Poetry Plus Prose in Sunday Doubleheader; Horror Writers Association — What Good Is It?

Today was a big day for literature, consisting not only of the Bloomington Writers Guild First Sunday Readings (cf. March 2, February 2, et al.) but, one hour before, a discussion on “Embrace the New:  21st Century Poetry” at the county library.  Presented by Dory Lynch, the hour touched on trends such as prose poems and haibun, “New Formalism,” postmodernism and language poetry, and use of political themes.  Examples were given in a handout “Poetry Sampler” as well as readings of favorite poems by some of those present.   And then for First Sunday at Boxcar Books (roughly a block from the library making for an easy commute), the featured readers were Richard Durisen with flash fiction as well as some poetry, Michelle Hartz with short zombie fiction, and Alisa Alering with an excerpt from her YA novel-in-progress PONYPOCALYPSE, with about five more of us aftrward for the open mike session.  My offering for the latter was a brief  introduction to “bizarro” fiction in the form of  an as yet unpublished short short, “Rocky Road,” about ice cream and cannibalism and hair styles.

And then, for an abrupt change of topic, perusing my email at the library prior to “21st Century Poetry,” I found a note by HWA President Rocky Wood.  To quote directly:  “A couple of months ago there was a discussion on various FB pages about what HWA does/achieves.  At that time we committed to compile a list and publicise [it] widely.”  The compilation now exists and serves, I think, as a reminder for all similar groups (another list I’m in, for instance, suggested  questions about SFWA, and there’s also the MWA, RWA, etc. — if you’re a member of any of these you know what the letters mean).  Dues cost money which, at times, can be short.  So what do the dues I might pay help accomplish?

In the case of the Horror Writers Association, to find out press here.