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Thomas Elias Weatherly, born in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1942, passed away July 15, 2014. Poet Burt Kimmelman tells of Weatherly as “a brilliant, eclectic poet, the craft and reach of his poetry astonishing. He was a member of the inaugural poetry workshop at St. Mark’s, under the tutelage of Joel Oppenheimer, and the second cook at the Lions Head when all manner of writer and poet could be found sucking up the nectar there. No degrees post the U.S. Marine Corps Tom was, among other things, the resident bibliophile at the Strand Bookstore in later years, before leaving NYC to return ‘home’ to the South. He taught variously at a number of colleges and universities, from time to time, and with Ted Wilentz edited what at the time was a game-changing anthology of contemporary African American poetry, titled Natural Process (Hill & Wang, 1971) His own poetry was also not only eclectic but game-changing as well.”

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The Center for Media & Social Impact has created numerous documents, codes, and teaching materials related to issues of fair use in the arts, including documentary, journalism, online video, visual arts, library science, poetry, dance, archiving, open courseware, and video. The publication Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry, among many other publications, is available free online or as a PDF download. “This code of best practices helps poets understand when they and others have the right to excerpt, quote and use copyrighted material in poetry. To create this code, poets came together to articulate their common expectations.”

Teaching materials include fair use scenarios, fair use language for course syllabi, teaching fair use for media literacy education, and examples of successful fair use in documentary filmmaking.

I love those little “Free Little Libraries” I see in people’s neighborhoods. If you don’t know what these are (yet), it’s a structure of some kind where people can put books to give them away for free and others can take books for free – or borrow them to read and return with no system for checking in and out. I first saw one while visiting New Orleans and was happy to leave behind the book I had brought to read on the plane. Again, at a conference in Madison, Wisconsin, there was one in the neighborhood nearby the hotel where I was staying. I walked past it each morning, and though I didn’t have any books to give away that time, I made some folded blank books and left them behind to share with others. In my own neighborhood, I want to try a free library, but unfortunately, where we live – so close to a bar district – our own yard, fence, neighborhood signs – are often the target of post-2 a.m. revelers. Alas, I’ve been hesitant to build and put out something that would make such a tempting target. However, I am impressed with and admire those who can do this, which is why I was so upset to read about the plight of Spencer Collins whose free little library was shut down by the due to an ordinance that prohibits free-standing structures on people’s properties in Leawood County, Missouri. After petitioning the council, Spencer will be able to have his library back. Although the article says “temporarily” (ending October 20), I would hope that this becomes something the county, and any others like it with such ordinances, will look to make a permanent exception. For as often as I am distraught and depressed by the news that surrounds us every day, it only takes something like this for me to feel hope. Cheers to Spencer and all the other Free Little Library Curator!

United Nations declared July 12, 2013 Malala Day to honor the fifteen-year-old education rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Malala Yousafzai. Every Day is Malala Day is a photography picture book created by Rosemary McCarny, leader of the Plan International Canada Team. The images are of young women from around the globe, each either labeled by country on the page or in the photo credits in the back. The text comes from letters written to Malala from youth around the world, and famously begins: “Dear Malala – We have never met before, but I feel like I know you. I have never seen you before, but I’ve heard your voice. To girls like me, you are a leader who encourages us. And you are a friend.” A video of the letters that inspired the book can be seen here.

The book is designated by the publisher for ages 5-8, which I would say is in regards to presentation and language reading level. The text discusses the shooting, how bullets are used to “silence girls” but that they are not the only means: early marriage, poverty, discrimination, violence are all named in the book, each with its own symbolic photographic subject. The full color photography on each page is rich – visually and culturally. The compositions are simple, but the message and emotional impact of each is strong.

The book ends, of course, with words of hope, courage, and empowerment. Also included in the book is an excerpt from the speech Malala gave on July 12 to the UN. I think it would be great to share this with young children, since the message is one that should begin at an early age for all if there is going to be any hope of changing attitudes across cultures.

The book was published by Second Story Press in conjunction with McCarny and Plan International, a charity organization started in 1937 to end global poverty. Because I Am A Girl is Plan’s global initiative to end gender inequliaty, promote girls’ rights and lift young girls out of poverty. October 11, 2012 marked the first international Day of the Girl which continues its campaign to ensure girls around the globe receive a minimum of nine years of quality education.

In the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter feature On Writing #33, Marthe Reed comments on the changing landscape and environmental destruction of the birdfoot delta of the Louisiana coastline. Reed, who spent just over a decade in south Lousiana before moving to Syracuse, speaks to the impact we, including herself, have on the natural world around us. She confronts this in a form of “documentary poetry,” which she says: “allows me, an outsider, to write my way into this beautiful, vanishing world without anger, without falling prey to the temptation to preach. Documentary poetics allows grief into the poem without bathos or sentimentality or feigned authority.” Her poem in image “wasted” appears in the column, including painstakingly detailed tracing of the landscape in which to embed her text. Lines like “fecal coliform (sewage),” “chlorine, metal complexing agents,” and “ammonia 17B-estradiol” seep out into the waterway space on the page, just as in real life. The combination of her personal narrative, environmental research, and this resulting work have a lasting impact on the reader, just as I’m sure she hopes to do, answering her own question: “Is it possible to bring urgency to the back page news item, the flickering story on the nightly news?”

In the editor’s note of the latest issue of Pleiades, Wayne Miller announces that this will be his last issue with the journal. He will be teaching in the fall at the University of Colorado Denver and work on the staff of Copper Nickel. “I’m very grateful to the many extraordinary authors I’ve had the privilege to publish over the last twelve years,” he writes, “and I’m indebted to the wonderful editors I’ve worked with…” Phong Nguyen and Kathryn Nuernberger will be in charge of most managerial items. “I have no doubt Pleiades will continue to be a vibrant and important voice in the world of contemporary literature under their stewardship, and I feel privileged to have played a role in the journal’s history and development during my time here,” he said.

Awesome Tapes from Africa is exactly as it proclaims. Ethnomusicologist and DJ Brian Shimkovitz curates this collection of hundreds of cassette tape recordings from various regions of Africa dating back to the 70s. Shimkovitz recently contributed a mix-tape of popular 50s Egyptian music for New Directions Books in celebration of the US release of Stealth by Sonallah Ibrahim, Egyptian activist and novelist.

Motion collage artist and poet Nathaniel Whitcomb had already created a mini-animated trailer to celebrate the book: “Inspired by vintage View Masters, Whitcomb flips through photos taken by Don Church of 1950s Cairo to let the viewer ‘peek in with care’ to Ibrahim’s childhood world. Accompanying the animation is music by the great 20th century Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.”

New Directions also interviewed Shimovitz about his work with Awesome Tapes from Africa, his creation of a mix tape ins
pired by Stealth, and the future new label created for ATFA.

Paul Nelson writes: It is almost August once again and this means POSTCARDS!

The August Poetry Postcard Fest is an exercise in responding to other poets. You write a poem a day for the month of August, write it directly onto a postcard and send it to the next name on your list. When you receive a postcard poem from someone, the idea is that the next poem you send out will be a response to the poem you just received, even though it will be sent to a different person. Ideally you will write 31 new poems and receive 31 postcard poems from all over the place.

To participate, send your name, mailing address, and email to [email protected]. Use the word “postcard” in the subject line.

Again, one long list will go out this year this year instead of individual lists of 32 names. You can send postcard poems to the 31 names below your name, please do not use this list for advertising or for any other purpose than postcard poems. DO NOT SPAM THE LIST.

I [Paul] will send out the list twice. Our international participants often require an earlier start due to longer delivery times, so I will send the incomplete list out on July 16th and the final version around July 26th. The 26th is the cut off date, I will not be adding any more names to the list after that, the list sent out on the 26th will be the final list for this year. Really. I’ll be out of the U.S. myself. Please be sure to send in your information before that. I will email the list to the participants in a google document as well as in the body of the email.

If you know anyone who would like to participate, feel free to forward them this message! Hope you enjoy the Poetry Postcard Fest!

Directions:

On or about Sunday, July 27th, look at the list to see the three people listed below your name. Write them each an original poem on a postcard, put their address on the card and affix the necessary postage. $1.15 for international cards leaving the U.S. Consider scanning your cards or photographing them to document each poem/card before you send them out. Do not recycle old poems for this. Do not compose a long poem in advance and cut it up into hunks for this. It is an experiment in composing in the moment and your poem has an audience of one. This is designed in part as a conversation.

(If you are near the bottom of the list, send a card to anyone below you then start again at the top.) Ideally, you would write 3 different short poems — remember they are being composed on a postcard and please keep your handwriting clear. If your handwriting is lousy, typing the poems is ok. If you have folks outside your own country on your list, you can start sending poems early…)

Write about something that relates to your sense of “place” however you interpret that, something about how you relate to the postcard image, what you see out the window, what you’re reading, a dream you had that morning, or an image from it, etc. Like “real” postcards, get to something of the “here and now” when you write. Present tense is preferred… Do write original poems for the project. Taking old poems and using them is not what we have in mind. You may want to use epigraphs. One participant last year used his daily I Ching divination to inform his poems.

This is also an experiment in community consciousness. Try to respond to cards that you get with subject, image or any kind of link if possible. Often newsworthy events happen in August. How would our community respond? Letting a card that you receive linger for a while before you respond to the next person on your list is the preferred method. When you go to your mail box each day, put the bills aside, read the poems you get and think about them as you compose to the next person on your list.

A GREAT story about one man’s conversion from being a postcard CHEATER is here: http://changeorder.typepad.com/weblog/2010/08/sending-postcards-to-strangers.html

A workshop handout for the poetry postcard writing exercise is here: http://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Postcard-Exercise.pdf

You may also view that handout at this link: http://paulenelson.com/workshops/poetry-postcard-exercise/

Monsterama is an Atlanta convention that celebrates the fantastic in film, literature, and art. It takes place from August 1-3, 2014. The convention will feature celebrity, artist, and author guests, screenings, programming on film, literature, and art, as well as other fan related events and panels.

From Running Press, Tequlia Mockinbird should be every readers compendium volume! Author Tim Ferdale “Broadway actor, word nerd, and cocktail enthusiast” (and author of the YA comic novel Better Nate Than Ever) offers readers/drinkers 65 literary themed recipes along with commentary on the source novels, drinking games, food recipes, and illustrations.

A few examples: One Flew Over the Cosmo’s Nest; Rye and Prejudice; The Cooler Purple; Frangelico and Zooey; A Midsummer Night’s Beam; The Old Man and the Seagram’s; The Sound and the Slurry – and I could go on! The book is divided into sections Drinks for Dames and Gulps for Guys (why the gender divide, I don’t know – I found BOTH lists appealing!), and Bevies for Book Clubs, Refreshments for Recovering Readers, Bar Bites for Book Hounds, and Games for Geeks (with games for Drinking All by Your Lonesome as well as Drinking with Friends).

I’m only sorry I didn’t have this book when I was in grad school – it would have made all those novel-a-week classes a lot more fun! A definite must have for literary lovers, a great gift for bookies on your list, and required reading for anyone heading off to English grad programs this fall!

And to look forward to: Federle’s Hickory Daiquiri Dock is due out December 2014. Nursery rhymes made even more fun? Who knew!

Get the latest issue of Iron Horse Literary Review, then read Anne Valente’s fiction piece “Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down,” and be rewarded with both the excellent prose and the interview with her that follows. Valente discusses her inspiration for the piece: “This story did develop from so many recent news stories about school shootings, as well as the difficult of even imagining the pain for everyone involved. From the remove of watching on television or reading the newspaper, I felt overwhelmed but also guilty for feeling this, as if I had no right. After the Sandy Hook shooting in particular, I couldn’t stop thinking about the unbearable weight of that kind of grief and where that pressure can even go. From there emerged the image of a sorrow-turned-to-fire, of grief having no outlet but to burn everything down.”

More generally, you also learn about Valente, that she has always wanted to be a writer, and if she wasn’t a writer, according to the career aptitude test in her high school, she’d be a tree surgeon: “In retrospect, this doesn’t seem to far off the mark; when I’m not writing, I’m usually outside or wanting to be outside.” Currently, she is working on a full-length novel that grew out of this published story as well as a collection of short stories about the city of St. Louis.

Right from the front cover (her passport) of the new issue of Brick, you can tell that this issue means to celebrate Mavis Gallant. And as you open the issue, you get a quote from her before you delve into the issue itself: “I have lived in writing, like a spoonful of water in a river.”

It starts with a short piece by the editors that discusses “Working with Mavis Gallant” as in 2007, they published an interview with her, conducted in French and then translated. Gallant called many times to make corrections and work on editing the interview, eventually relinquishing the care of the work to Tara Quinn. “There would be no more auspicious a start to life at Brick than to be show by Mavis Gallant how to edit an interview,” Quinn and Nadia Szilvassy write. “The experience informed how we edited all interviews in issues to come. The voice had to come through wit ha force equal to that of Mavis on that first phone call. We’d all do well to keep listening.”

The issue continues with four more pieces “For Mavis Gallant” from Michael Helm, Francine Prose, Alison Harris, and Michael Ondaatje.

Paula Carter writes that, “live nonfiction storytelling is hitting a nerve. Audiences are showing up all over the country, and even more are listening online, looking to enjoy some real-life struggle vicariously—or, for that matter, to tell their ow personal stories. As the scene continues to grow, it is becoming clear that this is a golden age of storytelling, and it is something to relish—maybe even to love.” This is part of her contribution to a section in the current issue of Creative Nonfiction called “Under the Umbrella: Getting Intimate with a Crowd of Strangers.”

Creative nonfiction doesn’t have to just be on paper. Carter explains it this way: “Like the narrative nonfiction essay, live stories reveal the truths of who we are. They air the unspoken, make fun of idiosyncrasies, and demonstrate our common humanity. Unlike at a comedy show, or even a theater production, audiences are asked to connect directly with the person on stage. Spectators fail and fall in love and overcome obstacles along with the storytellers. We see ourselves in the stories. We’ve been there.”

In the next section, Graham Shelby takes us on stage with him as he goes through the experience of performing at The Players, The Moth Mainstage: “My story will be recorded and maybe someday broadcast to the roughly one million weekly listeners of The Moth Radio Hour,” he writes. Shelby tells us that there is something very rewarding with this type of nonfiction:

“I love writing. I do. But it can be isolating. When we’re writing in our rooms, it’s easy for our eventual readers, unknown in name or number, to remain abstract. So easy to focus on what we want, rather than what they need. Live storytelling never lets you forget about the audience. The form offers one more gift, as I see it, one that springs from the very aspects of storytelling that sometimes keeps writers away: it’s public, it’s interactive, and you have to go somewhere to do it. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, that means you leave the house with one story, but you come home with two.”

Both pieces are insightful and great reads. Editor Lee Gutkind writes in his opening note, “Storytelling is our oldest, most powerful art form; we use it to entertain, to inform, and to inspire. A good story can change the world. That is what his issue is all about.”

The Broadsided art/poetry collaboration for July features “A Poem by Brian McGuigan,” which is actually a poem by Kate Lebo, and art by Sarah Van Sanden The website features a collaborators’ Q&A, in which Artist Sarah Van Sanden notes, “The poem immediately evoked the yin/yang symbol for me and everything followed that lead by drawing forms from the poem.” Poetry lovers and those who simply love postering the neighborhoods are encouraged to download the broadside and “vectorize” your quadrant! Also of interest, it would seem Kate Lebo is something of a pie aficionado. Check out her Pie School, “a cliche busting pastry academy.”