Coming Early October in the Land:

[Shared from the Literary Cleveland newsletter:]

Thrity Umrigar & Karan Mahajan

Wednesday, October 4 at 7pm at CCPL Parma-Snow

Spoken Word: Poetry Open Mic Nights

Thursday, October 5 at 7pm at Kaiser Gallery

Literary Citizenship Seminar

Saturday, October 7 at 4:30pm virtual with Ashland University

Con Tu Variety Show

Sunday, October 8 at 10pm at Dunlaps Corner Bar

Indigenous People's Celebration

Monday, October 9 at 8pm virtual with Ashland University

Poetry ~ Cathy Barber & EF Schraeder

Wednesday, October 11 at 7pm at Macs Backs-Books on Coventry

Broadsides & Ephemera featuring Judith Mansour

Thursday, October 12 at 7pm at Loganberry Books

Cris Harris & Mary Quade

Saturday, October 14 at 7pm at Macs Backs-Books on Coventry

Stephen Haven at Ohio Poetry Day

Stephen Haven of Ashland University was named the Ohio Poet of the Year (see my previous post)* for his newest poetry collection Dust and Bread, and, as part of the Ohio Poetry Day celebration, gave a reading at Mount Union College on October 18.

Haven's reading featured work from the prize-winning collection, and also some more recent work, poems about being a single father, poems about China, poems about growing up as the kid of a preacher in the Mohawk Valley (including a sestina about being snowbound with a bishop, which I found quite a tour de force). His reading was alive with alliteration and clever internal slant-rhyme.

The Ohio Poetry Day event included a lot more than just the reading by the poet of the year. Following the reading and signing by Haven, the winning poems from the Ohio Poetry Day contests were read.

Some of the other poetry activities were poetry workshops and games-- including three overnight poem-writing contests** where the challenge was given 10 pm on Friday night and the poems turned in 10 am Saturday morning, the Evan Lodge workshop (with the interesting feature that the writers of the poems participated... anonymously. The authors of each poem were unnamed.) And an amusing poetry riddle game, "stinky pinky," from the Alliance poetry group (examples: A small flying insect? Wee bee. Wet canine? Soggy doggy. Tilted sepulcher? A tipped crypt. Beginnning of a lawsuit? Initiation of litigation.)

• find Dust and Bread by Stephen Haven at Mac's Backs, along with other books by Steven Haven.

(The pictures in a slightly larger size can be viewed in my album. I'm sorry that I only have four decent shots of the event-- I was inadequately prepared, and my camera ran out of battery right in the middle of the reading!)

---

*one of two Ohio Poets of the Year in 2009. Although it's unusual for the award to be split, this year Terry Hermsen and Stephen Haven share the honors of Ohio Poet of the Year.

**Two of which I won. Yes! Too bad that the art of writing poems fast is not necessarily the same as the art of writing good poems.

Ashland University Visiting Fellow

Ashland University the Provost’s Office and the Master of Fine Arts Program Welcome

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow

October 26-30, 2009

Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Monday, October 26, 7:00 p.m.                            
Ridenour Room, Dauch College of Business

Truth Under Pressure: Strategies for Writing Poetry, Fiction & Nonfiction

Tuesday, October 27, 7:00 p.m.                                  
Ronk Lecture Hall, Schar College of Education

Keynote Address

Writing on the Wall: Public and Private Language in the Wake of 9/11

Thursday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.                          
Trustees Room, Myers Convocation Center

Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s most recent book is the memoir, Not Now, Voyager.   Among her 21 books are the novels The Writing on the Wall; In the Family Way, Disturbances in the Field; Leaving Brooklyn (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award) and Rough Strife (nominated for a National Book Award).. She is also the author of three story collections; the poetry collection, In Solitary; the memoir, Ruined by Reading, and the editor of The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald, a collection of essays and interviews.

Her work has been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays, and many other anthologies, and her reviews have appeared in leading magazines and newspapers.  Ms. Schwartz has translated several books from Italian, including A Place to Live: Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg, and Smoke Over Birkenau, by Liana Millu.

For more info:
Ashland University
Bixler Center for the Humanities
401 College Avenue
Ashland, OH 44805
swells@ashland.edu
(419)289-5957
Fax: (419)289-5255