Grenfell Poetry Prizes for 2008

The University of Maine English Department is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Clarine Coffin Grenfell Poetry Prizes, judged by poet Annie Finch, director of the Stonecoast Brief Residency Master of Fine Arts at the University of Southern Maine.

Recipients of the prizes will be recognized at the English Department’s Honors & Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, April 30, at 3:30pm in the Arthur Hill Auditorium of Barrows Hall. For more information, contact the English Department at 207-581-3822.

First Prize (free verse)
Katie Lattari for “I Break Leaves in Brittle Mornings”

First Prize (traditional form)
Crystal McArthur for “Rebirth”

Second Prizes
Megan Soderberg for “Fluency”
Jessica Putnam for “Reality”

Third Prizes
Virginia Lee Sand for “An American Indian Woman”
Cassandra Lueneburg for “My First Kiss”

Event Report - Julia Elliott

Fiction writer Julia Elliott read to an audience of approximately fifty people in the penultimate event of the spring 2008 New Writing Series on 10 April 2008. The event, introduced by David Kress, was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon) as well as both lo- and hi-end audio (thanks to Rebecca Griffin for the latter). A full set list follows the photo gallery below. For Kyle Kernan’s write-up in the Maine Campus, click here.

PHOTOS

Julia Elliott reads her story “The Whipping”

The writer entertained questions after her reading

Julia Elliott reads the name of one of two audience members who won copies of her band’s CD

Dave Kress scours the cube: “No more questions?”

SET LIST (compiled by Katie Lattari)

* Introduction by Dave Kress
1) “The Whipping”
- originally published in the Georgia Review

Questions
1) How long did it take you to write “The Whipping”?
2) How much personal experience went into “The Whipping”?
3) Did you revise “The Whipping”?
4) Was it particularly difficult to write the prayer scenes in “The Whipping”?
5) What do you think is the most important aspect of the short story?
6) Did you place alliteration in your story on purpose?
7) Did you find it hard to get “The Whipping” published?
8] Could you tell us something about your CDs [Elliot’s band “Grey Egg“]?
9) I noticed the inclusion of incongruous tastes and smells in the story; do you include that in your writing on purpose, and continually?
10) Was there more of the Arthurian novel included in “The Whipping” originally?
11) What’s the rest of your writing like, compared with “The Whipping”?
12) What does “texture” mean to you in terms of writing?
13) What/ who do you read?

Next Up - Julia Elliott

Fiction writer Julia Elliott makes her first appearance in the UMaine New Writing Series on 10 April 2008 at 4:30pm in the Soderberg Auditorium (Jenness Hall). Like all NWS events, this one is free & open to the public (though seating is limited).

JULIA ELLIOTT’s fictions have appeared in Conjunctions, Tin House, The Georgia Review, Puerto del Sol, The Mississippi Review, 3rd Bed, Fence, Black Warrior Review, and other print and online publications.

An instructor in English and Women’s Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Elliott holds a PhD in English from the University of Georgia and an MFA in English from Penn State University.

Besides appearing as one of the dramatis personae in Paul West’s teaching memoir Master Class: Scenes from a Fiction Workshop (Harcourt, 2001), Elliott’s honors and awards include being published in Best American Fantasy 2007 (Plume Books); listed in “The Hugo Awards that Weren’t”; included in StorySouth’s Million Writer’s Award, Notable Stories of 2004 (“the top online short stories of 2004”); listed as “Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2002” in Dave Eggers’ series The Best American Nonrequired Reading; and receiving the Great American Novel Award in the Virginia Festival of the Book (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities & Tupelo Press, March 2003).

The event will be introduced by Assistant Professor of Creative Writing David Kress.

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Listen to tracks from previous NWS events on UMaine’s iTunes U.
On Facebook? You’re invited to join the NWS group.
Keep track of NWS events via LibraryThing Local.
To learn more about the National Poetry Foundation, visit the new website.
For more about the English Department, which offers Master’s Degrees in Creative Writing and Poetry & Poetics, click here.

Event Report - Koeneke & Friedlander

Poets Rodney Koeneke and Benjamin Friedlander read to an audience of approximately fifty people in the New Writing Series on 4 April 2008. The event, introduced by Steve Evans, was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon) and, thanks to Rebecca Griffin, hi-end audio. Full set lists follow the photo gallery below.

PHOTOS

Benjamin Friedlander addressing the NWS audience

Rodney Koeneke introducing a poem

Koeneke dons his neo-Benshi garb

Koeneke and Friedlander entertaining questions from the audience

(photos by Jennifer Moxley)

SET LISTS (compiled by Katie Lattari)

Benjamin Friedlander
- “It’s a pleasure to read for the home crowd…”
- Reads works in translation, originally in either German or Italian; then proceeds to his own poems
1) The Fox, the Cook, the Cock (translation)
2) Prayer of Exhortation or Encouragement (translation)
3) To Set Your Mind at Rest (translation)
4) Afternoon with Circus and Citadel (translation)
5) Brecht (translation)
6) History lesson
7) The Social Contract
8] Urban Renewal
9) Network News
10) Dictation
11) The Mind is a Bubble Sheet
12) The Emergency Broadcasting System
13) Dedication
14) Patriot Days
15) When a Cop Sees a Black Woman
16) Biological or Social Female Parent of a Child or Offspring and Its Poetry
17) Somebody Blew Up America
18] Hillary Duff
19) Fame
20) The Chinese Written Character is a Medium for Poetry
21) Beloved
22) Eliot
23) Me and My Gang
24) Charmed
25) Drew’s Old

Friedlander’s Commentary
- The poem “Hillary Duff” as his “statement on poetics”
- “Fame” is in memory of a friend; “may be my first FLARF elegy”
- “The Chinese Written Character is a Medium for Poetry”: “for Burt and Sylvester if only they were here”
- “Charmed” is a “Birthday Poem”: “My favorite thing about FLARF is the Birthday poems”

Rodney Koeneke
epigraph for this reading, derived from the sign of the University Inn: “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face”

from Rouge State
1) #50 Summer Acrostic Hotshot
2) #39 How to Find Safe Passage
3) #21 Sweethearts of what rodeo?

from Musée Mechanique
4) Afterword
5) Use Dips to Initiate
6) Pizza Kitty
7) Chary as Gary
8] In Memory of My Feelings
9) The World is Loud
10) Europe. Memory. Squid Parts. Grace.
11) The Adorno Corollary

from “Etruria” (manuscript)
12) ben friedlander
13) Rules for Drinking 40s
14) chinoiserie
15) Etruria

Film/ poetry “neo-benshi” performance for Guru Dutt’s film Pyaasa (1957)

Koeneke’s Commentary
-On “The Adorno Corollary”: the poem is referencing Adorno’s famous statement about poetry after Auschwitz
-On “Ben Friedlander”: this is a birthday poem
-On “Etruria”: “FLARF, like soylent green, is people”

Questions
1) How do you use Google searches to help sculpt your [FLARF] poems?
2) (To Koeneke) Do you have any audio files of your poetry available anywhere?
3) For birthday poems, how/ what do you search? Is there a certain way you go about it?
4) How much FLARF do you write in comparison to non-FLARF poetry?
5) (To Koeneke): How long did it take you to write the “neo-benshi” piece?
6) (To Koeneke): Are you striving for persona-type poems?
7) Do you think writing can change things?
8] To Koeneke): You like performance—do you have any background in theatre?

Event Report - Thomas Sayers Ellis

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis read to nearly a hundred people in the Hill Auditorium on 20 March 2008 in an event cosponsored by the New Writing Series and the Honors College. In his forty-minute set, Ellis read from his book The Maverick Room and from a manuscript in progress (see set list below). The poet also took questions from the audience. The event, introduced by Steve Evans, was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon).

Next Up - Rodney Koeneke & Benjamin Friedlander

The UMaine New Writing Series continues this Thursday, 3 April, with a poetry reading by Rodney Koeneke and Benjamin Friedlander at 4:30pm in the Soderberg “cube” (Jenness Hall).

BENJAMIN FRIEDLANDER is the author of The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes, Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism, and Time Rations, among many other volumes. He recently edited the Selected Poems of Robert Creeley for the University of California Press. Friedlander is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maine and a member of the National Poetry Foundation editorial collective. Read more about him here.

RODNEY KOENEKE is the author of Rouge State and Musée Mechanique. His new manuscript is called “Etruria.” He lives in Portland with his wife, Lesley Poirier, and their curly-headed son, and tends a blog called Modern Americans. This will be Koeneke’s first appearance in the New Writing Series.

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Listen to tracks from previous NWS events on UMaine’s iTunes U.
On Facebook? You’re invited to join the NWS group.
Keep track of NWS events via LibraryThing Local.
To learn more about the National Poetry Foundation, visit the new website.
For more about the English Department, which offers Master’s Degrees in Creative Writing and Poetry & Poetics, click here.

Event Report - Rivera & Moxley

Poets Eléna Rivera and Jennifer Moxley read to a capacity audience in the Soderberg Auditorium on 20 March 2008. Both writers read from work in manuscript (set lists below). The event was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon), on lo-fi audio (8-bit wav) and hi-fi audio (thanks to Rebecca Griffin). Benjamin Costanzi’s recap of the event for the Maine Campus is online here.

Up next - Thomas Sayers Ellis

The New Writing Series, in proud partnership with the UMaine Honors College, is pleased to welcome poet Thomas Sayers Ellis to campus for a reading this Wednesday, 26 March, at 4:30pm in the Arthur Hill Auditorium (Barrows Hall). This event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS was born and raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. He co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988 and earned a M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Grand Street, Tin House, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry, 1997 and 2001. He has received fellowships and grants from The Fine Arts Work Center, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. Mr. Ellis is a contributing editor to Callaloo and Poets and Writers and a frequent contributor to WaxPoetics. In 2005 he was awarded a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers’ Award. His first, full collection, The Maverick Room, was published by Graywolf Press in 2005 and awarded The 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award. He is also the author of The Good Junk (Take Three #1, Graywolf 1996); a chapbook The Genuine Negro Hero (Kent State University Press, 2001) and the chaplet Song On (WinteRed Press 2005). Ellis is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A program (Cambridge, Massachusetts). His Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series. For more about Ellis, visit his homepage.

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Event Report – Stephen Cope and Catherine Taylor

A full Soderberg Auditorium greeted poet Stephen Cope and experimental essayist Catherine Taylor for the third event of the spring 2008 NWS. Cope read from his latest manuscript, “The Bellerophonic Letter,” including several provocative poems such as “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Assassination of a President,” while Taylor read engaging excerpts from her latest hybrid genre essay “Duffer’s Drift.”

NWS now on LibraryThing Local

We’ve added the New Writing Series to the map of local literary venues now provided by the excellent library cataloging site LibraryThing (founded in Portland, Maine, by Tim Spalding). Have a look—and while you’re online, consider joining our Facebook group, here (local) and here (global).