Tag Archives: BIPF

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet R.G. Evans

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

R.G. Evans will be reading his poetry on  Sunday, January 18th, at 10:00am.

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Excited to be a part of the 2015 Bridgewater International Poetry Festival!

Visit my website to see my bio and links to some online poems, interviews and videos:http://www.rgevanswriter.com.

Here’s a poem from my book Overtipping the Ferryman:

MONTH WITHOUT A MOON

Any night I like, I can rise instead of the moon
that has forgotten us, not a thought of our sad lot,
and roam the darkened oblongs of the dunes.

Once you said the moon was some pale god
who turned away his face to cause the tides,
and once you said that, I of course believed

that you were mad. Now the ghost crab guides
me to the edge where land is not land, sea not sea,
and all the sky above is one dark dream.

This is the month with no full moon. You
were its prophet, and I am standing on the seam
between belief and what I know is true.

I gave you a diamond. It should have been a pearl.
It should have been a stone to hang above the world.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Pia Taavila-Borsheim

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Pia Taavila-Borsheim will be reading her poetry on  Saturday, January 17th, at 10:00am.

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Thanks for hosting this, Jeff. Can’t wait to meet / see everyone.

Check out my web page for some poems, my resume (with my publishing history) as well as a listing of my forthcoming readings and book signings. Thanks!

http://piataavilaborsheim.wordpress.com

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Stan Galloway

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Stan Galloway will be reading his poetry on  Thursday, January 15th, at 1:30pm.

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Stan Galloway hosts the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival in alternate years. It is a global event in a small town atmosphere. He also writes poetry himself (which fuels his desire to meet all these outstanding poets). Here is an early poem which can be found in Scratching Against the Fabric, an anthology of poems from the last poetry festival, and scheduled for release next week.

 

Failed Romance

The little boy offers his best fire truck
and invites her to the box
while she sees the castles that he
has not built and the prince who
has not ridden to the rescue.
He says he likes the way she shows the
ribbon in her hair, meaning he likes
the way she shows the ribbon in her hair,
while she hears the one-tenth
surface to a nine-tenths depth he
won’t reveal.
He reaches out to tie the shoe
string that falls loose and she
begins to list the hundred other
broken things he’s failed to see, thinking
love and entropy are opposites.
He drives his cars around her,
happy that she chose to squat with him
for a time, and she wonders
why he needs her there while
he does his own thing oblivious.
Then she begins to talk and talk and he
turns his ear to her and finally says,
again, he likes the ribbon and
she turns away and leaves the box
to the shallow boy
with the one-track mind.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Ras Takura

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Ras Takura will be reading his poetry on  Thursday, January 15th, at 3:30pm.

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RasTakura, was nominated for the International Reggae and World Music (IRAWMA) award in 2011 – Dub Poet of The Year. Founder of the Royal African Soldiers Movement

As the tides change in the Reggae landscape that maintain the Rootical vibration from the days of the founding fathers to the Today era of the Reggae Revival, Dub Poetry as always been playing a great rule in the brand of Jamaican Reggae .

RasTakura is one such Poet who carry on in the tradition of people like Oku Onora, Linton Kwesi Jonson and Mutabaruka who is like a Mentor and a Father Figure and has been featured on the ‘Food War’ album in the track titled ‘The Science of Agriculture’

He has performed on some of Jamaica’s major shows including Reggae Sumfest, St. Mary Mi Come From, Capleton & Frenz, Fiwi Sinting, Rebel Salute , Heineken Startime, plus numerous appearances in schools, Colleges and Universities across the Island. He has also Toured and performed across the Caribbean. He is the founder of the annual Dis Poem Wordz & Agro Festival, an all day Poetry festival and expo of Agricultural Products, which was started on the campus of the College of Agriculture Science and Education in Portland Jamaica in 2011.
His work covers not only modern issues but critical ones that need to be brought to the forefront. He performed on Word Sound Power that was featured on BETJ. He classified Himself as a Jamaican Reggae Dub Poet, recording and performing artist, Farmer, Painter, conscious Rastaman.

RasTakura gains his inspiration from H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, Marcus Garvey, Mutabaruka, Andrea Williams-Green and Capleton Peter Tosh, Bob Marley. His agricultural and environmental roots were deepened at the Knockalva Agricultural School, and the College of Agriculture, Science & Education (CASE).

In 2003 Takura was featured on the Multicast Poetz CD – a compilation album produced by Mackonen Blake Hannah & Eric Dixon.

He has been featured on IRIE FM’s programs – Running African, the Entertainment Buzz and Elise Kelly’s Easy Skanking show. plus numerous international interviews, He has been featured on T.V.J, CVM TV, as well as in several local print media such as : The Star, The Gleaner and The Observer Newspapers.

He is “A Potent, Afrocentric Political Poet with a cause” – Rooted with two underground compilation CD’s, Run-Away-Slaves & Dragon Slayers, and a DVD, produced by C.P.T.C. RAS Poetz.

RasTakura was born in the beautiful parish of St. Ann, in a small community neighboring Nine Miles, the home of Reggae Legend Bob Marley. He spent his earlier years growing up on a farm with his Grandparents then later lived with his single mother in a neighboring District. He recognized his talent while attending Bensonton All Age School where he gladly used the opportunities given to perform on every school and community concert as a Dancehall Deejay. Now Dub Poet RasTakura

Look forward to the voice of the future, living in the present. Look forward to the ‘Food War’ album. Look for RasTakura.

For booking information please call 1-876-573-1851 or email rastakura@yahoo.com

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Lesley Wheeler

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Lesley Wheeler will be reading her poetry on  Friday, January 16th, at 3:30pm.

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Lesley Wheeler is a poet and professor born in New York, raised in New Jersey, and residing in Virginia since 1994. Her books include the poetry collections The Receptionist and Other Tales, Heterotopia (winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), and Heathen as well as two scholarly studies and the co-edited anthology Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-po Listserv. Her next poetry collection, Radioland, is forthcoming in September. Now the Henry S. Fox Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, Wheeler has held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation (New Zealand), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. In 2011 she received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia. Recent poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, and the Tahoma Literary Review. Find more information and her poetry blog at http://lesleywheeler.org/.

 

Côte Sauvage

Although the borderland is stony
and slicked by vivid seaweed,
the old man walks again without a cane—
his silhouette disrupts the glare.
No use shouting. Parents and children
never hear each other. Or
they pick up the faintest
impatient huff. Blackout
yields to voice as randomly
as suns broadcast their flares.

This terrain’s all surf and precipice.
Mirror pools bristle with mussels.
Generations break into foam around
boulders. Ahead, an absolute Atlantic.

But a limestone cliff at our backs
reflects the roar, as if we stand
within a shell whose whorls affirm
each listener’s inner ocean. Touch
the wall and feel a bass-line throb.

And there’s my son, leaning into
this green noise. Locked mollusk.
My daughter’s magnetic waves assail me.
Gods and fathers rarely signal,
but rock vibrates
sympathetically. What else
could it say? Echo
a kind of love, of
parley.

from Turbine: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/iiml/turbine/Turbi14/poetry/t1-g1-g1-t17-g1-t1-body-d1.html

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Lynn Martin

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Lynn Martin will be reading her poetry on  Saturday, January 17th, at 3:30pm.

You can listen to Lynn read one of her poems at the link below

http://lynnmartinandthesonsoforpheus.yolasite.com/resources/Lynn%20Martin%20and%20the%20Sons%20of%20Orpheus%20-%20Shiver.mp3

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Sarah Elizabeth Murphy

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Sarah Elizabeth Murphy will be reading her poetry on  Saturday, January 17th, at 4:30pm.

Some of her work can be found here:

http://www.theredthreadsociety.tumblr.com

New Film of Tomas Transtromer’s “Baltics”

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As you can tell from the quotation on the banner of this site, I’m a huge fan of Tomas Transtromer, and have been ever since I stumbled across a selection of his poems in the Cambridge Public Library back in 1989, while looking for a volume of Fernando Pessoa’s poems.

I have written about Transtromer and his work here, and I guess this was just enough of an online presence to be luckily found by James Wine, who has created a beautiful film of Transtromer’s poem “Baltics,” in which the poet reads his own poem in his native tongue and which can be viewed with English subtitles. The link to the film is below—hopefully this method of sharing works; if it does not, I have also linked to it on my Twitter account @jeffschwaner.

Magically enough, the filmmakers once lived very much in this part of the world, outside Front Royal for a few decades before moving to Sweden. So at a time when poets are preparing to gather at Bridgewater for the poetry festival next week, here comes a film of a most moving poem by a Nobel Prize winning writer who, long before he’d won any prizes had already won the hearts of so many readers, in a film created by folks with roots right around the corner. Please check it out, and enjoy.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Joshua Gray

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Joshua Gray will be reading his poetry on  Friday, January 16th, at 11:00am.

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Joshua Gray was born in the mountains rural Northern Virginia, outside Washington DC. He grew up in Alexandria VA, two miles from the nation’s capital and spent most of his adult life in the suburbs of the city. From 2012 to 2014 Joshua Gray lived in southern India, and has recently moved back to the DC area.

He has been published in many journals, including Poets and Artists, Mipoesias, Blind Man’s Rainbow, Front Range Review, Iconoclast, Zouch Magazine and many others. For two years he was the DC Poetry Examiner for Examiner.com where he wrote reviews of poetry collections by local poets as well as articles on the local poetry scene. He is active on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and many other social media sites.

WHY KRISHNA AND RADHA LOVE THE MONSOON

–Originally published in RaedLeaf-India

In the eternal hemorrhaging of the present,
the monsoon is a man pursuing, a god preserving.
His sperm penetrates
the shores of India’s hips, satiates her dry, rough skin.

But here, high in the mountains, dark clouds
finger across the distant sky.
Beneath the blazing sun, I lap
the sweat from between your breasts.

The monkeys are in heat around us;
They leap from tree to tree,
their mouths shut, as they prepare for the tornado
of our love. India bares her breasts, atop her waterbed, seduced.

As the fog rolls in and chills us,
I notice the cool liquid
vanishing from your august temple
as the humor of the present continues its steady flow.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Sara Robinson

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Sara Robinson will be reading her poetry on Sunday, January 18th, at 10:00am.

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Greetings, I am Sara Robinson, reading on Sunday. I am the poetry columnist for Southern Writers Magazine and instructor of contemporary American poetry for UVA/OLLI. I founded the Lonesome Mountain Pros(e) Writers Workshop three years ago and was the poetry editor for the inaugural issue of Virginia Literary Journal. I have published three poetry books and a memoir. I love rye and Scotch whiskies.

What We Seek

Asymmetry is
a plump wren perched
on a thin branch
contemplating
a ripe strawberry
stilled on a table

In its serene
pose does
the wren feel
ripeness or see
the redness or
is the setting
just a “pas de deux”
for one