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Stone, daughter of Jeneva Stone, made her debut reading (Edith is eight years old) and Philip Clark read poems from an unpublished  anthology that he is developing on poets who perished from A.I.D.S., including poems by Chasen Gaver and Essex Hemphill, poets who read in the early days of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

Review of Hat City on FutureCycle Poetry

2006 Washington Prize winner John Surowiecki's The Hat City After Men Stopped Wearing Hats was recently reviewed at FutureCycle Poetry by George Drew.

Whiskey in the Garden of Eden reviewed in The Montserrat Review

Sarah Browning's poetry collection, Whiskey in the Garden of Eden, was reviewed recently in The Montserrat Review. Read the review at http://www.themontserratreview.com/bookreviews/whiskeyinthegarden.html

Whiskey in the Garden of Eden was published by The Word Works under its Hilary Tham Capital Collection series earlier this year. You can purchase copies at http://www.wordworksdc.com/books2.html#whiskey.

2006 Washington Prize Winner Receives Verse Drama Prize from The Poetry Foundation

The Poetry Foundation has announced that John Surowiecki is the inaugural recipient of the Verse Drama Prize of $10,000, honoring a living poet who has written a previously unpublished, outstanding original verse drama in English. In addition to the cash prize, the winning manuscript will be presented as a staged reading in New York and Chicago in 2008. The Verse Drama Prize brings renewed attention to an under-recognized area of poetry and encourages poets to work in a new genre, thereby bringing fresh life to the art.

Surowiecki is the author of two poetry collections, Watching Cartoons before Attending a Funeral (White Pine Press, 2003) and The Hat City after Men Stopped Wearing Hats (The Word Works, 2006 Washington Prize), and five chapbooks. My Nose and Me: (A TragedyLite or TragiDelight in 33 Scenes) is his first piece written for the stage.

In 2005, Surowiecki was awarded a poetry fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Office of the Arts. He is a freelance writer and teaches poetry courses at Manchester Community College. His poems have recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Common Ground Review, Connecticut Review, Margie, Nimrod, and Poetry.

The Word Works Publishes Christopher Conlon's Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt

The Word Works is pleased to announce the publication of Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt, a collection of poetry by Christopher Conlon.

“Here she is: Mary Elizabeth Surratt, who was hanged as co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, has taken passionate possession of Christopher Conlon and now lives as ghost in his evocative sequence,” says William Heyen, author of Shoah Train. Conlon melds history with poetry to evocative effect as he imagines the emotional turmoil of a woman infatuated with the man who would become a legend: John Wilkes Booth. The collection includes a Reading Group Guide.

Conlon is a poet, fiction writer, and editor whose books include Gilbert and Garbo in Love: A Romance in Poems (The Word Works, 2003), Thunder­showers at Dusk: Gothic Stories (Rock Village Publishing, 2006) and Poe’s Lighthouse (Cemetery Dance, 2006). His work has been published in Poets & Writers, America, Filmfax, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, and many other periodicals. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt can be ordered online at http://www.wordworksdc.com or at http://www.amazon.com.

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READING SCHEDULE

Wednesday, August 15
7:30 p.m.
The Frederick Coffee Company
100 N. East Street, Frederick, MD
Ph. 301-698-0039

Thursday, November 8
Time TBA
Nora School Poetry Series
955 Sligo Avenue, Silver Spring, MD
Ph. 301-495-NORA
http://www.nora-school.org

Wednesday, November 28
Kensington Row Bookshop
3786 Howard Avenue, Kensington, MD
Ph. 301-949-9416
http://www.kensingtonrowbookshop.com

Sunday, January 13, 2008
IOTA Poetry Series
Iota Bar & Restaurant
2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA
Ph. 703-522-8340 or 703-256-9275