Bringing Poetry into Communities

How does one bring poetry to a community? And who is going to make it happen?

In response to these questions posed by the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, Katharine Coles and a cadre of poets and artists provide Blueprints: Bringing Poetry into Communities.

Blueprints creates for poets and arts organizers the sense that they are part of a larger, noble endeavor based in shared values and commitment to poetry. The first three sections include essays by a dozen poets and artists about ways they have brought poetry into different kinds of communities. These essays demonstrate what has been done and what can be done and will inspire others to bring poetry into their own communities. The final section provides a practical “toolkit” loaded with experience-based advice and the tools and strategies necessary to accomplish those endeavors.

Katharine Coles is a professor of English at the University of Utah, former director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, and Utah poet laureate. She is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and has published poems in a wide variety of literary journals and anthologies.

You can purchase the book or download the Free eBook (PDF)

Free NJ Poetry Workshop This Weekend

Free Poetry Workshop this weekend at the Ringwood Public Library (30 Cannici Drive, Ringwood, NJ 07456)

Saturday, April 30, 2011 from 1:00 - 3:00 PM

Celebrate National Poetry Month and accomplish some mental spring cleaning. This workshop will offer a variety of starting places for poems through readings and exercises. Coordinator and poet Ken Ronkowitz is a lifelong educator and New Jersey resident. He has run poetsonline.org, an online poetry workshop, since 1998. His writing has been published in many magazines including English Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Roadmap, The Shakespeare Quarterly, Prague and in the anthology, The Paradelle. He is currently the Director of the Writing Initiative and teaches at Passaic County Community College, and is an adjunct professor at NJIT.

For more information and directions: http://www.ringwoodlibrary.org

Toni Morrison at Rutgers-Newark

Toni Morrison is the author of nine major novels. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, and A Mercy have received extensive critical acclaim.

She received the National Book Critics Award in 1978 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In 2006, Beloved was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best work of American fiction published in the last quarter-century.

Toni Morrison reads in the Writers at Newark Reading Series on Tues., April 26, 2011, 5:30-7 p.m., in Multipurpose Room 231 at the Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, Newark, New Jersey

Readings are free and open to the public.

Attention: No RSVPs are necessary for the Toni Morrison reading. Seating will be done on a first come, first serve basis. Please arrive early to give yourself plenty of time to park and to obtain seating. For High School teachers interested in bringing their students, please email rnmfa@andromeda.rutgers.edu

http://www.mfa.newark.rutgers.edu/visitingwriters/morrison.htm

        
           

Rutgers-Newark Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing | Visiting Writers | Toni Morrison

Poets Online Workshop in New Jersey

Free Poetry Workshop
at the Ringwood Public Library

30 Cannici Drive

Ringwood, NJ 07456

Saturday, April 30, 2011

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Celebrate National Poetry Month and accomplish some mental spring cleaning. This workshop will offer a variety of starting places for poems through readings and exercises. Coordinator and poet Ken Ronkowitz is a lifelong educator and New Jersey resident. He has run poetsonline.org, an online poetry workshop, since 1998. His writing has been published in many magazines including English Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Roadmap, The Shakespeare Quarterly, Prague and in the anthology, The Paradelle. He is currently the Director of the Writing Initiative and teaches at Passaic County Community College, and is an adjunct professor at NJIT.

For more information and directions: http://www.ringwoodlibrary.org

Finding Poems With Naomi Shihab Nye

Nye

Have you ever had someone ask you to write them a poem?

As Naomi Shihab Nye says in her poem, "Valentine For Ernest Mann":

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Maybe non-poets believe that poets can conjure up poems at will (or with a simple prompt). Nye continues and suggests that rather, poems hide in places where poets find them.

In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

It reminds me of Gary Snyder’s little poem “How Poetry Comes To Me” from 1992 that also talks about how we find poems and how they find us.

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of the light

Poetry is a wild animal that is sometimes clumsy and dwells outside our knowledge and awareness. It comes to us only so far. Then, we need to "meet it at the edge of the light” in that place between the known and the unknown.

How do poets do this? Again, Nye suggests:

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.

For our April writing prompt, write about how you find poems (or found one poem) or how they find you. Yes, it's a poem about inspiration and the Muses.





Red Suitcase

National Poetry Month 2011

Since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has sponsored National Poetry Month each April.

It's a month when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its place in American culture.

Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

Some events online include:

	Poem In Your Pocket Day: Join thousands of individuals across the U.S. by carrying a poem in your pocket on Thursday, April 14.
	Poetry & the Creative Mind: Each April, The Academy of American Poets presents a star-studded celebration of American poetry.
	Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles.
	Spring Book List: Check out the new books of poetry available each spring.
	National Poetry Map: Find out what is happening in your state by visiting our redesigned and updated National Poetry Map.