Sat., Apr. 26: SC Poetry Initiative's Awards Celebration, Columbia, SC

2008 South Carolina Poetry Initiative’s
Single-Poem and Book Contest Awards Celebration

Date: Saturday, April 26
Time: 2 to 4 p.m.
Place: Columbia Museum of Art
Corner of Hampton & Main
Columbia, SC
Free & open to the public

This year’s 2008 South Carolina Poetry Initiative’s Single-Poem and Book Awards Ceremony is definitely an event worth raving about. Enjoy a tour of the Columbia Museum’s Excavating Egypt Exhibit, some music, a bit of food, and POETRY. Here are further details about the day's happenings and features:

* Announcement of this year’s SINGLE-POEM CONTEST winners…the short list (top placement winners) and the long list to include the naming of the top twenty winners. Co-Sponsored by The State Newspaper, judged by Gabeba Baderoon. Awards include $400 for 1st place, $300 for 2nd place, $200 for 3rd place, and $100 for People’s Choice.

* Announcement of this year’s SC POETRY BOOK PRIZE winner.

* FEATURED READING by this year’s Book Contest judge, poet ELIZABETH ALEXANDER, and the winners of the three previous year’s SC Poetry Initiative's SC Poetry Book Prize: Susan Meyers, Keep and Give Away (2005 Winner, USC Press, 2006), Ray McManus, Driving through the Country before You Are Born (2006 Winner, USC Press, 2006), and Ed Madden, Signals (2007 Winner, USC Press, 2008).

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. She is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She has read her work across the U.S. and in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, and her poetry, short stories, and critical prose have been published in dozens of periodicals and anthologies. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, and a Guggenheim fellowship.

Her most-recent honors are the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that "contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954," and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. She is a professor at Yale University, and for the academic year 2007-2008 she is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

SC Poetry Initiative

Thur., Apr. 24: SC Center for the Book reading

National Poetry Month Program
South Carolina Center for the Book
1430 Senate Street,
Columbia, SC
Thursday, April 24
12 noon - 1 p.m.
Reading & discussion by Susan Meyers, Ray McManus & Ed Madden
Winners of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize
www.sccenterforthebook.org
Free and open to the public
Attendees are welcome to bring bag lunches
Books will be for sale on site.

A major poet selects one poet per year to receive the SC Poetry Book Prize, which began in 2006 and is sponsored by the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the University of South Carolina Press.

Keep and Give Away, by Susan Meyers (2006)
Selected by Terrance Hayes. Meyers guides us through her examination of life's ordinary moments and the seemingly ordinary images that abide in them to reveal the extraordinary. From minutiae to marriage, crumbs to crows, nothing is too commonplace to escape her attention as she traverses terrains of childhood, loss, relationships, and death.

Driving through the Country before You Are Born, by Ray McManus (2007)
Selected by Kate Daniels. The speaker in these poems searches for redemption and solace while navigating from a traumatic loss in the past to a present fraught with violence and self-destruction. Here we witness family stories without happy endings, landscapes on the verge of collapse, and prophetic visions of horrors yet to come. From these haunting visions, salvation is rooted in hope that, out of the ruins, there remains the possibility of a fresh beginning.

Signals, by Ed Madden (2008)
Selected by Afaa Weaver. Deeply rooted in the recognizable landscapes and legacies of the American South, these lyric poems couple daring engagements in topics of race and sexuality with tender reflections on personal and cultural histories. Madden's adopted home of South Carolina rises to the surface in poems set at Folly Beach, Fort Moultrie, Lake Keowee, and Middleton PLace. His interrogations of social oppression conjure the ubiquitous iconography of the bygone Confederacy, a first encounter with the miniseries Roots, and a cameo appearance by Strom Thurmond.

Monday, April 14: Reading for Hub City Writers Project

Hub City Writers Project reading
Mon., Apr. 14
7:30 p.m.
Showroom at Hub-Bub
149 S. Daniel Morgan Ave.
Spartanburg, SC

I'm delighted to be reading in Spartanburg for the Hub City Writers Project. Betsy Teter, and all those at Hub City, have done a fine job of leading, supporting, and showcasing the Spartanburg literary community--as well as publishing books that help to document Spartanburg's cultural history.

Please visit their website to learn more about them:
Hub City Writers Project

Sunday, April 13: Four poets reading & signing in Mt. Pleasant, SC

Barnes & Noble reading & signing
Town Centre, Mt. Pleasant, SC
Sun., Apr. 13
2 - 4 p.m.
Reading at 2 p.m.

Marjory Wentworth, Poet Laureate of SC -- Despite Gravity
Susan Meyers -- Keep and Give Away
Linda Annas Ferguson -- Bird Missing from One Shoulder
Carol Ann Davis -- Psalm

Sat., Apr. 12: Seven poets reading/signing in Columbia, SC

Saturday, April 12
Barnes & Noble
278 Harbison Blvd.
Columbia, SC 29212
2 - 5 p.m.
Reading at 2 p.m.
In the shopping center on the south side of Harbison Boulevard, 1/4 mile west of I-26 (exit 103)


Poets reading & signing:
Kwame Dawes
Fred Dings
Linda Annas Ferguson
Ed Madden
Ray McManus
Susan Meyers
Charlene Spearen

We're all looking forward to a brief reading--and a chance to relax & visit with friends (and strangers too).

Friday, April 11: Moveable Feast

Moveable Feast / Litchfield Books
Friday, Apr. 11
11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
DeBordieu Beach Club
$25 preregistration
Reading by Ed Madden, Ray McManus & Susan Meyers
Three SC Poetry Book Prize winners
Signing at Litchfield Books
2 - 4 p.m.
Pawleys Island, SC
e-mail: linda@classatpawleys.com
or call 843-235-9600


From the CLASS at Pawleys website: "Celebrating the return of spring and National Poetry Month, three marvelous poets will share the podium and excerpts from their recent published works ~ Susan Meyers (Keep and Give Away), Ray McManus (Driving Through the Country Before You Are Born), and Ed Madden (Signals) ~ as well as the trials and tribulations of the poet's life in a particularly unpoetic era of American life."