Mendocino Writers Blog

Telling Stories Through Poetry

Camille Dungy, who will teach a three-morning workshop on persona poems at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, July 28-30, has changed her workshop description. Here’s the revised one:

Telling Stories through Poetry

Forget what you’ve heard about not trying to be someone other than yourself. In poetry, we can inhabit all sorts of people’s experiences and come away with new insights about ourselves and the world. Whether we write straight from personal history or in someone else’s voice, participants will learn some of the exciting possibilities persona poetry offers. We’ll generate poems through in-class exercises and have an opportunity to discuss previously-written work. This workshop is appropriate for anyone looking for new ways to invigorate and strengthen their poetic voice.

Winner of this year’s Northern California Book Award in Poetry and many other awards, Camille is known for her expertise in the persona form.  For more information about the conference and how to register, check out the website.

Youth Scholarship Program Needs Help

by Maureen Eppstein

One morning this week, I helped judge a local high school’s Poetry Out Loud contest. It’s a National Endowment for the Arts program  in which students memorize and recite poems selected from an NEA anthology.  As I listened to their young, passionate voices, I thought of all the wonderful young people we’ve brought to the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference through our Youth Scholarship Program, what a burst of energy and enthusiasm they’ve shared with other participants, and what hopes for the future they’ve taken away with them. Here’s a young person’s quote from last year’s evaluations: Now I see that the words, follow your dreams, you can be who you want to be, are possible. They are a reality. I am revived and excited for life.  

This month, MCWC again invites high school students from throughout Mendocino County to compete for scholarships to our 2011 conference in July. If you know a student who might be interested and eligible, please encourage her/him to apply. Guidelines are available on our website.

MCWC needs to raise $3,000, or $500 each, to fund these scholarships. Through contributions from board members and other donors, we’re about halfway toward this year’s goal. Rather than drag friends out to yet another fundraising event, we thought this year we’d try the direct plea. Can you help us with a donation? Checks made out to MCWC and indentified as a Youth Scholarship Fund donation may be sent to MCWC, PO Box 2087, Fort Bragg, CA 95437. Because MCWC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, your gift is fully tax-deductible. No matter how small the amount, we will value your partnership in nurturing the next generation of writers.

Vertigo

by Maureen Eppstein

An essay by Tony Hoagland in the September 2010 issue of Poetry finally clarified for me why I find some modern poetry confusing. It’s meant to be, Hoagland says. In the essay he lays out two views on the function of poetry. The first suggests that poetry constructs perspective for the reader. He cites Wallace Stevens for the alternative view: “The poem must resist the intelligence/ Almost successfully.” 

“It’s the gong of recognition versus the bong of disorientation,” Hoagland says. He attributes the sense of vertigo aroused by reading poems by Stevens or John Ashbery to the complexities of modern life. “After all, our economic culture specializes in two things: surfeit and counterfeit. …Add to that our drastically increased sense of the corruption of commercial and political speech, and the instability of language---surely our resulting collective dizziness is a fundamental symptom of modern life, one to which poems naturally refer.”

When I showed the essay to my friend Jeanette Boyer, she commented: “When I was a little kid, I used to love spinning in circles, stopping, and finding the world all topsy-turvy. Now that would make me all too dizzy. Similarly, I find I prefer poetry that brings me a sense of stillnesss rather than a sense of vertigo.”

I agree with Jeanette. I’m much more attuned to poems in which the reader and the poet share a moment of recognition. At the same time, we both appreciated Hoagland’s essay for the clarification it provided.

Recycled Words

Since I attended John Felstiner’s Soundings workshop last week, I’ve thought about the subtle gradations of difference between poetry and prose. Soundings is a program of Mendocino Coast Writers Conference in which, like a whale sounding, participants dive deeply into some aspect of writing. John’s topic was “Combing poems to learn bolder prose, & vice versa.” We looked at an example of poetic prose (an extract from Ellen Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise). We struggled to reassemble William Carlos Williams’s poem “Iris” from a version laid out as prose. All the while, I was mindful of the genre changes I have inflicted on my own poems.

I am working on a memoir that braids three threads: the story of my sister, Dame Evelyn Stokes, whose work on Maori land rights issues helped transform New Zealand society over the past several decades by moving Maori culture, language and environmental concerns into the mainstream; my experience as a long-time expatriate who feels more and more a foreigner when I return to New Zealand; and my complicated relationship with my older sister.

I have written, and published,  many poems on the expatriate and sibling rivalry themes. Congenitally frugal, I realized that with a little work I could reuse these poems rather than hunt for other words to express my meaning. In some cases, it was simply a matter of removing the line breaks. In other cases, the intensity of the poem’s syntax had to be expanded to fill the more leisurely opening up of meaning in prose.

Here are two examples. My poem “In My Sister’s Garden” contains the lines:

Old cabbages, like pensioners, enjoy the sun.

Pansies purr round their stems.

To turn it into prose, I wrote:

A row of old cabbages sat like pensioners enjoying the sun, while pansies rubbed against their stems like purring cats.

A poem about the immigrant experience, titled “Metamorphosis,” has the lines:

We immigrants lie locked

in tightly-wound cocoons.

When the pain subsides

we will emerge

transformed.

In prose this became:

The immigrant experience is something like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. Locked in tightly-wound cocoons, we slowly take on the coloration of the new country, hoping one day to emerge, transformed.

I felt a twinge of guilt about using my poems in this way. But then I thought, why not? Mozart and Bach did it all the time with their musical themes. It’s another way of making the images new.

Message from Malìn Alegria

by Maureen Eppstein

Received a lovely card from Malìn Alegria, one of our favorite presenters at the 2010 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. She says: "Thank you for the fabulous opportunity to share my writing, techniques and laughter with the participants of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. I had a blast!"

In Memoriam: Skip Wollenberg

by Maureen Eppstein

I have just come from the memorial gathering for Skip Wollenberg, a former member of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference committee and a good friend. Longtime conference attendees may remember that Skip used to help lead the nature walks that were part of the conference program. An engineering geologist by profession, Skip was renowned among those who knew him for his willingness to make understandable the geology of any landscape. My personal connection with Skip was geological: various kinds of rocks have appeared in my poems, and Skip was pleased both that I would make poems about geology, and that I got the geology right.

Skip wrote entertainingly about his work and travels. Some of his stories can be found on the Mendocino Stories website.

As we sat in the garden of his family home, carved out of the forest east of Fort Bragg, we heard family members, writing group partners and friends honor his life and work.Words like calm, laconic, thoughtful, committed and lovingkindness filled the air. “We fell into friendship the way people fall in love,” said one friend. He will be missed.

Ending a Story

by Maureen Eppstein

“Endings are tough to write. Harder than leads by a good bit,” says Andrew Todhunter. Author of several nonfiction books, including the PEN USA Literary Award-winning A Meal Observed, and dozens of articles for national publications including National Geographic, The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal, Andrew is also a terrific editor and writing coach. He will teach the nonfiction workshop at the 2011 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference.

Andrew has been helping me with my first attempt at memoir, a narrative that weaves together three threads: homage to the role of my late sister, Dame Evelyn Stokes, in restoring Maori land rights in New Zealand; my experience as an expatriate observing changes to  my birth country that result from her work; and my complex relationship with my elder sister.  Not happy with my ending, Andrew sets me a task: “Your ending must magically and subtly summon forth all that energy and feeling, casting our minds back across the journey made, and quietly, without sentiment, transmute or transcend it.” He tells me to reread the endings of eight to ten favorite novels and memoirs. “Study the pacing, the rhythm, what happens to the voice. Take notes on how they work, mechanically, those endings you most admire. Many of the best endings are deeply lyrical and yet almost invisibly so because the language becomes so restrained and quiet and pure.” 

I pull books from the shelf, and in the last page of each, find sentences that sing.

From Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It: "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

Joan Didion, in The Year of Living Dangerously, spoke of small things and large: “Leis go brown, tectonic plates shift, deep currents move, islands vanish, rooms get forgotten.”

Judith Barrington, who lost her parents in a disaster at sea, writes in Lifesaving how a movie that showed a fire at sea from the camera angle of the water dispelled her fantasy of saving her parents. “I knew at last the awful power of the water I would have encountered.”

William Styron, in Darkness Visible, a memoir of madness, quotes Dante: “And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.”

I turn back to my manuscript, sit with it, meditate on Andrew’s words, and on the powerful story endings I have just read. I remember an anecdote about burying a dead fox that I used in an earlier chapter. I could pull that to the end, I think. A memory comes to mind, the sound of a bell being struck. Could I do something with that? Silently thanking Andrew for his insight, I reach for a pen.

Community Connections

From Maureen Eppstein, MCWC Co-director

Last night, in the gracious lobby of the Stanford Inn in Mendocino, representatives of many of Mendocino County ’s arts organizations gathered to celebrate grant awards in the Community Foundation of Mendocino County’s Arts for our Future Program. These grants were made possible through funding from The James Irvine Foundation of San Francisco.

 It was my privilege to accept a substantial check on behalf of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference (MCWC). These funds will help us make the transition to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to strengthen our board with collaborative training with the Mendocino Film Festival, and to increase our visibility through collaboration with youth service organizations and the California Poets in the Community.

 As I mingled, I was struck by how interconnected local arts, business, and social service organizations have become. The Arts Council of Mendocino County received funding for a huge collaborative website project that will link participating organizations and artists. Visit Mendocino County, Inc., a promotional alliance, is working to boost the local economy by identifying the Mendocino Coast as an arts destination. MCWC’s grant-funded community outreach project involve a large number of partners. We funded a poetry slam workshop for at-risk kids through the Mendocino County Youth Project. We’re helping Big Brothers Big Sisters keep their after school art and cooking classes alive while we work with the City of Fort Bragg to find space to add a writing workshop component. Safe Passage, Cancer Resource Center, Coast Community Library and South Coast Senior Center will partner in writing workshops for adults whose stories need to be heard.

 It’s exciting and humbling to be part of an undertaking so big and so important, and to realize that as writers we can make a difference.  

Christmas Dawn by Katherine Heiman Brown

    I had climbed upon my father’s empty chair, which was normally “hands-off,” and pushed my 6-year-old self against the seat back like a queen. I sensed I belonged there on that 1960s Christmas morning. The coo-coo clock coo-cooed six times, but it remained dark outside. And birdless. My mother told my two older brothers, older sister, and I not to disturb her until at least 7. “And for God’s sake, don’t wake the baby.”
    I had already been to the tree and found my red felt stocking with the missing jingle bell, my name, Kathy, stitched in crooked white yarn letters across the top. The stocking marked my area of four or five unwrapped gifts, spread out with their cellophane box tops. I did not receive the Chutes and Ladders game I had seen on television, or a doll with long, blond hair that I could braid. Instead, I received a rubber baby with unbendable arms and legs, her hair short, black, curly and unbrushable. She did not have eyelids. She could not even wet herself.
My brothers tiptoed into the room and looked for their stockings, but I did not stir. I was busy thinking.
    The evening before I had been to my neighbor friend Judy’s house, where she showed me their front room crowded with colorful boxes, delicious in themselves with their cherry red bows and patterned paper. I had never seen so many presents. Her Christmas tree was green, a real one that drank water from its stand and smelled like a cedar chest. Our tree was fake, the silver branch tips curled by my father with his pocket knife. He made us leave when he worked on the tree. We got in the way.
    “We’re going to have our Christmas now,” Judy’s mother had told me as the family began to gather. Judy’s older sister, Rosella, put on a Christmas album. Judy’s father patted my head. I loved how his eyes twinkled all the time, as if he were holding in a joke.
    “You better get on home,” Judy’s mother said. The family turned my way, but I could not move. It was all too beautiful.
    “Judy, you be Santa’s helper.” Her father smiled, letting all his white teeth show.
    “I’m sure your mother wants you at home,” Judy’s mother said again, her look stern. I moved off to the side.
    Judy placed a gift before one person and the entire family watched them unwrap it amidst oohs and aahs, like a happy story that seemed to go on for hours. Judy’s mother and older sisters frowned at me when I squealed over Judy’s presents. Judy got Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, a two-story dollhouse with a bajillion pieces of furniture, a tea set, a pretty nurse doll with long hair that you could braid, plus a bunch of clothes. Before I could help her try out her new toys, her mother shooed me out with instructions to come visit after the New Year.
    I wondered why Santa treated people differently. I kept replaying Judy’s Christmas as my brothers looked at their gifts and whispered appreciation. But not pride.
    Our presents gave me the same feeling I got from the Fish Pond game at the Knights of Columbus fair, where I paid a nickel to hold a fishing pole with a colored bucket hooked on the end of it. The attendant made me use the pole with the pink bucket and my brothers the pole with the blue one. I lowered the line so that the bucket disappeared behind a curtained booth, and a shiver of possibilities passed through me when I felt the string tug, a signal to pull the pole up again. I wanted a present plucked from the depth of my imagination. But the prize was always dumb: a plastic ring, a comb or a small coloring book. My brothers got yo-yos.
    If Santa received lists, why didn’t he pay attention? Why did some people, like Judy, get more than what they could possibly want, and others, like those starving kids from Africa on TV, get nothing? Seemed like he would at least bring starving kids some Cheerios or chicken noodle soup.
    I heard my mother’s slippers scuffle down the hall and pass the living room on the way to the kitchen, but I remained in my father’s chair and waited for the heater to clink on and drive out the chill. Cabinet doors opened and closed. The lid snapped off the coffee can.  
    Why was it that every Santa I had ever seen was fake, the elastic from their slobbery cotton beard’s showing? How could anyone believe in them?
    My mother came to the edge of the hallway and called out to my father. “The kids are up.” My brothers glanced at each other, all of us wondering if he would be in a good mood. Soon there would be breakfast and itchy clothes to put on for church.
    The quiet was leaving, my time in the chair over, but before I slid off, a shocking thought crept into my head. I looked at the cold aluminum tree and the lack of paper, ribbons and grins. And slowly, it made sense.
    There was no Santa Claus.

Katherine Heimann Brown is the executive co-director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference in California. She teaches English and creative writing at College of the Redwoods.

Glowing Evaluations for Mendocino Coast Writers Conference

“The best conference I’ve attended. The format allowed indepth work and learning that spiraled and connected ideas.” 

“Impeccably organized and extremely worthwhile.”

“I gained so much! Next time I’ll recruit my writing group to attend.”

 

These enthusiastic comments are typical of the evaluations received from the 2009 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. We learned that MCWC participants are committed writers. The most important things they gained were good writing advice, a sense of being part of a supportive community of writers,  and encouragement for their work.

 

As we prepare for the 2010 conference, we know that the words of this year’s participants, either in person or through online social networks, will persuade others to come. By a huge majority, participants came in 2009 because they, or someone they knew, had a great experience at MCWC in a previous year. Participants particularly liked MCWC’s program format. Meeting in a small group with the same faculty member for three consecutive mornings built bonds of friendship, while afternoons devoted to readings, panels and lectures offered variety. Our cool climate and spectacular location were big draws too, as was the opportunity to work with outstanding teachers such as Ellen Bass, Ben Percy and Sharman Apt Russell.

 

Mark your calendars: dates for the 2010 Mendocino Coast Writers Conference are July 29 through July 31, 2010.