STORMWASH is an inter-arts program presented by the Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington, Artists for Climate Awareness, the Writers Guild at Bloomington, Windfall Dancers, Inc., and musicians Julian Douglas and Kyle Quass.
Tony Brewer, Zilia Balkansky-Sellés, Peter Kaczmarczyk, Ray Zdonek, Lara Tokarski, Walter Biskupski, and Arizona will perform climate conscious poems as spoken word with expressive dance accompaniment by Erin Strole, Joanne Shank, Maxime Werk, Corinne Jones, Kay Olges, Kara Lynn Hayes, and Nonie Daniels. Julian Douglas and Kyle Quass will provide musical interludes.
Thus the announcement. The event: The official debut of STORMWASH: ENVIRONMENTAL POEMS (see March 11, February 12, 5, et al.), courtesy of the Arts Alliance Center in Bloomington’s College Mall.
Spoken word performers, dancers, and musicians advance the goals of this year’s ACA opening program for the gallery show Depictions: Earth, Life, and Our Shared Responsibility, a guided meditation to elevate consciousness about earth’s vicissitudes, and our role in counteracting them through our personal practices of sustainability.
In STORMWASH: ENVIRONMENTAL POEMS (The Grind Stone, April 2024), 40 poets address the climate crisis and its various effects.
With me one of the poets with “The Drowned City,” a reaction to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and the consequent flooding of New Orleans, originally published in THE MAGAZINE OF SPECULATIVE POETRY. Though, having not been matched with a dancer, one not read this night (as other poems — with dancers — but out-of-town poets or poets that couldn’t make it this evening had substitute readers. One does what one can).
For others, though, copies of STORMWASH were available at the Arts Center, and can be found on Amazon as well by pressing here. (Hint: my poem is on pages 27-28.)
And so, NaPoWriMo time again (cf. April 15, just below), or today’s poetry challenge had to do with contrasts. In short: Write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. That is, concrete vs. abstract, the example they gave concentrating on sharp, sensual images seen relaxing on a summer day, with an ending line on wasting one’s life.
Having relaxed too much, then, one supposes? The ideas are connected — if unexpected.
And so it came to me, having already used three or so prompts to write poems about my cat, why not (sigh) again. But this time a great ending line came to me too! Even if, perhaps, mildly repulsive, but that’s pets too, isn’t it — anyway, sometimes?
Thus, tipping one’s hat to the Goth Cat Triana (“black-cloud-over-snow cat” being, I understand, a Chinese term for this particular kind of cat):
TRIANA
The “Goth” cat, but graceful, too,
slinking, stalking,
brave and skilled huntress,
silent feet, tiptoes,
“black-cloud-over-snow” cat,
darker than coal, but
white chest, tummy, feet too,
dark and light face and chin.
Comical sometimes
but beautiful as she purrs,
yawns, gets up, saunters.
I wonder how mice taste.
Let us go back in the Wayback Machine, for exactly one week:
So, somewhat against my best judgement (that is, things can pall if they become too routine — but then one can always quit early and who else will know?) I accepted a dare to myself and “joined” NaPoWriMo, the write-a-poem-from-a-daily-prompt challenge for National Poetry Month, a.k.a. April. But the NaPo guys had to know better for April 8, at least for a broad swath of states from Texas to Maine, where there was to be a total solar eclipse.
Thus, for April 8, a prompting for poems of doomed love, of the breakup of couples, on a day when the sun and moon . . . well, of a union that did not last long. Did one sense a subject?
And so for today, as said a week later, the subject matter is stamp collecting or, rather, unusual stamps. Or, well let’s let the NaPo guys say it themselves: Take a look at @StampsBot, and become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. For example, while it certainly makes sense that China would issue a stamp featuring a panda, it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honor 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in stamp form. From Romanian mushrooms to Sudanese weavers to the Marshall Islands getting far too excited over personal computing, stamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.
The Isle of Man? The Manx? Does one once more sense something obvious (hint: it’s not cats with no tails, though they can be included)? So:
THE ISLE OF MAN
(” it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honor 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in stamp form” — NaPoWriMo prompt. 4-15-24)
The Isle of Man honors
2001, the Space Odyssey film,
but is that, then, so odd?
Is not the home of us all, the Earth,
an island of man;
and is not our collective journey
around the sun,
and with that star to who knows where,
an odyssey that would top any other
our minds can conceive?
Be that as it may, it was also a special session with the featured readers presenting selections from the December/January THE RYDER’s “Short Stories from Bloomington Writers” issue (in which this April, in a newly named Second Thursday Spoken Word, the other three tales from that issue, including my own “Casket Suite,” will be featured as well). This from “New Year’s First Sunday Brings Two Ryder Stories” from January 7 this year. For the publication of the RYDER Fiction Edition itself, cf. December 12 2023. And now, on a rainy Thursday, and yes, the second for April, the other three stories have been presented.
But the rain, alas, may have been what made for an overly small audience at downtown Bloomington’s Backspace Gallery for a session (even if I say so myself) that really deserved better. Also even if time constraints caused the stories themselves to be excerpted or otherwise slightly shortened in their presentations. The authors, in order of reading, were Paula W. Sunderman with “Day of the Dead,” Laura Lasuertmer with “A Light in the Woods,” and (ahem) me with “Casket Suite” — or, as I jokingly announced it, “Casket Suite Minus One,” with just four of its printed five “movements” read. For those present, however, MC Tony Brewer had brought a sheaf of RYDER December-January issues so those who wished could peruse the original tales as well.
For the musical part, the session began and closed with bass guitar solos by Brendan Keller-Tuberg from Canberra, Australia, who also played for a brief interlude between the formal readings and an also sparse two-participant Open Mic segment. But, small numbers or not, a program as a whole that should not have been missed.
So, somewhat against my best judgement (that is, things can pall if they become too routine — but then one can always quit early and who else will know?) I accepted a dare to myself and “joined” NaPoWriMo, the write-a-poem-from-a-daily-prompt challenge for National Poetry Month, a.k.a. April. But the NaPo guys had to know better for April 8, at least for a broad swath of states from Texas to Maine, where there was to be a total solar eclipse.
Didn’t they?
You see, Indianapolis — and fifty or so miles south, right here in Bloomington — was smack in the center of the eclipse path. For my own case, I watched it in Dunn Meadow, an Indiana University gathering place, absorbing the wonder of the crowd — here largely composed of cheering students as total darkness approached, then (with a “diamond ring” flash with the first light’s reappearance between two lunar mountains) was re-dispelled, though I must confess with a certain jadedness myself, having observed a similar total solar eclipse in Hopkinsville, KY in 2017 (cf. August 22 2017). But even for me still a thrill, and one well worth enjoying again.
Whereas, for mere poem-writing . . . well, I’ll confess too that I first-drafted this beforehand, this morning, but as I say they still should have known better. You see, this was today’s prompt, for April 8: “a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.”
Thus:
ECLIPSE
It was fated to fail,
this joining of sun and moon:
he was hot, she colder —
icy, in fact, when
their relationship started,
his glory hidden
while she had her way —
but only for minutes.
He came to his senses,
his brilliance intact
at their ultimate breakup,
complete,
or at least for the next few
years.
April’s Bloomington Writers Guild “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (see March 3, et al.), at the Juniper Gallery on West Kirkwood Ave., deviated from the usual pattern of two featured readers, a break, and an open session for walk-on participants. In view of a soon-ending spring school semester, coordinator Molly Gleeson opted instead for a special program honoring local students and teachers. Thus seven readers (truncated from nine, as two were unable to make it) with short presentations comprised the first part, with (as it turned out, due to limited time) a segue, sans break, to three audience readers.
Thus the program began with Writers Guild member Tonia Matthew discussing her role with Bloomington’s VITAL– Volunteers In Tutoring Adult Learners — program at the Monroe County Public Library; followed by three high school students, Percy Patterson, Maci Day, and Allister Farrell, with poetry; Guild member Erin Strole on her path to becoming a teacher at Bloomington North and on teaching in general; another high school poet, Mya Coleman; and “70-year-old Ivy Tech student” Andre Deloney on, among other things, his work with county jail staff on helping inmates improve reading skills.
This then was followed, as noted, by we three walk-ons, with me coming last with a very short story combining the theme of teaching and learning with one of darkness, the latter in view of tomorrow’s upcoming solar eclipse (participants also found eclipse glasses on their chairs when they came in, courtesy of MC Gleeson), “School Nights,” originally published in Gothic Blue Book, October 2014, on the journey of a possibly naive young girl to her realization that she was a vampire.
Since the first automobiles rolled down a street, the range of human emotions attached to these machines has run from love to hate, humor to horror, joy to sadness. This book is a sampling of how fiction writers have viewed the automobile, from yesteryear to tomorrow.
Famous writers, experienced story tellers, and new literary voices are mixed together between these covers.
Automobilia is the first in a trilogy of stories and poems featuring that one machine that has changed the face of the earth, for the good and for the bad . . . the automobile.
Authors include: Jack Finney, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Christian Matheson, Richard Matheson, J. P. Seewald, Bruce Boston, Marge Simon, Kevin David Anderson, Katherine Tomlinson, James S. Dorr, William F. Nolan, Dean Wild, Sarah Key, Robbie Sheerin, and J.R. Hayslett, among many others.
This spark any memories? No? Well in fairness there was a mention — that it had been finally published! — as recently as January 22 this year, but prior to that we must journey back to January, two years before, for when I’d received payment; then December, 2021 (contract received); then November, 2020 (story accepted), for a tale which had been submitted in late spring 2016. For a book about cars, that’s some pretty slow driving.
But anyhow, my author’s copy is finally here, chock full of both stories and poems with mine on page 325, “The Christmas Vulture.” And a big book too, at more than 440 pages!
So my story, originally published in UNTIED SHOELACES OF THE MIND, Fall 2010, is about pretty much what its title says — and with automobiles too! But for more, you will just have to read the book — which looks to be a winner! — for further details on which press here!
Well I don’t know if everyone, reader or listener, was necessarily a signed-up member of the Bloomington Writers Guild — poets can turn up in all kinds of places! — but credit, at least, for the organization goes to Guild Chair April Ridge. As well as kudos to The Monroe, a frighteningly large apartment complex on Bloomington’s east side, for hosting the event.
Plus nice snacks too.
The call had gone out a month before from April: [W]ould you like to read at the World Poetry Day Open Mic at the Monroe on 3/21/24? There’s a 10 minute spot with your name on it if you want it! And Tony or I can give you a ride to and back as well. Tony being Writers Guild past officer and all around firebrand Tony Brewer who also led off and MCd the event. And some twenty-two poets, give or take, took the bait — for the reading, that is, if not for the ride — to fill three hours of five and ten minute individual sessions.
And so, surprisingly, it came off last night only about five minutes out from the precise 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. listed schedule, granted with a few blank spots written in that allowed some adjustment. Most poets read five minutes, though with me one of eight tagged for ten minute sessions. So, natch, I read horror poetry, “vampire and vampire adjacent,” cut down from a reading I’d done last Halloween-ish for “Last Sunday Poetry” (cf. October 29), at roughly half-way through the listed lineup.
It seemed to go over well, as did the whole event!
Strange Storm Described for March 3rd Sunday Write (Feb., Meantime, Having Been Lost in the Shuffle)
So the time comes again for the Bloomington Writers Guild’s “Third Sunday Write,” with me as usual a few days late. At the least (see January 23, et al., but also below for a “missing” last month). With four prompts supplied by moderator Shana Ritter, I chose the third, to “Describe a Storm” — an active one, seemingly popular with other writers as well, though mine perhaps just a tiny bit different. Thus:
A Whirlwind of Frogs
Yes, another whirlwind of frogs greeted Wednesday,
green hopping as it hit,
the ground teeming with frogs’ legs
(still attached to the amphibians, of course,
this is weather, not dinner)
but messy underfoot as one steps on them.
Take care you don’t slip!
But it could be worse, these changes wrought
by a warming climate;
in California they have rains of sharks —
it was on the TV —
but luckily less deadly than it might seem,
they falling through air which they cannot breathe
forcing a passiveness on them.
Here though I fear summer,
the long-range forecast predicting, first, turtles
(snappers among them!)
but then alligators.
February’s entry, in the meantime, somehow got lost in the shuffle (I didn’t get to it, in fact, until February 29, a strange day in itself and one dominated by sales for Femmes Fatales and another reprint for New Orleanian vampiresses), but was no great shakes. Still, for the sake of completeness, here’s what you (probably) didn’t miss:
(3. When I Looked Up)
When I looked up,
Wow! a pizza-moon
round and orange
filling the sky!
“Family size,” no doubt.
Until, bat-like, black clouds
nibbled the edges —
politely, in sections —
but nevertheless the light
growing dimmer.
Gold going to darkness.
Just a quick note for “The Writing Life.” Tuesday, March 19, the email received: I have attached the contract for your review and signature. Once we have received the signed copy we will proceed with the editing process. The story is “The Blue Man,” a variant on the fairy tale “Bluebeard,” accepted for ONCE UPON A FUTURE TIME, VOLUME 4 (see March 16, below). And so this afternoon, downloaded and signed, the contract whisked back to Editor/Publisher Logan Uber, with more to appear here as it becomes known.
jamesdorrwriter 