Poetry Society of South Carolina

Event Details

Please join The Poetry Society of South Carolina for poetry readings by Davidson College and Queens University of Charlotte professor Alan Michael Parker and P.S.S.C. president Deborah Lawson Scott at The Poetry Society of South Carolina's 2012-13 season inaugural events in Charleston.

Readings are free and open to the public. Book signing and reception follow the program, held on the second Friday of the month in downtown Charleston at: 7:00 p.m.

September 14
Readings by Alan Michael Parker with Deborah Lawson Scott

September 15
Seminar with Alan Michael Parker
“Revenge, and Other Delights.”
In this seminar, we will consider the idea of the revenge poem, with its emotional upheavals and its medical malpractices, from Pope's Arbuthnot to Plath's Daddy and beyond. Come with writing utensils and memories of childhood: our comedy will be serious.

Alan Michael Parker is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Davidson College; he is also a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-res MFA. Among his awards are three Pushcart Prizes, a poem inBest American Poetry, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Medwick Award from PSA. He has written three novels and seven collections of poems, most recently Long Division (Tupelo Press, June, 2012).
(read Parker’s “Between Poems the Vandals”
http://www.thebluemoon.com/4/spr99poeparker.html)

PSSC President Deborah Lawson Scott, a native Baltimorean, lived in Miami for 25 years before moving to Charleston in 2003, and also spends time in the Catskills and Stockholm. Her lyric poems reflect these varied landscapes; as a Long Table Poet, she also enjoys collaborative writing. She is an MFA graduate of Queens University of Charlotte and among her numerous poetry prizes is the DuBose & Dorothy Heyward Society Prize. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including My South, Poetry in the South, Kakalak, and Boomtown.
(read Long Table Poets' collaborative poem, “A Week of Kindness”
http://qarrtsiluni.com/tag/deborah-lawson-scott/)

October 12
David St. John with Anna Journey
read David St. John’s “Chestnut”
David St. John has received NEA, Guggenheim Foundation, and Rome fellowships, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the O. B. Hardison Prize for teaching and poetic achievement, and the George Drury Smith Lifetime Achievement Award. Among his ten volumes of poetry is Study for the World’s Body, nominated for The National Book Award in Poetry; Where the Angels Come Toward Us is his collection of essays, interviews, and reviews. He teaches at The University of Southern California and lives in Venice Beach.

Anna Journey is the author of two collections of poetry: Vulgar Remedies (Louisiana State University Press, 2013) and If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting (University of Georgia Press, 2009), selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. She teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California.

read Anna Journey’s “Alarm (2)

October 13
Seminar with David St. John, “The Braided Narrative: The Poetry of Philip Levine and Larry Levis.”

November 9
Jillian Weise
read Jillian Weise’s “Incision”
Poet and playwright Jillian Weise is the author of a poetry collection, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, and a novel, The Colony. Her work has appeared in A Public Space, The New York Times, Tin House and elsewhere. Her manuscript The Book of Goodbyes won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and will be published by BOA in Fall 2013. She wrote some of these poems while on a Fulbright Fellowship in Argentina. She is an Assistant Professor at Clemson.

November 10
Seminar with Jillian Weise, “The Poet as Spy.”
Adopt a secret agent name. Work with classified documents. Create entries for a spy book. This workshop/seminar will take, as its theme, the poet as spy, and introduce you to techniques for close observation and discovery.

December 14
Holiday Party, for PSSC Members Only

January 11
Open Mic

February 8
Paul Allen
read Paul Allen’s “Private Charter”
Poet/songwriter Paul Allen received the SCAC’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award (George Mason University), the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize (American Crawl), the Distinguished Research Award (College of Charleston), and a Pushcart Prize. Ground Forces (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2008), according to poet Andrew Hudgins, is about "brokenness and, with richly explored theological implications, everything in the broken world, the fallen world." Allen has retired, Professor Emeritus, from the College of Charleston, and lives on the road in a camper.

February 9
Seminar with Paul Allen, “From Anecdote to Myth: Aspiring to the Bigger Poem—Not Necessarily Longer, but Bigger.” Two or three abandoned drafts—or even recent poems—may be just notes for one bigger poem, the one with larger themes, more layers; the one that aspires to “Dover Beach,” “Among School Children,” “Sunday Morning,” and the like. It’s fun to see if they are. Please bring six pages of your most recent writing, whether completed poems or abandoned attempts. No copies, they’re just for you.

March 8
Keith Flynn
read Keith Flynn’s “If you are Chagall...”
Keith Flynn, founder and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, has authored four collections of poetry, most recently The Golden Ratio (2007). His poems have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Rattle, and hundreds of others. He has been nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize, was awarded the Paumanok Poetry Prize in 1996, and has given thousands of performances from his work across North America and abroad. In 2005 and 2006, Flynn served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina, working to promote the cultural importance of poetry in his home state.

March 9
Seminar with Keith Flynn, “The Power of Poetry: Honoring The Condensary.” Condensation is the final frontier for a poet. Examining the work of our finest pruners, including Frank O’Hara, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, and Li Po, we will focus on losing the dross and creating poems that are more muscular and radioactive. Each participant should bring at least twelve copies of two poems. Work will be considered for publication in The Asheville Poetry Review.

April 12
Brian Turner
read Brian Turner’s “R & R”
Soldier-poet Brian Turner is author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and the award-winning Here, Bullet (2005). His poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and included in the documentaries Voices in Wartime and Operation Homecoming. He earned the MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea. In 2009, Turner was selected as one of fifty United States Artists Fellows.

April 13, 10:00 a.m. to noon
Seminar with Brian Turner, “Figure Studies.” Taking our cue from the studio artist’s practice of sketching the human figure in pencils and charcoals, this workshop will experiment with perspective and intention through a variety of ‘sketches’ focused on one primary subject. Time permitting, we’ll also consider poetry’s use of white space and silence (just as the sketch artist’s lines and shadows are in conversation with the blank space of the canvas or paper). Materials required: Please bring writing tools with you to class (pen and paper or a laptop).

May 10
Annual Forum with Eric Nelson
read Eric Nelson’s “Apostrophe to the Apostrophe”
Eric Nelson has published four collections of poetry, including Terrestrials, winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Award (2004), and The Interpretation of Waking Life, winner of the Arkansas Poetry Award (1991). He coordinates the Department of Writing and Linguistics’ creative writing concentration at Georgia Southern University.

April 13, 10:00 a.m. to noon
Seminar with Eric Nelson, “The Catalogue.” The catalogue (aka list) poem, a popular form among contemporary poets, has a long history. Homer, Milton, Whitman, Ginsberg—not to mention the Bible—have used catalogues to great effect, either as self-contained poems or as sections of epics such as the Iliad and Paradise Lost. We will look at several examples—both old and new—discuss the characteristics of a compelling catalogue poem, and write a draft of one.