Seth Brown & WordPlay in the Beacon

Congratulations to Seth Brown, whose WordPlay reading got rave reviews in the MCLA Beacon! The reviewer, Mark Burridge, praised Seth’s reading from his latest project, From God to Verse (a rendering of the entire Torah into rhyming couplets) as well as his fabulous freestyle abilities.

You can read the article here: Seth Brown Plays With Words at Inkberry/Papyri Reading

April inkmail

The April edition of inkmail features a farewell from Inkberry’s two interns:

Holly and Sondra: We both heard about the internship through last year’s Workshop Facilitator intern, Sarah Russell, and it appealed to our interest in the literary world. We started out not knowing what to expect, but over the past year, we have each found our places in our own literary niche…

Read the whole April issue of inkmail here.

Jill in Ploughshares

This morning I ran into Derek Mong — who will be reading with Jeffrey McRae at WordPlay (presented by Inkberry at Papyri Books on April 12th) — at the coffee shop in Williamstown. He mentioned to me that Jill Gilbreth, Inkberry’s executive director from 8/06 through 12/07, had a story in a recent edition of Ploughshares magazine.

The story in question is called When the Stars Begin to Fall; Jill read an excerpt from it at the Eclipse Mill last year, at an Inkberry event that featured Jill alongside Andrea Barrett.

Anyway, Jill’s story is excellent. The language is rich, the characters feel real, and the arc of the story kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through. Belated congratulations to Jill for the Ploughshares publication — and to all who enjoy really good fiction, take a moment out of your day and check this out, because it’s grand.

How to critique a poem

Sharon Brogan over at Watermark has a terrific post up entitled How to critique a poem. It’s full of nuggets of wisdom like:

• Critique the poem, not the poet.
• Don’t assume that the speaker of the poem is the poet; poets often write in fictional voices.
• Say what you like about the poem; be specific.

– and many of the suggestions are links to comments or articles that shed more insight on her suggestions. The post is designed for those who are active in online poetry communities, but this advice would work equally well for in-person writing workshops…and I think these are generally applicable, with some obvious minor modifications, to commenting on prose (fiction or nonfiction), too.

There’s also a certain alignment between Sharon’s suggestions and the workshop instructions we developed at Inkberry’s inception…though, of course, her version doesn’t begin “Don’t eat babies.”

Gloria Gets Motion Sickness (guest post from Seth Brown)

Doing something literary when you’re inspired is great. But doing something literary consistently, even on days you’re not inspired? That’s hard work.

When I first heard about Inkberry, I was very excited. Granted, this was because I thought it was something I could eat. But even after someone explained to me that it was a literary cabal generally consisting of people who didn’t want to be eaten, it still seemed like a pretty neat idea — even moreso than digital watches. I’m glad there’s a literary force in the Shire (as I like to refer to the Berkshires), and doubly glad that it happens to be headquartered in my city.

It’s not easy to keep literary things going for any significant period of time. I had a political poetry column in the Providence Journal for a few years, but it ended in the middle of my college career. I co-founded a humor magazine at Williams, but then I foolishly graduated. I have a blog on RisingPun.com that I mean to update regularly but end up updating in fits and starts. Mostly fits. I used to do improvised verse at the 413 poetry slams until they ended. Sic transit gloria. (Or for those who don’t speak Latin, “Gloria gets motion sickness”)

The point is, doing something literary when you’re inspired is great. But doing something literary consistently, even on days you’re not inspired? That’s hard work. Sometimes, it’s even too great a task for one writer to face alone.

So, what do you do when faced with an overwhelming task? Well, you have two options. The first is the option I take: Cheat. I’m not inspired for a post on my blog right now, so I’m going to steal this Inkberry blog entry of mine to paste on my website as well. But that’s not a long-term solution. The other option is to seek help. How fortuitous that you have a local literary cabal that puts on events and even offers a wide range of courses.

Me? I pretty much just offer humor. As a course when there’s demand, on my website even when there isn’t, and in my column in the Transcript until the editor wakes up one day and announces he’s leaving for Bennington. (Seriously, if it happens a third time, I’m going to suspect a conspiracy.)

In conclusion, buy low and sell high. And feel free to replace “low” with “my books”.

Meet Lois! (guest post from Lois Daunis)

Inkberry invites you to meet Lois Daunis, the owner of Papyri Books. The new location of Papyri Books on Eagle Street is a spacious, welcoming and relaxing space. Stop by and meet Lois in person!

As an English major at Clark University in Worcester, MA I worked very part-time for an antiquarian bookseller back in the late 70’s. Upon graduation, I managed two different bookstores in Central Massachusetts. I took a 25 year hiatus to pursue teaching and education administration. At the same time I enjoyed raising a son and later becoming stepmother to three very talented daughters – all of whom love to read.

A hope of mine was to someday slow the pace of life and become proprietor of my own bookstore. Over thirty years of workng for others has given me a taste for relative quiet and solitude on a daily basis. Purchasing Papyri Books from Karen Kane has been a means to that end. However, the first 18 months of ownership has been anything but quiet. My oldest stepdaughter, Emily, and her fiancee, Dan, ran the business during year one while my husband and I juggled several jobs, a move to North Adams, two graduations, and the purchase of a new business space on Eagle Street. It became clear, very early into ownership of the business that remaining on Main Street, and paying exorbitant rent did not lend itself to longevity. So … Papyri Books and our family now reside at 45 Eagle Street. We moved thousands of books during January and February of 2007 and are just now reopening! Now it’s time to read and relax!

The newest of the newbies (guest post from Alexandra Woolner)

So I’m the newest of the newbies to Inkberry. For a brief bio I’ll say that I’m from MCLA studying English and graduating this Fall. For a longer bio feel free to go here: here. Nice picture, huh? I’m reading Langston Hughes.

Actually, I’ve been reading more and more graphic novels recently, and I’ve branched out from my typical style of writing poetry into some short fiction. Other recent events concerning the artistic side of my life include drinking almost exclusively red and tazo black chai as far as tea is concerned, writing my valentines this year on construction paper, and fully completing a doggy sweater in about 24 hours for the Toy Fox Terrier of my fellow intern, Sarah. Through a friend I also just acquired a new camera, a Lubitel (which translates into Black-Cross-eyed- Toy-Box in Russian), and I’m entirely too enthralled. Hopefully all of this translates into some great writing.

I like hanging out at local cafés in the North Adams area because I feel like that sets me with the right amount of background noise, hot beverage, and general atmosphere to write. My suggestion to any writer who wants to improve their work environment is to switch up those small elements occasionally, you never know what might work. For instance, I’ve found that I love writing with either lots of sunlight in the room, or just one small lamp.

One of my goals for the rest of this academic year is to keep up my writing as much as possible, even if I say I’m having a busy week. So far so good.

Wish me luck.

Coming onboard! (Guest post from Leanne Jewett)

My move from the sensory overload of Los Angeles to the simpler life of the smaller city of North Adams was a welcome change, and, happily, thanks to Inkberry, fears of a possible sense of creative isolation were totally unfounded.

I was thrilled last July when my husband, Brian, and I found an available loft for rent in the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. At the same time, however, as I continued work on my first novel, I missed the camaraderie and support of my writing group in Los Angeles.

The Internet came to the rescue when I searched writer’s organizations and found Inkberry. By August I was a member and in September joined the Thursday night writer’s critique group. There I have found serious writers doing good work and helping each other to do even better work. Through Inkberry I have also been able to attend readings and take a mystery-writing workshop from Beth Saulnier.

A few weeks ago, Jill asked me to join the Board of Inkberry. In a very short period of time Inkberry has become an important part of my writing life and I was very pleased to accept her offer.

I am looking forward to being on the Board. I volunteer in the office on Wednesday afternoons and, in addition to being a great resource for me, I see that Inkberry is a dynamic organization, not frozen in time but still developing. The chance to contribute to that development is what most appeals to me.

I also look forward to meeting more members of the vibrant local writing community and becoming acquainted with their work as they become acquainted with mine.

Sock Eating Monsters and a Land Stranger than Oz (guest post by Sarah Russell)

Meet Sarah Russell (author of said monsters) and Courtney Llewellyn, two terrific writers who’ve been interning at Inkberry this semester…

I am Sarah Russell, the current workshop facilitator intern at Inkberry. I’m a senior at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, majoring in English with a concentration in Writing. I hope to attend graduate school next fall and to get my Master’s in either Writing or Literature.

School aside, I’ve been writing since I was very young. Beginning with outlandish fantasy stories about sock eating monsters and a land stranger than Oz and moving on to poetry inspired by Lifetime movies by the time I was 12. As I got older I moved away from short fiction and into poetry; writing was an emotional outlet for me as a typical angst ridden teen. I now write poetry, it seems, exclusively; I’ve put together several portfolios for various classes and I am currently in progress with yet another. I’ve recently been published in Other: __ magazine, a publication by Albany Poets, a non-profit writers organization located in Albany, New York. Outside of writing, I like to spend time with my two dogs, Sassafras and Schnookie (a Chihuahua and Toy Fox Terrier, respectively), my fiancé Carl, and my friends and family. I also enjoy old-lady activities, such as window shopping, going to flea markets, bingo, arts and crafts, and going to bed at 10 o’clock.

Interning at Inkberry has been a wonderful experience, and I will continue to intern next semester. Some plans for the future are an upcoming poetry and fiction reading at Papyri Books on Dec. 9 at 7:30 pm, and an upcoming chapbook featuring the students in my workshop to be published next semester.

Courtney Llewellyn would like you know the following about herself:

I enjoy short walks on the beach, puppies, unicorns (specifically, unicorns named Charlie), and my favorite author of all time is Aimee Bender. In high school, I was a nerd/drama dork/choir geek/punk rock outcast, which made for some good times. I participated in quiz team competitions, acted in plays and musicals, sang in concert choir and jazz choir, and skipped school many times to drive three or more hours for a show. I graduated fifth in my high school class and then went on to a prestigious community college. After that, I transferred to MCLA where I’m majoring in English/Communications with a concentration in journalism.
I’m no longer quite as active as I was in high school, although I am a member of the bowling club and I attend a lot of on-campus events. Although journalism is my intended field of work, I seriously enjoy fiction (and poetry to a lesser extent). I haven’t had much of a chance to write any lately but reading it is always fun and! you can find me the first Wednesday of every month at Café Latino either participating in or judging the 413 Poetry Slam.

A day with Anne Waldman

Inkberry’s day with Anne Waldman was absolutely fantastic.

I picked her up at Porches on Saturday morning and took her to Inkberry, where eight other women joined us for a day-long workshop called “Wide Awake Writing.” Some of us teach poetry regularly; some of us had never written poetry before. Anne created a workshop that was comfortable for newcomers, and engaging for oldtimers. (Click the “read more” link to hear all about it — and about the reading, too…)

We did several generative exercises during the day. The first was a paired interview exercise, where we paired up, asked each other questions, transcribed as fast as we could, and then turned those verbal sketches and interviews into poems. We wrote little four-line sense-poems; we wrote haiku on the spur of the moment and talked about the heaven/earth/man triad in classical haiku; we did cut-up poems, scavenging in newspapers and magazines for texts to reuse and work around.

She handed out a bundle of postcards and photographs, and we wrote poems inspired by the ones we’d chosen. At the end, we wrote a series of collaborative poems, writing lines and passing the pages around, and then Anne read the little impromptu anthology aloud while one of the students played a steady rhythm on her painted sticks.

It was a great workshop — exciting for all, and I think really transformative for some of us.

Afterwards I drove Anne down to Great Barrington. We managed to snag a table at Bizen, my favorite Japanese restaurant, in one of the tatami rooms. There wasn’t time for sushi, alas (the place was packed, and the sushi chef is meticulous) but we had good fish and talked about travel and poetry and movies and Japan. And then, off to the Guthrie Center!

I’d forgotten what a great space it is. That night it was dim and churchly, the red stage lit and the rest of the room sparkling with tabletop candles. A good-sized crowd came to hear three really excellent poets.

Though first we learned that every Wednesday there’s free lunch at the Guthrie Center (“There is such a thing as a free lunch!”) and every Thursday there’s a hootenanny. Neat, eh?

Ellen Doré Watson read first. “She Forgets Aphasia” moved me deeply — about her mother, ten years into Alzheimer’s. “An unmarriage is not a sweater, unraveled,” began one poem I liked a lot. I also liked the title poem of her book “We Live in Bodies,” which ends, “Bodies are the doomed and wonderful cities where we live.”

And between the poems, the shrill song of peepers floated through the walls…

Ilya Kaminsky was the second reader. They brought the house lights up a little bit, and he explained that as we may have noticed, he speaks with a heavy Russian accent, so to help us understand him, he would be passing out copies of his book so we could follow along.

His reading was gorgeous, and not quite like any other reading I have ever heard. He reads with a lilting music, like singing or praying — I found myself wanting to sway as I do during davvening. Sometimes I closed his book just to lose myself in the music of his voice, hearing the syllables accented and inflected, clearly Russian and quite beautiful. Of course, then I always opened the book again, because I didn’t want to miss his words.

(Apparently he has been Deaf since he was four, which makes the extraordinary beauty of his spoken poetry all the more impressive…)

Anne read last, and was predictably superb. She doesn’t just read poems, she performs them — she declaims. She reads with her whole body, the whole range of her voice, which is pretty awesome to behold.

I loved her poem “Yea, though I am walking,” which takes a phrase from psalms and runs with it. It has lines like “Yea, that thy thyness be without gender,” and “Thy will keep you awake in any time zone,” and “Thy goes back to any older time you mention.” And “Thy is a book of thy thyness which is not owned.”

Inspired by Ilya’s song-like manner of reading, Anne opted to read a poem for John Cage. Well, I say “read,” but really I mean sang — like weird avant-garde opera, which seems eminently appropriate for John Cage. Between the singing, the melodic onomatopoeia, and the oscillations of pitch and sound, I think I can safely say we’ll never hear anything quite like it in the Inkberry reading series again. More’s the pity; it was all kinds of fun.

Ditto “Matriot Acts,” which began, “Invoke the hyena in petticoats.”

All in all, though, I think the excerpts from “Marriage: A Sentence,” a long prose poem in sections, were my favorite. The story about when Coyote almost took a wife, the piece about women marrying women, and the piece “Stereo” which repeated so many pivotal words — good stuff.

So thanks to everyone who took Anne’s workshop; thanks to the folks at Blue Flower Arts and the Guthrie Center for putting this co-presented event together; and special thanks to Ellen, Ilya, and Anne, who are tremendous!

Hello and goodbye (guest post from Jessica Falzerano)

This is a hello, nice to meet you as well as a goodbye, it has been great blog. I failed to ever write a hello, this is who I am blog entry and so now I am combining the two. Well, to start, I am Jessica Falzerano a graduating senior at MCLA as well as Inkberry’s spring intern. The past few months here at Inkberry have been an amazing experience for me for numerous reasons.

I have been welcomed with open arms and been given creative freedom to try out my wings in this safe and comfortable environment called Inkberry. I have also created, facilitated and nurtured a writing workshop for MCLA students here at Inkberry. I am sad to have become apart of North Adams’ writing community when I am about to leave but I have enjoyed these few months of being immersed in it immensely. Inkberry is an amazing organization that offers so much to a town like North Adams, and I have been honored to be a part of its dedicated staff and to share my passion of writing with their own. So, here it is: goodbye, it has been amazing!

Our first reading at the Mill

Last week’s reading was amazing. Fantastic work, read in a beautiful space, surrounded by wonderful art — exactly the kind of cross-genre collaboration I imagined when I first heard that the Eclipse Mill was going to become a reality.

Here’s what the space looked like before anyone got there:

And here’s what it looked like once it filled up:

Here’s our two readers talking before the event:

Jill read first, an excerpt from a terrific short story that brought the weird religious world of snakehandling to life.

And then Andrea read from her new novel-in-progress, set in the early 20th century in a sanitorium. It was fascinating and gripping, and predictably I want to read the whole thing now. Only trouble is, she hasn’t written it all yet.

Afterwards we had a wine and cheese reception. One of the Mill residents told me she felt our event had finally inaugurated their gallery in the way she had dreamed of, which made me really happy.

Talking about John Dicker

Avid Inkberryphiles may remember that we brought John Dicker, author of The United States of Wal-Mart, here last week; we presented him in a pair of events at Williams College and MCLA. His visit got some good press, which is exciting.

John’s visit was blogged in advance here at greylocknews, and there’s a great writeup by Andrew McKeever in the MCLA Beacon.

The Beacon article — called Union Blues — includes a color photo of John speaking at Smith House, and offers some terrific quotes from John’s talk.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t care what people who don’t shop there think,” said Dicker. “They totally got into the P.R. game late. They realized that their public image affects the bottom line.”

When asked about the future of Wal-Mart, Dicker stated, “I see them maxing out. I also see them changing their format…”

If you weren’t there and want to get a sense for what you missed, check out the link (we hope to reprint the article in our press archive, but at the moment it’s still online at the Beacon site, so you can check it out there.) Thanks for the press, guys!

Another Inkberry intern’s goodbye (Guest post from Anne Louise Ennis)

Hello! I’m Anne Louise Ennis, and I come to Inkberry from Philadelphia, by way of Williamstown, where I’m a senior at Williams College. Like Liz, I was looking for something a bit more rewarding to do with myself during our Winter Study term. I decided to intern at Inkberry (through Williams’ experiential education program) rather than remain on campus and study something completely esoteric, as a bit of preparation for what awaits me this June.

Jill and Rachel didn’t know it, but I’d actually done my research on Inkberry prior to meeting with them on January 4th. For a final project in my Non-Profit Organizations and Community Change tutorial last fall I drafted a proposal for a literary arts after-school education program, which I set here in Berkshire County, as a sort of mini-Inkberry. I was terribly excited to hear that Inkberry was interested in actually pursuing such a program, in the real world, as opposed to in the computer lab at the Williams College library.

In addition to doing some preliminary research on after-school programming possibilities, I’ve been refreshing my computer skills and working on the Inkberry website, and I hope you will enjoy the fruits of my labor. When I’m not busily working away in front of a computer screen, Liz and I have been distributing Inkberry’s glossy new calendars throughout town and making friends with the owners of the new (and excellent) coffee shop next door, Cup and Saucer.

I’ve greatly enjoyed my time here at Inkberry; I would like to thank Jill and Rachel for showing me how a few dedicated people can make their dreams into reality. I greatly relished this opportunity to get out of the classroom and into the world, before I re-enter the classroom as an elementary school teacher in the fall.

Mount Holyoke intern’s farewell (Guest post from Liz O’Grady)

Hello there. My name is Elizabeth O’Grady and I’m a senior from Mount Holyoke. “Mount Holyoke?” you might ask, “what is she doing here, then?”

Well, to answer your question, I’m from Williamstown. I decided that this January, rather than returning to South Hadley to take a class on dog sledding or balancing a checkbook or some other enticing academic offering, I’d prefer to intern at Inkberry. I wanted to learn something about the dark inner workings of a literary arts non-profit.

On my first day at Inkberry, I went down the hall to use the ladies room. I noticed that the door was missing its “w” and said only “omen.” Seeing this within my first few moments at Inkberry made me worry. Was this all a mistake? Should I have stayed at school and learned about dog sledding?

Fortunately, I have enjoyed my experience here at Inkberry. I’ve gotten to distribute Inkberry’s exciting (and attractive!) new postcard-sized event schedules, learn a little something about the literary life by researching fellowships and retreats for writers, and ventured into the fascinating world of literary blogs.

I would like to thank Rachel and Jill for this valuable January opportunity, and Inkberry for letting this little English major know that there are so many more options for me out there besides living in a cardboard box or becoming a high school English teacher. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those options…