Time for Re-Verse, Sigma Tau Delta style.

Last April, several people in the Department of English and Foreign Languages met to plan a new event, a poetry recitation. Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, sponsored the event and the experiment was born on a rainy Thursday night. Eleven people read, including students and professors. In planning this year's recitation, STD decided to move it to the fall semester.

This is the story of Re-Verse. The beginning, anyway. The second chapter occurs on November 18, a Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the Buddy Green Room in the MCC on the Cameron University campus.

The event is open to the the public and anyone can recite a poem as long as they sign up in advance. This year you can speak to Dr. William Carney if you want to recite a poem. Email him at wcarney at cameron dot edu.

You can recite one poem. The poem must by written by anyone other than yourself. Last year, someone recited a poem written by his niece. Dr. Seuss is fair game. So is Chaucer, Shelley, and Plath. Poems not in English ARE ENCOURAGED ENTHUSIASTICALLY. It doesn't matter if no one else speaks Sanskrit; poetry is also about rhythm and sound, and those things can be understood in any language.

Price of admission is a can of food, to be donated by STD to the Lawton Food Bank. Please join us for an evening of fun, friends, and poetry.

Moira Crone reads her stories about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina

(This article was written by David Pilon, Cameron University creative writing student.)

Award-winning fiction author Moira Crone visited Cameron University on Friday, September, 10 for a reading of some of her work, and I had the pleasure of attending. The reading was part of the continuing Visiting Writers Series at Cameron, which has included in the past such writers as Anis Shivani and Barry Graham.

Crone, a resident of New Orleans, read for us her short story, “Black Carpet,” about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the effects of crises on relationships. Afterwards was a question and answer with discussion of her writing and her experiences in relation to New Orleans and Katrina. She offered some interesting insight on the disaster as well as into the current culture of NOLA and the increasing growth of the artistic scene there.

Two of her short story collections, What Gets Into Us and Dream State were also being sold outside of the reading. Her work sounds modern and relevant and seems also deeply influenced by her life and experiences in the American South. If you missed the reading, then you can read more about Moira Crone online and find some of her books on Amazon.

The next scheduled Visiting Writer event is Ken Hada on October 8 at the CETES building.

Moira Crone reads her fiction Friday Night at 7:00

Novelist and Louisiana State University professor Moira Crone will read on the Cameron University campus Friday (September 10) in the CETES building.

Moira Crone is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She is the author of four books of fiction, most recently WHAT GETS INTO US (read a review). Her stories have been selected five times for New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, and her works have appeared in the New Yorker, Oxford American, Image, and many other journals. She has degrees from John Hopkins U. (MD) and Smith College (MA).

Please join us for her reading which will take about an hour. Hear some excellent storytelling and meet others in the Lawton and Cameron writing communities. There may be cookies and coffee. If not, we'll owe you some.

The event is sponsored by CU Lectures and Concerts, the School of Liberal Arts,

the Department of English and Foreign Languages, and Sigma Tau Delta.

David Pilon Writes About The Oklahoma Review

In the spring semester of 2010, I was enrolled in a class at Cameron University listed as Online Magazine Editing. It wasn’t really exactly what I had expected or what it might sound like to some. The class was also my introduction to The Oklahoma Review, a publication I wish I had known about sooner.

The Oklahoma Review is an international online magazine published twice each year through the English Department at Cameron. Its Editor in Chief and the professor in charge of the class that publishes it is Dr. John Hodgson. For those who don’t know Dr. Hodgson, he can seem intimidating at first with his booming voice of authority, and it’s also not a great idea to smart off to him or shirk on assignments (both of which I’ve sometimes done in the past). However, it was actually fun working for him, and I learned a lot from the experience.

I was also impressed both by the volume and the quality of work the magazine receives. Being in the class also means being on the staff, and my main task as such was working as a student reader, reading through and evaluating poems, short stories, and works of creative nonfiction. I read some great pieces (and honestly, some not-so-great ones as well), and I got to openly discuss them with my peers. Out of the works published in the spring issue, I was particularly fond of the short story “The Statue at the Café Ephemera,” by Robert Kaye.

As a Creative Writing major, a writer, and someone who is looking towards pursuing an MFA and probably going on to be a college instructor, what I gained most from working on the magazine was learning more about the submission and publication processes, as well as building better communication skills in regards to writing and literature and a better understanding of what is considered quality, contemporary literature.

The spring 2010 issue of The Oklahoma Review turned out really good, and I enjoyed helping to create it. I liked reading the poems and the one work of fiction published in this issue, and I would recommend the magazine to anyone who values quality literature, as well as recommending the magazine editing class at Cameron to anyone who is interested.

David Pilon is a senior Creative Writing student at Cameron University. He is also the newly elected Vice President of the Cameron chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. He has been a reader for both The Oklahoma Review and The Gold Mine Literary & Fine Arts Journal. His poetry was nominated for the John G. Morris Poetry Prize the past two years.

Visiting Poet (March 29th)

Jenny Yang Cropp

will read from her work

March 29

@

7 pm


CETES Conference Room B

This is what she looks like:

She is a Lawton native, a former Cameron student and the author of the chapbook, Hanging the Moon (RockSaw Press, 2010).

Click on these links to read her work at Poetry Southeast, Boxcar Poetry Review, and Superstition Review.

Her poems have also appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Ecotone, Eclipse and others. In 2009, her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA from Minnesota State University-Mankato and is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of South Dakota where she also works as the circulation manager and an editorial assistant for South Dakota Review.

So. . . wow!

Re-Verse Recap (March 11, 2010)

The first annual Re-Verse is completed. I use the word "annual" because we're definitely doing this again. It was too much fun to let it fade away into the Lawton fog. We had about 25 people show up and Amber Harrington, Sigma Tau Delta's president, said it was the best attended event STD has hosted all year.

I wish I didn't ramble on so much at the beginning with introductions, but no one ran away screaming. Anyway, we had both faculty and students read. Next year, we hope to increase our presenters to 30, with people participating from both Cameron and the Lawton/Southwerstern OK community.

Highlights... Drs. John Morris, William Carney, Ginette Baillergeon, and Vivian Tomlinson all gave us great poems performed passionately. Dr. Baillergeon, in particular, wowed us with two poems, one in French. She recited a longer poem by Carl Sandburg and reminded us that not all Sanburg poems are four lines long. Both of her poems were long ones and I don't think she faltered once.

Several students read, both English majors and students from other disciplines. All together, eleven people read a poem each and not one person had a difficult time reciting their work. Not one. I've been to recitation events before, and I've never seen one without a few long pauses. Long pauses are perfectly fine in such a difficult situation, but the fact that there was not one at our event is very impressive.

Also, we contributed lots of food to the Lawton Food Bank. This was Amber's idea and it is a good one. Future events only mean further donations. We are considering a fall date for next year's even (maybe a bi-annual thing) simply because we don't want to wait twelve months to do this again.

Another Publication with Excellent Taste in Poets

This literary magazine right here:

(link ^)

has had the good sense to publish two of our fellow poets--and Cameron graduates--Tracy Haught and Jason Poudrier, in a special Oklahoma Writer's Issue.

Congratulations to them!

Jason Poudrier regularly attends the monthly poetry readings, so if you do too, it is likely you have heard him read some of the poems that will appear in Sugar Mule. We may have even heard several revisions of the poems. Jason is a veteran of the most recent war in Iraq. His poems, which often transpose images of the Iraq war over images of the Oklahoma landscape, present a vision that is probably familiar to a lot of Lawtonians.

Here is a bit from his poem "Red Fields," which is one that will be appearing in Sugar Mule:

our holes would be shallow,
and we'd push the sand up around
the perimeter, making
a false reservoir of safety,
knowing bullets would penetrate
the powdered walls if we were ambushed,
and our bodies would lie
half-exposed in shallow graves,
in pools coloring the sand
Oklahoma clay.


You can read some of Tracy Haught's poetry in the latest issue of Polyphony , where her poem, "Oklahoma," also presents a brave and authentic vision of our state.


Where sunset flames
On the western horizon
Like the sparks of past pain.
Like those who were forced
To walk until they could no longer be
What God intended them to be.
The only abundance was in tears--
Plenty enough for future irrigation--
but mostly they've been forgotten,
Overlooked in the stomping and clapping,
the humdrum of the average life


Sugar Mule is a really cool looking magazine, and I'm pretty excited about an issue featuring a lot of Oklahoma voices, like Tracy's and Jason's. The issue will be available on line in July, and eventually Sugar Mule will partner with Mongrel Empire Press to create a print anthology of Oklahoma Writers.

Here's a link to the current issue.

LOCAL MONTHLY OPEN-MIC READINGS IN LAWTON

Every second Saturday of the month, writers from Lawton and surrounding towns come together at the Universalist Unitarian church. This ragtag bunch reads new work, old work, tells stories, and shares the poems and stories of writers they admire.

For the most part, the readers become familiar, as may people read regularly. A new face or two, though, arrives each time to share a new perspective, a new voice. At the last reading, Amit Bashyal, a first-year student at Cameron walked in with his laptop, ready to read. Amit is from Kathmandu, Nepal. He is studying the sciences at CU, but he is most certainly a writer.

I first met Amit in my Comp class; he was my student, adjusting to college life a long, long distance from home. Amit and I are now friends and several times he has shared his new work with me. On his facebook page, he's listed quite a few titles under his "favorite books." But the list is not a wish list. It's the list of book he's read in the last two years and includes many of the most celebrated English-language books. Recently, he was turned on to the Beat writers. How he likes these writers, I hope to find out soon.

Anyway, here's a poem by Amit. Also, I wrote about Amit for the January issue of Okie Magazine--"From Nepal to Oklahoma, Amit Bashyal Discovers His Other Life."

Spaces Around Me

by Amit Bashyal

Vacant spaces around me
There I try to fit myself
Far left in the corner
I put my anger
In front of my eyes
Lies my world of ties
Above my head
Is the large round space
There is my world full of mess
My left hand points a place
Lies the challenges I have to face
My right hand facing the vacancy
Lies my dreams full of dreams and fancy
In my back lies an eternal room
All my memories are doomed
All around me are the spaces
Where I try to fit myself!

March 2nd Show at Cameron Campus Ministry

Featuring Levi the Poet , a "Death Metal Poet." Here's a clip of him performing at Cameron in September '09:



The show will also feature Andrew the Poet, our new Facebook friend, who let us know about this event.



C-Note and the Ballerz, who were interviewed by Jeremy Bigelow for the March '09 issue of OKIE MAGAZINE, will perform.



And so will Paid in Blood

Show starts @ 8pm at Cameron Campus Ministry

500 SW 27th Street . Lawton, Oklahoma . 73505

Sounds like it could be pretty cool. Check it out. Tell us what you think.

February 12th Cameron Visiting Writer

Author, Anis Shivani, will be reading from his collection,

ANATOLIA AND OTHER STORIES

@ Cameron University

in CETES Conference Room B

Friday, February 12

@ 7 pm

Here's a picture of Shivani that you can click on to get to his website:



Here's a bit about ANATOLIA AND OTHER STORIES:

In these stories of novelistic breadth, Shivani takes the measure of the fallout from globalization as well as its advantages, exploring cultures old and new to gauge their ultimate resiliencies. An undocumented Indian worker in Dubai, an Issei man in a California internment camp, a persecuted minority novelist in contemporary Tehran, and a loyal-to-the-core Jewish trader in the Ottoman empire are the kinds of sympathetic characters who bridge place and individuality in this powerful collection. These stories make us confront the hardest intellectual challenges of the emerging world, without losing narrative urgency, concision, and lyrical power.

These readings are usually very intimate and enjoyable. Afterward, the authors often invite questions from the audience. It's a great way to spend a few hours on a Friday. See you there!