Heavenly Graduation, Kelly Cherry, Jacklyn Potter Young Poets

How did The Word Works ever manage to spend 35 seasons doing poetry at the Miller Cabin? The answer: we had Jacklyn Potter running the show for 22 years and she loved the out of doors.

Moving the Joaquin Miller Poetry Series to the Planetarium of the Rock Creek Nature is clearly a heavenly graduation, especially on a day such as June 9, 2011 was with its 100 degree Fahrenheit reading, the oppressive humidity and annoying gnats. None of that inside the pleasantly air-conditioned Planetarium where Ranger Scott treated us to the night sky that Joaquin Miller saw over the cabin when it was still in its original location (now Meridian Hill Park).

Our featured readers were: Kelly Cherry and our Jacklyn Potter Young Poets Julia Holemans and Cori Stash. Mel Belin read Joaquin Miller’s poem “Columbus.”

Kelly read from two books, both of which are now being sold in the lobby of Nature Center for entire eight weeks of the Miller Poetry Series.

Here’s a poem from The Retreats of Thought, which is a collection of sonnets that according to Daniel Tobin “dares nothing less than ‘to drag truth from hiding.’”

A BRIEF REVIEW OF WHAT WE HAVE COVERED SO FAR

I think that something and nothing are one

thing, the moon with one side bright as joy,

the other dark, unshined on by the sun

and cold as January in Sheboy-

gan. I think creation and consciousness

are the same one side of a Moebius strip,

unending, so that each is more or less

the other. I think time is round trip,

a journey sweet but often hard and lonely

and taken on the train of thought from here

to here, that all times happen at once, only

past, present, future are how they appear.

I think that when we die we die for good

and ever, making room in the neighborhood.

Kelly Cherry

from The Retreats of Thought

Copyright © 2009 by Kelly Cherry

Join us Thursday June 16 at 7 PM

Rock Creek Nature Center

5200 Glover Road NW DC for

Pia Taavila & Ian Williams

Miller Cabin's Moveable Feast

While Joaquin Miller had to deal with the “perils of civilization,” the volunteers and audience of the June 9, 2009, opening night program had to deal with the perils of Mother Nature. Thunder, lightning, and rain sent participants directly to the Sixth Presbyterian Church where we typically have our receptions and our programs when inclement weather occurs. However, the church was dark and locked despite assurances from our contact Mr. White that he was primed to be there for us.

Karren Alenier suggested that we drive to Connecticut Avenue and try the new café attached to the Avalon Theatre. One of the assembled audience members called ahead and asked for permission and voila—a moveable feast (Marcela Sulak, one of the readers, had brought her birthday cake)!

The gracious manager and staff of the Avalon Café welcomed the dozen people with carrot cake and were happy to serve us coffee, tea, and spirits. Marcela had poems fitting the occasion—sonnets about food and coffee that got the staff chuckling and nodding their heads.

Deborah Bernhardt who had driven all the way from Massachusetts with a friend presented a lush landscape of language in the tradition of Gertrude Stein.

It was definitely a family affair. Lead co-host Kathi Morrison-Taylor invoked the spirits of Jacklyn Potter (the former director of the Cabin Series) and the late Word Works Board Members Robert Sargent and Hilary Tham. Mel Belin gave an inspired reading of Joaquin Miller’s poem “Columbus.” Paul Hopper in the open reading hosted by co-host Deborah Ager read a trio of poems honoring Jacklyn, his mother, and a late NIH doctor who had visited the Cabin. Marcela’s daughter wander on and off “stage” as her mom read.


We apologize to anyone who came either to picnic grove 6 where the Cabin sits or to the church and couldn’t find us. Nonetheless, we had an inspired reading in an unexpected and wonderful venue. Thank you to Henry Passman and his staff at the Avalon. Join us next week on Tuesday June 16 to hear Tyler Caroline Mills with the Jacklyn Potter Young Poets Katherine Casey and Baobao Zhang.

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.