Retirement Dinner

Last night the English Department faculty at Lakeland Community College, where I have worked for the past 27 years, had a retirement dinner for me and my colleagues Micki Ling and Deb Shearer. All but two people were able to make it. Even two of our beloved retirees, Phil Skerry and Larry Needham, came! These are all very bright people--most of them have doctorates. A few are brilliant poets and fiction writers. I have been so lucky to work with them and to work at Lakeland all these years.

Micki, David, Larry, Phil, Patrick, Meryl, Jamie on left. Sue, Tobin, Deb, me, Linda, Joanna, and Angie on right.

Larry, Sue (reading my poem "Harry Man"), and Phil.

Linda, me, and Deb.

Phil, telling one of his stories. To his right, Patrick and Meryl.

Patrick, Meryl, Larry.

Angie and Joanna.

Phil, Patrick, Meryl.

Micki, David, Larry. I have worked with Micki for 27 years. She has been our union president for 10 of those years.

Lakeland Poetry Awards Reception--Great Success

We had a fine time last evening at the Lakeland Poetry Awards (27th Annual!) Reception. Our judge and featured reader was John Repp, who drove in from Erie, Pennsylvania (and recited a fine poem set at Presque Isle in Erie). John is originally from Southern New Jersey, and also recited a terrific poem set in that area.

John Repp

Tobin Terry entertained us all with his hilarious poem "Nursery Crimes," featuring his real or fictional mother (we'll never know). Later in the evening, Tobin read Nate Harris's winning poem in the Lakeland Student category of the contest.

Tobin Terry doing "Nursery Crimes"

A wonderful highlight of the evening for me was Ellen McHugh giving the first place award in the General Public category to her sister, Mary Roulette. Both Ellen and Mary are extraordinary poets--unfair that such talent should be focused in one family. Their sister Katie Callahan was also there to see the presentation.

Ellen McHugh

So many other fine moments. Bill French, contest co-founder, reading his poems; Tom Hyland reading his.

There were readings by high school winners Ryan Campbell, Zak Martinjako, and Hannah Dickson. Readings by Lakeland College winners Kaylee Wells, Rhiannon Leslie, Lottie White, Shawntay Hardesty, and Taylor Metcalf. Readings by General Public winners Mary Roulette, Lee Chilcote, Katherine Willow-Peterson, and Bob Speer (who has wonderful narrative poems).

I served as Emcee for the awards and for once didn't read any poems (there were plenty of readers and this helped me relax some!). Thank you to all the fine local poets who submitted to our contest. Thanks to John Repp, our poet/judge, and my colleagues at Lakeland who helped with the reception.

Bob Speer

Lee Chilcote and Ellen McHugh

Katherine Willow-Peterson

Wonderful Poetry Reading at Lakeland Last Evening

We had our 15th annual Poetry Month reading at Lakeland Community College last evening, Kathy Fink was emcee, and the featured readers were Bill French, me, Alynn Mahle, and Tobin Terry. Open microphone readers included Bob Speer, Joy Christianson, Robin Crawford, Christopher Franke, Suzanne Ondrus, and others. The open mic readers are all accomplished poets in their own right and could easily have been featured. I read the following poems:

• "Still Life, With Grand Babies" [a poem for Linda]
• "Thanksgiving for Companions" [a poem especially for Kathy Flora and my St. Mary's friends]
• "Dream Haiku in Three Languages" [in English, Irish, and German, for Linda]
• "Short Memory Needed in Lake and Geauga Counties" [about our late-late snows in Ohio's snowbelt]
• "Klara im Zwielicht" [a poem in German--for an old friend]
• "Blood Root" [a poem set in the spring rain at Holden Arboretum, with thanks to K.O.]
• "Lucky (Stones) at Mentor Headlands (1964)"

In "Lucky Stones" I got to sing a bit of the Everly Brothers' song "Cathy's Clown," which is mentioned in the poem.

So many wonderful poems. I particularly loved Tobin's brilliant "Nursery Crimes," in which he sings, quite a bit, the somewhat twisted songs he learned at his mother's knee (a mother I would like to meet!). Alynn's final poem, which is about poetry and the writing of poetry, is flat-out brilliant. Bob Speer, one of the elder statesmen of the night, was exceptional with his narrative and dialect poems. Joy Christianson had wonderful linked haiku poems. Christopher Franke is one of a kind--he is very good and often wickedly funny. And Suzanne Ondrus read us a beautiful and sexy short poem from her new book, Passion Seeds. She will do a featured reading and book signing in a couple weeks--can't wait! Thanks to Kathy Fink for organizing and emceeing this wonderful event!

Kathy Fink

Bill French

Alynn Mahle

Tobin Terry

Bob Speer

Robin Crawford

Christopher Franke

Suzanne Ondrus

Bob Coughlin, Bill French, Alynn Mahle, Tobin Terry

Great Night of Poetry in Painesville

Last night we had our second monthly poetry reading in Painesville at the winery/restaurant "Your Vine or Mine." Tobin Terry emceed the evening of poetry reading. The night was kicked off by Linda Tuthill and her husband Tim Tuthill. Linda's poems exhibited very precise word choice and a great eye for the natural world. The poem I liked best was set in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where she grew up. The poem even had a bit of Pennsylvanian German in it (I remember hearing the phrase "was ist los?" which means either "what is going on" or "what is wrong?"). Tim Tuthill followed with very short, exquisitely formulated poems. They were over in a flash and you had to really pay attention for the punch, the twist. You could tell that both Linda and Tim had read a lot of poetry and had written a lot, they were that good.

Margie DeLong then read some poems, as did I. Margie is the person responsible for resurrecting the Painesville poetry night, and is now co-hosting the event with Tobin Terry. Margie's poems were wonderful. I like her eye and how she reached into memory for her poems. My poems were about the coming of winter and waiting for the grace to get through the darkness. I hope the heaviness of these poems didn't put a pall over the evening! I tried for great sounds in this poem (I love sound and rhythm--the music of poetry) combining with the imagery of darkness and storms--and grace.

The featured reader of the night was a poet from the Dayton/Waynesville area of southwest Ohio, Grace Curtis. I didn't know what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised. Grace is a terrific poet and a great reader/performer of her own poems. Her poems play with words and ideas, reach into memory like the poems of Linda Tuthill and Margie DeLong (and actually, the way many of my own poems do). Grace's poems are also a lot of fun, and at times very humorous. And she is not afraid to play with some big, complex ideas. In short, Grace's performance was terrific.

Many of Grace's poems can be found at her website: http://n2poetry.com/poems/

Below are some photos of the readings:

Tobin Terry

Linda Tuthill

Tim Tuthill

Margie DeLong

Grace Curtis

Wonderful Poetry Reading at "Your Vine or Mine" in Painesville

I was a featured poetry reader along with my friend Tobin Terry at the micro-winery in downtown Painesville, Ohio, this past Tuesday. Our reading took place at the winery/restaurant "Your Vine or Mine." The atmosphere was wonderful: good food, wine, and poetry. The evening began with four people reading at the "open microphone." The included Alynn Mahle, Robin Flowers, and Ryan Manista. I didn't catch the name of the other reader. Their readings were wonderful. I especially liked a new poem Robin wrote called "My Father's Watch," or something like that. Alynn's poems were also quite good, as usual. Ryan read publicly for the first time, and it went very well. He is already a very skilled poet.

I followed the open mic readers and read/performed the following poems:

1. October in Willoughby, 1958
2. Cat Nation Ghosts [a poem about the annihilation of the Erie Indians]
3. Remnants [of the Cat Nation]
4. Before the Invention of Safety [about growing up in the 1950s]
5. "I'm from Painesville, with an Emphasis on the Pain!" an Elegy for Mike Celizic
6. Old Math: The Calculus of May 4, 1970 [about the Kent State killings]
7. Just Under the Surface [on the culture of guns in Chardon and the Chardon High School killings]
8. The Chase [about my old beagle-dog, Jake]
9. Toothpaste Violence [how we squeeze every drop out of the toothpaste tube in my house]
10. Whiff of Despair [haiku about the coming of fall]
11. Northern Lights
12. One Happy Moment [portrait of my daughter Carolan and grandson Colin doing cartwheels at Patterson Apple Farm in Chesterland]

I got to sing a bit and howl like a beagle as I performed some of these poems--great fun!

My performance was followed by Tobin Terry. Many of Tobin's poems were funny, especially the one about the Johnnycake Turkey, "Mr. Gobbles." And the brilliant one about his mother, "Nursery Crimes." Tobin sang much of that poem. This is one of my all-time favorite poems.

The "Your Vine or Mine poetry reading, organized by Margie DeLong, and co-hosted by Margie and Tobin, will occur on the first Tuesday of every month from now on. The next one will be Tuesday, November 5th, from 6:30 to 8:30. The featured poet will be Grace Curtis, from Waynesville, Ohio.

Thanks to Margie for getting this going!

Chagrin River Review--Goes Live Monday, September 24th

Several of my colleagues and I have been developing an online literary journal, Chagrin River Review. The co-founders and co-editors of this journal are (besides me) Angie Weaver, Tobin Terry, Tom Hyland, Ellen McHugh, and Suzanne Ondrus--with some help from Byron Kanoti. We all brought something different to the task, and the fruit of our work will be revealed in the first issue this Monday at this web address: www.chagrinriverreview.com. We are all connected to Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio, but the college's role so far has been peripheral--so don't blame the college if any material offends!

One of my covert goals with Chagrin River Review is to develop a literature and mythology of our home--which is the Chagrin River drainage area of Northeastern Ohio: Lake County, Geauga County, Cuyahoga County, and surrounding area. This area is part of what the French Jesuit Exploreres and Voyageurs called "La Nation du Chat," the Cat Nation, the home of the Erie Indians.

Can we make any progress on such a mythology? This is the same kind of task that William Butler Yeats set for himself in Ireland over a hundred years ago. Was he successful? Of course we can make a start on this!

The journal will evolve as we learn to exploit the power of the internet--so we will include oral readings and more graphics in the future. And who knows--maybe some day a bit of video. Right now we have some excellent poetry and short fiction. Take a look at our new journal!

Link to Chagrin River Review