Join our mailing list
- August 16, 2010
CRITICAL STATE – A Multimedia Performance Installation - July 21, 2010
Village Harmony at River Arts! - July 6, 2010
Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival performance – Wednesday, July 14th at 7pm
River Arts, Morrisville, Vermont
Poetry & Writing
River Arts is hosting a new series of workshops, readings, and clinics devoted to supporting the myriad voices living within the community and surrounding areas. Read on to see what’s been going on, about to happen, and join in on the blog!
Poetry Clinic-Special guest facilitator, Jeanne Masson-Douglas September 7th!
Jeanne Masson-Douglas is a writer and editor of monographs, creative essays, and poetry. A member of the Poetry Society of Vermont since 1980, she served as editor of its chapbook, The Mountain Troubadour, from 1993-2003. Jeanne enjoys working with adults in writing courses and creative writing workshops, returning as often as possible to her first love, the writing of poems. She is currently working on her third collection, Farmhouse Kitchens: Recipes & Verse.
For those of you who use writing classes as a way to set aside special time for your writing practice: Here is an irresistible gift … a clinic to keep your pen and mind in motion. The first hour of the clinic will be devoted to generative poetry writing exercises; the second hour will be devoted to respectful critiques of work you bring to or make in class.
Cost:$5.00
When: Every 1st and 3rd Tuesday from 6-8pm
Coming September 14th – Novel Workshop with Grant Meixel!
Writers wanted!
Are you a writer? Do you have an idea for that novel you have always been meaning to write? Perhaps you are a person who has already begun work on a novel, but needs help with organizing or revising your book? Maybe you are looking for a forum for respectful critiques of what you have already written? If so, join Grant Meixel for an ongoing series of writer’s workshops aimed at helping novelists with these questions and many others.
Meixel is a graduate of the Lycoming College Creative Writing Program (studying under novelist G.W. Hawkes), holds a Master’s of Education from Johnson State College, and specializes in helping writers deal with procrastination and a stalled creative process.
When: Tuesdays, beginning September 14th, 6-8pm
Cost: $5.00 suggested donation
2010 Fall Classes Coming Soon!
Poetry Wall!:
Work excerpts from our Tuesday night Poetry Clinic:
If I Cried Out – Joseph Lively 8/24/10
If I cried out, would you come and wrestle with me in the night
a dark angel of desire with wings outstretched
hovering inches off the ground
to take your pleasure upon the earth
with fire and light in your eyes
and masses of flaming hair about you
like a brewing thunder storm
charging the space between us with electricity
lightning crackling between our finger tips
fusing us, drawing us together
in a web of fiery threads
Would you hear a naked stranger
invoking the celestial angels
outside the protected fortress of the Watch Towers
would I be the first to fall
brought down by the sharp teeth of ecstasy
severing my grasp of mortality
and wrapped softly in your raven wings
float peacefully in calm repose
I want to call you but fear being taken
so I take what you have given me in my dreams
your smile, that wicked blade of beauty,
your glance, a taste of cardiac arrest
a feathery caress, whispered endearments
sparks from a fire that lingers on a distant burning star
I take the sparks and form them into a single ingot of white hot diamond
to press against my heart
my warmth against the cold
my light against the darkness
your promise against the void
Still, still, even the void
that yawning abyss of the infinite unknown
the ultimate horror of my squirming mind
that clings so tightly to its need to survive
even the void yearns to be filled
and with that desire
comes an ocean of light rushing through me
like a whirling shaft of pure energy
that fills so completely that I have no choice
but to release everything into that joyful aching void
that immense desire to embrace all
on and on and on
the core of my being
the rhythm of my breath.
mermaid – Peter Clark, August 2010
I am flying through the waters
listening to Raven caw with delight
keeping my fin straight.
my tail produces a turbulence and
the seaweed waves with a knowing sense
of the destination I seek.
spurred on by Raven’s call
I smell his message
a deep pungency of his song fills my gills
with sharp round pages of ecstasy.
I hear the water as it rushes past my skin of
brown
my scales of green.
my school follows as Raven beckons
towards the whirlpool of
passion
family
power
death
life
truth
hope
loss.
the shiva of my soul meets me here
the water flows through me as I take
no space
no breaks
no end
no fear.
I fling my hair back to glance
upwards again
seeing what I always see.
a smile creeps into all that is.
