The Manchester Chapter of The Connecticut Poetry Society
Get a poem from Paul
Minutes of Last Meeting
Treasurer's Report
WWWC Topics
Do we really need an election of officers?
The next meeting is our holiday meeting, December 13, 2008-- let's make plans.
Freshwater request for submissions
CPS Topics
Dues due?
Current contests--CONNECTICUT RIVER REVIEW POETRY CONTEST
Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS
Submit poems: Dec. 1- Feb. 28th 2009(postmark)
Prizes of $400, $200, and $100.
Send up to 3 unpublished poems, any form, 80 line limit each. Include two copies of each poem: one with complete contact info and one with NO contact info. Both copies should be marked CRR Contest. Include SASE for results only (no poems will be returned). Winning poems must be submitted by disc or electronically following notification. Send fee of $15 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Connecticut River Review.
CPS is pleased to announce that the judge for the 2009 Connecticut River Review Contest will be Brian Clements, Professor of Writing at Western Connecticut State University and coordinator of WestConn’s MFA in Professional Writing. He edits Sentence: a journal of prose poetics and Sentence’s parent press, Firewheel Editions. His most recent books are Disappointed Psalms (Meritage Press) and And How to End It (prose poems from Quale Press).
Send submissions to CT River Review Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.
News Item
This link-- The London Times Online will take you to a London Times Online article I read from at the meeting. It discusses the impact of a program led by an Irish woman to introduce people to great poetry read by professional actors, actresses and entertainers. Definitely worth the read.
Barack Obama
Barack Obama still has time for a little poetry
President Elect Barack Obama may be busy assembling his transition team and meeting with economic advisers to discuss healing the blighted US economy.
By Catherine Elsworth
Last Updated: 8:37PM GMT 07 Nov 2008
Barack Obama still has time for a little poetry
Barack Obama carries the book of poems in his right arm as he and his wife Michelle leave their daughters' school Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
But it appears he still has time for a little poetry.
Three days after winning the presidential election, Barack Obama was spotted in Chicago carrying a book of poems by Derek Walcott, the West Indies Nobel laureate.
The Illinois senator was photographed holding the new-looking book, perhaps a gift he had just received, and reading a letter as he headed to his car with his wife, Michelle.
The 500-page volume, Collected Poems 1948-1984, is one of 20 collections by the poet, theatre director and playwright, who has also written more than 20 plays.
Walcott, who won the 1992 Nobel prize for Literature, is often described as the West Indies' greatest writer and intellectual. He was born in St Lucia in 1930 and is best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of the story of the Odyssey in a 20th century Caribbean setting.
Collected Poems 1948-1984 includes selections from all of Walcott's previous seven books of verse, including the full text of Another Life, his 1974 autobiographical poem.
Midsummer, Tobago
by Derek Walcott
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.
You can certainly see why this is of interest to President-elect Obama with two daughters who will outgrow his harboring arms.
If you get a chance to hear Derek Walcott read, do so. I met and heard him once at the University of Hartford about twenty years ago. It was in a small classroom with perhaps 15-20 in the audience. A far cry from the scene described in the article about the readings in England. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a president who supports the arts, esp poetry?
Educational Item
Correction of prior website address: Alpha Dictionary is at:
www.mississippireview.com/
Next Assignment
Several weeks ago I passed a house that was empty, trucks having apparently just left. The house was okay looking, not large, not small. The only thing remaining outside, at the roadside near a mailbox that was open was a steamer trunk-- the kind with straps and buckles. It was closed, the straps buckled. The assignment for the next meeting is to write a poem that tells what was in that trunk.
This Month's Assignment and Poems
This month's poems are to engage all five senses in some way.
One of the reasons for doing this is to enrich our poems with imagery that is real, sensible, tactile, visual, savory and olfactory. So often the poems we remember are the ones that tie in to our sense-experience of the world. Recent developments in neuroscience reveal that we recall events better when memory is accompanied by sense-stimuli that were present when the memory was first created even if that sense stimulus is unrelated to what is being recalled. An example from John Medina's Brain Rules describes two groups of students asked to memorized some material. One group was in a room where the scent of lilacs was present, the other in a room without a significant similar scent. The group with the lilac scent, when asked to recall the information recalled it better when the lilac scent was present than when it was not and the group without the sense stimulus recalled the information with the same accuracy as the other group without the lilacs but not nearly as well as the group with the lilac scent present at the recall event. What does this mean? Tie the poems down; anchor them for the reader so that the reader may bring her own sensory experiences to the reading of the poem.
Keeping this in mind we come to the educational item for the day-- alliteration. One of the key elements of good poetry is how the poem sounds. As obvious as this is we still sometimes neglect sonic aspects when we write and revise. I'm guilty of this all the time. Let's take an example-- alliteration. This is defined as The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of two or more words (ie, Waves want to be wheels…).
Example:
Grief (an exercise in alliteration)
Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 02:30:34
Prayer, Alliteration, poetry, Hope, Grief
desultory, disconnected. defeated and undone
listless, languid, lethargic and alone
the love, the fun, the desire is gone
left in place to keep the faith
holding onto only grace in the face
of trials, troubles and woes
weary, wan and woebegone
wondering why and weeping
hot tears of despair
distress and hopelessness
hopeful heart hardens
from holding on when hope is gone.
rekindle the flame
revive and refresh me again
send strength into my soul
lest I swoon with the sorrow
of this love lost.
I'm not recommending you write that alliteratively but suggest that as you write and revise you pay attention to the ways you can enhance the sonic effects of your poems.
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