Thursday, February 8, 2024

**Where Have All the Workshop Venues Gone?**

 

Since the Pandemic, there has been a tremendous overturn of venues that used to happily host open poetry mics. Some have closed, and some are no longer willing to make the space available. Zoom has become a contender, and has its advantages as well as drawbacks. In a Zoom reading, one can interact with poets from across the country and around the world, a rarity at best in the Before Times. Unlike a live reading, however, interaction is limited to private chats and public conversations instead of intimate chit-chats in a dark corner of the coffee shop. But nothing is perfect. With Zoom, Calling All Poets (CAPS) would have been doomed, and it still maintains an ambitious online schedule while waiting for its next physical venue to emerge. The Woodstock Poetry Society currently holds hybrid meetings at the Woodstock Library, an ironic twist since its previous incarnation, the Stone Ridge Poetry Society, had its origins at that town’s library. The ART BAR is no more, so Teresa Costa’s Word of Mouth Poetry series (WOMP) is on hiatus, with hints of a future resurrection making the rounds.

But readings are one thing, and have ebbed and flowed in the 40+ years I’ve been attending. The current difficulty for me personally is finding a venue to offer my RANDOM WRITING poetry workshop at. Past locations are often history, or have incarnated into high priced rentals that are out of reach of my wallet. Talks are in the works for a session at the Poetry Barn, a fine addition to the poetry scene here in Ulster County. I am also making plans for a one-day event at a private home here in Kingston, NY, a generous offer I will tell more about soon. But the old days of a side room at the library, a bar, a church have all evolved in this newly “upscaled” valley into big buck endeavors.

Now, it is America for sure, and Capitalism still reigns supreme, even as the costs of housing, food, and healthcare rise to criminal heights. Everybody has a right to make a fair and reasonable buck. But now more than ever, we need arts that are accessible to the other 90%, people who can tell the stories of life without trust funds and safety nets. Groups like TMI are doing this good work, putting out there tales of the real world that most of us populate. And certainly I charge a fee for my workshop, too. Nothing I could actually pay the light and water bills with, but what I believe is fair compensation for my time and experience.

I have an opportunity to offer a session of my poetry workshop under the auspices of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. The stipulation is that it needs to be free to participants. A $100 stipend will cover my small expenses. However, I have reached out to three area libraries with no reply, even while emphasizing that the class would be free. I am at a loss now where else to look. Churches that once offered the use of their space for free or nominal charges are now making a business of it, it seems. I cannot think of a retail space that would be appropriate either, understanding how much they are all being overcharged for their own square footage. Finally, my own home is truly too small to host more than a couple friends at a time socially, let alone an eager group of poets!

Any ideas? I am open to suggestions. Perhaps in the spring one of the local parks would be an option. If the rent isn’t too high.

Saturday, June 17, 2023

** HIATUS **

 Time to recharge, renew, reinvent life. I'll be officially taking a break from the blog, and most other literary endeavors, until the Fall. Please read my previous entries (there are a lot of them), comment so I know I'm not just puking into the void, and look for something in September.  -CAR

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Hughes Vs. Hitler: The Absurdity of Keyboard Researchers

 

Early this morning, during my usual Facebook perusal, I noticed a particular comment on a friend’s post. Don Levy is a fine poet, and an active reader who shares his interests with others on the web. He’s been posting about a different poet every week, and last week his poet of choice was Ted Hughes, former Poet Laureate of the UK and widower of Sylvia Plath.

Hughes’ role in Plath’s suicide has been debated for decades now. An ardent band of Plath devotees has gone so far as to regularly chip his surname off her headstone, blaming him entirely for her sad ending. Whether these folks take into account her long history of mental illness prior to meeting Hughes is unknown.

Even here in 2023, Don got so much flack for his choice that he felt the need to apologize. Many people supported him, and made the argument for the work and the poet as being separate entities to be considered apart from each other. One gentleman however, with research on Wikipedia to support his opinion, declared Hughes a “psychopath,” and likened his so-called killing spree to that of Hitler.

Anyone’s suicide is a long reaching tragedy that affects many more than can be anticipated. To make Hughes’ case more complicated, his lover, Assia Wevill, lived with for several years afterwards, and ended her own life and that of their small daughter in a similar fashion to Plath. Hughes’ son with Plath, Nicholas Hughes, committed suicide as well, in 2009 and well after the deaths of both his parents.

Considering her long history of mental health struggles in particular, it is difficult to blame Hughes directly for Plath’s suicide. Theirs was a marriage fraught with struggles, the plight of artists as well as husbands and wives. Only those two know the full stories, and we are left to piece together the truth, or some sensible version of it, from diaries, letters, and most unreliably, their poems.

Certainly comparing Hughes to Hitler is an absurdity not even worth discussing with Professor Wiki. Hopefully his next source of “facts” won’t be the wretched Gwyneth Paltrow film of several years ago that exploited the agony. Surviving daughter Frieda Hughes wouldn’t even give permission for their poems to be used, and the producers were reduced to fictional Sylvia and Ted quoting from Shakespeare like starry-eyed freshmen.

Full disclosure- for almost a decade I was the host of an annual event I called, “The Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Looking to draw attention to a monthly open mic here in the Hudson Valley, I came up with several themes, and this one took off with a life of its own. I don’t regret the events now, although as I age I do become more acutely sensitive the pain that drove Plath to the oven. No one came in laughing about her method of suicide, although the usual levity was present, the same that one often experiences at funerals. Poems were sympathetic odes, not satirical rants. I have no plans to revive the series, although many remember it with great fondness. I am too old to find much more to ask of Plath and Hughes, having given all I could expect to my selfish cause.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

2023: An Overview of Sorts

 

The end of the calendar year is supposed to bring a review of the previous 12 months, or at least an assessment of accomplishments. In this near-post-Pandemic environment, there was a facade of normalcy, but deep differences that will take years to return to former experiences.

There were live readings, with many in attendance still masked (not a bad thing). I usually do not mask at this point, but others are of course free to do so. Am I in denial of the consequences of COVID? Probably, but here we are. I’ve been vaccinated and boosted multiple times, and even spent a week with my Beloved ill, and still have not contracted the virus. With all my allergies, I can’t believe it’s anything more than luck that’s kept me well. I’m also working from home for half the year, limiting my exposure to others for great lengths of time in enclosed spaces. I’ll take it.

I’m sorting through files again, this time with more purpose, determined to put things in a usable order. The first time I worked from home, I was too frightened about the state of the world to do much cleaning or organizing of consequence. I’ve abandoned that fear, for the most part, and am now primarily concerned with making the most of the rest of my life, artistically speaking.

There have been a few readings sprinkled in, a short feature courtesy of the Ulster County Women’s Network, a couple more live streams with CAPS, and a Hudson Valley Writers Guild reading in Albany with some Midwest poets I hadn’t yet met in person. I published another Flying Monkey Press chapbook, and helped out at Bruce & Joanne Weber’s Samsara poetry marathon this past New Year’s Day.

I’ve been writing a monthly column for the HVWG newsletter, but somehow this blog has fallen off my task list, despite appearing again and again in my planner. A lot of what I would normally say here has ended up there. Whether or not anyone reads either is anyone’s guess. Both systems make commenting difficult, and I know that there’s a lot of competition these days for eyeballs on the internet. I hope some find it at least diverting for a few minutes. Don’t we all need diversion from this reality we could never have imagined?

2023 is a big unknown for me so far. Resolutions are a daily thing, so making more at the end of the calendar year is no longer a thing for me. With recent health revisions, I am more acutely aware of changes, good and bad. I push through. My mortgage is paid off. I’d like to stop working altogether in a few years. I promise not to be bored when my schedule is my own. That’s all for now.