Sandra Gail Lambert

Multi-media poetry!

Take a poem and add a whole collaboration of musicians and actors and all the people and locations and props it takes to make a film.  Now you have Alice Teeter's double sestina The 103rd birthday of Emma Regina DeGraffenreid Smith lifted off the page and made dimensional.  It thrills me, the thought of all that effort and time by all those people, young and old, focused in on one poem.  It makes me want, well, something - maybe get some of my dialogues acted out, have a scene put into song, or at least form a poetry study group of some sort.  Anyway, here's the video.      

Nikky Finney's NBA for Poetry Speech

"I am now officially speechless," she ends it.  More accurately, we all are speechless. Start at the four minute mark to hear Nikky Finney's awesome acceptance speech for her collection Head Off and Split. 

The Scribe Tribe - Poetry and Wild Music on Sunday, October 2nd.

 
The poets Aliesa Zoecklein, Feral Wilcox, Corky Culver, and Samara Golabuk (collectively known as The Scribe Tribe) are some of the natural treasures of Gainesville which makes them a perfect fit for the Florida Museum of Natural History.  On Sunday, October 2nd at 1:30pm, they'll weave spoken and sung poetry with instrumental music in celebration of Wild Music: Sounds and Song Life, an exhibit at the museum. 

Aliesa's poems have been accepted into the journals Cream City Review, Cimarron Review, and Pleiades, where's there's a link to one of her poems available. Corky's collection The Natural Law of Water has a prominent place on my bookshelf, and in addition to her lyrical poetry, I've heard that Samara has quite the singing voice.  Top this all off with Feral's genius as a wordsmith and musician and we're pretty much guaranteed one of those transportive, can't-hardly-believe-we-got-to-be-there afternoons.     

 So, Sunday, October 2nd, 1:30pm, at the Florida Museum of Natural History.  The admission is free.  I'm so looking forward to this. 

The Poetry of Resilience - Written and Directed by Katja Esson

 
Katja Esson brings us the stories of six international poets who have survived political violence.  They tell us and themselves why they write - "to remember, to take revenge, to curse, to forgive, to honor, to commemorate, to transcend."

Li-Young Lee, Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, Majid Naficy, Alexandre Kimenyi, Yashuhiko Shigemoto, and Choman Hardi speak, each one, of their history and their relationship to the creative.  The Poetry of Resilience premiers any day now.  Here's a trailer.   

Poetry of Resilience Excerpt from Penelope Pictures on Vimeo.

C. elegans, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Ruta graveolens

 
Why have I been googling roundworms, a Polish sculptor, and abortifacient herbs?  Poetry made me do it.  A while back I noticed that the more poetry I read, even without always understanding all of what was going on, the better prose I wrote. 

Since this seemed an effective, inexpensive, don't-even-really-have-to-get-out-of-bed way to "write better" - a life goal of mine - I asked a poet friend to direct my reading out of her vast library of poetry collections.  Then I asked her to study a few of the poems with me.  (A shameless using of a friend's time, talent, and intellect.)  And thus, this week, we will be discussing poems from Melissa Kwasny's Thistle and Linda Gregerson's Magnetic North. 

I'm trying to get a head start by knowing some of the references.  Did you know that roundworms are hermaphrodites except for the .05% of them who are male?