Living Poems at 2011 Baltimore Book Festival

Yesterday was our big 100 Thousand Poets for Change event.

Gregg Wilhelm of CityLit Project was awesomeness itself, hosting our Living Poetry Flash Mob at the CityLit Stage.

Me, Gregg Wilhelm of CityLit Project, and my co-conspirator, poet Virginia Crawford.

Ginny and I designed this family literacy activity for the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event happening worldwide on Saturday, 9/24/11. You can visit the 100 TPC website to watch video and see photos of events in Afghanistan, Egypt, Australia, Washington, DC, etc.

I tried to convince Baltimore's Best Hon to be in a living poem. She had too many adjectives to fit in one line of verse.

Here are my favorite Living Poems from Saturday.

Courage waving toward time

Face the path beyond fear

I become fire and kiss everyone out of time

May you inspire poetry

The path beyond fear feels change become courage

And my favorite poem, because it captures the 100 TPC spirit:

Everyone human become a revolutionary innocence

We donated the "gently used" tee-shirts to a local charter school, where a fifth grade teacher wants to try Living Poetry in her classroom. I'm happy to report 100 TPC founder Michael Rothenberg got a big kick out of the Living Poem photos.

Tomorrow, I'll post about the "Poets for Social Justice Panel," sponsored by Little Patuxent Review. What a valuable discussion about Social Justice issues in the U.S! LPR will have video of the conversation available online later this week.

Reminder -- LPR is accepting submissions for our Social Justice issue through November 1.

UPDATE: One of the surprises about this project -- revision! One poet would begin a poem, but others in the crowd would switch out or add a word. Fascinating to see revision in living process, not on the page, but with people.

Join the Living Poetry Flash Mob

Credit goes to my fellow MSAC Artist-in-Education Virginia Crawford for noticing that the date of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (Saturday 9/24) coincides with this year's Baltimore Book Festival.

Since Ginny and I both lead poetry workshops for children, we wanted to plan a fun, hands-on activity for families at BBF. How would this connect with 100 TPC? Read my interview with the organizer of this global event, Michael Rothenberg. Playing with poetry gets kids excited about language, eager to share their original poems, and teaches both self-awareness and empathy.

There are three ways you can join our Living Poetry Flash.

1. Show up at the CityLit Tent on Saturday, 9/24, between 12:00 PM and 12:30 PM. You'll see a group of people wearing t-shirts with a word or short phrase on the front and/or back. Line those people up to combine words and create your living poem. Be sure to take a photo. Send it to me or upload it to the 100 TPC Facebook page.

2. So, you want to be part of a Living Poem? Ginny Crawford and I will hand out a limited number of free t-shirts on Saturday morning (CityLit Tent). The words on these shirts will be taken from a Lucille Clifton poem that's in keeping with the "Poets for Change" theme. Come back to the CityLit Tent at 12:00 sharp to get versified. Your poet awaits!

3. If your house is like mine, you have glitter, fabric markers and puffy paint on hand. Or maybe your creativity ends with a black Sharpie. Either way -- grab an old t-shirt or get a new one.

My blank t-shirt.

Pick a word (family-friendly, please) that would inspire a poet. Write that word, or a short phrase, on the back of your shirt. You can use the front, too.

It will look like this:

I wrote my phrase with fabric markers and I'm ready for the Living Poetry Flash Mob.

Remember -- all parts of speech are welcome and needed. Small words carry as much weight as big words in a poem. We love articles, conjunctions, nouns and verbs equally.

With all that craft gear on hand, my middle schooler and I had to add some bling to our tees. Here are our Living Poetry Flash Mob tees-in-progress. The bandanna -- that's for my dog. He wants to be in a poem, too.

Questions? Leave me a comment. I will answer you pronto.

For grown ups, we will follow the Living Poetry Flash with another 100 Thousand Poets for Change event. Little Patuxent Review is sponsoring a panel discussion, "Poets for Social Justice." You'll find the list of panelists at the Baltimore Book Festival website.

Fall for Poetry -- Events, Contests, Festivals

Lots of news to share, poetry gang! Here we go:

Sunday, September 26
Laura & Shirley Brewer at the Baltimore Book Festival
POEMS AND GEMS: LETTING IN THE LIGHT - two luminous poets illuminate the writing craft.

4-5 PM in the CityLit Tent
 
The pink is in honor of Shirley. She is fabulous as a person and as a poet. We always have a lot of fun together. Join us and you'll have fun too.
 
Friday, October 1
Deadline
Clarinda Harriss Poetry Prize and Chapbook Competition 2010
Submit 20-25 pages of poetry (and $25)
Prize is $250 and publication. Final judge is Dick Allen.
 
My chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone won the inaugural Harriss Prize. I had an amazing experience with CityLit Press. Highly recommended!
 
Tuesday, October 5
Howard County Poetry and Literature Society hosts poet Mark Doty
 
I'm sad to have to miss this one. Doty is a remarkable poet, but he's also a wonderful speaker. You will leave this evening feeling enriched.
 
Thanks to HoCoPoLitSo to bringing national voices to Howard County, MD. Info: www.hocopolitso.org
 
Thursday, October 7 - Sunday, October 10
13th Biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival
New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ
 
If you've never been, do yourself a favor and GO! This is the biggest poetry festival in the nation. It's amazing and Friday is free for teachers. Wow.
 
Info at www.DodgePoetry.org
 
Saturday, October 16 - Sunday, October 17
Women's Poetry Retreat
Harpers Ferry, WV
 
Three of my favorite local poets are leading the retreat: Shirley Brewer, Barbara Morrison and Christine Stewart of the Maryland State Arts Council. For just $99 including lodging and meals, you can't go wrong.
 
Info at http://baltimorewriterscollective.blogspot.com
 
Wednesday, October 27
Deadline: Maryland Writers Association Poetry Anthology
 
The theme is Love, in all its facets.
Members are encouraged to submit 1-3 poems on this theme. Non-members are encouraged to join!
www.marylandwriters.org
 
More exciting news on this anthology in a separate post. I'm very excited to be editing the anthology.
 
 
Monday, November 1
Deadline: Little Patuxent Review
www.littlepatuxentreview.org
 
The next issue's theme is Water.
 
LPR is a beautiful local journal that consistently supports local poets, essayists and fiction writers.
 
Anyone would think it's National Poetry Month! Good luck with your submissions. Get out there and hear some poetry.

Blogastic Surgery?

I'm thinking about a blog facelift.

Unlike plastic surgery, blogastic surgery is free and does not require medication or being shot with rat poison. But, like plastic surgery, I have to consider how much I want the blog to look like its old self.

What has me hankering for a new look? Last week, I had a conversation with poet Barbara Morrison. We were discussing CityLit Project (my publisher) and the experience of putting together a poetry chapbook. The interview is going to be on JMWW Journal's website soon.

Barbara said she didn't get the whole "Author Amok" vibe. The name, the frenzied tag -- they don't fit my work.

I'd like to tackle the name issue first, then work on the visuals.




So, word surgeons, give me your best consultation. Comment on the ideas I've come up with, or post an original title for the toned and tightened blog. I'll send two of you (chosen at random) a copy of my award-winning chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone.

Here are my "namelift" ideas, with some points to consider:

1) 13 Ways of Looking

This one suits the variety of work I do as a poet and teacher. But, much as I like "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," I'm not a Stevens nut. It's also the name of an artist's website.

2) This Is Just to Say
3) The Red Wheelbarrow

I love & adore WCW -- who is a fellow New Jerseyan -- but I don't write like him. "The Red Wheelbarrow" feels kid-lit friendly. There is a blog called "Is Just to Say" and a Red Wheelbarrow bookstore, but no blog.


4) Eat a Peach

Love the poem and this particular line's call to creative action. Still, I don't write like Eliot.

5) In Uffish Thought
I admit, this one makes me sound like an Alice-geek. Which I am. But is it too much of an in-joke? Surprisingly not, as there are quite a few blogs with this name.

6) Mrs. Poems
I was given the nickname by an elementary student with Aspergers who couldn't remember "Mrs. Shovan." Is it too cute for anyone but primary graders and their teachers?

I'm going away for a week, so let's make July 31 the deadline for comments/contest.

Help me, Jedi Poets... you're my only hope!

Please insert new blog-face below.

News You Can Use

It's been a big week at Author Amok. Let's do some announcements, events and a Poetry Friday sneak peek that you won't want to miss.

Announcements

1) Have you read Laura Miller's review of The Hunger Games in the New Yorker? It's a thoughtful review, not just of Suzanne Collins' series, but of the dystopian genre and why it works for YA readers. Miller's comparison of the Capitol city and the games themselves to the hungers and cruelties of high school is spot on.

One disappointment with the article -- Miller didn't mention The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. My middle schooler ate up the book and its sequel. It's dystopian, but very funny and scathingly satirical (adults run around worrying about "The Emergency" but no one can say what the emergency is or how long it's been in existence). I think Stewart's balance of humor and disaffection is perfect for middle grade.

2) Speaking of Middle Grade, there's a new blog championing MGs. From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle Grade Authors promises can't-find-it-anywhere-else interviews with MG authors, giveaways, fun book lists, and an insight into real kids' opinions about MG books.

3) Not exactly an announcement, but I'm reading Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan. All it took was the flap copy for me to proclaim this is the perfect book for my world history/modern technology/fantasy novel loving almost-eighth grade son. He took one look at the maps and agreed. Now he's bugging me every night, "Are you done? Can I have it?" No -- get your  paws off my book!


Events
1) The Columbia Festival of the Arts kick off this weekend with Bookfest at Lakefest. Stop by the Maryland Writers Association tent on Saturday and say hello. If you get there around 1 PM, I'll be doing a family poetry craft -- Poetry Pops...concrete poems shaped like whirly pops.

2) Steampunk was the talk of last month's Balticon SF/F convention. If you're free June 18, I'm hosting a "Craft & Crit" -- we'll discuss Leviathan while catching up on our craftworks-in-progress. (I'm finishing up my son's socks.) Leave me a comment if you'd like info.

3) June 22 is a big fundraiser for CityLit Project, publisher of my chapbook. I'll be reading from Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone. A $40 ticket buys you dinner, the reading and you're supporting the arts in Baltimore!

Sneak Peek
Tomorrow is Poetry Friday.

I was dismayed and disappointed that the next state on my 50 state tour does not have a poet laureate. You'd think Nevada would join the poetry party. I thought Las Vegas never met a good time it didn't like.

I have soothed my mood by asking a truly fabulous Nevada poet to visit tomorrow...bestselling YA novelist Ellen  Hopkins. She's going to share a poem.

Are you jumping up and down with excitement? Me too!

See you tomorrow.

NPM 50 State Tour -- Maryland, My Maryland

Please come in and welcome to my neighborhood, Maryland!

We've lived in the Baltimore 'burbs for ten years and I admit, I still feel land-locked. (New Jerseyans get anxious if we're more than 45 minutes from the ocean). Remind me to tell you that funny story about crossing the Mason-Dixon line some other time.

Maryland welcomed me with open arms. I've been a poet-in-the-schools for the Maryland State Arts Council for eight years. And Baltimore's CityLit Project is publishing my new chapbook for National Poetry Month. More exciting news on that in a second.

Some Maryland facts: 7th state, joined the union 4/28/1788, home of the very awesome Berger Cookie (it's a black and white cookie without the white) and the Baltimore Honfest.

Another reason I've proudly adopted Maryland? Unlike my home state of NJ, *we* have a poet laureate -- Stanley Plumly, a professor at the University of Maryland. Go Terps!

To help you celebrate spring, I'm sharing Plumly's poem, "Wildflower."

Wildflower
by Stanley Plumly
Some--the ones with fish names--grow so north they last a month, six weeks at most. Some others, named for the fields they look like, last longer, smaller. And these, in particular, whether trout or corn lily, onion or bellwort, just cut this morning and standing open in tapwater in the kitchen, will close with the sun. It is June, wildflowers on the table. They are fresh an hour ago, like sliced lemons, with the whole day ahead of them. They could be common mayflower lilies of the valley, day lilies, or the clustering Canada, large, gold, long-stemmed as pasture roses, belled out over the vase-- or maybe Solomon's seal, the petals ranged in small toy pairs or starry, tipped at the head like weeds. They could be anonymous as weeds. They are, in fact, the several names of the same thing, lilies of the field, butter-and-eggs, toadflax almost, the way the whites and yellows juxtapose, and have "the look of flowers that are looked at," rooted as they are in water, glass, and air. I remember the summer I picked everything, flower and wildflower, singled them out in jars with a name attached.

Read the rest of the poem here.

The exciting news? SAVE THE DATE! April 17 is CityLit Festival at the Enoch Free Pratt Library in Baltimore. I'll be reading with Stanley Plumly, 1:30 PM, and signing the new book. Hope you can make it!

Tomorrow morning, we'll continue our National Poetry Month tour of the 50 states. We're leaving bright and early for South Carolina. No Wall of Shame for them.

Workshop News!

Just found out we *are* talking walk-in registrations for my fall CityLit Project workshop. Drop me a comment if you’re interested…or just show up! Poetry Café: Small Plates to Tempt Your Writing Palate 8 Mondays: September 14 – November 2, 7-9 PM Howard County Arts Council, Ellicott City, MD Registration Fee: $175 You don’t have to be a gourmet to enjoy good food. Sample a variety of poetic styles and forms in this workshop for beginners. The Poetry Café is dishing out model poems and writing exercises for you to try. Through reading and writing, you’ll discover new tastes and flavors to add to your own literary menu. Your server is Laura Shovan -- a poet-in-the-schools for the Maryland State Arts Council’s Artist-in-Education program. Her poetry has been published in literary journals, anthologies and children’s magazines. Her author website is http://www.laurashovan.com/.

Registration forms are at http://www.citylitproject.org/ Look at the Write Here, Write Now schedule.