Henry Real Bird to conduct public workshop in Cheyenne

In conjunction with Wyoming's Poetry Out Loud state competiton, guest judge Henry Real Bird will be facilitating a public workshop on Sunday, March 3, at the Laramie County Library, from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m., in the Cottonwood Room on the main floor.

Henry's theme for the workshop, "Shadow of Home" will "take participants beyond reflection and past the stars, sending our thoughts in search of rhyme, exploring realms of dreaming in sound and tunes of a life."

This workshop is free and open to the public.

Two Wyoming authors takes home High Plains Book Awards

This news comes from a press release from the High Plains Book Awards in Billings, Mont.:

Winners of the prestigious 2012 High Plains Book Awards, a project of the Parmly Billings Library, were announced Saturday, October 20, in Billings, Mont., at a banquet held at the Yellowstone Art Museums. Award winners included Shann Ray's American Masculine, which won in two categories: Best First Book and Best Short Stories. Each winner received a $500 cash prize.  Other winners included Hand Raised: The Barns of Montana by Chere Jiusto & Christine W. Brown for Best Nonfiction, The Ringer by Jenny Shank for Best Fiction, Songs of Unreason by Jim Harrison for Best Poetry, Married Into It by Patricia Frolander for Best Woman Writer, and Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation by Sara Wiles for Best Art & Photography. Emeritus Award winner was Tom McGuane.

Eighty-eight books were nominated for the 2012 High Plains Book Awards in seven categories from publishers in the United States and Canada. Finalists were selected after each nominated book war read and evaluated by community readers. Winners were selected by a panel of published writers with connections to the High Plains. Many finalists and winners participated in a day-long series of readings at the Yellowstone Art Museum as part of the High Plains BookFest. All nominated books were published for the first time in 2011.

Award sponsors include the Parmly Billings Library, Friends of the Parmly Billings Library, Montana State University-Billings, the Parmly Billings Library Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, the Writer's Voice of the Billings Family YMCA, the Yellowstone Art Museum, and the Zonta Club of Billings.

More information about the High Plains Book Awards is available at: http://highplainsbookawards.org.  Nominations for the 2013 High Plains Book Awards will be accepted January 14, 2013-March 15, 2013 for books first published in 2012.

About the High Plains Book Awards
The Parmly Billings Library Board has established the High Plains Book Awards to recognize regional authors and/or literary works which examine and reflect life on the High Plains including the states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.

Here are details about the Wyoming winners:

MARRIED INTO IT by Patricia Frolander
Best Woman Writer
Married Into It
Patricia Frolander
High Plains Press

What happens when a young urban woman marries into a fourth generation rural ranching family and must learn the traditions, customs, and lifestyle of the land, all under the scrutinizing eye of its close knit community? Author Patricia Frolander's clear-eyed poems chronicle her years of challenges and triumphs, bruises and breakthroughs, as she moves from outsider to neighbor.

Patricia Frolander, Wyoming's poet laureate, tries to balance family, ranching, and writing and have a passion for each of them. She and her husband own his family ranch in the Black Hills of Wyoming where ties to land and livestock have provided a wonderful variety of subjects to journal and pen.

ARAPAHO JOURNEYS: PHOTOGRAPHS AND STORIES FROM THE WIND RIVER RESERVATION by Sara Wiles
Best Art & Photography
Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation
Sara Wiles
University of Oklahoma Press

Award-winning photographer Sara Wiles captures that life on film and in words in Arapaho Journeys, an inside look at thirty years of Northern Arapaho life on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming.  Through more than 100 images and 40 essays, Wiles creates a visual and verbal mosaic of contemporary Northern Arapaho culture. Depicted in the photographs are people Wiles met at Wind River while she was a social worker, anthropology student, and adopted member of an Arapaho family.

Wiles's essays weave together tribal history, personal narratives, and traditional knowledge to describe modern-day reservation life and little-known aspects of Arapaho history and culture, including naming ceremonies and cultural revitalization efforts. This work broaches controversial topics, as well, including the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.

Sara Wiles is an independent photographer, writer, and scholar who holds a master s degree in anthropology from Indiana University. Her photographs, including the images published here for the  first time, have been exhibited nationally. She is the recipient of a Wyoming Governor's Arts Award.

Arizona joins the ranks of states with a poet laureate post

Congratulations to our colleagues at the Arizona Commission on the Arts in Phoenix. Thanks to their efforts, and those of the Arizona literary community and State Senator Al Melvin, the 2012 legislature passed a bill establishing a poet laureate post for the State of Arizona. On May 11, 2012, Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1348 into law, and October marks the beginning of the nomination, review and selection process.

Until now, Arizona was one of only eight states without a poet laureate position. Wyoming’s poet laureate is Patricia Frolander of Sundance. She is Wyoming’s fifth poet to serve in that position.

The Arizona bill specifies that the appointed poet laureate will serve a term of two years; will offer public readings throughout the year, in both urban and rural communities in various regions of the state; and will pursue a major literary project over the course of the appointment term.

The Arizona Poet Laureate will be provided with an annual honorarium of $2,500 to offset travel and so that he/she is able to actively serve the broadest constituency of Arizonans, who live, learn and work in urban, rural and suburban areas of the state.

The honorarium will be disbursed from the Arizona Poet Laureate Fund, which consists of private monies donated by individuals, organizations or businesses – raised by the Arts Commission and its statewide literary partners.

Interested parties may nominate themselves or others for the position of Arizona Poet Laureate through a process managed by the Arizona commission on the Arts. The initial deadline for nominations is November 9, 2012. To review details and information regarding the nomination/application and selection process, visit http://www.azarts.gov/azpoetlaureate.

"Writers in the Park" series begins

The Grand Teton Association invites you to join its Writers in the Park series every second Saturday of the month, June through September. Writers both serious and casual, working in all areas of interest, are welcome. The workshops are free.

On Saturday, June 9, Wyoming's past Poet Laureate, David Romtvedt, will be conducting the writing workshop in Grand Teton National Park.

David says, "My workshop and talk will focus on really old Chinese poetry. The poetry of the moongazing half-mad half-Buddhist half-Taoist country scholars. These were writers who on full moon nights went out in small boats and chanted poems to the moon. Sometimes they drank too much wine and fell out of their boats. Our workshop will not require boats much less falling out of them. But we'll talk about some of those old poems and the way they integrated the life of the individual with the natural world in which the individual lives.

"I'm a writer and musician. My most recent book is one I edited on the lives of Basque immigrants to northern Wyoming. It's called Buffalotarrak: an Anthology of the Basques of Buffalo, Wyoming. It appeared in 2011 from the University of Nevada Center for Basque Studies. My most recent book of poetry is Some Church from Milkweed Editions. I served as poet laureate of Wyoming from 2003 to 2011. With the band The Fireants I play dance music of the Americas."

We will meet at 9:00am at the flagpole at the Craig Thomas Visitor's Center (formerly the Moose Visitor's Center). From there we will go to a good place to write and talk together. Bring paper and pen, appropriate outdoor clothing for variable weather conditions and perhaps water and something to sit on. The workshop ends at noon.

Amy Kitchener, literary activist and "Angel"

Check out Amy's "Literary Angels Without Wings FDN" website here: http://www.amykitchenerfdn.org/  There's a lot going on and poetry contests to enter.

Here's a link to her newsletter, featuring Neal Whitman, the 2012 White Buffalo Native American Poet Laureate: http://amykitchenerfdn.org/2012_april_diploemat/april-2012.html

Good stuff!

2012 Equality State Book Festival announces confirmed slate of authors and illustrators

Holly Wendt & Laurie Lye, co-directors of the 2012 Equality State Book Festival, send word that the bookfest web site has been updated with some exciting news to share about September's event in Casper:

The Equality State Book Festival organizers are pleased to announce this year's festival date has been set for Sept. 14-15 in Casper. This celebration marks the 26th anniversary of the annual Casper College/ARTCORE Literary Conference, which has been called "The Equality State Book Festival" every other year since 2006, this being our fourth venture in that spirit.

For the two-day event, more than 15 authors and illustrators will share their talents, giving readings, leading craft talks, emceeing a poetry slam, visiting local schools, and participating on panels. This year's group includes poets, novelists, memoirists, essayists, illustrators, and publishers. 

Among the participants slated are state-wide and regional favorites: Pat Frolander, current Poet Laureate for Wyoming; Zak Pullen, Cat Urbigkit, Kendra Spanjer and Karla Oceanak who will be making school visits; Alyson Hagy and David Romtvedt, faculty from University of Wyoming's MFA program, who will give readings and lead craft talks; and essayist and poet Linda Hasselstrom. From further regions, we are also joined by Rebecca O'Connor and Renee d'Aoust.

The Wyoming Arts Council will be announcing their annual Creative Writing Fellowship awards which celebrate poetry this year and will be judged by Brian Turner. Our friends at Natrona County Public Library are sponsoring a visit from Luis Carlos Montalvan. 

We hope you can join us to appreciate the good company of fellow readers and writers and help celebrate books and the written word Sept. 14-15, 2012, at Casper College and a few other Casper locations, all to be detailed on this web site soon.

For more book festival information, please contact Laurie Lye at llye@caspercollege.edu or 307-268-2639.

National Poetry Month is here

Couple of things from poet out-in-the-field Christine Valentine, who is also a member of WyoPoets and Wyoming Writers. One is a link to a wonderful spoken word performance by Joshua Bennett, Princeton scholar, who was chosen to be part of the very first White House Poetry Jam in 2009.

http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2012/04/04/pages/9489/index.xml

And a poem from Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry series, Column 367

Prairie Sure by Carol Light

Would I miss the way a breeze dimples
the butter-colored curtains on Sunday mornings,
or nights gnashed by cicadas and thunderstorms?
The learning gossip, the half-alive ripple
of sunflowers, sagging eternities of corn
and sorghum, September preaching yellow, yellow
in all directions, the windowsills swelling
with Mason jars, the blue sky bluest borne
through tinted glass above the milled grains?
The dust, the heat, distrusted, the screen door
slapping as the slat-backed porch swing sighs,
the hatch of houseflies, the furlongs of freight trains,
and how they sing this routine, so sure, so sure-
the rote grace of every tempered life?

Poetry for the Ages

2012 Wyoming Poetry Out Loud contestants

Shalene Velarde sat nervously at the table while we waited for our dinners to be served. Her friends, Kayla, and Mikki, runner-up in Pathfinder High School’s Poetry Out Loud (POL) contest, tried their best to ease Shalene’s nerves. She was Pathfinder school’s POL champ, and was about to compete with ten other Wyoming high school contestants in the state POL contest at the Atlas Theatre in downtown Cheyenne.

“Don’t worry, you’ll do fine,” they kept telling her. Shalene had the worst kind of nerves—so internalized that they could not be assuaged no matter what; nerves that would most likely get worse in the short hour until the competition would begin.

As a fellow sufferer of that plight, I commended her for just doing it. “No matter what happens, you will have this experience, and you can say, ‘I did it.’ That’s really important.” I knew of what I spoke, having let those kinds of nerves hold me back from participating in many creative endeavors.

All the students competing that evening had some degree of nerves working on them. At the dinner before the competition, the atmosphere was chatty but expectant. Teachers had brought their school’s competitor as well as assorted supporters—fellow students, parents, friends.

As coordinator of Wyoming’s Poetry Out Loud program, I’d seen several years of students’ POL nerves. The competition is a unique experience, drawing on aspects of dramatic, spoken word and slam performance, speech and debate, and just plain ol’ elocution, a mostly forgotten tradition from the Victorian era, when recitation of favorite memorized romantic verses was a favorite parlor game.

Eligible ninth through twelfth grade POL competitors choose poems to memorize from the POL “canon,” a selection of a few hundred poems by well-known published poets from the 16th Century up to contemporary poets of today. Contestants only have two requirements when picking poems: that one of the three poems they choose be pre-20th Century and one be 25 lines or less. One poem can fill both of those requirements. After the selection process, the memorizing begins for the school competition. The winning student from the school comes to the state contest. Each state champion and a chaperone receives an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C., for the contestant to compete in the national finals.

The key to a good POL recitation is linking the meaning and emotion of the poem to being able to deliver the poem to the audience, and not just the audience that is sitting in chairs out front, but for the audience about whom the poem was written.

This audience, or the tribe, as I learned at the public poetry workshop put on by Jim Coppoc, a poet, spoken word artist and performer, and one of the judges for Wyoming’s 2012 POL competition, is probably the most important component. In knowing that audience, the reciter has probably studied what the poem is trying to convey, also learning something about the poet in the process. That seems to be the formula for the most successful poetry recitations. Dramatic emphasis when needed, pregnant pauses, and use of the rhythm and meter of the poem are also good indicators that the reciter has studied these elements of the poem, and practiced the poem out loud, to listeners.

This year’s winner, Sara Ellingrod from Arvada/Clearmont High Schoool, also won the 2011 state contest. Her teacher/mentor/coach, Linda Crawford has had the state winner for the past three years. State winners can keep coming back to compete in the state competition, but not if they win any one of the twelve final places at nationals.

Sara nailed several aspects of Poetry Out Loud performance criteria. Contestants are judged on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, level of difficulty, evidence of understanding of the poem and overall performance. Her level of performance took a definite leap from the previous year.

Casper student Hannah Hout earned the runner-up spot. She is also a returning contestant from 2011, and her performance as well reflected a studied improvement.

As it turned out, this was Shalene’s first time ever on a stage. That’s a big step, a big leap and a big responsibility, to go from a classroom setting to a formal and dramatic stage performance with only the sparest of instruction or training. As all the contestants did, Shalene walked out on that stage, forgotten phrases and all, and just did it. Taking that first step is always the hardest, and often, the most brilliant.

By Linda Coatney

Poetry takes center stage today in Wyoming State Legislature

Wyoming Poet Laureate Pat Frolander of Sundance read from her work today in the Wyoming House. Pat read  "Houston Creek" (from her new collection Married Into It) and "Requiem in Lace" about her pioneer grandmother -- "smallpox and snakebite/she dealt with it all." She also read to the Wyoming Senate on this second-to-the-last day of the Wyoming State Legislature. Arts supporter Rep. Rosie Berger (R-Sheridan County) opened today's House session with another poem -- a Bible reading from Ecclesiastes 3: “There is a time for everything/and a season for every activity under heaven/…a time to plant and a time to uproot/…a time to tear down and a time to build.” Those lines were the inspiration for a sixties rock song, "Turn, Turn, Turn" made famous by The Byrds. Thanks to Sara Needles for the smartphone photo.

Video of Wyoming Poet Laureate Pat Frolander at Poetry Out Loud competition in Cheyenne

Art Perspectives - Wyoming Poet Laureate Patricia Frolander from Indie Media: The New Journalism on Vimeo.

Sara Ellingrod of Arvada-Clearmont High School wins Poetry Out Loud title

Sara Ellingrod (center) is pictured with First Lady Carol Mead (l) and Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill (r) who presented the awards certificates to all of the participants, the winner and runner-up.

For the second straight year, Sara Ellingrod of Arvada-Clearmont High School in Sheridan County was named winner of the Wyoming Poetry Out Loud finals held in Cheyenne on Monday.

As champion, Ellingrod receives an expenses-paid trip with a chaperone to Washington, D.C. where she will represent Wyoming at the Poetry Out Loud finals, May 14-15.

Ellingrod receives $200 and a selection of books. She also earned a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books for her school.

This is the third consecutive year that a student from Arvada-Clearmont High School has won the Wyoming competition.

Receiving runner-up honors was Hannah Hout, a student at Star Lane Center in Casper.

She receives $100 and a selection of books. Also, her school receives a $200 stipend to buy poetry books.

The awards were presented by Wyoming First Lady Carol Mead and Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill.

In addition to Ellingrod and Hout, nine others participated. Those students are Alicia Sanchez, Ft. Washakie Charter High School; Alyssa Prado, South High School, Cheyenne; Christian Borgaard, Carey Junior High School, Cheyenne; Felipe Lehtinen, Whiting High School, Laramie; Katlynn Kretz, Worland High School; Kyla Christensen, Kaycee High School; Rebecca Dulaney, Sundance Secondary; Shalene Velarde, Pathfinder High School, Lander; and Shawna Wolf, Buffalo High School.

Judges for this year’s competition were Jim Coppoc, performance poet and musician from Ames, Iowa; Wyoming Poet Laureate Pat Frolander; and poet and educator Diane Panozzo.

The Wyoming Arts Council invites high school students involved in creative writing, drama and speech and debate to encourage their teachers to sign up for next year’s Poetry Out Loud program. The WAC will send out registration information in September.

For more information, contact Linda Coatney at the WAC at 307-777-6393 or linda.coatney@wyo.gov. For more information about Poetry Out Loud please visit www.poetryoutloud.org.

Poetry Out Loud tonight in Cheyenne

From Linda Coatney: Local art teacher Mark Vinich silk-screened this design onto a piece of linen-looking fabric, a design that he came up with using elements of the Poetry Out Loud logo. It didn't work to try and cover up the previous printing on the bag with paint. Wonder Under was used to apply the piece of fabric to the front of the bag. I did some quick cross-stitching around the edges of the fabric and sewed a button on each one. These bags will be given to the student contestants with a copy of POL judge Jim Coppoc's book "Manhattan Beatitude, 1997".

The Poetry Out Loud state competition takes place tonight at the Historic Atlas Theatre in downtown Cheyenne. There will be 11 competitors reciting poetry. Jim Coppoc, from Ames, Iowa, joins Wyoming Poet Laureate Pat Frolander of Sundance and Tie Siding poet and educator Diane Panozzo as judges for the Wyoming Arts Council's Poetry Out Loud competition tonight at 7 p.m. in the Historic Atlas Theatre. Come on out and see high school students from around Wyoming battle it out for the title of Wyoming Poetry Out Loud champ. Winner travels to Washington, D.C., in May to compete for the national title and scholarship money.

Wyoming Poetry Out Loud competition coming soon

The 2012 Wyoming Poetry Out Loud state competition will take place March 5-6 in Cheyenne. Sixteen student competitors and their teachers are expected, the largest slate for the Wyoming competition since its inception in 2006. Guest judges this year are James Coppoc, Pat Frolander and Diane Panozzo.

Coppoc, a poet, spoken-word artist and musician from Ames, Iowa, teaches English and American Studies at Iowa State University and creative writing in the low residency M.F.A. program at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Balancing poetry, pedagogy, playwriting, music and performance in his varied career, Coppoc’s publications include Manhattan Beatitude, 1997 (One Small Bird Press, 2010), Reliquary (Fractal Edge Press, 2010), and Blood, Sex & Prayer (Fractal Edge Press, 2005). Coppoc received four Pushcart Prize nominations in 2011.

Coppoc will give a public workshop on Sunday, March 4, from 2-4 p.m. at the Laramie County Library, focusing on bringing out the musicality in poems.

Frolander is Wyoming’s Poet Laureate, appointed by Governor Mead in late 2011. She hails from Sundance, Wyo., where she works the family ranch with her husband. Her publications include Married Into It (High Plains Press, 2011), and Grassland Genealogy (Finishing Line Press, July, 2009); her poetry is informed by her move to and unexpected rendezvous with the West and its captivating lifestyle. Frolander will read her poetry and say a few words prior to the competition’s start.

Panozzo, Tie Siding, Wyo., teaches classes at the University of Wyoming (UW) in the Honors English program, at the UW Art Museum and the UW Theatre Department. She has won three literary awards from the Wyoming Arts Council: a 2003 Literary Fellowship in poetry, and two honorable mentions in fiction and nonfiction. Panozzo taught in the Laramie County School District for 18 years, and began the Words Worth Symposium for middle and high school students in Cheyenne, and in the 1990s, started the first poetry slams in Cheyenne. She was nominated for a Governor’s Arts Awards in 2003.

Poetry Out Loud is sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Wyoming Arts Council administers the program. Ninth through twelfth grade students are eligible to compete.

The event begins with a dinner for the contestants, teachers, judges and guests. The competition begins at 7 p.m. at the Historic Atlas Theater in downtown Cheyenne. The winner and runner-up are not announced until the next morning.

The awards ceremony begins at 10:30 a.m. on March 6 in the Capitol Rotunda. Presenting the awards this year will be First Lady Carol Mead and Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill.

The winner from each state receives an all-expenses-paid trip (along with a chaperone) to compete in Washington, D.C., May 13-15 at the national finals. Among the activities is the Congressional Breakfast, where students get to meet and have photos taken with their Congressmen. A total of $50,000 in scholarships is awarded to the finalists and winner.

Wyoming Poetry Out Loud competition takes place March 5-6

Sara Ellingrod, center, Wyoming's 2011
Poetry Out Loud champ.

If you are a teacher of 9th - 12th grades and have students that are interested in competing in Poetry Out Loud, you have until February 20 to hold a school contest. Two competitors make a contest!

The state finals will take place in Cheyenne on March 5th and 6th. The dinner begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Historic Plains Hotel. The competition takes place at the Historic Atlas Theater, across the street from the Plains beginning at 7 p.m.

The following morning, breakfast begins at 7 a.m. Student and teacher workshops begins at 8 a.m.

At 10:30 a.m., everyone goes to the Capitol, where certificates are given to all the participants, and the winner and runner-up are announced.

Invited guests include, Jim Coppoc a performance poet from Iowa; Pat Frolander, Wyomng's Poet Laureate; and Cindy Hill, Superintendant of Public Instruction.

FMI: linda.coatney@wyo.gov or 307-777-6393

WY Poet Laureate Pat Frolander will read from her work and sign books in Casper Nov. 17-18

Nice article in today's Casper Star-Tribune about new Wyoming Poet Laureate Pat Frolander of Sundance. Pat will be signing copies of her book, Married Into It," on Thursday, Nov. 17, 8 p.m., at Wind City Books, 152 Center Street, Casper. On Friday, Nov. 18, she will host a poetry reading and book signing at the Wyoming Women in Ag Symposium at the Parkway Plaza.

Gov. Matt Mead names Pat Frolander of Sundance the new Wyoming Poet Laureate

High Plains Press published Pat Frolander's
new book of poetry earlier this year.

Press release from Gov. Matt Mead:

Governor Matt Mead signed an Executive Order today naming Patricia Frolander as Poet Laureate of Wyoming. Frolander is Wyoming’s fifth Poet Laureate and is a rancher from Wyoming’s Black Hills.

At the signing ceremony today, Governor Mead noted that Frolander has won several awards for her work and been published in anthologies, literary reviews, magazines and newspapers. Governor Mead complimented Frolander for her book of poetry titled, Married Into It. “It’s great work and it resonates with me and should resonate with all of Wyoming because it speaks about Wyoming and speaks about our people.”

The Poet Laureate of Wyoming position is an honorary title and Frolander will serve without compensation. She can submit writings for occasions of her choice. Today, Frolander came to the Capitol with a group of fellow writers. She said receiving this distinction was a great honor. “It’s a privilege and I am excited to serve the State of Wyoming. I not only want to further poetry, but literature in general. I think this is a wonderful opportunity and I would like to thank everyone who accompanied me and all of those poets in Wyoming whom I dearly love.”

Governor Mead also expressed thanks to the Wyoming Arts Council and its board for the help in selecting a Poet Laureate.

WY performer and poet laureate emeritus David Romtvedt featured at High Plains BookFest

The High Plains BookFest begins Oct. 13 at the Babcock Theatre in Billings, MT.

The Big Read kicks off Thursday, October 13, with the High Plains BookFest. This year’s theme: “The Nature of Poetry, the Poetry of Nature.” The Billings YMCA Writer’s Voice and Parmly Billings Library hosts The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The Big Read in Billings will focus on the selected poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

Join us for two gala evenings at the Babcock Theatre! On Thursday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m., David Caserio hosts “Poetry and Performance” featuring Bozeman poet, humorist and musician Greg Keeler; and Wyoming poet and accordion player, David Romtvedt performing Cajun, Brazilian and world music with his wife and daughter. Caserio will also perform some of his work accompanied by local musicians. Tickets are $10 and valid for Thursday and Friday evening. Tickets may be purchased at the door.

On Friday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. the High Plains BookFest features a gala reading by four poet laureates from three states: Sheryl Noethe and Henry Real Bird of Montana, Larry Woiwode, North Dakota, and David Romtvedt, poet laureate emeritus of Wyoming.


RSVP on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=260083724029846&notif_t=event_invite

Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry Column 341

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Here’s a poem of mixed feelings by Don Thompson to help us launch October. Thompson lives in Buttonwillow, California, which sounds like the name of a town in a children’s story, don’t you think?


October

I used to think the land
had something to say to us,
back when wildflowers
would come right up to your hand
as if they were tame.

Sooner or later, I thought,
the wind would begin to make sense
if I listened hard
and took notes religiously.
That was spring.

Now I’m not so sure:
the cloudless sky has a flat affect
and the fields plowed down after harvest
seem so expressionless,
keeping their own counsel.

This afternoon, nut tree leaves
blow across them
as if autumn had written us a long letter,
changed its mind,
and tore it into little scraps.

Buffalo's "Walkabout Gallery" offers public art in unexpected places

Artist Louise Anderson is shown working on her landscape painting of Elgin Park located at Buffalo's Holistic Health Center. Louise's painting is part of the Walkabout Gallery co-sponsored by the Buffalo Downtown Association and the Johnson County Arts & Humanities Council. Vikki Chenette, vice president of the JCAHC, says that the "Walkabout Gallery" is a bit different than most traditional public art projects. "We think that people will be surprised and delighted to find these little things" around town, she said.

David Romtvedt's poem "Falling Asleep" is affixed to the brick wall outside of his wife Margo Brown's pottery shop.  David, who recently stepped down from his position as Wyoming Poet Laureate, told the Buffalo Bulletin that "it is neat to see it where people wouldn't necessarily go hunting for poems." 

Becky Spencer's mosaic, "Majestic Wyoming Wildlife," hangs outside of the Sol DeVallarta restaurant in downtown Buffalo. It is the most recent addition to the "Walkabout Gallery" project.

Library of Congress names Philip Levine the new U.S. Poet Laureate

The Library of Congress announced today that Philip Levine, who is "best known for his big-hearted, Whitmanesque poems about working-class Detroit" (New York Times quote), is to be the next poet laureate, succeeding W. S. Merwin.

Congratulations to Mr. Levine, one of wyomingarts' favorite poets.

Here's part of the statement issued today by the Library of Congress:

"Philip Levine is one of America's great narrative poets," Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in a statement. "His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling 'The Simple Truth' — about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives."

In "Drum," Levine writes of a "Tool & Die" shop and of the men who "sweep, wash up, punch out, collect outside for a final smoke." In "Coming Close," he presents a "quiet woman" standing for hours before a polishing wheel. But who is she, really? Levine asks. "You must come closer to find out."

You must hang your tie
and jacket in one of the lockers
in favor of a black smock, you must
be prepared to spend shift after shift
hauling off the metal trays of stock
bowing first, knees bent for a purchase
then lifting with a gasp, the first word
tenderness between the two of you