Lainie Senechal appointed the first Poet Laureate of Amesbury, Mass.

Lainie Senechal--New Poet Laureate of Amesbury, Mass.

After the Fall

I want to fall,
let go of everything;
like last lazy leaf of laurel,
drift aimlessly; no desire
to soar with eagles,
rather a feather from
wingtip relinquished
to zig, zag through space
on slightest zephyr.

I want to fall
through layers of light,
sunrise to sunset,
steadily deepening into dark.
A languid meteor
sparkling slowly to earth,
holding on to nothing;
never heeding where I land:
on softest snow of season,
among spring’s cheery crocus,
with summer’s daily dandelions,
along autumn’s silent stream.

For I am all of this
and from all
I have been released.


Lainie Senechal


http://www.lainiesenechal.com/index.php/about-me/
For more about Lainie Senechal go to   

Susan Tepper: A writer with one foot in New York City and the other in Somerville, Mass.

Susan Tepper

By Doug Holder


I have known Susan Tepper for a number of years now, and she has not slowed down an iota. She is a consummate New Yorker--she moves fast, talks fast and thinks on her feet. I have read for her at the KGB FIZZ series in the lower east side of NYC, have been on a small press panel she organized for a literary festival at Hunter College and I have published her poetry in The Somerville Times and the Ibbetson Street magazine. Tepper will be in Somerville, Monday June 16 7PM, to read from her latest book The Merrill Diaries, which is a novel told in stories that link one to the next. She will be reading in Gloria Mindock's Cervena Barva Press Art Space located in the Somerville Arts Armory building. It's a gathering of writers and poets published by the Cervena Barva Press and the MadHat Press.



Hundreds of Tepper's stories, poems, essays and interviews appear worldwide in print journals and online venues. Her bi-monthly MONDAY CHAT Interview column ran on the Fictionaut blog for more than a year and is archived on that site. Tepper is host of the reading series FIZZ at KGB Bar in New York City. She has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize. Deer, the title story of her collection, was nominated for NPR Selected Shorts. Her novel WHAT MAY HAVE BEEN: Letters of Jackson Pollock & Dori G (with Gary Percesepe) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Doug Holder: Can you give me a brief history of your experience in Somerville? 

Susan Tepper:  My first experience of Somerville was several years ago when my collection ‘Deer & Other Stories’ came out from Wilderness House Press which is located in northern MA.  I had been invited to do a TV spot in Somerville with a certain Doug Holder(!)  I found Somerville to be diverse and charming.  After the TV interview, a small group of us had a lovely dinner outdoors (I believe you had the salmon, Doug).  I always remember what people eat.  It’s bizarre.  I also remember it was a balmy night in early fall.  My 3 city MA book tour.  You try and cram in as much as possible since you are paying for hotel nights.  I also taught a fiction workshop at Grub Street in Boston which was delightful, and I read at Four Stories Reading Series in Cambridge.  It was a whirlwind few days in MA!

DH: How did your life journey lead to writing?

ST: Becoming a writer was not in my game plan.  I’d been an actress since I was seventeen, and that was my primary focus.  To make money I sang with the bands, any gig I could land.  Six sets a night was standard.  Hard times require hard measures (or some such thing).  I was young and that made all the difference.  I didn’t start to write until I hit forty.  I wrote a story, took it to The New School and watched it get massacred.  Then the teacher told me it was a good story and that I should keep writing.  Green light!  I was waiting for something new and there it was.  That class was life-changing.  I became a writer.

DH: Can you describe your involvement with Gloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva Press? 

ST: Gloria published my poetry chapbook Blue Edge, as well as a novel I co-wrote with Gary Percesepe called What May Have Been, which traces a fictional account of a love affair between the surrealist painter Jackson Pollock and a made-up young woman.  Gloria and I became great friends and I was her assistant editor at the Istanbul Literary Review for a few years.

As for my current book The Merrill Diaries, which I’ll be reading from, that was published by Pure Slush Books http://pureslush.webs.com/atasteofmerrill.htm  out of Australia.  The novel begins in 1976, at the end of the Vietnam War.  I grew up during those years, and the time period, though tumultuous, was also one of great personal expansion and change for many.  It fascinates me to think back on those days.  The Merrill Diaries spans ten years and follows the main character, Merrill, over two continents, two marriages, and quite a few quirky relationships.  Merrill, like me, is a traveler.  Life for her is about seeing and acquiring new adventures. 

DH: Is there a recurrent theme in your work?

ST: A recurrent theme in my work is the search for love.  I find love to be mostly elusive.  Not just romantic love, but familial love, friend love, all of it is transitory in my experience.  It’s around for a while then it can do all sorts of unpredictable things.  It can hide like a bear in a cave, or take a long walk off a short pier.  In essence, love is not a static thing.  Love cannot be depended upon to bring you happiness.  You have to get that on your own.  And so it comes into my prose and poetry with regularity.  I examine love as if I was a scientist and it was a smear on a slide. 

DH: Do you think women writers still get the shaft in the literary world?

ST;  There is a lot of controversy over male vs female writers, who gets which prizes, which gender is favored over which.  I don’t buy into that.  If you write a really good story or book that takes risks, you will get it published and possibly even win a prize.  Or at least be nominated for one.  A lot of women writers feel the men are being favored.  I don’t agree.  I conduct author/book interviews and I will be dead on honest here when I say that I have a hard time finding really good novels written by contemporary women authors.  The ‘mommy books’ that are popular amongst the 40-something readers leave me cold.  I end up mostly interviewing women about their story collections or poetry books (I can feel the rotten tomatoes being hurled).  But, seriously, there is a reason certain books get prizes and nominations.  Women need to break out of traditional themes and go where the men go.  Risk Risk Risk.  An example of a fabulous woman novelist is the late Susan Fromberg Schaeffer who wrote the Vietnam book ‘Buffalo Afternoon’.  Now there was a woman who understood risk in writing.  I think it’s the best book ever written about the Vietnam War.  And by a woman who never served as a soldier!

For more information about the reading go to:Cervena Barva Press

English Poets Sue Guiney and Ruth O’Callaghan: Popping Over the Pond to Somerville, Mass.

                                                                  Sue Guiney

                                                          Ruth O'Callaghan











 English Poets Sue Guiney and Ruth O’Callaghan: Popping Over the Pond to Somerville, Mass.

By Doug Holder

  Recently on my show Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer on Somerville Community Access TV I had the opportunity to interview two accomplished poets who were visiting from London:  Sue Guiney and Ruth O’Callaghan.

  Guiney, a native of New York City has lived in England for over 20 years. She has two poetry collections published, and recently a novel titled A Clash of Innocents that was published by Blue Chrome Publishing in 2006.

  Ruth O’Callaghan, a native of London holds the prestigious Hawthornden Fellowship and is a prize- winner in international competitions. She is an international competition adjudicator, and hosts two poetry venues in London. She is currently compiling a book of interviews with prominent women poets from around the globe.

Doug Holder: Ruth, how did you receive this American poet on the English scene?

Ruth O’Callaghan: Well Sue has a different voice and background. She is such a nice and outgoing person. She is not totally brash as some might expect being that she is from the States, and New York City. Perhaps she has been tempered by the English weather. (Laugh) I’ve known other American poets who have been brash.

DH: Both you and Sue have embraced poetry and writing and aligned it with charitable efforts.

RO: In my case I was at church and I happened to be sitting next to a minister. She told me a group of seven churches were banding together to read at homeless shelters. I became involved. I know extremely well-known poets who could read for free. They attracted an audience to the shelters. We took in money for the shelters and it has been a very successful effort. It is good for the hosting churches and publishers who get a free venue for their poets. A London venue costs up to 600 pounds. We have ordinary poets read with famous ones and some really good things have come from this. Publishers have found some very good poets at my venues and asked me to send them more.

Sue Guiney: Charitable work has not only come from my poetry but from my fiction. I have a novel that has come out of that is the first in a trilogy, Clash of Innocents and it takes place in modern day Cambodia. Cambodia is a country that I have grown to love over the past 5 or 6 years. Through the work I do in writing I have been able to connect with an educational shelter for street kids in the city of Siem Reap. I have set up a writing workshop in English for teenage kids in the shelter. The English program is being taught on-line and on-site, and I spend at least one month a year in Cambodia. When I teach online I give students editorial comments. I use the sales of my books to support the work that I do there. I am now the Writer-In-Residence to the SE Asia Department of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

DH:  Ruth you told me you were fearful about writing poetry at first?

RC: I just didn’t have any confidence. I always wanted to be a poet. I had been teaching Special Education students for years. But I felt I was wasting my time because I wasn’t fully committed. I then decided to commit myself to poetry. It was a turning point for me.

First Time

I didn’t stay with you forever,
although forever started that first night
when you lifted me into your arms
cradling me, not like a baby
but like a swan,
my long neck curling over
the muscles of your crooked arm.

Softly you settled me onto the quilt
your grandmother had wrapped around her treasures
as she said goodbye to home.
I remember the tired strength of the thread between
the panels, the softness of the fading cotton.

The skin around your chest was even softer,
and the tiny hairs that marched straight down, down,
down to where I’d never been before.

You were not heavy above me.
I don’t recall an unyielding force inside.
Instead, your body and mine,
your face, our lips,
the coverlet on top, the wrinkled sheets,
all were soft, safe, soft,
and stayed with me forever.
 

Sue Guiney

Notes on a Journey              

The Friends’ Cafe closes shortly.
                                                                     Later:
The vending machine needs 50p’s.
Its cups need care, they disintegrate at touch.
 
                                                             But what is whole?
The crisp-clean touch and turn
                                                             of medics
inserting a catheter –          an addition
to your molecular composition?
 
                                              Half a mile of corridor
from here
                                                              a man
                                                                         slides
                                                                                    a body
                                       carefully
                                           onto
                                      the slab
 
another – green capped, scrubbed –
                                       takes a knife
to discover what lies behind death.
 
He will be particular
in this particular death
                                                                   distinct
from any other
– o, the wound may be the same
but was, is, the journey?



-----RUTH O'CALLAGHAN

Randy Ross writes from the “Loneliest Planet…” in the midst of Somerville, Mass.

(Randy Ross-center)










Randy Ross writes from the “Loneliest Planet…” in the midst of Somerville, Mass.

By Doug Holder

Randy Ross, an aspiring novelist who lives in the hinterlands of Somerville, Mass. that borders on the Republic of Cambridge, is a “holy fool.” Ross, 49, who was laid off his job as an editor at PC WORLD, works day and night on his novel “ The Loneliest Planet: A Handbook for the Chronically Single.” Ross, who has an advanced degree from North Western University in Journalism, also founded the online and in the flesh group “Media Chowder.” The group is made up of local journalists, novelists, and denizens of the media world from broadcast to the internet. Ross said, “We are open to people of all levels.” The slogan of the said group is “Media Chowder: The best damned excuse for Boston-area journalists to go out drinking, period..." And indeed they meet at Sidney’s, a convivial pub just outside Central Square off of Mass. Ave in Cambridge, Mass. The group is an excellent place for folks to down a few and network with people in the field. Ross told me that AOL.COM once recruited at one of their gatherings and folks have secured gigs through the group.

Ross described his work-in-progress as a story about a never-married hypochondriac who takes a trip around the world hoping to meet his perfect mate. Along the way he gets involved in the lurid world of sexual tourism. Much of the “action” takes place in Cambodia. Ross said the book is very loosely-based on his own travels around the world. He describes the novel as a dark comedy of sorts.

Ross said of the prospects of publishing the book: “I have gone to endless conferences. I have met with about 7 agents, 3 of whom have asked to read it when it's finished in late fall/early winter, and I have gotten just enough encouragement to continue.”

Ross works part time to help keep chowder on the table, and the rest of the time he labors over his novel. He is in three writers groups, and has run workshops with local writers such as Michael Mack and Daniel Gewertz. Like many of the writers I have interviewed Ross is enamored with Somerville, Mass. He loves the proximity to his fellow scribes, and the whole vibrant milieu the “Paris of New England” offers.


*****Go to this link for more info about media chowder and Ross:

http://mediachowder.weebly.com/

The Massachusetts Poetry Festival for 2009

Friends --



The Massachusetts Poetry Festival for 2009 has been established. This year -- our second! -- the Festival will start on the evening of Thursday October 15th with 7 simultaneous opening events in Boston, Worcester, New Bedford, Salem, Lowell, Amherst and the Berkshires. Then the Festival returns to downtown Lowell for two days.



During the day on Friday, the focus is on student poets with separate programs of workshops and readings for high school students, college undergraduate and MFA graduate poets. Friday evening there will be a music and poetry event in Lowell cosponsored by the Urban Village Arts Series with Michael Casey, Jessica Smith, Caleb Neelon, and Capoeira Rosa Rubra/Mestre Calango.



Festival Schedule

Thurs (15th)
Fri (16th)
Sat (17th)
Sun (18th)
View all events


Saturday from 11:00 AM to midnight, downtown Lowell will be filled with more than 35 readings, workshops, performances. There will be the second annual small press fair running all day. There will be an official opening and favorite poem reading at 11:00 AM. There will be readings by dozens of Massachusetts poets. There will be a sequential reading (and book signing) by all the Massachusetts poets with new full length books out in 2009. There will be haiku and dance, environmental themed readings, smaller hands on workshops (like this one, this one, and this one). Readings by acclaimed African American poets produced by Cave Canem and more readings by such poets as Ann Waldman, Afaa Weaver, Louise Gluck, Robert Pinsky, Franz Wright, Ellen Watson, Dara Wier, Erica Funkhauser, Joan Houlihan, Fred Marchant, Lisa Olstein and many, many more.


The evening will culminate with a nationally sanctioned Poetry Slam competition with a local Lowell team and an established Cambridge team taking on two national renowned NY team with the winner automatically getting a place in the National Slam Championships.



Sunday afternoon the Festival moves to the Boston Children's Museum for an afternoon of poetry for kids and families, featuring author/poet/illustrator Calef Brown and other performances and workshops designed for kids and their parents. The Festival closes in Cambridge with poetry and jazz, co-sponsored by Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room and Adams House.



How much do tickets cost? $0, Zero, Nada, Free!



This year all the events are free. We need your support to make this possible. So we are asking all of you to make a donation. You do not have to. You will not be hounded into doing so. But we will give you the option when you sign up for an event to make a donation. Or you can make a donation to the Festival right now by clicking here. All donations are tax-deductible. We are still $6,500 short of the minimum we need to put on the 2009 Festival. Please make a donation, support Massachusetts Poetry and help us keep the Festival Free for everyone.



Important: Space is Limited. Reserve your seat now.



Especially in Lowell on Saturday, there is limited seating. If you will sign up for the events that you want to attend we will gurantee you a seat. The cost of the ticket: nothing. We do ask for a donation. We have had to guess at how many people will attend certain events. You can help us and yourself by signing up now to hold a seat - and getting your friends to so the same. We will hold your seat for you - and if too many people sign up we can move most events to a larger venue if and only if we know soon that more people want to attend it. So please sign up and get your friends to sign up for the events you want to attend. All of the workshops held in the Mogan Center on Saturday are limited to 15 participants. We will assign participation to them to the people who sign up in advance on a first come basis. So go through the schedule and sign up now for the events you want to attend. We've even got maps that will show you exactly where each event is being held.



Saturday in Lowell: Meet at Poetry Festival Central



On Saturday, with so many events being held throughout Lowell, we have created a central meeting place. Please come to the National Park Visitor Center at 256 Market Street. At the Visitor Center, there are all the basic necessities for your festival needs: bathrooms and space to meet your friends, greeters will provide maps & program books, and guides can assist you with finding your way to events or a good place for coffee, tea, lunch or dinner. Public parking is just down the street at the Market Street garage. You can read more on our directions and map page.



Thanks for everything -- and please, spread the word! Poetry is alive and well in Massachusetts -- see you in October!



The Massachuestts Poetry Festival Organizing Committee



Michael Ansara
Charles Coe
Chloe Garcia-Roberts
Jacquelyn Malone
Paul Marion

Nicco Mele
LZ Nunn



Massachusetts Poetry Festival
http://masspoetry.org/
Office of Cultural Affairs & Special Events