July 27, 2013: Post and Courier interview

Recently in the Saturday "People" section, the Charleston Post and Courier featured an interview with me titled, "Q & A with local poet Susan Laughter Meyers." Besides including a few poem excerpts, it was a good opportunity for me to say a few things about poetry in general and my writing practice in particular. Here's a link to the article:  Post and Courier










photo by Paul Zoeller

Hats off to Hub City! A few words about their Writing in Place conference

Last weekend's Writing in Place conference, offered by Hub City Writers Project and held at Wofford College, was the 13th annual one—and what a wonderful weekend it was. Betsy Teter, the brain and heart of Hub City, truly knows how to plan a conference. Lots of classroom time, of course, for the workshops focusing on writing something new in the particular genre—but also readings by faculty and workshop participants, casual receptions that gave us time to get to know one another better, a panel on publishing, and a couple of concurrent Sunday workshops on specific topics. Plus plenty of good food! 

In the poetry workshop I taught—“An Arrival of Poems"—there were 13 participants: talented, dedicated poets who came together in the spirit of not only writing new work but also encouraging the others in the class with their own writing. I felt lucky to have such a congenial, hard-working group gathered together for our three sessions. Thank you, poets! 

And thank you, Hub City, for this gift of time, as well as the chance for each of us to allow ourselves  to wander off in a new direction with our writing, to try something we don't yet know how to do--to risk sounding clumsy and maybe even silly—but ultimately to trust that eventually it's all leading somewhere we need to go.

 

My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass is off at the printer's

I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas: my new poetry collection is at the printer's, with an official release date: August 15. So for me the countdown is on. My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass is a book that I began in 2007, poem by poem--not knowing initially that the poems were working their way toward a book. Before too long, though, I realized that there were a few core obsessions holding the poems together. In particular was the epistolary form that had gotten me started, short poems written to such friends and enemies as the constant bark of a dog, melancholy, the atamasco lily, and the loose wing of a dragonfly. In addition, the poems I was writing at the time kept returning to feelings and premonitions about the natural world; about what constitutes (for me) wonder, burden, and danger; about--what else?--love and death.

In 2009 I started circulating a completed manuscript, which went through additional revisions as it would come back, again and again, without a home. I knew I was getting close when the manuscript was a finalist for several contests, including The National Poetry Series, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and the Anhinga Robert Dana Prize for Poetry. Finally, last August I received the call I'd dreamed of. It came from editor Ruth Foley: the manuscript had won the Cider Press Review Editors Prize. I am most grateful to Ruth and editor/publisher Caron Andregg for their tireless, creative work in producing what I think is a gorgeous book. The cover art is a bromoil--an early 20th-century photographic stippling technique--by my brother Gene Laughter.

Please do visit CIDER PRESS REVIEW and enjoy getting to know their journal, as well as the books they publish annually. I'm now a huge fan!

Hub City Writing in Place conference, Jul. 12-14

It's less than a week until the annual Hub City Writing in Place conference. I can't wait! Invited to be the poet on faculty, I've been having fun putting a class packet together--called "An Arrival of Poems" and completed last night. The weekend conference workshops are for the purpose of generating new work, which is my kind of workshop.

The conference is held on the campus of Wofford College in Spartanburg. Other faculty this year include Wiley Cash, keynote speaker; Judy Goldman, Jim Minick; and Susan Tekulve. Betsy Teter is the director of Hub City and the conference. Check it out here. It may be the perfect jumpstart for your writing next year.

Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series: A joy to Coordinate!

Barbara G. S. Hagerty and I had a wonderful time putting together the Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series programming for the first time this year. We knew we were in for a big job, following in the footsteps of Carol Furtwangler, Coordinator for the Series for the past fifteen years. Carol was a tremendous help in getting us oriented and ready to go as the new Coordinators. The Series consists of ten evenings, Monday through Friday during the Picolo Spoleto Festival, of poetry readings by poets from the Charleston area and beyond. This year's Series featured the following talented poets:

Mon., May 27         William P. Baldwin
Tue., May 28           Lola Haskins
Wed., May 29         Edward Gold
Thur., May 30         Barbara G. S. Hagerty
Fri., May 31            Glenis Redmond

Mon., Jun. 3           Emily Rosko
Tue., Jun. 4            Randy Spencer
Wed., Jun. 5          Alice Osborn
Thur., Jun. 6          Henk Brandt
Fri., Jun. 7             Sandra Beasley

Much gratitude to all the fine poets who read, plus to the wonderful audiences who made it all worthwhile. We're already looking forward to the 2014 Series. Applications will be posted online this fall at the Piccolo Spoleto website .

Saturday, May 18: Two panels at the South Carolina Book Festival

Thanks to the University of South Carolina Press for asking me to participate on two panels at this year's South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia. For the first panel, Sheila Morris moderated a session about the anthology Seven Strong: A South Carolina Poetry Book Prize Reader, 2006-2012. Marjory Wentworth, who wrote the foreword for the book, Ed Madden, Ray McManus, and I were on the panel. We each read a poem or two of our own work, plus the work of one of the four poets in the anthology who were not present: Worthy Evans, Delana Dameron, Julia Koets, and Jennifer Pournelle. Here are the books that are in the series:

Keep and Give Away (my collection), 2006
Driving through the Country before You Are Born, 2007, Ray McManus
Signals, 2008, Ed Madden
How God Ends Us, 2009, DeLana R. A. Dameron
Green Revolver, 2010, Worthy Evans
Excavation: A City Cycle, 2011, Jennifer Pournelle
Hold like Owls, 2012, Julia Koets

Seven Strong: A South Carolina Poetry Book Prize Reader, 2006-2012. Edited by Kwame Dawes. Foreword by Marjory Wentworth.

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For the second panel, Charlene Spearen moderated. Artist Jonathan Green was the anchor of the panel, talking about his now-famous work of art titled Seeking, commissioned by Mepkin Abbey and the impetus for the anthology. He also explained the inspiration for the painting: his experience as a child wanting to join the church, a child who first was required to spend time alone in the woods as a part of the Gullah tradition's way of being trained to seek the depth of his commitment and the truth of his own life. Again, Marjory, Ed, Ray, and I participated on the panel. We talked about the spiritual connections that the Seeking project brought to us, and we each read our poem in the anthology. Poets Linda Annas Ferguson, Mary Hutchins Harris, and Ellen Hyatt joined us for a signing immediately following the panel session. It's amazing how much richer such an experience is when a whole group of poets is a part of it.

Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green. Edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth.

College of Charleston Advanced Poetry Workshop

Debbie Scott and I enrolled in English 402, the Advanced Poetry Workshop III at the College of Charleston (CofC) this semester, and it was a true immersion for twelve or so weeks. We completed the course yesterday. Professor Emily Rosko, author of Prop Rockery and Raw Goods Inventory, couldn't have been any more teacherly--in a good way!--and focused on being sure that her students grew as poets, readers, critics, and students in general. For the course we read--and discussed and wrote commentary on--seven collections of contemporary poetry. We each led a class discussion of one of the books, and we each twice served as one of two critics for workshopping 5-8 poems of  a classmate. We wrote at least a poem a week, sometimes in collaboration with a partner. And we critiqued the poems written by our collaboration partner. In other words, we were busy learning!

Here are the books we read: Tracy K. Smith's Life on Mars; Kathleen Peirce's Mercy; Beth Bachmann's Temper; Ann Marie Rooney's Spitshine; Shane McCrae's Mule; Mary Ann Samyn's Inside the Yellow Dress; and Wayne Miller's The City, Our City.

The capstone assignment for the course was to put together a chapbook of poems, of about 15-20 pages, and even to design a cover, write an artist's statement, include a table of contents/dedication/etc. I spent a good part of the last few weeks working on that--and a huge chunk of this past Monday and Tuesday trying to figure out how to sequence the pages correctly so that they could be printed out chapbook size in the right order. The process about drove me nuts; but by cutting and pasting a dummy copy, I finally managed to do it.

Thanks to all the bright young poets in our class for welcoming Debbie and me into their poetry lives--and especially to Emly Rosko for orchestrating and teaching such a wonderfully rich, thought-provoking course.

April 26-28: SC Academy of Authors Induction Ceremony & weekend

Once again Debbie Scott and I hit the road, this time to go to Columbia for a weekend of events sponsored by the South Carolina Academy of Authors (SCAA). Friday afternoon was a superb reading by poet Terrance Hayes. I can't say enough glowing things about his work and the reading. He's a poet I met a few years ago when he taught a public workshop-in-the-round  in Columbia that I was lucky enough to be in, back in 2004 or so. It was a South Carolina Poetry Initiative event. I was also honored that Terrance Hayes selected my book Keep and Give Away for the inaugural SC Poetry Book Prize. So it's no wonder that I feel a special affection for him and his poetry. His latest two books are Wind in a Box and Lighthead.

On Saturday night there was a lovely reception at the Thomas Cooper Library, followed by the Induction Ceremony. Jack Bass, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, and Eugene Robinson were all inducted into the SC Literary Hall of Fame. Unfortunately Eugene Robinson couldn't be there; but the others gave meaningful, inspired responses to their inductions.

On Sunday morning there was a brunch at The Big Apple, a beautiful building for such an event. Fiction writer Thomas McConnell, of Spartanburg, and I read as winners of the fiction and poetry fellowships, respectively. I'm still up in the clouds over winning this year's Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship. I knew and loved Carrie, so it means all the more to me. Thank you SC Academy--and thank you, Carrie!