Word Works Authors and Moving Words

Last night, wearing my hat as Moving Words Program Co-ordinator, I attended a reading by the winners of the Arlington, Virginia Cultural Affairs Moving Words contest for adults. The winners were selected by Kim Roberts, who founded the contest in 1999, and Jeneva Stone. The program was held at the Shirlington Busboys and Poets restaurant. There were six winners and two are Word Works authors: Mel Belin (Flesh That Was Chrysalis) and Kathi Morrison-Taylor, a new author in The Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection imprint. Other readers were Philip Clark, Katie Kemple, and Madelyn Rosenberg. Absent was Natalie Le Beau. Visit http://www.arlingtonarts.org/cultural_affairs/movingwords.htm to read the winning poems which will be posted as attractive broadsides on Northern Virginia Metrobuses operating in Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, Fairfax County and Fairfax City.

Other interesting highlights of the evening were that Edith Stone, daughter of Jeneva Stone, made her debut reading (Edith is eight years old) and Philip Clark read poems from an unpublished  anthology that he is developing on poets who perished from A.I.D.S., including poems by Chasen Gaver and Essex Hemphill, poets who read in the early days of the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series.

If you haven't been to an event at the Shirlington Busboys, check out Fred Joiner's weblog. What I loved about last evening is that people of all ages and varying interests in poetry came together to hear the featured Moving Words winners and the open mic readers. Hats off to Norman Thornton for moderating the evening.

In the Empire State is Poets House. Each spring, this national poetry library founded in 1985 by Stanley Kunitz and with currently over 50,000 volumes of poetry puts on annual showcase. This year, they temporarily housed the showcase in the New York Public Library at Jefferson Market. Annually The Word Works has participated in this showcase of new books added to the Poets House collection.

This year Karren Alenier attended the showcase with Word Works book designer Janice Olson. Each of the

 five books we exhibited were designed by Janice.




Book titles in this showcase were: Call from Paris by Prartho Sereno, Green Bodies by Rosemary Winslow, The Hat City After Men Stopped Wearing Hats by John Suroweicki, Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt, Whiskey in the Garden of Eden by Sarah Browning,

Jacklyn Potter Tribute

Jacklyn Potter, who ran the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series from 1984 to April 2005 when she died unexpectedly, was celebrated by her friends on April 13 at the Iota Restaurant and Bar in Arlington, Virginia, in the poetry series that


Miles David Moore hosts. Many people came to hear Karren Alenier, Anne Becker, Michael Davis, Patricia Garfinkel, Myra Sklarew, and Marchant Wentworth read Jacklyn's poetry. Lois McBride made a cake honoring Jacklyn's love of the Miller Cabin.

Toujours le Mot was how Jacklyn signed her letters.

The 2008 Miller Cabin Poetry Series fundraising campaign was launched at this event and The Word Works has already received some donations to help fund this year's programs. Please contact editor@wordworksdc.com if you wish to make a contribution in honor of Jacklyn. Jacklyn was also the lead editor of Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin MIller's Cabin 1984-2001. Karren Alenier
read Jacklyn's poem "Boundaries" from that anthology. Here is a poem from Jacklyn's unpublished work.

Return to the Gallery
(To Mary Cassatt’s “Child in the Straw Hat”)

For seven years I wandered
through a planetary bower.
The straw brim of your hat
circling toward me
brought me home.

Here in the city of winter flowers
your breath, rich as pomegranate seeds,
hardens into pigment.

I cannot speak. You cannot see.
A blind man’s cane strikes the years
in sidewalk cracks beside the avenue.

by Jacklyn W. Potter

Copyright © 2008 by the estate of Jacklyn Potter

Gallery of poets paying tribute to Jacklyn.