Sunday, April 23, 2017

April 19: Pints & Poets reading, Spartanburg






































Russell Jackson, Rick Mulkey, Clara Jane Haller
Susan Laughter Meyers, Robert Lee Kendrick, Angela Kelly


Pints & Poets
April 19, 2017
Robert Lee Kendrick & Susan Laughter Meyers
8 p.m.
Hub City Tap House, Spartanburg, SC
Celebrating National Poetry Month
Sponsored by the Converse MFA program

Friday, April 14, 2017

April 7 opening reading for The Poetry Society of SC


It was a pleasure to read a few poems to open the April PSSC program that featured Celeste McMaster. I started out, here, with a poem by Kate Daniels. It's always a joy to be among poet friends at the beautiful Charleston Library Society in downtown Charleston.

Opening reading for The Poetry Society of SC, April 7, 2017

Friday, April 07, 2017

April 7, 2017: Tonight's Poetry Society of SC program -- Celeste McMaster with Susan Laughter Meyers

Tonight at the Poetry Society of SC


I'm happy to be reading a few poems to open tonight's Poetry Society of South Carolina (PSSC) program, which will feature poet CELESTE MCMASTER, who won the inaugural PSSC Summer Scholarship, an annual competition for members. For her selection by judge Lola Haskins, Celeste received full tuition to the 2016 Hub City Writing in Place Conference, a weekend event held every year in mid-July on the campus of Wofford College. While there, she studied with nationally known poet Kate Daniels, of Vanderbilt. Debbie Scott and I, of the PSSC Summer Scholarship Committee, would like to congratulate Celeste again for this honor!

Celeste is an associate professor at Charleston Southern University. She has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals, including The Dos Passos Review, New Delta Review, and Arkansas Review. She is also this year's winner of the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fiction Fellowship of the South Carolina Academy of Authors.

The Poetry Society of SC programs are held at The Charleston Library Society, 164 King Street, Charleston, SC, at 7 p.m. Typically they are on the second Friday of the month (Sept. - May), but this month is being held early because of the Easter weekend holiday next weekend. The readings are followed by a reception and book signing. They are free & open to the public.

Looking back on the 2017 Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series

Here was the schedule for this year's Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series. 
A special thank you to all the poets who read!

_______________________________


2017 Litchfield Tea & Poetry
3 – 4 p.m., first Thursday of the month, Jan. – Apr.
Waccamaw Neck Branch Library
41 Saint Paul Place, Pawleys Island, SC
■     ■     ■
Please join us for our eleventh year of the Series!

Book signing after the reading
Refreshments: tea & homemade confections by Deloris Roberts
Brief reading/writing recommendations in “Poet to Poet”
Free & open to the public
Linda Ketron, series co-founder, linda@classatpawleys.com





January 5 – Brookgreen Gardens: Nights of a Thousand Candles (CLASS, 2016). Editor Linda  Ketron and photographer Anne Swift Malarich will talk about the experience of publishing this beautiful book celebrating Christmas and the winter holiday season at Brookgreen Gardens. Several contributors will read a selection of their poetic responses to the book’s images.

February 2 – Jennifer Bartell; Len Lawson
Jennifer Bartell teaches at Spring Valley High School in Columbia. She has an MFA from the University of South Carolina; and her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Pluck!, and the museum of americana, among others. 
Len Lawson is the author of the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press) and co-founder of the Poets Respond to Race initiative. Recent honors include a fellowship from Callaloo Creative Writing. He teaches writing at Central Carolina Technical College

March 2 – Jonathan Kevin Rice; open mic
Jonathan KEVIN Rice, of Charlotte, is a poet and visual artist. His most recent poetry collection is Killing Time (Main Street Rag, 2015). He is also the founding editor of Iodine Poetry Journal.
Open mic will follow Jonathan’s reading. All who attend are invited to read one of their own poems. (Please keep your reading to a single poem no longer than a page.) We’ll all look forward to hearing a variety of voices, including yours. Please join in!

April 6 – Kate Daniels; Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry
Nationally known poet KATE DANIELS, professor and Director of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University, is the author of several poetry collections—the latest, A Walk in Victoria’s Secret. Among her many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship and Pushcart Prize. She will offer a reading of her poems, including her work in the new anthology Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016). Introducing her will be co-editor Daniel Cross Turner, who will also talk about the anthology’s focus. Author George Singleton describes Hard Lines as “a wonderful selection of writers wrestling with, and extolling, the most intricate, beautiful, and perplexing aspects of our South.”


Cosponsored by
Waccamaw Neck Branch Library
&
The Poetry Society of South Carolina
____________________________________

For further info about the events, contact series facilitators
Susan Laughter Meyers at bardowl2@aol.com

or Libby Bernardin at libbypoet@gmail.com

April 6, 2017: Litchfield Tea & Poetry 2017 grand finale: poet Kate Daniels

What a finale to the 2017 Series, our eleventh year!

Thanks to poet Kate Daniels, of Vanderbilt University, for making our last event of the 2017 Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series a finale that was truly grand. Yesterday she read some of her poems from the new anthology Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016), as well as a selection of her other poems. Hard Lines was edited by Daniel Cross Turner and William Wright. This final program of the season was a celebration of the anthology, as well as of Kate's poems.

Please join us in 2018--on the first Thursday of Jan., Feb., Mar., and Apr.--for readings by a roster of talented poets from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Libby Bernardin and I have enjoyed coordinating each event this year. We're delighted to be joined next year by poet Cliff Saunders, who will work with us as a third coordinator. The three of us have lots of ideas for the coming year! Much gratitude to our cosponsors, The Waccamaw Neck Branch Library and The Poetry Society of South Carolina. Thanks, too, to Deloris Roberts for our receptions of delicious homemade confections and tea--and to co-founder Linda Ketron. The events are held at the lovely new library at 41 St. Paul Place, Pawleys Island. We look forward to our twelfth year of tea and poetry!

Friday, March 31, 2017

Wednesday, April 19: Pints & Poets readings, Spartanburg, SC

PINTS & POETS
April 19, 2017
Readings by Robert Lee Kendrick & Susan Laughter Meyers
8 p.m., Hub City Tap House
197 East St. John St., Spartanburg, SC
Hosted by Converse College MFA in Creative Writing

I'm excited to be a part of this lively event and look forward to meeting and reading with Robert Lee Kendrick. It's the last Pints & Poets reading of the semester for the Converse College MFA in Creative Writing program--a chance to celebrate National Poetry Month.

About Robert Lee Kendrick:
Robert Lee Kendrick grew up in Illinois and Iowa, but now calls South Carolina home. After earning his M.A. from Illinois State University and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, he held a number of jobs, ranging from house painter to pizza driver to grocery store worker to line cook. He now lives in Clemson with his wife and their dogs. His poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Xavier Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, The James Dickey Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Winter Skin, was released in 2016 by Main Street Rag Publishing.





Hmm, it sounds like a party. Should I leave my elegiac poems at home?


April 1, 2017: SC State Library's "Young Minds Dreaming" Poetry Contest -- awards ceremony

SC State Library's "Young Minds Dreaming" Poetry Contest
Awards Ceremony
April 1, 2017, 3 p.m.
SC State Library, 1500 Senate St., Columbia, SC
Pamela Hoppock, Coordinator
Attending & featured: author Jacqueline Woodson.


Youngest winner
with author Jacqueline Woodson
I was honored to be asked to be one of the judges for the inaugural "Young Minds Dreaming" Poetry Contest, sponsored by the South Carolina State Library. South Carolina students in grades 3-12 were invited to submit poems relating stories of a person, place, or an experience that made a mark on student's lives. 

There were nine judges. I judged the submissions from the 3rd graders, a rich assortment of poems consisting of about 90 entries. Then the three judges assigned to the elementary grades judged the top nine poems from grades 3-5. Thank you, students, for each poem--each flight of imagination--that I read! I look forward to attending tomorrow's ceremony to cheer your talents and efforts.

Out of more than 600 SC student entries in the contest, offered for students grade 3 - 12, there are nine winners. 

Elementary (grades 3-5)
  • 1st Place - Sonia Baxter: "The Beach", 3rd grade, Round Top Elementary School
  • 2nd Place - Catie Coats: "My Grandma's Death", 5th grade, Oak Pointe Elementary School
  • 3rd Place - Michaela Grindstaff: "Up Main Street", 5th grade, Oak Pointe Elementary School
Middle (grades 6-8)
  • 1st Place - Nada Rahal: "Beauty", 6th grade, Alice Drive Middle School
  • 2nd Place - Charlotte Hughes: "The Cherry Blossom City", 8th grade, Heathwood Hall
  • 3rd Place - Michaela Lanier: "Destructional Peace", 7th grade, Blythewood Middle School
High (grades 9-12)
  • 1st Place - Skye Robertson: "Dreams", 12th grade, Fort Mill High School 
  • 2nd Place - Gillian Moses: "Flight", 9th grade, Clover High School
  • 3rd Place - April Williams: "Dreaming of Innocence", 11th grade, Fort Mill High School

Looking back at the March 25 PSSC Writers' Group workshop -- "Fishing for Poems, Part II"

Saturday, March 25
Poetry Society of SC workshop
Susan Laughter Meyers, instructor
10 a.m. - noon
Fishing for Poems, Part II
Charleston Library Society, 164 King St.
Charleston, SC
Free for PSSC/CLS members & CofC students; $15 for all others (PSSC membership $30; new memberships welcome)

Last Saturday was the second Poetry Society of SC (PSSC) Writers' Group workshop of the year, when we continued our exploration of "Fishing for Poems," generating new work. We began by each creating a word bank of nouns and verbs we might want to use in the day's writing. We then spent working with our class packet. For our first writing activity we wrote our own lines in-between the lines of a published poem, all of us using the same poem, "Though I've Never Been to Gettysburg, by Gabrielle Calverossi. We used her poem, which was tripled spaced to give us writing room, as ghost lines that we took off from by paying attention to sound, rhythms, and whatever else struck a core. Our intent was to make associative leaps, not necessarily to respond to the poem or even pay attention to it content.

We also wrote an erasure poem, either from our own earlier freewriting or from two pages of prose from a book called Weather Wisdom. An erasure poem is typically quite spare, with deliberate care spent on which single words to choose. We each circled only the words from the paragraphs in the Weather Wisdom excerpt that we wanted to cause to bump up against each other with surprise and freshness to create the poem. All the rest from the prose was "erased." No rearranging of words and no adding of new words. It's like choosing which stones to step on while crossing a wide creek.

Fourteen participants attended the workshop. I'm always grateful for the poets' input, as well as their writing and camaraderie.

The next PSSC W.G. workshop will be on Saturday, September 30. Same place, same time.