Splendid Wake notes the passing of Cliff Bernier on May 23, 2025.

 There will be a memorial service for him:

Saturday July 19, 2025, from 2 -5 pm, Mt Vernon Unitarian Church.1909 Windmill Lane, Alexandria, VA 22307

 

All are invited to attend.

 

Writer's Center Tribute to Elisavietta Ritchie

 

Poem in Tribute to Myra Sklarew

Innisfree Poetry Journal  published a poem in tribute to Myra Sklarew in its 40th anniversary edition. The poem is "second thoughts" by Karren Alenier. 

Innisfree editor Greg McBride has put together an exceptional issue with such well known poets as Rick Barot, Nancy Naomi Carlson, John Koethe, Michael Lally, Hailey Leithauser, Jean Nordhaus, Terence Winch, Anne Harding Woodworth and many more.

Myra Sklarew Celebration is also being live streamed

 

The family of Myra Sklarew in cooperation with American University announces the life celebration of the remarkable Myra Sklarew.

The Washington Post has a extensive tribute to Myra Sklarewpo published January 29, 2025. Among the many things said about this remarkable human being is that she wrote poetry starting around the age of 7. Those of us who knew Myra knew she was accomplished in the fields of science and literature. The Post article also has a link to the Splendid Wake-up blog.

Live stream link:

https://sites.google.com/view/myra-sklarew-memorial/home 

In Memoriam: Elisavietta Ritchie (June 29, 1932-January 13, 2025)

Elisavietta Artamonoff Ritchie Farnsworth, well-known and loved, prolific American writer, poet, teacher, editor, essayist, and translator passed away on January 13th, 2025 in Solomons, Maryland. You can read more of her obituary at Legacy on the Internet.

Lisa Ritchie was the collaborating poet who gave the name A Splendid Wake to Myra Sklarew's archival project that operated with a wiki supported by The George Washington University.

On June 7, 2025, A Splendid Wake will be celebrated for Lisa at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD.

 On June 28, 2025, a life celebration will be held for Lisa at her former farmhouse.

In this photograph taken in 1999, Karren Alenier (left) stands with Lisa Ritchie (right) on the occasion of Karren's book launch party (Looking for Divine Transportation) which Lisa hosted at her DC house on Macomb Street. Lisa's hospitality and generosity were well known in the Washington, DC area.

SORTING LAUNDRY

   by Elisavietta Ritchie

 

Folding clothes,
I think of folding you
into my life.

Our king sized sheets
like table cloths
for the banquets of giants,

pillow cases, despite so many
washings seams still
holding our dreams.

Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale,

reserved, we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.

So many shirts and skirts and pants
recycling week after week, head over heels
recapitulating themselves.

All those wrinkles
to be smoothed, or else
ignored, they're in style.

Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foam
like those creatures in the ark.

And what's shrunk
is tough to discard
even for Goodwill.

In pockets, surprises:
forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking on enamel;

paper clips, whatever they held
between shiny jaws, now
dissolved or clogging the drain;

well washed dollars, legal tender
for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation;

and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold

you brought from Kuwait,
the strangely tailored shirt
left by a former lover...

If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold
only my own clothes,

the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,

a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fill
the empty side of the bed.

 

 

Founder of A Splendid Wake Myra Sklarew dies December 30, 2024

 

Our beloved MYRA SKLAREW, a matriarch of our American literary community died December 30, 2024. She was a biologist, poet, and teacher. She was author of 17 poetry collections and many other books including her last A Survivor Named Trauma: Holocaust Memory in Lithuania (published in 2020), an interdisciplinary book that combined prose, poetry and memoir. She founded the MFA in creative writing at American University and taught over 10,000 students. From 1987 to 1991, she served as president of the Yaddo arts colony. With support from The George Washington University, she was the founder of A Splendid Wake, the archival project that operated from 2013 to 2022 and whose purpose it was to preserve the legacy of poetry in the Greater Washington, DC area from 1900 to the current day. Her family is planning her splendid wake and we will let you know when we know. In the meantime, find the witty obituary she wrote herself that was published in The Washington Post on December 31.

 

Here is a poem by Myra Sklarew:

 

The Sunflowers of Umbertide

Before I go into the dark places, before I enter
the tunnel of the past, before I climb down
into the pit where I kneel on the earth,
where those I once loved leave me a remnant
of bone, before their lost names scatter
to the wind, before the trees forget what they witness,
before for no reason at all a child is taken
from life, before before . . .

 

I stand in Umbertide

 

where the sunflowers turn their bountiful heads
eastward, their buds still in circadian rhythm.
And I am warmed by them, my eyes fill
with their seeds and petals, florets in perfect spirals,
their golden offerings risen high on their stems.
I carry them in my arms, the entire field of sunflowers
from Umbertide, so the coldness of the pit
in the cold country will not freeze me entirely.

SPLENDID WAKE 9 , SUNDAY, MAY 22, 2022

 

SPLENDID WAKE 8 LIVE ON ZOOM, November 8th

Splendid Wake 8 will be live on ZOOM, Sunday, November 8, 2020
2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Register  https://tinyurl.com/y2449vf7

 

A SPLENDID WAKE 8--Rescheduled for November 8, 2020 by ZOOM

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. 

Summer Poetry Pop-Up: Ginger Ingalls

Culture and Consciousness

My soul sweeps

the earth and settles

a small African.

I hold this child.

My eyes open

but bloodshot from the strength,

from Strasbourg to west Senegal,

for holding on so long.

                                    --Ginger Ingalls

Ginger Ingalls, at 68, wishes to absorb the lessons of her life as Mom, poet, energy bodyworker, and former journalist.

Summer Poetry Pop-Up: Chan Wing-chi

A REQUIEM FOR A VOYAGE OF 100 YEARS        

                                                               End of de 19th century

                                                               Off a fishing port entry

                                                      Eight-year boy's dad’s sick death

                                                      Where mother & grandmom left

                                                   While teenager's dream to be sought

                                                  At Macau, he dared to jump on board

                                           Wooden boat sailed for cross-oceanic voyage

                                           Over the storm, in months, to a golden village

                                   For ten years plus, worked for fifteen hours every day

                                   Never in school, dreamed schooling for his kid one day

                            Selling the ID, back to hometown with dream of land property

                            For money been cheated by a learned cousin, yelling in misery

                        So left behind a three-year son/wife, voyaging 2^nd time to Ellis Island

                       Whom, with no ID, yelled by Immigration be under an arrest warrant

                   Faceless, speechless, hopeless, a body found on Hudson River, motionless 

                   His son, of US Flying Tiger, at River recalled how dad needed to be tearless

             When a voyage voicing through two continents via symphony of hundred years

             What a requiem symphonized voices of war/peace, life/death for human dears  

         Echoing to a home legacy for singing grace to the needed with a generous hospitality

         Where three great-grand kids now bowing tunes on thy heart-strings at a Capital City

                                                                             11-1-2017

   Note: Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, had been the gateway for each of the 12 million

  new immigrant’s entry inspection upon his/her arrival to the United States from 1892 to 1954.   

                              

Chan Wing-chi, currently chair professor for arts at the Beijing Capital Normal University.  Being a Washingtonian poet cum musician, Chan organized the Washington, DC Youth Orchestra’s ten concert tours to Europe and Asia, during his tenure as Development Director.  Also he served as consultants for National

Endowment for the Arts and China National Symphony, adjunct professor at Green Mountain College in Vermont and Shenyang Music Conservatory in China, and external examiner for New York University’s Master’s program. Spearheading to score his mind of conceptual art, minimalism and pointillism music, Chan has synchronized tonal rhyming perception in composing English poetry.  Chan’s poems had been broadcasted and recorded under the Poets & Poems Program at the Library of Congress. Meanwhile Chan’s English poems has recently been published under the Fall 2015 MiPOesias, 2018 The Federal Poet, and by the New Academia Publishing, namely Mass for Nanking’s 1937.  In 2007, Chan, as choral conductor, took a team of twelve American vocalists to participate in a Memorial Concert for the 70^th Anniversary of Nanking Massacre . 

Summer Poetry Pop-up: Jacqueline Jules

Waiting To Heal

Fractured bone

bleeds, then clots.

A callus forms

and tissue toughens—

as long as

circulation is good,

no infection intrudes,

and the limb

stays immobile

long enough.

Bone cells

possess the magic

to link broken parts,

become whole enough

to bear the weight

of living once again.

If only waiting

weeks and weeks

didn’t blister and itch

or entomb every thought

inside a plaster crypt.

                                        --Jacqueline Jules

"Waiting to Heal" appears in Itzhak Perlman's Broken String.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of three chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press), Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications), and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String (Winner, Helen Kay Chapbook Prize 2016). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com where you will see that she is also the author of 40 books for young readers including the Zapato Power series and Pluto is Peeved.

Summer Poetry Pop-up: Kim Roberts

A BOY NAMED SCHMUTZ

His mother dressed him up so fine,

spent all her cash on sailor suits,
wool knickers with the sewn-in pleats,
and floppy grosgrain ribbon ties.
The Coney Island crowd of boys
liked him though: his dirty jokes,

his pitching arm.  Also the way
he let his mother dress him up,
then watched her face go purple-red
screaming down the tenement walls
to all the ragged neighbor boys
who called him out to stickball games.

His name is Irving! she would shout
to my father and his gang below.
It's Irving!  You dirty indigents!
You impecunious gutter rats!
No one screamed as gloriously:
How dare you beggars call him Schmutz!

                                                                   --Kim Roberts

Kim Roberts is the author of A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018), and five books of poems, most recently The Scientific Method (WordTech Editions, 2017). She co-edits the journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes. Roberts has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, HumanitiesDC, and the DC Commission on the Arts, and has been a writer-in-residence at 17 artist colonies (and will attend her 18th, Art OMI in New York State, this coming October). Poems of hers have been featured in the Wick Poetry Center’s Traveling Stanzas Project, on the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Project, and on podcasts sponsored by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her website: http://www.kimroberts.org