Mark Your Calendar for March 24, 2019

Martin Galvin: 1937-2018

     We were very sorry to hear that poet Martin Galvin passed away earlier this month. His work as a poet and instructor will be long remembered and deeply missed. In his honor, we will be including a reading of one of his poems during ASW 7 in March, 2019. 

     For information about his impressive life as well as his memorial service, visit :http://www.pumphreyfuneralhome.com.
(Photo via Pumphrey webpage)

Mariposa Poetry Retreat

The Mariposa Poetry Retreat began in 2011 to fuel, stimulate and challenge the passion of poets and writers from DC, MD, VA, FL, NY, MA, PA, and beyond, including Brazil. Since then we’ve been honored by the participation of incredible keynote speakers and faculty members as follows:

(2011): Kwame Alexander, Naomi Ayala, Monica Hand (1953-2016), Joseph Ross;
(2012): Ethelbert Miller, Mike Bosdavanos, Rocky DeLaPlaine, Kim Roberts;
(2013): Grace Cavalieri, Michael Davis, Jose (Joe) Gouveia (1964-2014), Yvette Neisser, and
          Maryland Poet Laureate, Stanley Plumly;
(2014): Dark;
(2015): Richard Peabody, Sarah Browning, Grace Cavalieri, Robert Giron, Cliff Lynn;
(2016): Merrill Leffler, Ann Bracken, Sarah Browning, Grace Cavalieri, Le Hinton;
(2017): Rose Solari, Abdul Ali, Yvette Neisser, Kim Roberts and Basil White; and each year, Michael Friend and Soul in Motion has joined us to "bless our boats" at the Welcome Reception.

What is so special about the Mariposa Poetry Retreat? We limit attendance to 25 participants. Yes, it's small compared to other retreats but we pack a lot into one weekend. It's an intimate space that offers a unique writing experience. We build community, the Mariposa family. It's “where the magic of poetry happens”!

Join us this year, October 5-7th, to celebrate and channel the muse with new and returning faculty members: Grace Cavalieri, Claudia Gary, Reuben Jackson, Brandon Johnson and keynote speaker, Michael S. Glaser, Maryland Poet Laureate (2004 – 2009). And as always, Michael Friend and Soul in Motion will get our blood pumping with West African drumming (and maybe some dancing too)!

With your continued support, we've been able to award scholarships to veterans, poets and international participants who would otherwise not have been able to attend. If you are interested and able to defray the cost of a participant, please let me know. Your generosity and tax- deductible contribution to the Capital Retreat Center is always appreciated!

If you've attended the Mariposa Poetry Retreat in the past, you won't want to miss this one either. If you haven't been yet, don’t miss this opportunity to join us!

2018 marks 7 years of memorable weekend retreats and Reunion Readings at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. We also look forward to offering a week-long retreat, Writing in the Rainforest, in Puerto Rico in 2020!

Maritza Rivera aka Mariposa:
“Where the magic of poetry happens!”

CONTACT: mariposa611@gmail.com

Poetry X Hunger

WORLD FOOD DAY

POETRY COMPETITION

Hiram Larew sends this note:

Dear Poets/Friends from afar —

While the Competition that's described below is limited to folks in the Washington, DC and surrounding Counties, I wanted to share the announcement with you.  

You may know of poets in this area who would be eligible; if so, please share this email with them.

Just as importantly, I wanted to make sure that you knew that the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is offering this Competition, in conjunction with Poetry X Hunger, as a way to bring poetry more forcefully to bear against hunger wherever it exists.  If, in your communities, there's an interest, please encourage your nearby poets/friends to consider ways to  "speak up" about actions on World Food Day (October 16) that can be taken to eliminate hunger at home and abroad.

Here's the link to FAO's World Food Day site -- http://www.fao.org/world-food-day/2018/home/en/

Here's to Poetry X Hunger,

Hiram 

For more info about this Competition, visit the Poetry X Hunger Facebook page.  

Calling all poets in Washington, DC and surrounding Counties!  In recognition of World Food Day on October 16, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Liaison Office for North America, in conjunction with the Poetry X Hunger initiative, is inviting submissions of poetry that focuses on taking urgent action to eliminate global hunger and malnutrition.  Held every year on October 16, this year’s World Food Day will focus on the theme: “Our Actions Are Our Future: A Zero Hunger World by 2030 Is Possible.” 

After a period of decline, world hunger is on the rise again. Today, over 815 million people are suffering chronic undernourishment, according to the latest FAO report. Conflict, extreme weather events linked to climate change, economic slowdown and rapidly increasing overweight and obesity levels are reversing progress made in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. Additionally, rural poverty, food insecurity, inequality, unemployment, lack of social protection as well as natural resource depletion due to environmental degradation and climate change are forcing millions to migrate. 

Now is the time to get back on track. The world can achieve Zero Hunger if we join forces across nations, continents, sectors and professions, and act on evidence.

Significant prizes are offered to winners.  There is no entry fee -- the Competition is free to enter.

Summer Poetry Pop-Up: Terence Winch

Ghost Bottle

You waited for me as long as you could

that night when I went out to play a gig

It was cold in the back of the car

I clenched my jaw till my teeth hurt

I was in the dark for so long my eyes

have never adjusted to the light

Someday humans will be able to remember

everything but not recognize the present

You waited for me singing your exit

in a rattle that shook through the house

After you were gone I made everything

into a prayer against everything divine

Then they put me in a bottle and tossed me

in the sea floating on the waves of my grief

 

                                                                     --Terence Winch

[from The Known Universe, Hanging Loose Press, 2018]

Terence Winch is the author of eight poetry collections: The Known Universe, This Way Out, Lit from Below, Falling out of Bed in a Room with No Floor, Boy Drinkers, The Drift of  Things, The Great Indoors [Columbia Book Award winner], and Irish Musicians/American Friends [American Book Award winner]. He has also written two story collections, Contenders and That Special Place: New World Irish Stories, which draws on his experiences as a founding member of the original Celtic Thunder, the acclaimed Irish band. His work is included in more than 40 anthologies, among them the Oxford Book of American Poetry, Poetry 180, and 5 editions of  Best American Poetry, and has been featured on “The Writer’s Almanac” and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Winch is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in poetry and a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing, among other honors.

Summer Poetry Pop-Up: Nancy Naomi Carlson

INFUSION: ROUND III

A coded language emerged from a morpheme sea:

Hyperplasia, exemestane, nuclear grade.

Charmed times are not evoked in threes.

Three weeks between infusions, reprised

In frayed dreams of the needle’s wake.

A broken language emerges. A lymph sea

Reels with vertigo. Red blood cells retreat.

I am bald and moon-faced.

Where’s the harm in threes,

Cytoxen whispers, corroding nails as it seethes

Drip by drip in recalcitrant veins.

A muted language merges with closed seas

Of blood so pale, a slight shift of disease

Could set off a swell so untamed

That evoking three times three times three

Charms may not be enough to save me. 

My body knows how it will end but remains—

With or without charmed times evoked in threes—

A veiled language merging with closed seas.

                                                           

                                                            --Nancy Naomi Carlson

(First published by The Georgia Review)

Nancy Naomi Carlson, poet, translator, editor, and essayist, has authored eight titles (5 translated). She received a grant from the NEA to translate Abdourahman A. Waberi’s first collection of poems, which was a “Best Translated Book Award” finalist for 2016, and her translation of Char’s Hammer with No Master was a finalist for the 2017 CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award. Recipient of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, as well as the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, her work has appeared in such journals as the American Poetry Review, Boulevard, The Georgia Review, and Poetry. “Infusion: Round III” comes from Infusion of Violets, forthcoming from Seagull Books in spring 2019. Her co-translation of The Dancing Other, a novel by Suzanne Dracius, from Martinique, is due out from Seagull Books this summer. For more information, please visit www.nancynaomicarlson.com

Summer Poetry Pop-Up: Patricia Gray

July Moons

I was born   in a lightning storm
thunder   cracking  sky roof
spirit eye opening   delivery
shaft   folk names of   full moons
humming   branch breaking, falling
street blocked   Buck Moon hiding
off in the reaches   young antlers
pushing-through, itchy, eager
I was born under   day-before
Hay Moon   alfalfa cut, baled
stashed from storm   Born
under   the Mead Moon medieval
old pubs peppering   flat beer
to sell it   Born   a bumpkin
in DC’s   mid-summer moon’s
mischief   a sliver left in me
slim switch of lightning   and this
deep clap of   Thunder Moon.

                               By Patricia Gray

First published in Stickman Review, Winter 2015

-----------------------------

PATRICIA GRAY’s poem incorporates folk names of full moons for July.  Another of her poems, “Moon Smudge,” enjoyed a three-month ride in 2016 as a poster on Arlington Transit buses—part of the Moving Words program of Arlington Arts.  Also that year, she received an artist fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Gray is an alumna of Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and formerly directed the Library of Congress poetry office.  After leaving the Library, she added two prose pieces about that program to the Splendid Wake Up blog.  She serves on the poetry board of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and in July will teach a “Getting Started: Creative Writing” workshop at the Capitol Hill Center campus of the The Writer’s Center.   Gray also made two recent prose contributions to The Writer’s Center blog spot on Facebook.