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Posts Tagged ‘kate colby’

Writer Friends

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

 

Ronnie Hess

Two people I know got attention for their writing this week.

Ronnie Hess, a friend from childhood summers on Fire island, won a 2015 Hal Prize from Write On, Door County, Wisconsin, for a story about Tina Hess, her mother. “Judge Michael Perry awarded the prize to ‘The Red Shoes,’ ” says the nonprofit’s website.

The mission of Write On, by the way, “is to facilitate and promote writing in Door County by nurturing the work of writers, supporting readers and audiences, and developing opportunities that encourage broad participation. …

“Write On received our nonprofit status in January, 2014. Since then, over 100 programs have been offered, reaching over 1,000 people in every portion of the county and beyond.” More here. And you can read Ronnie’s essay here, starting on p. 48.

In other news, poet Kate Colby, a friend of Suzanne and Erik, got a Publishers Weekly (PW) star for her latest collection, I Mean.

Says PW, “The book’s parts function in tandem as tools via which the author, in various degrees of obsession, contextualizes and re-contextualizes her life, her experiences, and her work: ‘I mean the walls/ are braced/ against themselves// I mean brace yourself// I mean to take the house down/ with its own components.’ ” More from Publishers Weekly.

Although I can’t use everything, I am interested in posting excerpts from your poems or your other writing. Feel free to send something small to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.

Kate Colby

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Poetry and Art Walk July 18

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Kate Colby (for whose offer of a room to Suzanne and Erik when they were house hunting there can never be enough gratitude) is a poet.

She came to the rescue when Suzanne was starting Luna & Stella and was having trouble finding a writer to capture the more ethereal qualities of the birthstones.

“What you need,” I said, “is a poet.”

“I know a poet!” she cried. She remembered Kate used to write copy for a catalog.

Beyond such marketing endeavors, Kate publishes poetry, choreographs offbeat theater, and co-leads art/poetry walks. An example of the latter will occur soon.

As Eryn Carlson writes at the Boston Globe, Kate is collaborating with artist Todd Shalom to offer “Duly Noted,” a participatory walk incorporating techniques from poetry, sound, and performance, at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, July 18, at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Carlson comments, “Shalom and Colby know that the very nature of tours makes it easy to overlook the ways in which artworks and their settings inform one another. … The pair created the collaborative walk ‘Duly Noted,’ a poetic exchange between participants and the Lincoln museum’s site and surroundings.

“ ‘Reading the art is apt because it’s so framed by woods and walls and water, and all this history,’ said Colby, who grew up in Wayland and lives in Providence. …

“ ‘It’s all about reframing the site,’ said Shalom, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist who founded Elastic City.”

At a performance in May, “participants evolved from visitors to artists and performers. Individuals gave one-word soliloquies atop a stump, announcing their visual discoveries, and, guided by a partner, wandered the grounds with eyes closed to pay special attention to the surrounding cacophony. …

“Shalom and Colby, who met while working on their master’s degrees in fine arts at California College of the Arts, planned ‘Duly Noted’ meticulously over the course of a year, visiting the deCordova several times to perfect the route, pacing, and segues. But a degree of uncertainty and room for spontaneity remained.”

This could be a fun activity on July 18 if you live in the area. The grounds of the museum offer breathtaking views and sculptures everywhere you turn. Add to that a participatory happening like this, and you have the ingredients for a memorable day.

Read more here.

Photo: Barry Chin/Globe staff
Visitors at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum on a participatory walk titled “Duly Noted.’’

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Island Poetry Workshop, April 11-14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Nancy Greenaway, owl poet, is passing along the website of the Block Island Poetry Project and details of this year’s gathering.

From the website: “The Block Island Poetry Project is turning 10, and we are so excited about it that we are outdoing ourselves with a 4-day celebration featuring the usual fun and extraordinary work which has become our hallmark. In addition, we are honoring our decade together with an anthology of poems written during, or as a result of, Poetry Project workshops.”

The website continues, “Unpretentious, textured, authentic, practical, frisky… that’s who we are at the Block Island Poetry Project, and that’s why our series is like no other.”

The 2013 featured poets are Li-Young Lee  and Coleman Barks.

According to poets.org, Lee was “born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His father had been a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, and relocated the family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. …  ‘What characterizes [Lee’s] poetry is a certain humility …  a willingness to let the sublime enter his field of concentration and take over, a devotion to language, a belief in its holiness.’ ” More on Lee, here.

The Coleman Barks website says that he is “the author of numerous Rumi translations and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. His work with Rumi was the subject of an hour-long segment in Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series on PBS.” More on Barks, here.

The featured poets will be joined by a range of other poets, teachers, editors, and publishers. Rhode Island’s new poet laureate, Rick Benjamin, will also stop by.

(Perhaps one of my favorite Rhode Island poets, Kate Colby, will get to this workshop some year.)

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Marsden Hartley’s Dogtown Paintings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2012| 2 Comments »

Sunday we drove up to Gloucester to the Cape Ann Museum to see Marsden Hartley‘s Dogtown paintings. I have always liked the spooky quality of the rock formations as represented by Hartley somewhere on the continuum between abstraction and realism. I love the strong outlines and the ambiguous puffy clouds, which convey either hope or irony.

The museum itself is charming in an eclectic way, and I was happy to renew my acquaintance with the work of children’s illustrator Virginia Lee Burton, who spearheaded a local artist collaborative called Folly Cave Designers, creators of wonderful fabrics.

Walker Hancock‘s plaster version of the angel-and-soldier war memorial at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station in Philadelphia is also in the museum. Not to mention all sorts of dories and fishing implements and seafaring works by Fitz Hugh Lane.

We enjoyed walking around Gloucester, the Beauport of Kate Colby’s recent book of poetry. I got a blueberry-lavender lemonade.

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When People You Know Are Poets

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2011| 4 Comments »

I have always liked reading poetry, but there is something extra delightful about actually knowing people who write good poetry.

Nancy Greenaway is a friend I see summers in Rhode Island. I learned last weekend that among other output, she recently published this poem at the Texas Observer site. It begins:

Salaam.

You write ghazals under shade of an acacia,

speak Farsi or Pashto,

eat qurmas, sabzi, lamb kebabs,

wear burqas and hijabs.

I write free verse under shade of a maple,

speak English,

eat pizza, cod, corn on the cob,

wear jeans and t-shirts. 

Read it here. 

Francesca Forrest has several online poetry outlets. In the tantalizing “Temptation,” an internal voice whispers,

Throw yourself down from here; try!

This is a dream, and you will fly.

Read “Temptation” here, published at the Linnet’s Wings. Two other poems by Francesca are “Songs Were Washing Up,” in the publication Scheherzade’s Bequest, and “Old Clothes Golem,”  at the site Stone Telling.

When Suzanne was getting ready to launch Luna & Stella, she came to the conclusion that a poet should write the descriptions of the birthstones, because only a poet would have the right artistic sensibility. As it happened, she knew a poet who also did copywriting, Providence-based poet Kate Colby. Here is what Kate wrote about the gems for Luna & Stella.

You might also like to read one of Kate’s poems, “A Body Drawn By Its Own Memory.” It begins :

Certain labels are impervious

to solvents, impermeable

as drawn bridges. …

I will post poems from time to time. Perhaps you will let me know what you like. Try the comments feature. Or e-mail me at suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.

Nancy writes: 
“Thought you might be one of the few who would appreciate our adventures in Boston/Cambridge on Sunday and Monday. Malcolm and I had a one-night vacation by driving to Cambridge on Sunday, staying at the Marlowe Hotel (with a view of the Charles) and hearing Naomi Shihab Nye read and then receive the Golden Rose Award from the Poetry Club of New England. She concluded with her poem about the Block Island ferry (which will appear in her new book of poems to be released by BOA Editions in September.) Before the reading, to the amazement of all in the audience, she rushed up the center aisle directly to me and gave me a wonderful hug.”

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