“My own work deals with cultural memory and how traumatic national events such as the Civil War are remembered, misremembered, reimagined, and reinterpreted by Americans living in later historical periods. As William Faulkner puts it in his novel Absalom, Absalom, ‘maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished.’ In other words, the past is never just the past—it co-exists with the present and shapes it, like double exposure on a piece of film.” Steven Bellin-Oka
The National Parks Arts Foundation (NPAF), the Poetry Foundation, the National Parks Service, and the Gettysburg Foundation announce Steve Bellin-Oka as the 2019 Poets in Parks Artist-in-Residence. Poets in Parks is a partnership expressly designed and curated to raise the profile of poetry as a vibrant and modern public art. Bellin-Oka is the second Poets in Parks resident. He will spend one month in residency at Gettysburg National Military Park with a $1,000 stipend.
Entrance to the Gettysburg National Park courtesy of Sallicio under CC BY-SA 3.0 license
“The beauty and variety of United States national parks provide fertile ground for growing dialogue around poetry, shared history, and art as a public service,” said Stephen Young, program director at the Poetry Foundation. “We’re excited to have Mr. Bellin-Oka continue these conversations as the new Poets in Parks resident. The relationship between the past in present in his work is well-suited to Gettysburg, where history is both commemorated and alive.”
Gettysburg and Beyond
The National Park Service’s cultural mandate to recognize and foster a democratic and participatory dialogue through the arts has never been more important. The current national debate about the representation and memorial of Civil War history provides an opportunity for education and discussion.
Bellin-Oka’s poems written during the residency will expand those conversations. He will begin his month-long residency at Gettysburg National Military Park in September, writing, leading workshops, and sharing his poetry in a public reading on October 11, 2019. After his residency, he will travel to Washington, D.C. and to the Poetry Foundation in Chicago in May, 2020 on a poetry tour with the first Poets in Parks resident, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejoa, a first generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, California
A Poet Connected to the Past
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Bellin-Oka grew up surrounded by Civil War battlefields; he takes the not-so-ghostly presences of history seriously, and intends to explore them during his time at Gettysburg.
He plans to write poems that imagine Abraham Lincoln preparing to give The Gettysburg Address, the experiences of soldiers on both sides, and new works in response to Civil War poems of the battlefield.
Bellin-Oka earned his MFA from the University of Virginia and his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. He currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is a 2019 Tulsa Artists Fellow, awarded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. His debut collection, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, won the 2019 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, and will be published by the University of North Texas Press in 2020.
RELATED:
Poems online by 2019 Poets in Parks Artist-in-Residence, Steven Bellin-Oka:
This post complied courtesy of The Poetry Foundation, The National Parks Foundation, Wikipedia, and Steven Bellin-Oka’s and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejoa’s websites.
*****
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs.
You can follow The Poetry Foundation and Poetry on Facebook and Twitter.
*****
The National Parks Arts Foundationis a nonprofit organization offering artist-in-residence programs, museum in-loan programs, and workshops nationwide at a number of national parks. To apply to open programs, visit HERE. .
The Gettysburg Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic, educational organization operating in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS) to preserve Gettysburg National Military Park and the Eisenhower National Historic Site, and to educate the public about their significance.
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet * Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire Upcoming in digital publications: * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review * From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)
* The Damask Rose Garden, In a Woman’s Voice
A mostly bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove,I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a vitual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Rate this:
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
by 
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 
Thank you!