17 Reasons to Attend P(EAR)

As you may or may not know, Local Poets Guild runs a series of talks about poetry, craft and aesthetics, that happens monthly at Acequia Booksellers. We’ve had some fabulous speakers already, the next one promises to be even more seductive.

At 3 pm on Sunday September 4th at Acequia 4019-4th ST. NW, we’ve got Barbara Rockman from Santa Fe who will be joined by Reed Adair Bobroff. They are going to surprise us! Both will address aspects of the work of poetry that matter to them: whether content, craft, aesthetics, vision, whatever their personal take on their talk I know this will be insightful and inspiring and get all of us in the audience thinking about what language and poetry means to us. I hope you’ll come join us in this free event and discussion.

Reed Adair Bobroff is Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water) Navajo which he is close to but is only a portion of  his Spanish speaking; French, German, Russian, and Polish, mutt heritage. Born in Menlo Park, California and happily forced to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico at his young age of 4. He began writing poetry two years later and continues through to this day; where he is a 17-year-old slam poet attending the Native American Community Academy. He has competed on youth slam teams since he was 13 (starting at NACA); one of those teams being the 2010 Abq Unidos Poetry Slam Team which took third in the Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam and was featured on HBO’s Brave New Voices. Now a leader of the Duke City Youth Poetry Collective (a collaborative of Youth Poets based in Albuquerque), Reed believes firmly in the power of writing. At it’s best it prompts thinking, challenges the current narrative of thought, and instigates positive change.

Barbara Rockman, raised in western Massachusetts, lives in Santa Fe where she leads poetry workshops and teaches at Santa Fe Community College. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies including Bellingham Review, Calyx, Cimarron Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She is editor of the anthology, Women Becoming Poems, and founder of “Community of Voices,” a reading and music series for emerging artists. She has received the Southwest Writers Prize, the New Mexico Discovery Award, The MacGuffin Poetry Award and Baskerville Publishers’ Prize. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is the author of the poetry collection, Sting and Nest, 2011.

Please join us. This promises to be a unique and fruitful conversation. And the 17 reasons to attend? there are well over 17 reasons to come out, but Reed is 17, and this is a chance to learn about his trajectory early and witness him grow into opportunities.

LPG presents P(EAR): POETICS AND POEMS

with Barbara Rockman and Reed Adair Bobroff

3 pm Sunday Sept 4

Acequia Bookseller 4019 4th St. NW

“The Unwieldy Mind, Loose Linguistic Tethers, and the Possibility of Preventing Suicide”

That’s the title, tentatively, of the talk I’m going to give at 3:00 pm on Sunday at Acequia Booksellers 4019-4th ST. NW. I’m looking forward it, and I actually hope to focus a great deal on the craft of poetry. And yet, I have to admit that he reasons I’m focusing on craft, the reasons I always focus on craft, are purely selfish: survival.

Which is why it’s downright perfect that the middle name of the poet I’ll be speaking with is “Survivor.”

John Survivor Blake.

After being born addicted to heroin and alcohol and enduring poverty in the Baruch Housing Projects on the lower east side of Manhattan at the hands of chemically addicted parents, he spent his adolescence visiting his mother in prison. Yet “Survivor” has managed to not only graduate high school and enroll in college, but has also shared performance stages with the likes of Patricia Smith, Saul Williams, Tara Hardy, Amiri Baraka, Suheir Hammad, Taylor Mali, and many, many other great writers.

He believes poetry saved his life.

Different stories for me, same assessment. Give credit where credit is due.

Language can be a powerful force for the good, even though (to be frank and a wee bit morbid) poets have foreshortened life expectancies compared to playwrights and novelists according to scientific studies. (I read that in a journal called “Death Studies.”) If you come out, among pure issues of poetry, I’ll also delve into how specific language choices statistically impact mortality.

I love this stuff! Sunday will be fun.I also hope to read from Tate and Levin, quote Emerson, Gaston Bachelard, Rukeyser, and Cocteau (image from his film Blood of a Poet pictured here) and discuss many of my influences, ranging from classic American poets and Shakespeare to Eminem.

Thanks everyone,

lisa gill

Good Pearing: Goodell & Jackson

Here is a quick short and inadequate recap of some of the highlights of P(EAR). There were two speakers, Larry Goodell and Gary Jackson, and about 16 people in attendance at Acequia Booksellers. It was a nice, thought provoking and inspiring time with cookies afterward

The image Larry Goodell used for getting lines was a slot machine. You pull the lever and get a mix of noun/verb/noun. Sometimes you hit it, and sometimes you don’t. He’s trained himself to write down lines that spark, and then importantly be open to what comes next, where that line leads. He quotes Ann Quinn, “Be ruthless with your own writing,” but also believes as John Cage said, “The best revision is new work.” He views poetry as inclusive and so prefers to avoid limiting classifications like slam, narrative, lyric, language–all poetry is on a continuum. And he says, “To me, poetry is a matter of song and sense.” And, “Poetry is humbling.”

Larry is also driven to ask questions like, what does the back of the poem look like, how does the poem exist in 3-d time and space, what happens if a mask is a part of a poem, or movement. He also talks heartily about poetry as service, even to the extent of publishing other poets, editing, making readings happen, all the good community involvement. There is joy in his presentation and his passion and commitment that’s contagious. It was great to hear him speak.

Gary Jackson, who opened the event, talked about cultivating obsession. However, he clarified that obsession is not “topic,” only the vehicle. For example, the comic book characters he writes about are not the topic. Rather, the context of superheroes allows him indirect access to explore issues of race and loss, adolescence and more–because poetry is capable of talking about many things at once and sometimes less direct ways work better.

Although Gary is driven by story, and narrative, he found a quote which I’ll paraphrase, that says, “A really good poem conveys meaning before it even conveys understanding.” He works hard to be neither blatantly obvious nor purposefully obscuring. He finds beauty in poetry in the way all the rules can be bent and anything and everything can be used at the service of poetry. Essentially, there are no rules. Right now,  in his own work, he’s exploring less linear leaps of consciousness. In terms of topic, he maintains work around his obsession, comics, but is also exploring concepts of motherland. I’m looking forward to seeing how these new series shape up.

Thanks tons to both Larry and Gary for speaking today.

Next P(EAR) is June 26th 3:00 with speakers TBA but I believe I’ll be one of them

Regards,

LG