HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the February edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with Joseph Ross and Michael Salcman, hosted by Laura Shovan. Join us at the Columbia Art Center on Tuesday, February 13th at 7 p.m., at 6100 Foreland Garth, Columbia, MD 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family and students! Light refreshments will be served and books by the readers available for sale.

An open mic follows the featured authors and we encourage you to participate. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time, about two poems. Sign up when you arrive, or in advance by calling the Columbia Arts Center at (410)-730-0075.

Below, get to know Joseph and Michael!

Who is the person in your life (past or present) that shows up most often in your writing?

Joseph: What an interesting question. My husband, Robert, probably shows up most but he is often whispering within the poems, even if he isn’t mentioned. Martin Luther King shows up in many of my poems too.

Michael: My father and my wife Ilene.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Joseph: Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

Michael: In bed at home in the early hours before rising on my iPad; next best, at anchor in a sailboat.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Joseph: I straighten the things on my desk before I write.

Michael: New ideas and first lines on iPad or paper notebook come at any time; new drafts occur at my desk computer. In the early hours editing on the iPad quickly goes through several drafts.

Who always gets a first read?

Joseph: There’s no one person who reads my work first. I share with very few people.

Michael: My wife Ilene and less so poet friends in New York & Baltimore; Ilene is usually in the kitchen and if I read her a new poem and my eyes get watery I know I have landed a good one. She gives me a rating but doesn’t cry.

What is a book you’ve read more than twice (and would read again)?

Joseph: Martin Luther King’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

Michael: Complete poems of Wallace Stevens more than twice, ditto Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop, Crow by Ted Hughes, and New and Selected Poems of Tom Lux, my teacher; recently finished my second reading of all seven volumes of Proust’s Remembrance of Lost Time (no third one is on the horizon).

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Joseph: Naomi Shihab Nye reading at one of the early Split This Rock Poetry Festivals.

Michael: Ilene and I hosted a reading and celebration by Richard Wilbur at the Century Association in New York; I invited Tom Lux and Edward Hirsch to give a joint reading at the City Lit Festival in Baltimore. They were terrific.

The Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo) is pleased to announce that Steph Sundermann-Zinger of the Baltimore area has been awarded first prize in the 2023 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest for her poem “A Dream of Solitude.” Judges noted the poem’s “gorgeous language” and “strong imagery, alliteration, and meter.” One said, “this poem has the strongest voice,” and another called it “a mature poem that is a moment in time.” A $500 cash prize was awarded, and the poem was published in the Winter 2024 edition of The Little Patuxent Review.

Larraine Denakpo of Columbia was awarded second place with a $100 cash award for her poem “Lullaby for Daughters,” in recognition of the poem’s effective usage of restrained form, while conveying what one judge called “universal resonance.” Another said, “this neatly packed, tiny poem is so enjoyable to read.” In addition, the review panel awarded honorable mentions to Joshua Ward of Dayton for his poem “Some Thrushes on Migration,” and to Eileen Wu of Clarksville for “Why Storms Have Human Names.”

Contest judges evaluated submissions from 60 poets residing throughout Maryland and Virginia for mechanics and technique, clarity, style/music for our contemporary age, imagery/sensory power, and emotional resonance. Each author receiving an award or honorary mention was invited to be interviewed for a blog post hosted at hocopolitso.org.

The Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize was established to honor HoCoPoLitSo co-founder Ellen Conroy Kennedy, who passed away in 2020. Ms. Kennedy, who was nominated for the National Book Award in Translation in 1969, translated Francophone African and Caribbean poets, and published her landmark work, The Negritude Poets, in 1975.

Kennedy founded HoCoPoLitSo in 1974, a nationally recognized, community-based nonprofits arts organization that has brought hundreds of writers to Howard County, Maryland, now soon to enter its 50^th year of operation. She served as president and CEO for 30 years, opening her home and sharing her table with an array of literary icons. She also developed and produced The Writing Life, originally a cable television series, featuring conversations with writers, now available free on HoCoPoLitSo’s YouTube channel. In 2019, the Kennedys donated more than 1,500 books, most of which featured authors who read for HoCoPoLitSo audiences, to the Howard Community College library; the Kennedy Collection is housed in a reading room open to the public during normal business hours.

HoCoPoLitSo works to cultivate appreciation for contemporary poetry and literature and celebrate culturally diverse literary heritages. The society sponsors literary readings; the Bauder Writer-in-Residence outreach program to local schools; produces The Writing Life; and partners with the public schools and cultural organizations to support the arts in Howard County, Maryland. For more information, visit www.hocopolitso.org.

Out of consideration for the year-end holidays, the deadline for application to the newly-created position of Howard County Poet Laureate has been extended to Monday, January 22nd, at 11:59 p.m. Don’t miss your chance to be the next, and first-ever Poet Laureate to our local community!

This program, presented in partnership between HoCoPoLitSo and Howard County Arts Council with the office of the County Executive, offers a stipend of $5,000 for each year of the appointed poet’s service representing poetry and the arts in Howard County. You can review all of the information at bit.ly/howardcountypoetlaureate on HCAC’s grants portal, and apply now!

UPDATED: The January session of the Wilde Reading Series, featuring Yvette Neisser and Pantea Tofangchi, has been re-scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, January 30th at 7 p.m.

Due to the severe inclement weather and possibility for flooding expected this evening in Columbia, the Wilde Reading Series event previously scheduled for tonight, January 9th, 2024 at 7 p.m. is cancelled, pending re-scheduling. We apologize for any inconvenience and please check back to this space, or to the Wilde Readings Facebook page, for an adjusted date.

UPDATED 1/10/2024: The Poet Laureate submission deadline has been extended to Monday, January 22, 2024.

The Howard County Poet Laureate program, created in partnership between HoCoPoLitSo, the Howard County Arts Council, and the Office of Howard County Executive Calvin Ball, is pleased to announce the members of the Poet Laureate review panel:

GRACE CAVALIERI is Maryland’s 10th Poet Laureate (2018-2023). Her newest book is The Long Game: Poems Selected & New (The Word Works). She founded and produces The Poet and the Poem series of audio interviews for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 47 years on-air. Grace was formerly Assistant Director for Children’s Programming, Corporate PBS, then Senior Program Officer NEH. Among other awards she holds the Allen Ginsberg Award and the CPB Silver Medal. She is an Academy of American Poets Fellow. She has written 26 books of poems and plays produced on American stages.

E. ETHELBERT MILLER is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller is Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. Miller’s latest book is How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask, published by City Point Press.

SYLVIA JONES is associate poetry editor at Black Lawrence Press and works part-time as an adjunct lecturer in creative writing, she teaches at Goucher College and George Washington University. Her writing appears in DIAGRAM, R&R Journal, Smartish Pace, Sprung Formal, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, The Poetry Society of New York, Revolut, and elsewhere. Sylvia earned her MFA from American University in Washington D.C. and lives in Baltimore, MD.

The deadline to apply to this inaugural position of Howard County Poet Laureate is fast approaching: applications close January 9th, 11:59 p.m. UPDATED: applications have been extended to close January 22nd, 11:59 p.m. All those interested are strongly encouraged to review the application guidelines and eligibility requirements, and to apply soon to allow time for completing the process.

let there be lit.

It is with deep regret that we convey the loss of long-standing HoCoPoLitSo board member and Irish Evening champion and chair, Catherine McLoughlin-Hayes, who passed away peacefully in her sleep this past Thursday, December 28th, 2023. For all you have given us, the wonderful world of Irish writers and music, and, especially, your dear friendship, we thank you and will remember you always with love.

An obituary and information on a viewing and Mass of Christian Burial are provided here:

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/catherine-mcloughlin-obituary?id=53964787

If you wish to make a donation in memory of Catherine, you may do so via PayPal or by check made out to:

UPDATED: This January session of the Wilde Reading Series, featuring Yvette Neisser and Pantea Tofangchi, has been re-scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, January 30th at 7 p.m.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the January edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with Yvette Neisser and Pantea Tofangchi, hosted by Linda Joy Burke. Join us at the Columbia Art Center on Tuesday, January 30th at 7 p.m., at 6100 Foreland Garth, Columbia, MD 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family and students! Light refreshments will be served and books by the readers available for sale.

An open mic follows the featured authors and we encourage you to participate. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time, about two poems. Sign up when you arrive, or in advance by calling the Columbia Arts Center at (410)-730-0075.

Below, get to know Yvette and Pantea!

Who is the person in your life (past or present) that shows up most often in your writing?

Yvette: My father. He died young, so I have written many poems processing his loss.

Pantea: Me and my family.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Yvette: In my bedroom, before dawn.

Pantea: My desk.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Yvette: Nothing consistent, though I often write first thing when I wake up, with a cup of tea.

Pantea: I pick a book of poems and read a few poems and then write! Or look at paintings.

Who always gets a first read?

Yvette: Depends on the poem, the subject. If I’m excited about a first draft, I share it with someone who I think would appreciate it–this might be my partner, a good friend, a fellow poet, or my mom.

Pantea: My husband.

What is a book you’ve read more than twice (and would read again)?

Yvette: I’m not sure if I’ve read anything more than twice. Certainly I’ve read several of Pablo Neruda’s works at least twice: Twenty Love Poems, The Captain’s Verses, and Heights of Macchu Picchu, and will probably read them again. I also just read Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain for a second time and would read it again.

Pantea: The Little Prince. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Baron in the Trees. Sharabe Khaam (The Raw Wine). Another Birth (a collection of poems by Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad).

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Yvette: The most magical for me were the Dodge Poetry Festival readings (in NJ) that I attended as a young poet— especially Lucille Clifton, who read in the early morning in a small cabin, with people seated all over the floor.

Pantea: Ivy Book Store, Judith Krummeck reading from her book in conversation with Dan Rodricks.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the December edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with Monica Prince and Carole Boston Weatherford, hosted by Laura Shovan. Join us at the Columbia Art Center on Tuesday, December 12th at 7 p.m., at 6100 Foreland Garth, Columbia, MD 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family and students! Light refreshments will be served and books by the readers available for sale.

An open mic follows the featured authors and we encourage you to participate. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time, about two poems. Sign up when you arrive, or in advance by calling the Columbia Arts Center at (410)-730-0075.

Below, get to know Monica and Carole!

Who is the person in your life (past or present) that shows up most often in your writing?

Monica: My mother shows up the most in my work. My first published choreopoem, How to Exterminate the Black Woman, is about and for my mother. Something about all the lessons I’ve absorbed from her makes me want to feature her in my writing. So many of my poems feature her because I have a romanticized idea of what it means to be a Black mother from her. She’s the strongest woman I know. I want her legacy to live after her.

Carole: Billie Holiday, my muse.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Monica: I love writing in public— bars, restaurants, intermissions during plays, in line at the bank. The frenzied nature of being in public, possibly observed, and not having that much time to get something down pushes my creativity. Most of the poems in Roadmap were written while I waited for friends to meet me at a bar, between workshops and events during a writing residency, and during commercial breaks while watching TV with my mom. I joke with my students that I’ve made my career off 7-13 minute stretches of poetry, and it’s not wrong.

Carole: Planes and trains.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Monica: The only thing I do every time I write is I try to find a black pen. I hate the color blue, despite it being my power color, so I can’t get good work done with a blue pen. I don’t have many rituals because I only write when I can get the time, which is infrequent these days.

Carole: No.

Who always gets a first read?

Monica: Typically, my husband Rob gets to hear my work first, but mostly because he’s almost always there while I’m composing work. Other than that, it’s whoever is present when I finish a draft. I’m unafraid of showing off my terrible drafts immediately because I’m a trained slam poet who has been workshopping poems on stage for over a decade. I’m not very precious about my work in that way. I want folks to see how pieces change over time.

Carole: My agent.

What is a book you’ve read more than twice (and would read again)?

Monica: Ntozake Shange’s For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. I read that book at least twice a year every year because I teach it. But it’s also the source of my original inspiration for writing choreopoems. I’d also say Meaty by Samantha Irby. I love reading and listening to it, it’s awesome in both versions. I’ve read that at least three times.

Carole: Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Monica: At one of my first AWP conferences, I think it was in Minneapolis in 2015, I attended a Cave Canem reading. It was one of those things that was scheduled before the conference really started. I met all these fellows whose work I’d been following for years. Jericho Brown read from what would later become the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Tradition, and I found myself sobbing. There was something about being surrounded by Black poets after another one of our siblings was murdered for nothing that made me feel at home, even if I wasn’t a fellow myself. I was three months from graduating with my MFA and I had been considering never writing again— nothing felt good about my work, especially after my thesis defense left me a little raw and stinging. But that reading saved me; that community saved me. I’m grateful for them.

Carole: Poet Ntozake Shange and saxophonist Oliver Lake at DC Space in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the November edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with Heidi Mordhorst and Victoria Adams-Kennedy, hosted by Ann Bracken. Join us at the Columbia Art Center on Tuesday, November 14th at 7 p.m., at 6100 Foreland Garth, Columbia, MD 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family and students! Light refreshments will be served and books by the readers available for sale.

An open mic follows the featured authors and we encourage you to participate. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time, about two poems. Sign up when you arrive, or in advance by calling the Columbia Arts Center at (410)-730-0075.

Below, get to know Heidi and Victoria!

Who is the person in your life (past or present) that shows up most often in your writing?

Heidi: They show up often, my mom and my dad. They do not mean to, but they do.

Victoria: It’s not just one; It’s my mother and her seven sisters. I learned so much from watching them and eavesdropping on their conversations. Their distinct personalities make them perfect subjects.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Heidi: I have a comfy sofa in a pleasant room in our new 1925 house in East Silver Spring.

Victoria: The Last Resort Artist Retreat in Baltimore. It’s a serene environment with beautiful artwork.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Heidi: Only the one, and it’s not exactly intentional or consistent: as I’m waking, or as I’m brushing my teeth, or as I’m shampooing, or as I’m pointing a hot noisy hairdryer at my head, something will come to me. Most recently a poem title: A Revision Is Required.

Victoria: I’m inspired by character traits that are most often attributed to members of my family or my childhood community. There were lots of colorful characters in my neighborhood. I draft characters who are composites of those people and their circumstances. Then the story comes and I sit down to write.

Who always gets a first read?

Heidi: Most often the trusted members of my critique group. They are fans, but they ask me hard questions as well, which generally carry the message, “You have made this way more complicated than it needs to be.”

Victoria: One of my aunts or a member of Zora’s Den, my writers’ group I founded in 2017.

What is a book you’ve read more than twice (and would read again)?

Heidi: Hmmmm. I rarely pick up an adult title more than once (although there are poems I never get tired of)—but there are many books written for young readers that I return to again and again. A recent favorite is GREEN ON GREEN by Dianne White, illustrated by Felicita Sala.

Victoria: The first to come to mind is Indigo by Beverly Jenkins. It is one of many.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Heidi: I’m a relative newbie to public readings. I haven’t been to many live readings and I’ve read at very few! I did have a memorable time hearing Lucille Clifton read at the Dodge Poetry Festival one year—but which year?

Victoria: A reading by Terry McMillan at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore City. She was engaging through her work and her commentary. And she had command of the room with humor and insight.