Global Voices Radio / SPLAB! E-Fishwrapper

In this E-Fishwrapper, Sam Hamill/Red Sky Reunion, José Kozer next in line, Charles Olson info, Postcal Poetry & More.

1) Sam Hamill is featured as part of the Red Sky Poetry Theater Reunion series, on Sunday, October 5 at the Richard Hugo House. Suggested donation $5-$10. Paul Hunter is emcee and open mic readers will be asked to read one poem. The series will continue on Sunday, December 7 with Judith Roche and Charlie Burks. Signup starts at 6:30 and the reading begins at 7P. You can download a .pdf file flyer Clarice Keegan created here.

2) José Kozer is next for a workshop/Red Sky feature Sunday, Feb 1, 2009. Details coming soon. The cost of the workshop is $100 and there will also be a workshop for poets writing in Spanish. Email pen@splab.org for details, or early registration.

3) Hayden Carruth is dead. More info on his life and work here. NY Times obit here.

4) The fight for the soul of Gloucester, Mass is detailed at the Olson Now blog, along with info on upcoming conferences on the work of Charles Olson.

5) Postal Poetry does not mean disgruntled employees with automatic weapons, necessarily. postalpoetry.org & http://contest.postalpoetry.org/

6) from John Burgess: On Oct 9 - 12 at Centrum (details at: http://www.centrum.org/writing/autumn-writers-intensive.html, or call 360.385.3102, x114 for more info.) Ilya Kaminsky will be teaching a poetry workshop and Rebecca Brown will be teaching Fiction workshop at the same time and we expect lots of great overlap of energy, creativity, conversation and other good stuff. Tuition, room and board $595.

Jody Aliesan, via Phoebe Bosche, passed on this note which I read before the V.P. debate last night:

George Orwell, on how to avoid thinking when you speak:

You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. they will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear...

It does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this, is that it is easy.

Who debases the language in an attempt to continue the rampant corruption of the last eight years? How does one deal with this beyond looking deep to root out any such behavior? To me, the Organic Poetry method speaks to this need to use the language with as much integrity, care and attention as possible.

That discipline allowed me to hold my own against a corporate lawyer in a hearing over my unemployment benefits, which I won, so it does come in handy, this discipline of daily writing and study even if the pay is less than that hired gun.

Meredith has a B-Day tomorrow. Join us tonight for the ceremonial spanking and wish her a Happy Day.

See you Sunday, I hope.

xoxo President Postcard.

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Paul E. Nelson

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