AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM 100TPC COFOUNDER, MICHAEL ROTHENBERG: “On September 24, 2016 poets, musicians and artists around the world will be organizing poetry readings, parades, gallery exhibitions, music and dance performances focused on issues of peace, justice, and sustainability. This important annual global act of solidarity is the core activity of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a non-profit organization.
100 Thousand Poets for Change offers an opportunity for a peaceful global discussion of issues such as war, global warming, poverty, racism, gender inequality, homelessness, gun violence, police brutality, lack of affordable medical care, censorship, and animal cruelty. Individual organizers are free to choose the specific topic and focus of their local event. If you are interested in participating in this global action please post sign up HERE.”
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THE BARDO GROUP BEGUINES will host a virtual 100TPC event on September 24 with American-Israeli poet, Michael Dickel (Fragments of Michael Dickel) as Master of Ceremonies. Between Michael and me the event will run from morning in Israel to midnight in California. You can share your work through Mr. Linky (instruction will be provided) or in the comments section of the blog post that day at The BeZinewhere you can also enjoy the work of other artist activists.
Work may include anything on topic: poetry, essay, short fiction, video (music, mime, dance, dramatic monolgue), art and photography and so forth. The topic we’ve chosen this year – selected by Rev. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again founder) – and supported by our core team of poets, writers, story-tellers, artists and photographers, musicians and clerics is ENVIRONMENT and ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.
This event is open to everyone wherever you are in the world and makes possible participation even if there is no street event happening in your area or if you are homebound. We hope you’ll join us. Soon after the event, we’ll collect everything into one commemorative page. This is tradition. Commenorative pages from prior years can be accessed at The BeZine through its blog roll. All work will be also be archived at Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
Please feel free to share this post widely. Thank you!
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Some days I get caught between my inability to spell a word and the artistic desire to use just the right one. There’s a temptation to take the lazy way out, to substitute the easy word for the perfect one. My spelling is so bad that I got Ds and Fs on tests in elementary school. I was always the first one to get booted out of the spelling bee.
Later in life, when my son got home from school, I would hand him a manuscript and pay him a quarter for every misspelling he found. Now I just text him. Generally I can’t come close enough to the right spelling … if I could the spell-check might work for me … so I just make like a crossword puzzle:
“Son, Homer between a rock and hard place … ?”
“Mom, Scylla and Charybdis.”
“Son, it begins with an ‘a’ and is foolish.”
“Mom, absurd…!!!!”
Even though I’m a slow reader and a poor speller, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t write for a living, probably because I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until I was almost fifty. (Story for another day.) I had no name to give this puzzling situation. In retrospect, that might be a good thing.
For years I thought my problem was my Brooklynese, my pronunciation. On and off over time I read books and listened to tapes on elocution, which did seem to help a bit. Then Laurel D. sent us this Funny or Die video, The Bensonhurst Spelling Bee. It’s a chuckle-and-a-half and has nothing to do with dyslexia, but in an odd way it sort-of validates my hypothesis. Pronunciation may not be the root of the challenge, but it probably does help to complicate things.
If you’re reading in email, you’ll likely have to click through to this site to view the video. (If you’re also from Brooklyn, it’s a must see.)
Humor aside, dyslexia shouldn’t stop anyone from being a writer. It’s not a reason to give up on writing or to encourage your children to do so.HERE is a list of twenty-five well-known writers who are or were dyslexic. The late Stephen Cannell was famously dyslexic. He was open about it in an effort to help and encourage others. The Learning Center section of his website provides some background and tips.
It is estimated that 15-17% of the population is dyslexic.
WINDHOVER JOURNAL, a publication of The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, publishes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction “that considers Christian perspectives and engages spiritual themes. Submissions are currently being accepted. The reading period ends August 1. Details HERE.
JAZZ CIGARETTE is accepting submissions and says, “we don’t have a type, but traditional verse will have to be pretty good to land here. Send us your sestinas, though … Prose poems and hybrid work will also be considered.” Details HERE.
ISTHMUS is accepting submission for a special issues themed “Politics.” Editors are reviewing poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction and seek works that speak “to our shared humanity through political engagement; works that bear witness, advocate, and foster authentic dialogue around current issues and events.” Deadline is August 1. Details HERE.
BELO MIGUEL CIPRIANI, award-winning author, former Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, currently a columnist for the Bay Area Reporter, named “Best Disability Advocate” by the SF Weekly has published a call for submissions for Essays by the Disabled on Rites of Passage for a proposed collection. Details HERE.
CONFERENCES/RESIDENCIES
WRITERS DIGEST’S annual conference is upcoming August 12-14 at the New York Hilton Midtown. Details HERE.
ANAM CARA WRITER’S AND ARTIST’S RETREAT residencies to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. It is situated Eyeries in County Cork, Ireland, overlooking Coulagh Bay and the mountains and farmlands of the Beara Peninsula.
Anam Cara hosts weeklong workshop-based retreats. Upcoming: “Memory, Secrets, and Immortality: A Crucible for Creativity,” a retreat for women writers and visual artists by poet and nonfiction writer Ione from July 23 to July 29. Also “Lining Our Thoughts,” a poetry workshop taught by poet Leanne O’Sullivan, from July 30 to August 6. Details HERE. (Honestly, it’s worth visiting the site just to check out the vids. The place is gorgeous.)
OREGON WRITERS COLONY “offers support to writers, from novices to published authors. Members benefit from classes, inspiration from teachers and colleagues, and access to Colonyhouse, a lovely writing retreat on the Oregon Coast.” For more information on the colony and upcoming events link HERE.
FESTIVALS
RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL, A Celebration of the Written Word (California)is scheduled for January 28-29, 2017. Details HERE.
SUNSHINE COAST FESTIVAL OF WRITTEN ARTS, Canada’s “longest running summer gathering of Canadian writers and readers, is upcoming August 11-14. Details HERE.
FLORIDA HERATAGE BOOK FESTIVAL AND WRITERS CONFERENCE is upcoming on September 15-17.Details HERE.
MELBOURNE 2016 WRITERS FESTIVAL is scheduled for August 26 – September 4.Details HERE.
FILM PRODUCTION
CHAOS FILMS (HERE) announced that it has received grants from Conference on Material Claims Against Germany, The Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts and Rabbi Israel Miller Fund for Shoah Research, Documentation and Education toward the making of its film production, Living with Shadows. This film will “unfold the stories of sexual abuse, subjugation and coercion of Jewish women and men during World War II. This aspect of WWII has largely remained a taboo subject in Israel and internationally. It has had until recently only limited or cursory treatment among scholars. Thus, the subject ends up marginalized in and mostly excluded from collective memory and public discourse about the Holocaust.
“Some women after the war felt they could not marry. Some who mentioned it were shunned. Others could not bear children as a result of the abuse. Most of the victims lived with shame about what happened to them and many avoided sexual relations. These are only some of the wounds, the shadows, these people lived with all of these years. When they arrived in Israel and were not accepted socially, they closed their mouths for decades. Only now, some survivors have begun to tell the stories as part of personal therapy.”
“Doing background research,” explains poet Michael Dickel, “we learned ‘The victims of modern armed conflict are far more likely to be civilians than soldiers. According to UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, the vast majority of casualties in today’s wars are among civilians, mostly women and children. Women in particular can face devastating forms of sexual violence, which are sometimes deployed systematically to achieve military or political objectives.'” —UN Outreach Programme on the Rwanda Genocide and the United Nations http://bit.ly/29wiG6u
Good luck to Producer Avi Bohbot and Director Ayelet Cohen and the rest of their team.
TIDIBTS
LIFESAVING POEMS OF SUMMER – twenty-one of them by different poets – are shared after a brief intro by English poet, Anthony Wilson, on his blog Lifesaving Poems. It’s an old post but a goodie.
THE POET BY DAY SUNDAY POESY
Submit your event, book launch and other announcements at least fourteen days in advance to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. Publication is subject to editorial discretion.
There’s something happening here,
What it is aint exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there,
Tellin’ me I’ve got to beware …
I think it’s time we stop, Children, What’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s goin’ down …
Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
Unitarian Universalists (UU) of San Mateo, CA
On June 12, 49 people were murdered at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and 53 were injured and hospitalized, four critically. People of good conscience gathered and mourned with victims and families at vigils held across the country and around the world. We grieved for lives lost. We grieved another mass shooting, the largest in U.S. history.
Congregational Church, San Mateo, CA
Here in San Mateo, we joined in a interfaith vigil held at the Congregational Church. We joined in sadness, shock and solidarity, both for Orlando, and for those in our own community, our country, our world who are of a minority sexual orientation: gay men, lesbians, bisexual persons, transgender persons, persons uncertain of their gender identity or sexual orientation, victims of senseless hate in some quarters.
The community we must hold vigil for in our hearts is even larger. It includes all our Muslim brothers and sisters here and around the world who have and will suffer from the kind of religious bigotry that cannot separate the actions of one radically disturbed individual from the peace- loving behaviors of millions of religious people.
Torah Center, Peninsula Temple Sholom, Burlingame, CA
Recently, Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo (UUSM) joined over 200 people and broke the month long period of daily fasting for Muslims known as Ramadan. The event, which I had never participated in before, was made even more remarkable to me because of its location. It was not held in a Mosque or even a Muslim Cultural Center, rather, it was hosted, and well attended, by the Jewish congregation of Peninsula Temple Shalom, in Burlingame. Muslims and Jews, Christians, UUs and others came together to learn more about this most holy ritual of Islam, and to stand against the violence of Islamaphobia and hate, which currently, the majority of U.S. citizens embrace and promote.
We hold vigil for people, especially black and brown people, who continue to be the targets of racial profiling and the oppression and violence that comes with it. Acts of systemic hatred and violence which we can not even imagine but which they face every day just because of the color of their skin.
Here, in this religious community, we are striving to embody and live out a life-long vigilance to building the beloved community that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of when he encouraged all people of good conscience, especially white people of privilege and power, to look at and dismantle the pervasiveness of white supremacy, lessons learned at a tender age and never truly unlearned without a committed effort and willingness to change and be changed—from the inside-out.
Our Black Lives Matter banner hangs outside our sanctuary, a reminder to be conscious of our complicity in the legacy of violence and hatred that is not yet overcome. We must hold in our hearts and move in our hands ALL of us here in our country who might at any time be the victims of violence of the highest order, violence inflicted by high-powered weapons that kill indiscriminately in every corner of this country: in our churches, mosques, temples and shrines…in our schools and workplaces, in our coffee houses and dance houses and our very homes.
Since the Orlando shooting on June 12th there have been 31 other mass shootings in the U.S. involving 4 or more victims, including the death of 5 in Las Vegas and 5 police officers in Dallas, Texas. More shootings. More vigils. So, what exactly do we mean by vigil?
A vigil is a SACRED kind of watchfulness, a call to be attentive and aware with devotion for the emotions that are sure to surge up within us— emotions of anger, even rage; emotions surrounding loss and shock; emotions steeped in frustration and fear. These emotions can convince us, if we are not careful, that rage justifies the kind of outrage that lashes out, repaying violence with violence, seeking a life for a life, an eye for an eye, the kind of rage that would turn the whole world into an unending whirl of violence and vengeance.
Inevitably,we must come to the question: “What WILL we do?” Because, now awakened, now alert, now vigilant…We know we are called to respond, to act, to engage in change that makes a difference.
Our first question is, “What do we need to make sure we do not do?” How do we honor the memory of those who were victimized by hate? How do we stand with those who are still victimized by hate? How do we keep from falling into the pattern of hate ourselves? Given the size and complexity of the problem, how do we remain vigilant and not acquiesce back into silence, numbness, complacency? How do we do more than pray?
We know that a culture that marginalizes and stigmatizes persons for any reason creates an environment that says violence towards those persons is acceptable because they are the “other,” that are not like us. But we who believe in a better way know that an eye for an eye only leaves us all blind.
We also know that a culture of violence such as ours also creates an environment of numbness and distance and silent complicity, which can be and has been part of what perpetuates the continuance of the dominant culture. We have now heard enough shots to know that silence is inadequate to the task of countering the culture violence. We must employ the power of love and peaceful engagement for we know that moments of silence and prayer are no longer enough. That they have never been enough…
Congresswoman Jackie Speier, our District 14 representative who, out of frustration to the impotence of her Congressional colleagues and out of vigilance and commitment to bringing real change to the culture of gun violence in our country, no longer participates in the moments of silence that have become the only response of our congress to these ceaseless mass shootings that are a plague upon our nation.
Jackie Speier
This is what our moments of silence have bought us. A silent nightclub, the only sound the frantic ringing of phones that would never be answered. Silent bodies, where there should be life and love and pride. And here, a silent Congress. Mere words cannot describe the depth of my grief and rage. Forty-nine lives lost, in the middle of Pride Month when they should have been safe and celebrated. Forty-nine families devastated by the loss of their loved ones. Forty-nine phones ringing, and ringing, and ringing. There were also frantic texts, like Eddie Justice’s final messages to his mother: “Mommy, I love you. He’s coming. I’m going to die.
“If you can hear these words without your heart breaking, if you can think of those little children gunned down in Newtown without grieving, if you can think of empty pews in Charleston without mourning, then truly you have lost your humanity.
“Hateful people like to compare LGBTQ equality to the sin-filled Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. But we in Congress are the real Sodom and Gomorrah. Are there 218 righteous members here to stand against this bloody tide? Increasingly, I doubt it.
“So I ask you today, how many lives must be destroyed before Congress acts?
Nine lives? Charleston showed us nine is not enough.
Thirteen lives? Columbine showed us that 13 is not enough.
Certainly 27 small children killed in their classrooms at Newtown? No.
The 32 lives lost at Virginia Tech? Again, not enough lives.
The more than 33,000 Americans killed each year by guns? Still not enough.
“And now 49 people have been murdered in Orlando.
“Yet even this historic tragedy hasn’t been deemed big enough, horrific enough, or insidious enough to break Congress’ silence.
“Congress is happy to debate for hours about bathrooms, but bring up the gun violence killing thousands? Absolutely not.
“Radical Islam, or home-grown American homophobia, or a toxic stew of both may have inspired the Orlando shooter. No doubt we will learn more about his disgusting motivations in the coming weeks.
“But there are simple actions we can take now, actions that would have reduced the deaths in Orlando as well as Aurora, Newtown, San Bernardino, and at Umpqua Community College…
“I urge you – I beg you – to make America better than this. We must be better than this. “ –Congresswoman Jackie Speier, California’s 14th District.
There exists among us a variety of responses to the NRA, more interested in the rights of those who sell guns than in the lives of innocent victims of gun violence. The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ-rights organization in the country suggests that we work to limit access to all assault weapons: That we move to expand background checks: that we limit access to firearms for suspected terrorists and for people with a history of domestic abuse. Common sense. Yes! In every other “civilized” country in the world, these are understood as common-sense regulations. But, here in our country, while the NRA owns the people’s Congress, these are seen as unreasonable restrictions. This has to stop. We must rise and turn the tide towards peace and justice when it comes to public safety. The best way to honor those who were senselessly slaughtered in Orlando and everywhere else is to act, NOW. We may BEGIN with prayers and with songs and with vigils…but let’s not stop there.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 