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Blackbird Poetry Festival Features Billy Collins, “The Most Popular Poet in America”
Contact: Pam Kroll Simonson, (443) 518-4568, hocopolitso@yahoo.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Howard County Poetry & Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo), in partnership with Howard Community College’s Office of Student Life, English/World Languages Division, and Arts & Humanities Division, presents the annual Blackbird Poetry Festival from Monday, April 21 to Thursday, April 24, 2014, at Howard Community College (HCC). For the first time, this year’s festival opens with a four-day Poetry Film Festival featuring showings of five acclaimed films. The last day of the film festival coincides with a full day of Blackbird Festival events, including readings by two-term National Poet Laureate Billy Collins, called “the most popular poet in America” by The New York Times; workshops for HCC students by Bruce George, poet and co-founder of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam; readings by student poets from HCC; and on-campus patrols by the Poetry Police, who will award individuals carrying a poem in recognition of national Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day. The theme of this year’s Blackbird Poetry Festival is “Poetry Unmasked,” exploring the bare truths of poetry. (more…)
Temperament Through Time: a not to be missed (free) event THIS FRIDAY!
The latest installment in our occasional series of blog posts from friends of HoCoPoLitSo. Today, the acting chair of Howard Community College’s Music Department, Hsien-Ann Meng, encourages all to see Stuart Isacoff this Friday.
Dear Friends,
I would like to invite you to a special event taking place this Friday, February 21, at 2 pm in the Smith Theatre on the campus of Howard Community College.
Click for full size image.
Stuart Isacoff, a wonderful pianist, celebrated writer of music, and the author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization, will be here to tell the intricate story of how modern musical tuning came about. He will also demonstrate through a reworked Beethoven piano sonata how central the modern tuning system (equal-temperament) is for us to enjoy the master piano works of the 18th and 19th centuries.
However, the road to equal-temperament was not a simple one. Isacoff has woven together a beautiful narrative that traces the development of the tuning system in the context of teachings and beliefs of the church, parallel developments in art and science, and the political plays between different power groups throughout history. Whether you are a music lover or a lover of arts and science, there will be lots to take away from this event.
This event is free and open to the public. After the lecture demonstration, Anne Midgette, the classical music critic for The Washington Post will join Stuart Isacoff on stage to conduct a Q&A session. A book signing and reception will take place in the Rouse Art Gallery and Horowitz Center Lobby following the Q&A. This event is co-presented by Candlelight Concert Society, Howard Community College Concert Series, and Howard County Poetry & Literature Society.
Hsien-Ann Meng
Acting Chair, HCC Music Department
A Warm, Spirited Evening is What We All Need and March 14th is Near.
Dear Friends,
A selection of faces from the first 30 years of HoCoPoLitSo’s Irish Evening, now in its 36th year and to feature Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan reading from their work, followed by the music of Narrowbacks and traditional Irish dancing from the Culkin School on March 14th.
With the winter that has been upon us, a warm, spirited evening is what we seem to need and you’ll have just that this year on March 14th, HoCoPoLitSo’s 36th Annual Irish Evening.
You who love literature, music, and art are invited to hear the beautiful cadences of not only one but two wonderful Irish poets Paula Meehan (Ireland’s Professor of Poetry) and Theo Dorgan (O’Shaughnessy Prize, BBC Radio) as they read their work and pay tribute to the late great Seamus Heaney, followed by the incomparable Irish music of Narrowbacks, featuring All-Ireland fiddle great Brendan Mulvihill, and fabulous stepdancing by members of the Culkin School. Did I mention the profusion of Irish coffees, signature drink “Jameson Ginger,” and scones?
HoCoPoLitSo relies on proceeds from this annual fundraiser to create live literary programs throughout the year, so in buying tickets, you are not only giving yourself the gift of a fun and elevating evening but investing in the 2014 arts and culture calendar of Howard County.
Friday, March 14, 2014, 7:30 PM
Smith Theatre, Howard Community College, Columbia, Md.
Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/522437
Click here to download the event flyer. Additional information is available by emailing hocopolitso@yahoo.com or calling 443-518-4568. (more…)
Blackbird Poetry Festival Features Billy Collins, “The Most Popular Poet in America”
Date: December 20, 2013 Contact: Pam Kroll Simonson, (443) 518-4568, hocopolitso@yahoo.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Blackbird Poetry Festival Features Billy Collins,
“The Most Popular Poet in America”
Howard County Poetry & Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo), in partnership with Howard Community College’s Office of Student Life, English and World Languages Division, and Arts & Humanities Division, presents the annual Blackbird Poetry Festival on Thursday, April 24, 2014, at Howard Community College. The all-day event features readings by two-term National Poet Laureate Billy Collins, called “the most popular poet in America” by The New York Times; workshops for HCC students by Bruce George, poet and co-founder of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam; readings by student poets from HCC; and on-campus patrols by the Poetry Police, who will award individuals carrying a poem in recognition of national Poem in Your Pocket Day. The theme of this year’s Blackbird Poetry Festival is “Poetry Unmasked,” exploring the bare truth of poetry.
“Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor,” writes The Poetry Foundation, an independent literary group, “but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself.”
“His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry,” writes the Winter Park Institute for intellectual engagement at Rollins College. “His readings are usually standing room only, and his audience–enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio–includes people of all backgrounds and age groups.”
Collins will read and discuss his work at Nightbird, the Blackbird Poetry Festival’s evening event, at 7:30 p.m. at Smith Theatre, located in the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center at HCC in Columbia. A book signing and reception will follow. Collins will give a short free reading at Smith Theater with student poets at 2:30 p.m. He will also tape an episode of The Writing Life, HoCoPoLitSo’s Bravo-TV Arts for Change Award-winning interview show seen on YouTube. George will facilitate creative writing/performance poetry workshops in morning classes at HCC.
Tickets to Nightbird are $50 for the first five rows in the center aisle and $30 for orchestra and balcony ($15 for students). Tickets can be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/523094 or www.hocopolitso.org . For more information, call HoCoPoLitSo at (443) 518-4568 or email hocopolitso@yahoo.com. Seniors in Columbia can request transportation by calling the Senior Events Shuttle at (410) 715-3087. HCC is an accessible campus. Accommodation requests should be made to HoCoPoLitSo by April 17, 2014.
HoCoPoLitSo is a nonprofit organization designed to enlarge the audience for contemporary poetry and literature and celebrate culturally diverse literary heritages. Founded in 1974 by National Book Award finalist Ellen Conroy Kennedy, HoCoPoLitSo accomplishes its mission by sponsoring readings with critically acclaimed writers; literary workshops; programs for students; and The Writing Life, a writer-to-writer interview show seen on YouTube, HCC-TV, and other local stations. HoCoPoLitSo receives funding from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts; Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County government; The Columbia Film Society; Community Foundation of Howard County; the Jim and Patty Rouse Charitable Foundation; and individual contributors.
For a pdf of this press release, click here: Blackbird 2014 Press Release.
Give the Gift of Lit: Tickets to Billy Collins and the 36th Annual Irish Evening Available.
Another year where you have to find that certain someone something especially special? HoCoPoLitSo is here to help.
This year, HoCoPoLitSo would like to make your life a little easier, giving you the opportunity to really delight your special someones with tickets to see Billy Collins or the 36th Annual Irish Evening, featuring Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan. Happy Holidays.
36th Annual Evening of Irish Music & Poetry
Featuring Paula Meehan & Theo Dorgan, The Narrowbacks, Step dancing
March 14, 2014 • Smith Theatre – HCC
Poets Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan will read from their latest works followed by a concert of traditional Irish music with Narrowbacks and step dancers from the Culkin School.
Dublin’s informal poet laureate, Ms. Meehan was recently named Irish Professor of Poetry. The post was created following the late Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. She is only the second women appointed to this position.
Theo Dorgan, a former director of Poetry Ireland, is also a poet, playwright, translator, editor and broadcaster. In 2010 he received The O’Shaughnessy Prize For Irish Poetry.
The Blackbird Poetry Festival’s Nightbird Reading
With Billy Collins
April 24th • Smith Theatre – HCC
The Nightbird reading featuring two-term National Poet Laureate Billy Collins closes the annual Blackbird Poetry Festival. Called “the most popular poet in America” by The New York Times, Collins headlines the festival, which this year has the theme Poetry Unmasked.
“Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor,” writes The Poetry Foundation, “but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself.”
Tripping over Lucille Clifton at Howard Community College
The latest installment in our occasional series of blog posts from friends of HoCoPoLitSo. Today, we spend a few moments with Amanda Fiore, a professor/fiction writer/occasional poet, who spent a day, recently, in our midst. Here is her telling of that story:
I was sitting at my desk, scrolling through junk mail and emptying my inbox at Howard Community College, when, to my immense pleasure and surprise, I came across a mouth-dropping subject line: Michael Glaser was coming to HCC’s campus to honor the late poet, Lucille Clifton, and conduct a free poetry workshop, Telling Our Stories — Michael S.
Michael Glaser.
Glaser Celebrates Lucille Clifton and Poetry Teaching! Unable to believe my eyes, I scanned the email and saw that it was being put on by an organization I had never even heard of before, HoCoPoLitSo, and was amazed when after looking into it I found out it was an arts council on which Lucille Clifton had served for many years, and that it was right here, in my own back yard!
Having been a former student of both Lucille and Michael at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, I knew immediately that the event HoCoPoLitSo was planning would be close to my heart. Michael Glaser was the first person to truly encourage me as a writer, and Lucille Clifton was a woman whose spirit and no-nonsense critiques had made me laugh, cry, and embrace my poetry with an honesty that had stayed with me the rest of my life. I immediately wrote to Michael, who returned my astonishment and excitement at being reunited after all these years, and started going through all my old journals until found the one I had kept twelve years ago in workshop with Lucille. I even found the very poem I once read in class, to which she had looked me in the eye and told me, with words I’ll never forget, “you’re hiding behind your words.” It was the hardest and most important thing I had ever heard about my poetry, and I ran out of that room hating her, sitting dramatically in the dark and crying over how mean she was until about three hours later, when I realized she had been right all along. I rewrote the poem. The result was, perhaps, the first honest poem I’d ever had the courage to write, and I never questioned her again.
Though I had thought about contacting her often over the years, by the time she passed I had still never had the chance to tell her how much she meant to me, and so the thought of sitting around a workshop table with Michael again and being given a forum through which to honor Lucille was just too perfect to seem real! But low and behold, a few weeks later there we were, sitting in a circle of tables in Duncan Hall on a cool Fall afternoon. We started off by remembering the lessons Lucille’s poems teach us all and thinking about how we could incorporate those into our own work.
Micheal was just as I remembered him — so much heart and creative energy we couldn’t help but be inspired. We read and talked and each composed a poem of our own, every one written with words that either calmed or stung the air.
Amanda Fiore reads her workshop poem.
Later that evening, some of us went to the reading to celebrate Lucille and were graced by a beautiful evening of poems, stories, and heartfelt emotion. By the end I not only had the opportunity to read what I had composed that day in the light of Lucille’s memory, but to meet her daughter, buy a book, and discover a group of like-minded people through HoCoPoLitSo whose energy and love for the arts mirrored my own. Afterwards, I was stunned at how satisfying and invigorating it was, with just one question repeating in my mind: how did I not know about this organization before, and why wasn’t I more involved?
One thing I know is that I will come to each of these annual Lucille events in the future, and that I will be attending many other HoCoPoLitSo events as well . . . as many as they can put on! But most of all, I am so thankful to Lucille who, even after she has passed, is still managing to connect me to poems. Thank you Lucille, I owe you so much.
From Abu Dhabi to Howard County and Back, Author Siobhan Fallon Lives Through the Jet Lag to Tell About It.
Jet lag, medically referred to as desynchronosis, is a physiological condition which results from alterations to the boy’s circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance transmeridian (east-west or west-east) travel on an aircraft.
The Library’s Megan Maguigan, Siobhan Fallon and Lisa Bankman, also from the Library.
I was asking for it. Heading to Maryland from Abu Dhabi, with two little daughters in tow, was bound to be trouble. But when the generous folks of Howard County chose You Know When the Men Are Gone for their Book Connection Project read, there was no way I was just going to send an ethereal Skype-self to their computer screens on October 15 and 16th. I wanted my flesh and blood and exhausted self right there in person.
We arrived in NY after nearly 24 hours of transit (made interesting by my nine-month-old trying to pull the hair out of the head of the nice lady in front of us all the way to Heathrow). On October 14, I left my girls with my mother and drove a rental car to a hotel in Howard County. I got on the treadmill for an hour of uphill climbing while looking through my notes and skimming my stories, brushing up for the talk the following morning at Howard Community College (HCC).
Authors Siobhan Fallon and Kristin Henderson.
Ten p.m. (six a.m. Abu Dhabi time) I was in my room and wired (for future reference, getting on a treadmill at 9 pm is not a good way to tire oneself out). I decided to post the upcoming readings on Facebook and ended up getting into a lively discussion about Kenny Rogers with Laura Yoo, HCC faculty member and member of the board of directors at HoCoPoLitSo. I mentioned Rogers’ lyrics make for great stories, she posted her favorite childhood songs with videos, and she even found one where Kenny still had his wonderful, original face.
Her sense of humor confirmed what I had already suspected — these events were going to be awesome.
And each one was, filled with enthusiastic, kindly, curious readers in sparkling learning spaces at both HCC and the Miller Branch of the Howard County Library System (no wonder it was voted Library of the Year 2013).
Here are some of my favorite moments:
– After reading at HCC, a student asked me to sign his book. His teacher required proof of attendance and he had me inscribe a paperback to her. I couldn’t help adding, Please give this man an A for creativity!!
– When I walked into Margaret Garroway’s English class (she joined forces with other English classes and the room was full), Margaret was in Alex Trebek mode, moderating a trivia game, classes pitted against each other with representatives sitting at a long table in front. The trivia was taken from my collection, and there was even an answer I didn’t know (but the students did, good job, guys!).
– After the English class, one student brought me a red sharpie and asked me to sign the cover of his book rather than inside. Everyone behind him in line liked the way it looked and asked to borrow his pen (I liked the graffiti feel of it myself—I’m going to start carrying a red sharpie and ‘tag’ all my books from now on) until the poor kid had to run off to his next class.
– During the taping of HoCoPoLitSo’s TV show The Writing Life, I finally got to meet fellow mil spouse author and my Writing Life host, Kristin Henderson. When I lived in Virginia, she and I played email tag (she is part of a group of mil spouse writers who get together once a month; alas I had my hands full of new baby and the move to Abu Dhabi and couldn’t manage to meet them). She is just as fabulous as I imagined her to be.
Now I am back in Abu Dhabi. Yes, I spent about a week downing too much coffee and railing at my kiddos for not sleeping enough (the nine-month-old was waking up bright-eyed at 2 a.m. every night, ready to pull my hair out).
Jet lag be damned, I wouldn’t trade a minute of the great time I had at Howard County.
Oh, and can somebody please tell Trivia Pursuit to add questions about my stories to their next edition?
Siobhan Fallon
Author of You Know When The Men Are Gone
Special thanks to Candace DePass, Lisa Bankman, Alesia McManus, and Susan Thornton Hobby for all their hard work coordinating this trip across time zones! I hope to be back in your beautiful Howard County again someday.
Telling Our Stories — Michael S. Glaser Celebrates Lucille Clifton and Poetry Teaching in The Third Annual Lucille Clifton Poetry Series Reading — November 9th
Join us on November 9th for a two-part event celebrating the poetry of Lucille Clifton and the teaching of poetry with Michael Glaser.
“…writing is a way of continuing to hope … perhaps for me it is a way of remembering I am not alone.”
– Lucille Clifton from her interview
with Michael S. Glaser in Antioch Review
Part 1: Michael S. Glaser Leads A Poetry Workshop for Teachers
10:30 a.m.-3 p.m.
Duncan Hall, Room 202
Howard Community College
FREE – requires advance registration.
Michael S. Glaser leads English and language arts teachers in a poetry workshop inspired by the work of Lucille Clifton. Some participants will read at the evening event. Lunch served. Space limited and registration is required.
Visit poetryworkshopforteachers.eventbrite.com to register.
Part 2: Telling Our Stories — Michael S. Glaser Reading & Tribute to Lucille Clifton
7:30-9 p.m., followed by a book signing and reception
Monteabaro Recital Hall, Horowitz Center
FREE – registration requested.
“Glaser views his work as an exercise in honesty, rarely practiced on the more flip side of popular culture. ‘When we can no longer recognize authentic, truthfully spoken language, we become lost as a civilization,’ he says.”
– The Baltimore Sun
Former Poet Laureate of Maryland, Michael S. Glaser was a longtime friend of the late Lucille Clifton. A recipient of the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching, Glaser has also received the Columbia Merit Award for service to poetry, and Loyola College’s Andrew White Medal for commitment to sustaining the poetic tradition in Maryland. Glaser served as a Maryland State Arts Council poet-in-the-schools for more than 25 years. He is the author of several books of poetry and an editor of two books on Lucille Clifton.
Beloved poet and national treasure Lucille Clifton was a HoCoPoLitSo board member until her passing in 2010. Along with Carolyn Kizer, she was the first poet to read for HoCoPoLitSo, in 1974. She was a National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Free. Limited seating. Advance reservations are requested at lucillecliftonpoetryseries.eventbrite.com.
A presentation of HoCoPoLitSo. Co-presented by Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Columbia, MD Alumnae Chapter.
“child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.”
From “telling our stories” by Lucille Clifton, from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. Used by permission of BOA Editions.
Seamus Heaney, HoCoPoLitSo Remembers His Visits to Columbia
Picture of the Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney at the University College Dublin, February 11, 2009. Photographer: Sean O’Connor.
The many who heard Seamus Heaney during his three HoCoPoLitSo visits to Columbia (1982,1988 and 1994), the last not long before his being named Nobel Laureate for Literature, are saddened to learn of his recent death at age 74.
We treasure the memories of hearing him read his poems no less than the acquaintance we made with his warm and generous person. From his 1982 visit to our 4th Evening of Irish Music and Poetry, we recall the place, our companions, his voice and afterwards the many books he signed and annotated for long lines of admirers.
From 1988 we prize our “Afternoon with Seamus Heaney” video. He read from his poems, talked with his friend George O’Brien, and responded to questions from a Smith Theater audience. Edited down to one hour, this TV program aired locally in Maryland in January 1989.
The circumstances of Heaney’s third visit in 1994 were dramatic. Close to 700 advance tickets sold for his evening appearance at the Interfaith Center in Columbia, but a winter blizzard had closed even the Kennedy Center in Washington. Traffic in the region was paralyzed, and only a few highways were passable. Nonetheless, about 230 people, some hiking through the snow, arrived to hear him. Earlier in the day a skeleton crew opened the Howard Community College TV studio, this time to record a half hour interview with Heaney reading several new poems – hosted by Roland Flint. The one hour 1988 program aired again in 1995 to celebrate our favorite Irish poet’s Nobel Prize.
Ellen Conroy Kennedy
Founder, Director Emeritus
A few Seamus Heaney links:
- Seamus Heaney at
- On his passing:
- from the Irish Times
- Paul Muldoon’s eulogy for Heaney
- Paul Simon’s piece in the New York Times
- A video collection of Seamus Heaney reading his work.
Patricia Smith, Sage String Quartet, and the Art of an Afternoon
An artist works alone in a garret, her solitary room the site of revelation. Or not.
Patricia Smith, who recited and read her poetry detailing the wrath of Hurricane Katrina last week, labored on the afternoon of the performance for four hours with four musicians.
The five of them collaborated on a performance that brought tears to the eyes of the audience. Smith even wrote extra lines – just a few moments before the performance – to make her poem better fit the musical score.
In four hours, having never met before, the poet and the musicians meshed their work into a tightly woven performance for HoCoPoLitSo and the Columbia Festival of the Arts called “The Sound and Fury of New Orleans.”
Audience member Mike Clark said he emerged from the reading feeling “flayed,” he had been so moved by the show.
First performed in October 2012, the synthesis of music and poetry was the brainchild of Martin Farawell, director of the Geraldine R, Dodge Poetry Festival, and had not been performed since. Board member Tim Singleton saw Smith at Dodge, and decided HoCoPoLitSo just had to host her.
Smith performed work from her book, Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist, as the Sage String Quartet played Wynton Marsalis’ “At the Octoroon Balls” for an audience that grew deeply silent.
Violinists Arminé Graham and Laura Chang reached deep into the heart of the poems, Maggie Hummel on cello drew out the voice of Katrina during “Blue Lights on the Bayou,” and Sarah Hart and her viola flirted with the ragtime. Each note, whether quavering or raucous, seemed to speak intimately with Smith’s poems about New Orleans as lascivious flirt and nursing home residents left to drown in their beds, about a dog howling at the looming sky, about a woman with three babies and two arms, who drops her littlest one with a tiny splash.
But before it became art, there was the devil in the details. The musicians knew the music, the poet knew the poems, but in one short rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance, they had to make those two types of art speak as one.
The rehearsal started on a good note. Smith walked into the Monteabaro Recital Hall, saw the four musicians warming up onstage and chortled: “Girl party!”
The quartet laughed, the tension broken. Then, in their shorts and sundresses, the five women settled into the rehearsal.
Smith began by explaining each poem, and reading it, as the musicians looked at the score. They talked about the silences that punctuated the piece, the times when the musicians would play “Hellbound Highball” and would have to tone down the frenzy so Smith’s words about running just ahead of Katrina’s winds could be heard.
The cellist, Maggie Hummel, took on the voice of Katrina, as Smith read poems in the hurricane’s hungry voice: “Every woman begins as weather.” Hummel’s fingers plucked insistently at the beginning of every poem in Katrina’s voice, lending an urgency to the hurricane’s approach.
Just at the end, when everyone was tired and the snacks of nuts and cherries had run out, Smith said she needed to say something about the ending.
“I’m hearing something,” she said. “Katrina’s voice.”
So Smith read the last few lines, and Hummel plucked those strings again.
“That’s it,” Smith said.
Throughout the rehearsal, if they weren’t sure how the piece would go, they just tried it.
“Let’s just do it and see what happens,” Smith said more than once. They did, then tried again. And art happened.
Susan Thornton Hobby
board member
HoCoPoLitSo 