Labor Omnia Vincit

Oklahoma Laborfest sounds like it's going to be great!

The festival takes place in Oklahoma City's

Plaza District

from

August 26th to August 28th.

It will begin with a poetry reading at Coffy's Cafe, hosted by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, whose book, Work is Love Made Visible: Poetry and Family Photographs, won the 2010 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry.



Several Oklahoma writers will read, including our own Aaron Rudolph, Jason Poudrier and more. Lawton will be represented! Let us know if you are going, too.

Here's a link to a map of the Plaza District.

Here's the schedule of events for the rest of the weekend, including panel discussions, screenings of documentaries, live music and art shows!

The festival will wrap up with "Labor Speaks," an event that "will include dramatic readings of selected historical texts from Oklahoma’s labor and civil rights movement as well as musical performances of songs connected to these movements."

This is a great opportunity to support the arts and to learn about Oklahoma history.

Jason Poudrier Writes About His Experiences at Scissortail Writing Festival

The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival is the most happening writing get together in all of Oklahoma. It takes place at East Central University in small town Ada, Oklahoma. The town fills and the restaurants are packed as writers from all over the United Sates arrive to participate or observe, or often both, the Scissortail Festival. At this year's festival, writer's came from as far away as Alaska and South Dakota to participate. There were several -yes several- former poet laureates from different states, including Oklahoma and Texas. And Jim Barnes, the current Oklahoma poet laureate, read from his new book and mingled with other writers and literature lovers during the afterhours events that take place throughout Ada each night of the festival.

Books are sold and can often be signed virtually simultaneously; a long table holds all the books for sale by various authors reading at the festival. Rilla Askew, last year--I had read last year from a manuscript I am working on--signed my copy of Harpsong "to a fellow writer," which I thought was awesome.


This year I got a chance to chat with Nathan Brown an Oklahoma Book Award recipient, who also has several poetry books out; we talked about writing and an author who read at the festival last year, named Jim Chastain. I enjoyed Chastain's reading and purchased his book right after. The title of the book: "I survived Cancer but Never Won the Tour de France."

The heart breaking part of the festival this year, for me, was finding out from Chastain's friend Nathan Brown that Chastain passed away last year. However, Brown and another of Chastain's writing friends are working on completing Chastain's final manuscript for him, and they are hoping to publish it within a few years.

As a reader, I enjoyed the opportunity and was honored to read among such great artists in 2008 and 2009; this year as a spectator, I enjoyed the freedom of attending which ever session I chose (more than one reading occurs at a time in different locations) and listening to fabulous writers share their works and talk about writing.

(Note: The photos come from Scissortail 2010's facebook page, this photo album for the 2009 festival, and Amazon.com. They were added by Teri McGrath.)

Fishouse.org: good resource to find emerging contemporary American poets

I know that my posts have been poetry heavy; I am sorry for the bias. I do love prose as well, and would love to discuss some non-fiction, especially. But for now, here's a great poetry site you may not have encountered.

The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) is a great site for classical poems and established contemporary poets. But what about the emerging voices: those 30-somethings and 40-somethings who need a wider audience? Fishouse (www.fishouse.org, 1 h) is the site for such poets. Fishouse features mostly American writers. And along with text, they have audio files. The poets read their work, both live and recorded in a studio, and they also answer interview questions. This site is a tremendous resource for anyone looking for contemporary work.

Yes, the work will mostly come from poets working in the academy, but there are still a wide and diverse range of voices. Poets who I go back to: Aimee Nez, John Poch, Patrick Rosal, Gerald Stern, Henrietta Goodman, and Curtis Bauer. I will admit to knowing a couple of these writers personally, so adding them on a list seems self-serving. Still, I believe that each poet here has good work. In fact, Curtis Bauer is talking about visiting Lawton soon. He is open to a spring reading. Hopefully, we can make that happen. If so, we'll all know what he sounds like before he shows up, thanks to this site.