ed Madden is an exemplary example of the best of humankind. He is kind, sensitive, strong, and good – and he is also very talented.

Congratulations from all of us at Jasper as well as from a few of the Friends of Ed below.

Ed Madden won’t be satisfied until parking tickets have verses, bus rides are lyrical, haikus magically appear after rainstorms, poems are typewritten at the Statehouse, and everyone in the city of Columbia is a poetic element. Thank you, Ed Madden, for engaging our ordinary lives with poetry. Columbia is in its best form with you as our poet laureate – Tim Conroy

Ed Madden is magic. When you’re around him you really understand the value of art and how it improves our world to interact with it. Fact is we live in a world that doesn’t really honor the importance of art. But when you’re around Ed you’re reminded of the necessity of art and the responsibility of the artist. You see it when you help him distribute poetry parking tickets. Maybe you see it when you talk with to him about making poem stencils for his rain poetry project. Or when you watch him create an environment where grade school students come alive with poetic insight. Whatever it is, Ed does the dreaming and physical labor necessary to make it possible. And if you’re lucky enough to go with him, then you get to see something better than magic. You get to see Ed Madden. – Ethan Fogus

I could not be more proud of my friend, and cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award. We’re better poets, writers, teachers, and patrons because of Ed Madden, and this recognition is way overdue. I hope he buys a motorcycle! That would be badass. – Ray McManus

Congratulations to the gifted poet and community-minded Ed Madden who wants our state to participate in bringing poetry to our corner of the world. Good on ya’, Ed. – Libby Bernardin

The Fellowship is a well-deserved recognition of the work that Ed has done as Poet Laureate to amplify the voices of citizens through the expression of poetry. He continues to develop projects that treat poetry as public art, both to tell the stories of Columbians and to add creative expression to our daily lives. By honoring Ed's work, the Academy of American Poets is affirming the importance of the arts in Columbia. – Lee Snelgrove

Ed’s an inspiring leader - the kind that fights for you, helps you find your own voice, challenges you to do more, uses that big university money for good, and all the while making the world better with his poetry. I’m so happy that even more folks will know how lucky this city is to have him. Congrats, Ed! – Meeghan Kane

Ed Madden, educator, poet, mentor, friend and Columbia's first poet laureate. A better choice for poet laureate is not possible. Ed welcomes in the entire family of poetry and expertly weaves town and gown into whole cloth. – Al Black

Ed, you deserve this. You constantly keep Columbia engaged with poetry. You are treasure. We are blessed to have you. Congratulations! — Jennifer Bartell Boykin

For more on Ed’s big honor check out:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/stanza/announcing-recipients-academy-american-poets-laureate-fellowships

https://www.free-times.com/arts/ed-madden-named-an-academy-of-american-poets-laureate-fellow/article_8294e210-6690-11e9-85b7-ab374eac2741.html

Deckle Edge Literary Festival Announces Dorothy Allison as Keynote Speaker

In its 4th year as the grass roots answer to the SC Book Festival, Deckle Edge Literary Festival announces South Carolina author Dorothy Allison as the keynote speaker for the 2019 festival and the recipient of the second annual Deckle Edge Literary Festival Southern Truth Award. Allison will speak at the Booker T. Washington auditorium at the University of South Carolina on Friday, March 22nd at 7 pm in an engagement sponsored by the USC Women’s and Gender Studies Program. On Saturday, March 23rd at 10 am, Allison will address the Deckle Edge Literary Festival in a conversation with Bren McClain, author of One Good Momma Bone (2017, USC Press) at the Richland Library on Assembly Street in downtown Columbia, SC.

Allison is the author of Trash (1988), a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories, the multi-award winning Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), Cavedweller (1998), which became a New York Times bestseller, and more. She has written for the Village Voice, Conditions, and New York Native and won several Lambda Awards. Bastard Out of Carolina was a finalist for the National Book Award, the winner of the Ferro Grumley Prize, was translated into more than a dozen languages and became a bestseller and award winning film directed by Anjelica Huston. Allison is a recent inductee into the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

A native of Greenville, SC, Allison’s writings frequently reference the class struggles and social alienation she experienced as a child growing up gay, impoverished, and the first child of a 15-year-old unwed mother in the conservative SC upstate. Bastard Out of Carolina also details the sexual abuse she endured throughout childhood at the hands of her step-father. The New York Times Book Review calls the book, “As close to flawless as a reader could ask for.”

Allison will be awarded the Deckle Edge Literary Festival Southern Truth Award on Friday evening, March 22nd. The Southern Truth award, whose first recipient in 2018 was Nikky Finny, is awarded to a Southern author whose body of work exemplifies the complexity of the South’s history, celebrates the gifts of the South’s diverse peoples, and enhances the narrative of the South by focusing on the progress we make and the continued work before us.

The 2019 Deckle Edge Literary Festival includes an exciting roster of authors, panels, and interviews including, among others, printmaker Boyd Sauders; Chieftess Queen Quet who is an elder of the Gullah/Geechee Nation; Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Kathleen Parker and more.

For more information please visit www.DeckleEdgeSC.org

CMA Presents Local Poets Joy Priest and Tim Conroy for its 2nd Session of theWrite Around Series

This Sunday, the Columbia Museum of Art will be putting on the second installment of its new Write Around Series, featuring poets Joy Priest and Tim Conroy in conjunction with the opening of the CMA’s newly designed collection galleries.

The Write Around Series is the latest project of CMA’s Writer-in-Residence, Ray McManus. For him it is “an opportunity for poets and writers to come to the CMA in pairs, walk the galleries, and write individual responses to the artwork.”

The idea came from an old CMA program called Frisson, which was created by Charlene Spearen and Leslie Pierce. “As a participant and audience member of Frisson, I simply loved it – the opportunity to come to the museum and generate new material,” McManus said, “and then to share that material with a receptive audience of literary folks and art folks and folks who were just curious what the hell a Frisson was; it gave me a space to grow in.”

Knowing how special this program was to him, McManus was confident the new Write Around Series would be just as important. “When we approach art, any art, I believe a conversation takes place – multiple conversations, really,” McManus continued, “When art speaks to us, when we are able to listen to art speaking to us, we can engage in a conversation that takes us through the art and beyond it. And each time we come back to that art, that conversation can be stronger, and completely different.”

By bringing local writers and poets to create work based on art, this program allows patrons the opportunity to participate in this conversation, “not THE conversation, but A conversation. A way of understanding the artwork,” McManus said, “For the everyday patron, seasoned art historian, perhaps the artist, and certainly the writers, I can’t think of a more immediate and hopefully rewarding experience. We no longer become patrons, art historians, artists, and writers. We become a community.”

This time around, local poets Joy Priest and Tim Conroy are sharing their work. “Joy and Tim are amazing. I’ve been a fan of their work for years, so perhaps for personal reasons, I reached out to them,” McManus continued, “But I also wanted the two of them together because the range of their voices together will make for one hell of a reading. Both are powerful poets on the page, but they also have a commanding presence on the stage."

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, Priest is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of South Carolina. She is the recipient of the 2018 Gregory Pardlo Fellowship at The Frost Place and has received support from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, among others. She is formerly an associate poetry editor for Narrative Magazine and senior editor emerita at Yemassee Journal. Her poems have appeared or are upcoming in Blackbird, Callaloo, Four Way Review, The Rumpus, Best New Poets 2014, Best New Poets 2016, and The Breakbeat Poets.

Conroy is a former special education teacher, school administrator, and vice president of the South Carolina Autism Society. His work has been published in journals, magazines, and compilations including Fall Lines, Jasper, and Marked by Water. In 2017, Muddy Ford Press published his first book of poetry, Theologies of Terrain, edited by Ed Madden, poet laureate of the City of Columbia. A founding board member of the Pat Conroy Literary Center in Columbia.

Conroy was influenced to start writing from a young age by his older brother and sister, but he didn’t pursue writing until later in life. Three years ago, he was influenced by a presentation from Kathleen Robbins on her book of photographs of the Mississippi Delta, Into the Flatland. “I take this book home, and I’m inspired to write poems from the book,” Conroy said.

Shortly after, Robbins asked him if she could use his poem in her upcoming installation, and it all kicked off from there. “I was always the no guy,” Conroy continued, “But I finally said yes, and a transformation has happened.”

Since then, Conroy has explored many themes with his poetry. For this event Conroy is presenting 11 new poems in contingence with the new CMA galleries. “Most of the poems have turned out to be narrative poems,” Conroy said, “Some part of the art sparked a story, and I derived poems from them.”

He continued to say that just because the art inspired the stories, it doesn’t mean the poems are what you would necessarily expect. Conroy elaborated, “There’s one piece there that I can tell was created to make laughter, but for me it recalled one of my worst memories, and I wrote to that.”

To hear Priest and Conroy read, come to the CMA this Sunday the 18th at 3:00 p.m. The event is free with admission, which is free for members and $6 (or less) for general entry. For more information on the event or the gallery, check out the CMA’s website at: www.columbiamuseum.org

The Write Around Series has already had two wonderful writers speak and will continue even after this Sunday into the Spring. A full 2018-2019 schedule is provided below (bolded dates yet to come):

2018-2019 Write Around Series

·         April 8, 2018 – Julia Liz Elliott, Monifa Lemons, Maya Marshall, and Jillian Wiese*

·         September 30, 2018 — Ed Madden and Ray McManus 

·         November 18, 2018 — Joy Priest and Tim Conroy

·         February 10, 2019 — Nathalie Anderson and Len Lawson

·         March 17, 2019 — Cindi Boiter and Jennifer Bartell

* Nothing to Hide: Fours Writers Responding to Renee Cox and Imogen Cunningham

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