April certainly did bring a busy month for me. The first weekend was not poetry, but our
Mississippi Music Educators/Choral Directors State Conference in Hattiesburg, MS. Three of my wonderful students were chosen to sing with the Elementary Honor Choir. (Only 5 from each school are allowed to tryout.) The concert was beautiful. I also attended many workshops during the week.
The next weekend, April 12-14, was the
Mississippi Poetry Society 2013 Spring Festival at Ocean Springs, MS. You can read about
here. I was proud that my music students (also in TAG) won top honors with their great poems! I'm also pleased that our 3rd graders make their own books and have an "Author's Tea" each year in May. Way to go teachers!
I had a weekend off : )
The last weekend of April was Experiencing Poetry, hosted by Lorelei Books and the Mississippi Writers Guild. The day began with a workshop on Ekphrastic Poetry with facilitator Irene Lathum, a Birmingham poet and novelist. Her debut historical novel LEAVING GEE'S BEND (Putnam/Penguin, 2010) was awarded Alabama Library Association's 2011 Children's Book Award. Her latest novel is DON'T FEED THE BOY (Roaring Brook/Macmillan, 2012). She is the poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal, and has two award-winning poetry collections WHAT CAME BEFORE (Negative Capability Press, 2007) and THE COLOR OF LOST ROOMS (Blue Rooster Press, 2010). The workshop was so informative and fun. We were happy to have a 14 year old young lady in attendance. She is quite talented! It's always a pleasure to know that poetry will continue to thrive in the years to come.
After lunch we heard readings by Irene and also the
2011-2013 Louisiana Poet Laureate Julie Kane. A native of Boston, she has lived in Louisiana since 1976. Her poetry collections include Jazz Funeral (Story Line Press, 2009), which received the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and Rhythm & Booze (University of Illinois Press, 2003), a winner of the National Poetry Series and finalist for the 2005 Poets’ Prize. The anthology that she co-edited with Grace Bauer (Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical and Creative Responses to Everette Maddox) was a finalist for the 2007 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) book prize in poetry. She is also the associate editor for 20th century poetry of the Longman anthology of Southern literature, Voices of the American South (2005), and the co-author of the memoir Counterpart: A South Vietnamese Naval Officer’s War (Naval Institute Press, 1998), which became a History Book Club Featured Alternate Selection. Her poems appear in more than thirty anthologies including Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (Penguin, 2012); Villanelles (Everyman’s Library, 2012); Hot Sonnets (Entasis Press, 2011); The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume 4, Louisiana (Texas Review Press, 2011); A Field of Large Desires: A Greville Press Anthology 1975-2010 (Carcanet, 2010); and The Book of Irish American Poets from the 18th Century to the Present (Notre Dame University Press, 2007). They have also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor and in journals such as The Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and The Southern Review. A former George Bennett Fellow in Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy, New Orleans Writer-in-Residence at Tulane University, and Fulbright Scholar at Vilnius Pedagogical University in Lithuania, Julie teaches at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA where she is a Professor of English and Creative Writing, and on the faculty of the West Chester Poetry Conference.
We also were blessed to hear
Jack B. Bedell, upcoming Louisiana Poet Laureate, Professor of English and coordinator of the programs in Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as editor of Louisiana Literature and director of Louisiana Literature Press. His most recent books are Bone-Hollow, True: New & Selected Poems, Call and Response, and Come Rain, Come Shine, all with Texas Review Press.
A discussion panel was hosted by A native of Meridian, Mississippi, Howard Bahr has authored four novels. In 2009, he received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters fiction award for his fourth novel, Pelican Road. Bahr won this year’s Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Literary Arts. He lives in Jackson Mississippi, and teaches at Belhaven University.
A reception followed in the loft above Lorelei Book Store. Laura was the gracious host, and I had a wonderful time talking with Julie, Jack and his lovely wife.
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