Suzzette Dawes's Blog, page 6

Who influences the Bards of Broward?

Who are the poets that influence us? I overhead Rick telling Shawn that he's also a fan of Edna St. Vincent Millay while Meryl shares about her days studying with Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I was inspired to ask each poet who are their influences and include their answer in the anthology.

Based on the list of influential poets, can you solve this crossword puzzle?

The Bards Are Coming!

And so is the festival... I got a glimpse of the upcoming lineup and am I thrilled! A truly international festival with Caribbean and European selections. My poets with their diverse backgrounds bring different styles to the anthology as we put fingers to the keyboards for the finishing touches.

For a glimpse into our poets, match the description to the poet:

Poet Number Letter Description Anastasia Clark 1__ __a She's an accidental poet who didn’t know she had poetry in me until about 10 years ago and is the author of several zip odes. Suzzette Dawes 2__ __b Just like his dad, he writes poetry and has his poems appear in Minnetonka Review, Pearl, Wisconsin Review, and several other literary magazines. Shawn Jackson 3__ __c She is a wife, mother, grandmother, non-political Christian, poet, composer and cutter of paper shapes Ellen Kendrick 4__ __d She is a poet, counselor and educator who explores the wildlife and water birds on her lake in Coral Springs Sue Malone 5__ __e She won the 2013 YellowJacket Press competition for her chapbook, The Magician's Daughter. Rick McKenzie 6__ __f She wrote quartet of Tribute Poems to children tragically lost in Florida and are on display at Studio 18 in Pembroke Pines, FL. Sally Naylor 7__ __g She hosts the poetry reading at Savor Cinema formerly known as Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale Meryl Stratford 8__ __h His latest project finds him participating with 100K Poets For Social Change where his theme was "Breaking the Silence."

Keeping It All Up!

Keeping up with this blog has quite a task as I've been preparing an anthology which will benefit Cinema Paradiso which is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit cultural organization.

Contributing poets include some who have been featured on this blog but all have read at the courtyard:

Anastasia Clark
Suzzette Dawes
Shawn Jackson
Ellen Kendrick
Sue Malone
Rick McKenzie
Sally Naylor
Meryl Stratford

Our next poetry reading is on Saturday, October 1, 2016. Stop by and you may hear one or more of these poets reading. I hope to see you there.

Bards of Broward

It was another Saturday and another evening but not just another event: it was open mic poetry at Savor Cinema on Saturday, September 10, 2016. I enjoy listening to the poets speak as the styles are so diverse: witty, serious, prose, rhyme.

I hope to produce an anthology and here's a taste of some of the poets involved:
http://suzzettedawes.blogspot.com/2016/05/cupcake-by-shawn-jackson.html
http://suzzettedawes.blogspot.com/2016/06/featured-poet-meryl-stratford.html
http://suzzettedawes.blogspot.com/2016/06/featured-poet-sally-naylor.html
http://suzzettedawes.blogspot.com/2016/07/featured-poet-sue-malone.html

I hope to share more with you real soon. If you can stop by our next poetry reading on October 1st.

Another

Another poetry reading is slated for Saturday, September 10th and I am looking forward to the words of imagery, acrostic, Ekphrastic and rhythmic. Will you be there?

If you're far away or just cant make it then coming soon is a poetry anthology where you can peruse...

Featured Poet: Sue Malone

The next poetry reading at Cinema Paradiso-Fort Lauderdale is Saturday, July 23rd at 6 pm. I hope to see you there. In the meantime, here's a feature on a poet who has been writing a poem a day and frequently reads at the event.

What inspired you to write the particular poem?

These five poems were inspired the way most of mine have been recently.  A random idea or phrase or sight grabs my attention and I run with it.  I like to capture passing thoughts and moments and keep them in poems.  It reminds me how significant little things are.

Which poets inspire you?

I honestly don’t read a lot of poetry, but I love A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, the Psalms, Ogden Nash and Sandra Boynton.

Why do you enjoy writing?

Writing poetry makes me lose track of time.  It puts order and rhythm into an unpredictable world. It’s soothing and invigorating at the same time.  It adds surprising dimensions to my thoughts and experiences.  And I like to make people laugh. 

Biography
Susan Malone is a wife, mother, grandmother, non-political Christian, poet, song-writer, piano player, former preschool teacher, homemaker and cutter of paper shapes.  She has been more successful in some of these endeavors than others, but she continues to try to improve at them all.

Featured Poet: Sally Naylor

This week's feature poet is Sally Naylor. At the last Courtyard Poetry reading, she shared a couple poems from her new book Riffs . Below is an interview with Sally.

What inspired you to write the particular poem?

First I hear an idea and rush to transcribe it in Ars Poetica, I heard A good poem never cries out loud and then next you will drown happy in it, that heart, that poem. This poem is my second ars poetica. But I often write about writing since it’s a metaphor for living. I also love poems of place and have written many New York, Canada, Tennessee and Florida poems. Those have been my places for decades.

 Which poets inspire you?

I love Mary Oliver and my teachers Campbell McGrath and Maxine Kumin and fellow student Richard Blanco ( Obama’s inaugural poet) also my Fort Lauderdale workshop friends: Meryl, Lori, Gary and Deborah.

Why do you enjoy writing?

Writing helps me make sense of my life, it clarifies and sometimes changes my emotions and provides me a verbal album of my life. But I really do it because I have to. I’m an art addict.

A sample of her poetry:






Reprinted on this blog with permission from author.

Featured Poet: Meryl Stratford

This is another poet who frequently attends the Poetry Reading and this post will highlight two of her poems.
What inspired you to write these poems?

Elegy with Backward Clocks  was written at the end of daylight savings time, when we turn our clocks back an hour.  This is a What if? poem, imaging we really could save some time now to use at a later date, a fantasy that becomes ever more attractive as one grows older. It’s also a list poem, enacting the ritual of going around the house finding all the clocks that must be turned back, having fun naming all the different kinds of clocks.  The music of the poem echoes some phrases from a half-remembered poem by Dylan Thomas. 

In Black & White  was written in a workshop with Carolyn Forche at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.  It’s an ekphrastic poem, inspired, as the poem says, by a (large) black and white photograph of a foot in a ballet slipper, which I saw in a photo exhibit in the visitor reception center. I was playing with the idea of synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole, and I liked the idea of that foot representing the entire art of ballet, so the phrase one had to imagine became part of the music of the poem.  When I realized that I had written about everything in the photo except the floor, I stumbled upon the ending, since the floor is at the bottom of the photo and also at the bottom, or end, of the poem. 

Which poets inspire you?

My desert island books would be:  The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke.  That said, I tend to fall in love with a different poet every week.  I have a large and ever-growing library of poetry books.  I believe is reading widely, old and new, traditional and experimental, English and translations from other languages, to find what you love.  I believe in reading deeply, rereading the books you love until you know them by heart, until they fall apart in your hands.

Why do you enjoy writing?

Poetry is the place where outer and inner worlds meet,  a compression of everything we know about real and imaginary worlds, every emotion we feel as sentient beings.  Poetry is always playful, even when it speaks of serious things.  It has myriad forms, infinite possibilities for combining and recombining words.

Elegy with Backward ClocksIn Black and WhiteThe clocks have fallen back.
The white clock ticking on the kitchen wall,
the antique clock in the living room.
They've fallen back as leaves fall,
as darkness falls earlier each night.
The bedside alarm with its shrill voice
and luminous face, the pocket watch,
the cuckoo clock with raucous bird
and Bavarian dancers.  After the fiction
of saving daylight, we've returned to facts.
Once we rose with the sun, marked time
by its shifting shadow. Now we have clocks.
Now we have months instead of moons.
We've abandoned the fantasy that we
could save some of the daylight,
even an hour of it.  That we could live
our evenings in the light of the past,
borrow light from the past to postpone
for awhile the coming of darkness.
These autumn days would last forever
if we called them by another name.








I saw a photograph
of a foot in a satin slipper,
ribbon wrapping an ankle,
the curve of a leather sole.
Such slippers are hand-stitched
by artisans, neither right nor left.
Dancers batter them
as they batter their own bodies
into impossible beauty.

I remember my first pair of pointe shoes,
the diva glamour of them, and the truth,
toes wrapped in lamb's wool,
bleeding and bruised.
Russian noblemen drank champagne
from slippers such as these.

The foot in the photograph
was at the point of balance.
One had to imagine
the muscled leg pulling upward
into the solar plexus,
into the supple spine.
One had to think of horses
running on tiptoe.

The foot was alone.
It was the feather without the bird,
the fin without the shark,
fragments of Sappho
suggesting
a body of poetry.

One had to imagine the dancer,
hair pulled back,
thin band of elastic round her waist
to guide her partner's fingertips,
Swan Queen or Sugar Plum
or fourth girl on the left
in a corps de ballet,
music flowing through her.

Don't tell me about the weaker sex.
She would starve herself for her art.
It was a photo of a foot in a slipper
poised on a marble floor.

Reprinted with permission from author. Poems are available in chapbook:
Stratford,Meryl. The Magician's Daughter. Florida: Yellow Jacket Press, 2013, Print.

Feature Poet: Michael Mack

On Saturday, I hosted a poetry reading at Cinema Paradiso. Not only did we receive a good audience, we had many different readers who shared their work or recited a favorite poem. Just in time for Memorial Day, the featured poet is Michael Mack.


What poets inspire you?

Well, I am basically a structure poet with a preference toward rhyme and meter so my heroes have been Poe, Robert Service and, at the top of the list, Banjo Paterson. On the free verse side, I admire Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda.

Why do you enjoy writing? 

Basically, I am a very quiet person and writing allows me to express myself in a non-vocal way. I also enjoy the challenge of creating something that touches someone else in a positive way.

I enjoyed your poems tonight and would like to feature you and your poems on my blog this week. If you could please send me the text of your poems: "Small Pain in my Chest", "Friday Night at Walmart" and "The Robot."  You mentioned that the "Small Pain in my Chest" was previously published or recited at an event,  could you include the event and dedication.

 As I mentioned, my poem SMALL PAIN IN MY CHEST was read before thousands of people at the funeral services of the first Blackhawk helicopter pilot shot down in Iraq. It is also included in the high school literature textbooks in India as required reading, Although the event in the poem is fictitious, I based it on my experiences in the military and knowing how soldiers think and feel. 

Author has retained all copyright in work above but has granted me permission to reprint on this blog.

The Emperor has died

We march Uptown
Head, I hate you.
Y you wanna treat me so bad?

Pink cashmere in the Purple Rain
Raspberry beret in the Little red corvette
I feel for you
Nothing compares to you
Controversy - Delirious, Let's go crazy with
Endorphinmachine.


Whose song titles did I use for a poem? A clue is in the poem!