Blog Archives - Marianne Murphy Zarzana

"Blizzard" by Bill Holm

1/31/2011

Yesterday's poem of the day on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor was "Blizzard" by Bill Holm, a former colleague at Southwest Minnesota State University. I especially like this image: "dancing through the house / like a polar bear who thinks / it has joined the ballet."

As the snow keeps piling up around us in higher and higher mounds, as the snowplows rumble and scrape down our streets, what are you reading? What are you writing? What helps relieve your cabin fever?

Poetry Rocks!

1/30/2011

In yesterday's article, "Poetry: A beautiful renaissance," in The Guardian, poet Jackie Kay explores how "poetry rocks" in the UK. Here are some excepts (click on the article title for the full story):

"In this bleak midwinter, with the recession and bad weather, poetry may be helping us to keep body and soul together. At a time when everything is being cut, closed down, diminished and discontinued, the forecast for poetry is surprisingly fair. . .

"Yes, there is a renaissance," says Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society. "Poetry used to be covered in the press only twice a year, and now poetry is getting serious coverage … The entries for the National Poetry competition went up by 46% last year, and the Foyle Young Poets of the Year entries went up by 43%. People are coming at the poetry world from all different perspectives. Just last week I met a neurologist who said he had a great poetry reading group at work. . .

"It used to seem funny to me how us poets called readings 'gigs' – just to pretend we were pop stars. We'd meet each other on the road and say, 'Done any good gigs recently?' But now it doesn't seem all that funny: not when a thousand people turn up for a poet at Latitude, or hundreds of people listen to poetry in the Clapham Grand at Book Slams and shout and cheer like they would at a pop concert, doing everything except singing along.

"And across the country, school students are attending the massive Poetry Live readings (around 150 000 schoolkids attend per year), where they can get to hear the poets they are studying on the page: Simon Armitage, Gillian Clarke, John Agard, Imtiaz Dharker, Daljit Nagra, Carol Ann Duffy … These readings are unique events, in the sense that they are electrifying. Poets go on the stage and students roar! There is no doubt about it, whatever the convergence of reasons and coincidences: poetry rocks."

OK, so that's England, home of Shakespeare. Does poetry rock in America too? What do you think?

Whitman: "To have great poets, there must be great audiences."

1/29/2011

Derek Walcott's White Egrets was named the winner of the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Jan. 23. A recent article in the online UK journal The Literateur titled "Report: 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize" described the event as if it was a rock concert for poets:

"Walt Whitman understood that in order 'to have great poets, there must be great audiences.' There is a sense, then, that when two thousand people fill the Royal Festival Hall for a poetry reading on a Sunday evening in late January, a sort of reverse could also be said to be true: great audiences require great poets. . . . Poetry books may not sell particularly well today, but it would seem from the swelling crowds clutching tickets, that the way back is in performance."

Have you been to an exceptional poetry reading or performance recently? Looking back, do you remember the first reading you attended or the best poetry reading you ever attended?

I love to hear stories about students who are learning to perform poetry. Today at Southwest Minnesota State University, we had a visit day for prospective students, and I met a high school senior interested in creative writing. She had performed several poems by Billy Collins ("Forgetfulness," "Winter Syntax") as part of her speech team last fall and made it to Iowa's state competition.

Another opportunity for high school students interested in performing poetry is the Poetry Out Loud contest sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts, in which students compete by performing poems by the finest poets on a local, regional and national stage.

These are signs of hope to me, hope that poetry lives, even today, even in our media-saturated American culture. Poetry is a force that brings us together, helps to dissolve the illusion that we are separate. Voices quaking, my students send their words out into the world, read their poems in class, in the Whitman Room, at open mics, at senior portfolio readings. Here in southwest Minnesota at SMSU, lecture halls fill to capacity with audiences hungry for the spoken word, poems that sing with precision, truth, humor and humanity.

Changing Places

1/28/2011

According to The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, today, Jan. 28, is the birthday of David Lodge, author of Changing Places, a satirical novel about academia, which my husband and I read aloud to each other a couple years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. Here's a review on Better World Books:

"To everyone who was telling me I should read this: you were right, you were right, you were so so right. One of my favorite books is Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim [another one my husband and I like too], so of course I would love Lodge's academic comedy—especially since it comes with the bonus of being set in Birmingham and Berkeley. They're not called Birmingham and Berkeley, of course, but if you have any familiarity with either locale, it becomes even more amusing to 'decode' the various place names (i.e., Silver Span, Cable Avenue, etc.). Further, the way Lodge plays with format (epistolary, newspaper clippings, film script) is both fun and effective, and there's a delightful amount of meta-humor. In short, I enjoyed this immensely."

Anyone who teaches, works or studies at a university knows there's always plenty of material for comedy. Lodge's humor is in good fun yet makes some serious points, as does all the best satire.

Southwest Minnesota State University Visiting Writers Series - Save These Dates

1/27/2011

This semester at SMSU we're welcoming three outstanding writers to read from their new books during our Visiting Writers Series:

Thurs., March 3, 7 p.m., CH 201 - poet Christine Stewart-Nunez, Keeping Them Alive
Tues., March 15, 7 p.m., Whipple Gallery - poet Jim Reese, Ghost on Third
Wed., April 6, 7 p.m., CH 201 - poet and former award-winning editor of the Marshall
Independent Dana Yost, The Right Place (poems and essays)

Save these dates on your calendar. Tell everyone you know. And get ready for writing that delivers--more than you ever bargained for, just what you needed.

All readings are free and open to the public. After the readings, writers will be available for book signings.

Synergize Your Writing Life

1/26/2011

In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 6 is Synergize: "Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots comingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total of the weight held by each separately" (Covey 263).

I'm blessed to have a husband and a daughter who are both writers. Not only do they provide the raw material for many of my poems and essays, they are also great readers and critiquers of my work. And I return the favor. So at our home, synergy happens.

Ways to synergize your writing life? Let's count some:
1. writing workshops at your local college, art center, senior center or SMSU Senior College
2. writing groups (imagine the synergy of The Inklings, the informal Oxford literary group with writers C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien)
3. writing partners
4. online writing communities
5. writing conferences and festivals
6. writing residencies
7. writing and foreign travel
8. writing coaches
9. readings (give them, go to them)
10. writing websites and blogs
11. mentoring young writers
12. writing and yoga retreats, writing and camping, writing and eco-tourism
And on and on. Any activity that brings you into the orbit of other writers can create synergy.
What are your favorite ways to synergize your writing life?

What is the Soundtrack of Your Writing Life?

1/25/2011

Want to get in touch with your inner child to stir up the creative juices a bit? Try listening to Wonderground Radio on Minnesota Public Radio. Billed as "non-commercial radio for kids to listen to with their grown-ups," there's everything from classics--Louis Armstrong's "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," Pete Seeger's "On Top of Old Smoky," Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walking," and Sly & the Family Stone, "Everyday People"--to newer hits such as Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Say Hey (I Love You)," Sufjan Stevens' "The Friendly Beasts," and OK Go's "White Knuckles."

When I write, I like either silence or instrumental music, no lyrics. But for some writing-related tasks--sorting, cleaning up desk clutter, filing--it's great to have music with good energy, music that jogs memories, loosens you up, takes you places. Check this out, and see what you think.

Spreading Light in the Darkness

1/24/2011

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it," wrote novelist Edith Wharton, whose birthday is today. In today's Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, he has made Wharton his historical focus.

How do we as writers spread light in the darkness? How do you as a writer spread light? How do you reflect it?

Billy Collins - Action Poetry

1/23/2011

Billy Collins is one of my favorite poets, and in 2008 my husband and I along with some of our SMSU creative writing students had the good fortune to hear him read at the Annual Conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in New York.

His poems are wonderful to read silently, but of course, it's always best to hear the poems read by the writer who put them on the page. So here's a link that will take you to a website where you can hear Collins read 11 of his short poems: Billy Collins Action Poems. Each poem is accompanied by amazing animated graphics.

In southwest Minnesota we're all tired of the unrelenting frigid temps, so I found the poem "Today" to be especially delightful for the bit of escapism it offered.

Harry Potter: Boy Wizard... and Real-World Activist

1/22/2011

Last week while teaching my SMSU Introduction to Public Relations Writing class in our computer lab, I asked my students to go online and choose an organization for their first assignment. Each time students do this project, I learn about new organizations. One of my students selected the Harry Potter Alliance. Last November National Public Radio did a story on HPA titled "Harry Potter: Boy Wizard. . . and Real-World Activist."

The HPA website claims "We are an army of fans, activists, nerdfighters, teenagers, wizards and muggles dedicated to fighting for social justice with the greatest weapon we have-- love."

According to the NPR story, "About 100,000 Harry Potter fans have been mobilized by HPA for causes including marriage equality, genocide prevention, and literacy. They raised enough money to send five cargo planes to Haiti bearing medical supplies after the earthquake there, and they've bought thousands of books for libraries in Rwanda and the Mississippi Delta."

In the NPR story, Prof. Henry Jenkins says, "This is a powerful new model for getting young people involved in the political process."

The organization is definitely carving out a new generation of activism. The NPR story notes "There's a playfulness and imagination to this brand of activism that can be lacking in more conventional political organizing."

According to the HPA website, "the HPA was founded in June 2005 by Andrew Slack, the Executive Director, and Paul DeGeorge of Harry and the Potters. “I thought we needed an organization to act as a Dumbledore’s Army for our world, full of Harry Potter fans wishing to embody the message of the books to create social change,” says Andrew Slack.

The HPA website notes that "J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, once said, 'We do not need magic to change the world; we carry all the power needed inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.' Indeed we do and the Harry Potter Alliance is striving to imagine activism better every day."

J.K. Rowling is an amazing storyteller, but I don't think she could ever have imagined all the many ways her characters and stories would stir hearts and minds around this planet.