MUSELETTER #6
11/13/99
Greetings poets,
This week we have reports from Stazja in Texas & Larry Jaffe in Los Angeles.
Margy Snyder & Bob Holman
Your About.com Poetry Guides
AUSTIN/TEXAS
For more detail on poetry happenings in Austin, Texas, check the Austin Poetry Calendar Web site, updated weekly.
How Many Festivals Does It Take To Capitalize Poetry?
Austin is arguably the festival capital of the world. In any given week, there are half a dozen festivals, from Marley Fest to the Jewish Book Festival to Eeyore's Birthday to Spamarama to Austin Jazz and Arts Festival to the dreaded and revered music/film/spoken word interactive institution each March known as South By Southwest, which gave Austin the appellation “Live Music Capital of the World.”
The weekend of November 6-7 was no exception, with the C-SPAN cameras trained on Mrs. Governor Laura Bush's 4th Annual Texas Book Festival. 101 Texas-related authors gave readings and held discussion panels in the Texas State Capitol building. Some poets who made it inside were Spike Gillespie and Sharon Bridgforth (Austin), Naomi Shihab Nye (San Antonio), Mark Doty (Houston), and Camika Spencer (Dallas). Outside the grounds proper were the exhibitors, including the “Spoken Like A True Texan” poetry tent, sponsored by The Austin Chronicle and coordinated by Texas Poet at Large Tammy Gomez.
On Sunday afternoon, November 14, C-SPAN 2's Book TV will feature four hours of Texas Book Festival programming. For details, check the Web site.
You won't see footage of the eighteen diverse groups of poets from Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio who regaled word lovers in the free speech poetry tent. You for-gosh-derned-sure won't see Third Eye performance troupe members RD Perin and Graffiti attracting Texas State Troopers with their oratory addressed to the Governor. Politics aside, Mrs. Bush done a good, good thing with the TBF, which benefits Texas libraries.
Speaking of Festivals, Austin International Poetry Festival 2000
Austin Poets International, Inc. has set April 13-16 as the dates for AIPF 2000. Last year's festival drew more than 200 registered poets from five countries and a whole bunch of states. Featured guest poets from Australia (Ted Reilly and Jayne Fenton Keane), the U.K. (Howard Frost, Alex Krysinski, and Ruth Malkin), Isreal (Moshe Benarroch), San Francisco (Alan Kaufman), Los Angeles (Larry Jaffe), Reston, Virginia (Dean Blehert), and NYC (Guy LeCharles Gonzalez) worked their heinies off, emcee'ing venues, conducting free workshops, reaching out into the community with visits to the Austin Children's Hospital, Hospice Austin, a nursing home, a high school and elsewhere. For the rest of the attendees, there were 16 programmed venues, two midnight-to-dawn open mics, a slam, anthologies, awards, midnight meals at Katz's Deli, and all the other things that poets do at festivals.
Registration packets for AIPF 2000 can be downloaded at The Austin International Poetry Festival Web site.
You Can't Keep A Good Venue Down
Bennedene Walton had a dream: to create a sense of community through play, through creating together. She actualizes it as proprietress of the East 13th Heritage House, an Austin historical landmark. Heritage House has hosted many a fine poetry reading, inspiring the Heritage Blue anthology from PoetWarrior Press.
Ivanho's Tuesday night open mic venue “Inner Circle of Spoken Word” began a year ago at the Whole Bean Coffee House, gaining a fast and loyal following. When Whole Bean closed in the spring, Ivanho took his Inner Circle to Koffee N' Kream. The management turned out to be squares. But you can't keep a good venue down.
When Benne read that the Circle had retired to Ivanho's living room, she offered performance space for the venue. Inner Circle of Spoken Word is now up and running at the Heritage House, 810 East 13th Street. Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m.Heritage House
Heritage Blue Anthology
Let The Sun Poets Shine In
The mission of San Antonio's Sun Poets Society is “to support art in all its forms from all walks of life, for peace.” Membership is free and open to anyone interested in positive support and growth of writers and artists, locally and internationally.
Sun Poetic Times is a literary and artistic magazine, published quarterly. They are looking for submissions, especially artwork (photos, line art or halftones). And of course they are looking for subscriptions, too.
But that's not all. The Sun Poets take their poetry to schools. Jennifer M. Garcia, a student at Luther Burbank High School, wrote: “The poems you read were very exciting and uplifting, they made me open my eyes and realize that poetry has a lot more to it than words. . . it has meaning.”
The Sun Poets Society sponsors two events in San Antonio: Open mic poetry readings hosted by Shannon McGarvey and the Sun Poets, Tuesdays, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Cafe Latino, 1621 N. Main Street, Suite 9, (210) 349-8216 Literate Lizard, A Sun Poets Society writer's workshop hosted by David Huber. Thursdays, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Calcutta Coffeehouse, 7920-C Fredericksburg Road, (210) 692-9600. For more information about the Sun Poets Society, contact: Rod C. Stryker, Editor or Tanya Keyser, Assistant Editor.
Any Takers for “Texas Poet Laureate” Petition?
Data Wrangler Tim Wood of Dallas comes up with wild ideas for promoting poetry. Then he puts them into effect.
There is arts DFW -- the Word, monthly guide to arts in Dallas and Fort Worth. The print publication is distributed monthly throughout the area and via the Web site. There are those three list servs:List, list, who's got the list?
- The Texas Poetry List Serv
- Slam Family List Serv
- Out
You got your poetryvideo.com, the Web site for living poets from around the world. You can watch video of poets performing, read their poetry, read about their poetry and their history and buy their books, CDs and more: “poetryvideo.com: we're here to change how everyone thinks about poetry.”
Now Tim is on a tear to reinstate the annual appointment of a Texas Poet Laureate, a post created by legislative resolution in 1933, and filled continuously through 1981. Tim carried his soapbox to the Texas Book Festival, where he got half a hundred signatures for the petition. “Texas Poet Laureate Now!” has its own Web page at poetryvideo.com.
LOS ANGELES & GREAT BRITAIN
Greetings from socal
Well, it seems I've been all over the world latterly. . .
In the last year I have toured and been at readings in Alabama, Florida, Washington, D.C., Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and then jumped the pond for a series of readings in London and Bristol for the Bristol Poetry Festival. Couple that with keeping our weekly readings at the Moondog Café in Hollywood continuing to grow strong along with my poetic partner-in-crime Donn Deedon (we added a live monthly Internet broadcast recently). It has been quite an adventure to say the least.
This shot I am reporting about a couple of venues: one here in Los Angeles and a special report on the poetry scene in Bristol, UK. The involvement of the Bristol poetry community in the city of Bristol is worthy of special comment.
Venue Report: Exile Music & Books
The reading series at Exile Music & Books in Sherman Oaks, California is hosted by Amelie Frank. Amelie is a gifted poet in her own right in addition to having created Sacred Beverage Press and one of the warmest readings in socal. Up until a few months ago, Amelie's every other Thursday night reading was held at a small coffeehouse in Studio City called the Hot House. She has since moved the reading to Exile and I think it was a great choice. The bookstore features a complete chapbook section for local poets and it is very visible in the store. The night I was at the reading the feature was Redondo Beach phenomenonal poet Barbara Bullard. Barbara is a poetic chanteuse. I have seen her read a few times now. She has featured for me at the dawg and I have seen her at her home reading at Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach. Barbara's poetry is very visual and seductive. In her poem “Going Blind” (Barbara is sight-impaired), she conjures up a world we rarely get a glimpse of: “as if within the close, safe sphere / of the inside slow, walk turn of a rumba. / She is grateful to move this way again / with dignity and grace / in the brief stretch of steps / no one else would think twice about taking.” About eight open readers graced the stage including some regular socal poets like Jack Shafer, Terry McCarty, Xennia and several others. The Exile is a warm room in the back of the bookstore. There is no traffic noise or interruptions during the reading (always a plus if you are used to reading in coffeehouses). There is a small low-profile stage area with a more than adequate PA system.EXILE BOOKS AND MUSIC: 14925 Magnolia, and 1/2 block west of Kester in Sherman Oaks, Cali.
Bristol Poetry Festival
One of the highlights of my trip to Britain was to visit the city of Bristol. I drove up there from London with Victoria Mosley; we rented a car as hers was doing the funky chicken. We went totally British with a Vauxhall and I got to drive for the first time since I had been there. It is more than daunting to drive on the other side of the road and shift with your left hand. I kept feeling like Alice through the Looking Glass: everything was a reflection of what I was used to. And that is the POV I maintained as I was watching myself drive in the mirror. Phew, what a trip! Well, we survived and got up to Bristol, about two and half hours from London, around dinnertime. The reading I was attending was called “The Poetics of Diaspora,” with a terrific lineup of poets including: Rupert Hopkins (he helped put it together), Delphine (a French poet), Megal Ashcroft, Ali Wade, Grimm (all from Bristol), as well as Victoria and myself. The reading was held in the Comedy Pub and was packed. There must have been 200 or more people in there and they wanted poetry. What an incredible audience! My good buddy Tim Gibbard hosted. He and I host together each year at the Austin International Poetry Festival, so we know each other very well. From what I have been told Tim and Rupert have been doing an incredible job involving the community with the reads. The house was packed with people honestly wanting to hear poetry -- they were not poets. Props to those guys!
In my next shot at the column, I will give you some more info on the poetry scene in London as well as giving you the poetic lowdown on poetry in la la land.
