Tag Archives: Virginia poet

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet A. Logan Hill

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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. 

A. Logan Hill will be reading his poetry on  Friday, January 16th, at 11:00am.

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Hey ya’ll, super stoked to meet up with everyone & exchange languages. Here’s some stuff about & of me:

A. Logan Hill grew up just north of Harrisonburg, Virginia in an old house by a small town off the highway. As a Poetry candidate in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, he is currently working on a novel, a new chapbook of “appropriations from texts on NOTHING,” a collection of “prosaic meanderings” with the working title “Reward,” new poems, a children’s book, journals, and a collection of essays. In addition, Logan has also begun preliminary research on “the art of the list” and his interests in the integrity of mobiles. He currently teaches College Writing in the University’s Writing Program and is an Associate Editor at Route 9 Literary Magazine.

Needless to say “logan’s poems are more like blooms.” — H I L L

l o g a n H I L L “ hates ” genre.
He writes lists, notes, batches, drafts, plumbs, poems, stories, lyrics, essays, journals, writing, fiction, creative non-fiction. letters, essays, journals, poems, genre/form, collections, novels, chapbooks, speeches, strands, grants, proposals, lectures, lessons, drafts, labels, symbols, diagrams, lists, talks, responses, reviews, poems, presentations, stories, lists & other illiterate drafts / songs.

x Poetry is an act.

x Fiction is a process.

x Writing is the universal human act of a reciprocation between / personal experience and
fragility.

x Everything is / the act of poetry.

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DAY 4r

little spiders
in the
cob webs
of the
house
hanging there
in the bodies
of brownish
orbs —
sacks
in between
the
greenish hemisphere
of the
porched in
walls.
sadness can
not achieve
complete loneliness —
solitude
like a rotting
mattress —
the beautiful paired
with the mundane —
the everyday
& the useless—
the beauty
& the grotesque
of the beautiful—
grotesque.
some things will never end up in the wildflowers.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Patsy Asuncion

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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. 

Patsy Asuncion will be reading her poetry on  Friday, January 16th, at 10:00am.

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Public education, her ticket from poverty, instilled passion for words in all its creative forms. Professional writing morphed into poetry and short stories, featured in Prevention Magazine and numerous anthologies (most recently in Chatter House Press’ Reckless Writing, SUNY’s Healing Muse, L.A. Loyola’s The Truth About the Fact, National Federation of Poetry Society’s Encore) as well as online journals, UK’s Female First and Laughing Fire Press. Her poetry collection, Cut on the Bias, will be published by Laughing Fire Press in early 2015.

Here’s a new poem about growing up in Chicago’s inner city:

Jalopy

She was stolen shiny new outside
a tenement for a joy ride then abandoned
in a back alley No anti-theft devices
in those days just next of kin to fender
troublemakers When they found her
they thought she was lucky just
a busted headlight bloody dents
and pigeon-toed tires probably
the reason thieves dumped her

Once healed she proved a good car
who kept good traction whenever
she drove her stepmother home
from the neighborhood tap Mechanics
saw her potential caught her interest
with books Interior lights a tough
engine ensured high performance
in school despite being left
alone a lot on the street

Tomboy antics in the alleys scarred
all four tires but she put up a poker-face
Two crashes shorting her electrical
started migraines every time she used
her turn signals Surgery on ball joints
and quality oil seemed to quiet cranky
squeaks when she rolled She paid
attention keeping her trim in top shape
to slow depreciation unlike some friends

Maintenance doesn’t stop life’s odometer
Rust spots on her once flawless finish
increased each winter Young cracks
in her underbody began puckering her
mainframe Cheap gas had been no
problem but then started upsetting her gut
Chronic allergies insisted more air filter
changes Not surprised each time she
was traded She didn’t choose her
owners

Sold now as vintage she is adept
a classic from the day the only one
to make it out of the old neighborhood
While memory settings have lost old
details she recalls important choices
running even in bad weather starting
while missing parts finding her way
regardless of confusing road signs
optimizing her standard components

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet KC Bosch

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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. 

KC Bosh will be reading his poetry on  Thursday, January 15th, at 2:30pm.

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KC Bosch is a photographer and woodworker who lives and writes in Rappahannock County, Virginia. His poetry can be found at literary journals such as Camel Saloon, Poetry Breakfast, Dead Mule, and Vox Poetica. His work was twice nominated for Best of the Net.

Stealing Days

when we arrive the calm dark is
rudely broken by generator and lamps
a million details to tend to

set the plates, fasten the sills
take the measure
run adhesive and sheet the deck
build the walls and stand in place

bring in the rafters
tip them up and nail them down
an ancient story of feet and inches

thirty-eight and seven-sixteenths skinny
short to short, three times
cripples and dead-men and bents
valleys and peaks and studs

stopping for lunch almost
while plotting …
sandwich in one hand
plans in the other

all afternoon more of the same
but different …

ok shut it down, tie it down,
pack it up

out to the truck
racing to Manny’s
pork rinds and beer
down 997 toward home

hat stuck to my head
sweat stain tie-dyed shirt
wearing enough sawdust and dirt
to … be … arrested … for … theft.

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 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 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

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Matthew Hamilton

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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. 

Matthew Hamilton will be reading his poetry Thursday, January 15th, at 4:30pm.

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Matthew Hamilton is a former Soldier, Congressional Aide, US Peace Corps, and Benedictine Monk. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Fairfield University and is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. His stories and poems have appeared in a variety of national and international journals, including Atticus Review, Coe Magazine, Noctua Review, Burnt Bridge, Boston Literary Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Muddy River Poetry Review. His chapbook, The Land of the Four Rivers, published by Cervena Barva Press, won the 2013 Best Poetry Book from Peace Corps Writers. Currently, he is the Librarian at Benedictine College Preparatory, an all-male, Catholic Military high school in Richmond, VA.

 

Snakes Belong in the Wild

As a child,
she kept purple-tailed lizards
in a doll house. The girls at school
called her queen of the reptiles.
A boy pulled a frog from his pocket
and told her to kiss it. She spit
in his face and disappeared
up a tree a maggot, wrapped herself
in bark-colored leaves
and waited for the bell to ring.
Years later, after college,
she disappeared again,
this time into the desert.
Her trailer was a rainforest.
She collected rattlers and corals,
mambas, and a gaboon viper
she allowed to curl around her wrist
like a diamond bracelet.
She never invited guests,
the boys and girls from school
an unbroken reminder of provocation.
She was never reported missing
and her ears and nose thrashed red
for days like exotic butterflies in flight.