'Lyn Follett

One Bird Falling

A bird falls,

spinning in widening circles,

like a spiral losing its tension,

or a pebble dropped in a pond.

The bird is already lost,

some distant shot, or a falcon

pierced then let it slip, and it falls

pulling the sky after it.

Like egg shells collecting again

in a film run backwards.

The waters of the pond reflect its coming.

The waters of the pond open

like a passage and welcome the bird in.

Not a bird now, but a flutter

of loosened feathers, a pirouette

adrift on a pewter eye.

No one can put this bird back together.

No one can uncrack the egg

of this world. The heart

flutters against itself. Something terrible

is coming and we pretend otherwise.

The bird, which has fallen into the water

has sunk from sight, the feathers have drifted

and spilled over the distant weir.

The rift closes over itself

and the surface, again, is smooth.

     'Lyn Follett

Follett's works may be purchased through Arctos Press http://www.arctospress.com.

The poem above is from her forthcoming book, One Bird Falling, which will be available from Time Being Press in 2011.
She will read her work in the Marin Poetry Center Traveling Road Show at the Tiburon Library at 7pm on Tues., June 15, 2010.

Greg Randall and Toni L Wilkes

STILL LIFE WITH PEONIES

The peonies are intense this year, blissful

from a January frost that took the pink jasmine

and several maples down the street. Some

haven't sprung from the earth in six years

and now they're cut and vased and this next day

spent on kitchen counters at 5 a.m. There were

more days like this, early on, we saw each other

late at night and communicated by notes scrawled

on Post-its. Days we woke before dawn and

sought out antonyms to contradict our living,

or not living. It's become the great strain

of our days-occupying this territory between

the stench of a ruffled peony and an odorless bud

over which Argentine ants scurry and munch.

      -Greg Randall

ONCE AGAIN

He hadn't heard that shot at all,

the one that took down the mare.

He'd moved beyond that strange scene.

Moved once. Then once again.

Why hadn't he heard it? Hadn't it meant

everything? Or had it meant nothing?

His father'd called the ailing mare over,

cut her mane, spread her ears wide

with his palms, rubbed her snout

on his face. Touched both flanks—

the inventory the living take

of the soon-to-die. He leaned

with his arms around her neck—

two lovers against a gray sky.

He hadn't heard that shot until college,

a late moon rising, a bottle slammed

through his dorm window,

and his mind flamed back to

the sloping meadow, to his father, the mare.

      -Toni Wilkes

A "Dangerously Curious" New Poet Laureate   

-interviewed by Kirsten Jones Neff

'Lyn Follett's love of poetry is palpable, a joy that underlies her long career as a published poet, and generous publisher of other poets' work through Arctos Press. (From 2001-2007 'Lyn Follett and Susan Terris published Runes, A Review of Poetry). Follett has been named the Marin County Poet Laureate 2010-2012.

KJN: How did you come to be a poet?

LF: I came to poetry 'slant'. My mother loved poetry and she read it to me as a child: Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, A. A. Milne. I loved Elizabeth Jane kicking the horrible rice pudding into the air. I loved going down to see the calf and Frost saying 'You come too.' How I yearned to take his hand and go with him! But basically, when I started writing, at about age 6, I wrote short stories and expected to become another one of those 'great American novelists'. During the school years, poetry danced around the edges, but gradually fell more and more to the side of the road. By college I was only reading poetry because I had to, as an English major. I liked Eliot and Yeats, Donne and some of the others, but was no longer swept away.Fast-forward to 1990 when we moved to Marin and I gave up a career in animal pottery and jewelry. I yearned to go back to writing. I had been discouraged by a college professor, mean-spirited and constantly abasing. Why did I listen to him, his voice in my head all those years? I decided it didn't matter if I was good at it or not, I wanted to write. I took a course from Tom Centolella at College of Marin. The classes were huge, forty people, and one could only bring two pages of writing. I figured at that rate I would never even get a short story finished, so I tried a poem. Yikes, it was fun! And so, a poet was born. What I liked besides the process, the jig saw of making every word count, of making the words sing and work together, of expressing myself in short tight renderings that would maybe speak to others - a communication with the world... I also liked this whole new discipline, this body of poetry I knew nothing about, new poets to discover, new forms, new approaches. I loved it...still do.

KJN: How do you write? What is your creative process?

LF: My creative process is very sloppy. I don't set aside certain hours. A line drops out of the air, I pull my car over to the side of the road to get it down, and maybe more lines. The transom is open, an idea drifts through like wisps of smoke and I start chasing it. I love to do free writes. Let my mind take its own path through the woods, try to follow it wherever it goes, writing as fast as I can. I then transfer what I get into the computer, doing some editing. Print it out, scribble all over it, make the changes in the computer, print it out, scribble, etc., until it is time to stop. Stop does not mean finished. It just means pause and consider. I like the visceral action on my muscles, my body, that I get from writing it out on paper.

KJN: Who/what are your inspirations?

LF: I'd have to say my inspirations come from everywhere: nature, family, memoir, surreal abstractions, musings, political ferment, environmental destruction, science discoveries and interactions, even some newspaper article will set me thinking. I am dangerously curious...

KJN: Which poets do you read the most often?

LF: I love a wide range of poetry, so trying to list favorites is very difficult, if not impossible. 90% of them get left out. But pushed to the question, I am happy to ramble about in Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, David St. John, Theodore Roethke, William B. Yeats, even T.S. Eliot, Akhmatova, N. Scott Momaday, William Stafford, Galway Kinnell, Robert Hass, Kay Ryan, Peter Everwine, Thom Gunn, Jane Hirshfield, Lucille Clifton, Ted Hughes—well, you get the idea, there is just a boatload of wonderful poets.

KJN: What drew you to the position of poet laureate? What are your aspirations for the coming two years?

LF: Being Poet Laureate of Marin County is a great honor. It allows me to be a roving ambassador for poetry throughout the county. I hope to encourage the participation of many people, poets of all abilities and those who are not poets - yet. I'd like everyone in Marin to be aware of the wealth of poets in our county, and those yet unfamiliar to discover these voices, and even better, their own voices for poetry. I have a long list of project ideas. Some will take time, some may be ephemeral, some may become permanent. We'll see. I started with a project called Pass the Poem. I announce at each reading, etc., that I would like those present, when they go home, to find a poem they like, even if they have to go back to those poems they learned to recite in sixth grade, make a copy and then give it to someone they know or don't know. Just Pass the Poetry, and ask that person to do the same. We're working on Chalk poems, that are written on a sidewalk somewhere and left to be read and to weather. I say we, because I hope these ideas will be taken up by others and proliferated.

I hope to encourage the less mainstream communities to plunge into the poetry of their own cultures, have gatherings to read it aloud in their native tongues and in English. I hope there will also be a student component to this. And I'd like people not from that particular community to have a chance to hear the poetry of other cultures. And there are lots more projects still to be launched.

Wilkes and Randall: The Poetry of Generosity

- Kirsten Jones Neff

Toni Wilkes and Greg Randall are married poets from Santa Rosa. They have earned a reputation as generous hosts of the Londonberry Salon reading series and as volunteers for Sonoma Libraries and literary projects. Between them they have published (or will soon publish) four new chapbooks.

KJN : How did you each find poetry?

GR : My paternal grandmother introduced me to Yeats, Frost and Sandburg in her 1929 anthology, Chief Modern Poets of England and America-- which she used to teach out of, in a one-room school house in a small farm town in Kansas. She first read "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" to me when I was in early elementary school in Southern California and then I studied the anthology myself in junior high. The book is now on my nightstand. Writing poetry arrived soon after. My first poem (though I'm not sure I want to admit it) was a 4th-grader's version of Robert Frost , which means "sincere but trite"- it was about swans in a neighbor's pond, except my neighbor didn't have a pond and I'd never actually seen any swans, except in books. It was published in the Magnolia Elementary school literary magazine. Whoop! Whoop! My grandma kept this magazine and other stories I wrote in grade school. My father found them in the drawers of her secretaire after she died. I did study the classics in college, having majored in English and Latin. But my education stopped after the High Moderns (Stevens, Eliot, Frost) and my senior thesis was on Chaucer. I was mostly a medievalist. Which means, I've been trying ever since to catch up with American Poetry since about 1950.

TW : My mother had a big volume of poetry on the shelf [when I was] growing up. Of course, it wasn't the kind of poetry I would read today. Mostly, I found poetry in the lyrics of songs published in the 1920s and 1930s which my mother played and sang on the family spinet.

GR : Yes, you could say a phrase in conversation that happened to be the line in some obscure 1920s song and Toni can launch into the whole song, which she probably hasn't heard since childhood.

TW : Later, I discovered poetry books at the library as a kid and would riffle through the card catalogue for books by poets I had heard about, or any poetry. The librarian wanted to know what I was doing. I told them I was looking for songs. Then, she'd try to escort me to the children's section. No, I'd say, I want grownup songs. I'd sit on the floor in the adult poetry section reading the words I understood.

KJN : How did you two meet?

GR : Toni and I came together over poetry. She was teaching a creative writing workshop with an emphasis on poetry at Chapman University. Although it was some years later before we came together as a couple, language, music and literature are in the fabric of who we are together. It's been there from the beginning for us. I will add that, for me, a new urgency and seriousness took over in the poetry after her daughter's stroke in 2003. A conscious/ unconscious realization that everything could dissolve tomorrow, so [you should] stop playing around and speak urgently about what it is you feel compelled to say. Just last year, the experience of tending to her daughter formed itself in the forthcoming chapbook Uncommon Refrains (The Lives You Touch Publications, 2010).

KJN : I've noticed that you collect all sorts of art. Did you ever think about another form of expression, or did you always know you were writers?

GR: Toni says I'm a musician/composer more than a poet. And maybe I would've been, except I can't carry a tune and my 5th grade band teacher told me to give up the cornet—I was hopeless. So instead of musical notations, I have words. In fact, the sonata form or the music of Chopin or Brahms' chamber works probably influences my poetry more than the writing of other poets. I'm drawn to the intricacy in the patterns of notes and voicings in their music and how ideas and themes develop, dissolve, drift apart and then reform to create a changed but unified whole.

TW : The art on our walls you mentioned are reminders of beautiful things. Nudes, still lives, landscapes—they're reminders of how necessary it is to be present to particular moments in our life.

KJN : I know you have a very busy financial practice. Is it ever difficult to transition from working with numbers to working with words?

GR : I don't imagine it's any more difficult for us to carve out space for reading and writing [than it is] for anyone else who's working... like all business owners', our minds never completely leave the needs of the business and perhaps that crowds out space for poetry. I don't know. I've never seen poetry and financial planning as anything but complementary... With our clients, we're always striking a balance between living more fully this particular moment... and planning for an abundant future. For me, poetry is similar. I see poetry as helping to improve decision-making relative to how we live a life more attuned to its particular moments. Poetry often synthesizes what seem like disparate elements into a cohesive whole. And the concerns of clients—those human fears, ambitions and desires—sound to me a lot like the concerns of most poetry. For me, the act of writing poetry is an act of paying close attention to the vitality of language. In corporate-speak and even in much of our media, words get hollowed out or dulled to the point losing of any meaning. The poetry reinvigorates the words so that the words remain alert and alive and meaningful in communicating with clients.

KJN : Tell me about the origins of the Londonberry Salon, what you envisioned and what you have created?

GR : Every time we clear the furniture out of the house and prepare for the Londonberry Salon we ask ourselves why we do this. And then, thirty-some people show up elated and eager to listen to a poet read and answer questions in our living room for an evening and we know exactly why. The Salon grew out of a craft talk Robert Hass gave at Squaw several years ago when he said it would become incumbent upon poets to create their own, local communities for poetry in order to give space for those voices to be heard.

TW : We wanted to bring poetry back into the home in a private and intimate setting and out of the distractions of bookstores and coffee shops. This spring we decided to expand to a public venue and launched the Londonberry Salon East. We host it at the Rincon Valley Library in Santa Rosa. We have websites for both Salons Londonberry, and Londonberry East.

KJN : This past year you both had significant personal successes.

GR : Toni's book was picked up the first time she submitted it (albeit, they waited seven months to accept it). My books have taken much longer to find homes. Toni kept telling me, "you just haven't found the right person to read it." And then suddenly it happened... (editor's note: Randall's A Room in the Country was published by Puddinghouse, Uncommon Refrain by The Lives You Touch Publications, and Double Happiness was the winner of the Camber Press Chapbook award). Toni's first chapbook, Stepping Through Moons , came out from Finishing Line so I threw a big party in December to celebrate the launch.

TW : What was so enjoyable about the evening was how many attendees were friends and clients who had never attended a poetry reading in their life—it's very much what we try to accomplish with the Londonberry Salon: to bring poetry to new people.

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

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Marin Poetry Center is proud to announce that Jacqueline (Jackie) Kudler is the first recipient of the Calliope Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. This award is given in recognition of Jackie's long-term contributions in teaching poetry in the Emeritus Program at the College of Marin, for her involvement in the education of children, her work with for Marin Poetry Center, and for the poetry she has written over the years.

Everyone is cordially invited to attend this special occasion. We do hope that you can attend and help us recognize this outstanding Marin poet, teacher, and neighbor. This event is co-sponsored by ESCOM, the Emeritus Students College of Marin.

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Tue Jun 1, 07:00 PM Rebound Bookstore 1 1611 4th Street, San Rafael (415) 482-0550 Host: Angelika Quirk. Readers: Gloria North, Alyse Rall, Budd Winston, Lynn Ireland, Carolyn Ingram, Louise Yahnian

Tue Jun 8, 07:00 PM Borders Books 588 Francisco Boulevard West, San Rafael (415) 454-1400 Host: Barbara Brooks. Readers: Susan Cohen, Terry Lucas, Stephanie Noble, Jeanne Wagner, Sara Tolchin, Ella Eytan

Tue Jun 15, 07:00 PM Belvedere-Tiburon Library 1501 Tiburon Blvd., Tiburon (415) 788-7649 Host: Kirsten Neff. Readers: Alan Cohen, Calvin Ahlgren, C B Follett, Susan Terris, Sim Warkov, Adele Tamam Kahn

Tue Jun 22, 07:00 PM Book Depot 87 Throckmorton, Mill Valley (415) 383-2665 Host: Toni L Wilkes. Readers: Stuart Chappell, Susan Gangel, Kit Kennedy, Marilyn King, Gerald Nicosia, Sandy Scull

Tue Jun 29, 07:00 PM Dance Palace 503 B Street, Pt. Reyes Station (415) 663-1075 Host: Calvin Ahlgren. Readers: Vivian Olds, Charselle, Andrea Freeman, Robin Lee, Barbara Martin, Jennifer Gennari

Tue Jul 6, 07:00 PM Fairfax Library 1 2097 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Fairfax (415) 453-8092 Host: Joe Zaccardi. Readers: Sharron Belson, Sam Doctors, Tomoko Ferguson, Stephie Mendel, Carol Griffin, Michael Beebe

Tue Jul 13, 07:00 PM Book Passage 51 Tamal Vista Boulevard, Corte Madera (415) 927-0960 Host: Yvonne Postelle. Readers: Dale Biron, Patricia Garfield, Yvonne Cannon, Michelle Bitting, Lola Brown, Sharon Fain

Tue Jul 20, 07:00 PM Rebound Bookstore 2 1611 4th Street, San Rafael (415) 482-0550 Host: Roy Mash. Readers: Diana Lyster, Connie Post, Mark Meierding, Catharine Clark-Sayles, Paul Watsky, Jane Green

Tue Jul 27, 07:00 PM Mill Valley Library 2 375 Throckmorton, Mill Valley (415) 388-4033 Host: Jean Sublett. Readers: Barbara Brooks, Yvonne Postelle, Roy Mash, Robert Sward, Maggie Morley, William Landis

Tue Aug 3, 07:00 PM Marin City Library 164 Donahue St, Sausalito 332-6158 Host: Gabrielle Rilleau. Readers: Judith Yamamoto, Adam David Miller, Cynthia Sims, Doreen Stock, John Hart, Daphne Muse

Tue Aug 10, 07:00 PM Petaluma County Library 100 Fairgrounds Drive, Petaluma (707) 673-9801 Host: Mark Meierding. Readers: Raphael Block, Spencer La Moure, Kirsten Jones Neff, Mary K Sweeney, Julia Vose, Albert Flynn Desilver

Tue Aug 17, 07:00 PM Larkspur Library 2 400 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur (415) 927-5135 Host: Susan Terris. Readers: Marie Henry, Katherine Crawford, Patricia McCaron, Gabrielle Rilleau, Carol Sheldon, Margaret Stawowy

Tue Aug 24, 07:00 PM Corte Madera Library 707 Meadowsweet Drive, Corte Madera (415) 924-6444 Host: Bill Noble. Readers: Barbara Swift Brauer, Alice Palmer Thomas, Angelika Quirk, Kate Peper, Terry Phelan, Ann Robinson

Tue Aug 31, 07:00 PM Fairfax Library 2 2097 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Fairfax (415) 453-8092 Host: Ethel Mays. Readers: True Heitz, Stephen Galiani, Terry Hamilton-Poore, Anne Bacon Soule, Michael Day, Phyllis Teplitz

Mon Sep 6, 07:00 PM 3300 Club 3300 Mission Street at 29th, San Francisco (415) 826-6886 Host: Ethel Mays. Readers: Zara Raab, Mahnaz Badihian, Kim Nunes, Renata Santerre, Bruce Sams, Ethel Mays

Tue Sep 14, 07:00 PM Stinson Beach Library 3521 Shoreline Highway, Stinson Beach (415) 868-0252 Host: Barbara Martin. Readers: Kenneth Dickinson, Marvin R. Hiemstra, Lonner Holden, Lynda Beigel, Elizabeth Underwood, Martin Roy Hickel

Wed Sep 22, 07:00 PM Frank Bette Art Center 1601 Paru Street, Alameda (510) 523-6957 Host: Alyse Rall. Readers: Rafaella Del Bourgo, Clive Matson, Ian Moore, Deborah Ruth, Lenore Weiss

Tue Sep 28, 07:00 PM Mill Valley Library 3 375 Throckmorton, Mill Valley (415) 388-4033 Host: Paula Weinberger. Readers: Joan Gelfand, Claudia Chapline, Gregory W. Randall, Toni L Wilkes, Rhodes Young, Rebecca Foust

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Mon Sep 20	Bob Hicok
Oct 21	MPC Anthology Reading
Nov 18	R.S. Gwynn
Dec (Date tba)	MPC Potluck & Read Around
Mon Jan 17	Marvin Bell
Feb 17	Panel Discussion: "Is Publication Hurting Poetry?" with Camille Dungy, Dan Bellm, & Gabby Calvocoressi
Mar 17	Sixteen Rivers Anthology Reading
Apr 21	Jacqueline Berger and Alexandra Teague
May 19	New Voices: Askia Humphrey and Javier Zamora

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MPC Members Book Launch
Saturday, June 12, 2010, 7:00 PM, Book Passage, Corte Madera. Rebecca Foust reads from All That Gorgeous, Pitiless Song, winner of the Many Mountains Moving Book Prize and Kirsten Jones Neff reads from Pushcart-nominated When the House is Quiet, winner of the 2009 Starting Gate Award.

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Poetry Farm is a monthly reading series held at Dr. Insomnia's Cafe in Novato.  This is a well-attended and high-spirited reading series now in its fifth year.  We feature one published author each month.   If you would like to be considered for our "Featured Farmer" spot,  please send an email describing your work to Kirsten@Neff.Org.  Otherwise, come join the audience or sign up for open mic. 
Second Mondays, 7pm,   Dr. Insomnia's Cafe on the corner of Grant and Reichert in Novato.

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MPC Readers: Do you remember how and when you first wrote a poem?  Did your pulse race? Palms go all sweaty? Did you follow up right away on that first odd tug of the mind/heart, or did you put the urge aside and write it out only when you couldn't help it?   Do us all a favor, jot down that memory and ship it off to the newsletter, for possible sharing with your fellow readers.  Send it to info@marinpoetrycenter.org .   

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Open Mic/Poetry Critique at Falkirk Cultural Center, on the fourth Thursday of each month (except Dec.), starting at 7pm.  Bring ten copies of your poem, no more than one page in length.  This event is free, and is open to everyone.  1408 Mission Street, San Rafael.  calvinahlgren@att.net. 

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Sunset Poetry by the Bay

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Marin Poetry Center Bookgroup meets at 7pm the second Wednesday of each month, rotating among living rooms of participants. In June Rodney Jones' Elegy for the Southern Drawl will be discussed, and in July a selection from Contemporary American Poetry, edited by R.S. Gwynn & April Lindner. For more information contact Roy Mash: events@marinpoetrycenter.org

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Marin Poetry Center Blog is now online.  Just click on the Blog! tab of the MPC website. MPC members can now upload their own blog posts, receive comments, and comment on the posts of others. An easy way to start is to send in a poem or two for the 'Admired Poems' section of the new MPC blog. These would be poems by someone else that you particularly admire or that have meant a lot to you or that you think of as overlooked. Send poems or blog postings to webmaster@marinpoetrycenter.org . Comments can be made on the blog itself.

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