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Workshop with David Axelrod – Tuesday, September 16, 1:00-3:30 p.m. – $30 per person, pre-registration required – email tonipoet@gmail.com to register – This workshop sponsored by the Lane Literary Guild: www.laneliteraryguild.org.

Attunement, Dancing to a New Music : In a era when we casually “like” and “friend” solely what pleases us or confirms our expectations, what is the advantage of taking a long, hard look at what refuses to meet this standard? In her essay, “Attunement,” first published in the New Yorker, Zadie Smith discusses the creative perils of seeking out familiar aesthetic encounters only, confirmations of our well-established personal tastes. But what about aesthetic experiences that seem dissonant, challenging, or confusing, or that do not conform to any recognizable engagement of heart and mind? The stuff you cannot dance to. In this workshop, we will consider the claim that we learn the most from what initially pleases us the least, literary art that objects to conventional formal tastes. Please read Smith’s essay (and possibly Jeanette Winterson’s “Art Objects”) before coming to the workshop. Before embarking on writing exercises, we will read and discuss poems or mixed genre works by Anne Carson, Melissa Kwasny, Mary Szybist, perhaps even some dreaded L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, not to proselytize language’s instability or inability to describe reality, but to deepen our commitment to both language and reality.

David Axelrod is the author of six collections of poems. The most recent, Folly and What Next, Old Knife? were published by Lost Horse Press. His previous collection, The Cartographer’s Melancholy, won the Spokane Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2006 Oregon Book Award. His collection of cultural and environmental essays about the interior Northwest, Troubled Intimacies, appeared in 2004. His poems and essays have been published in New Letters, Boulevard, Alaska Quarterly Review, High Desert Journal, Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, River Styx, Serving House Journal, Terrain, Verse Daily, among others. He co-directs the low residency MFA at EOU and edits basalt magazine.

The calendar for the 2014-2015 Windfall Reading Series is now out:

Time again for the Willamette Group of Haiku Poets to meet! It’s this Friday, July 18 at Springfield City Hall from 2 to 4 p.m. Remember, at our last meeting we were discussing minimalist haiku and agreed to give it a try. Please bring your results. Or bring examples by others that you especially like, or find interesting. Also other forms–senryu, tanka, linked forms–are welcome in our rounds of haiku reading, so show us what you have been working on…even if you are barely past the idea stage. Join us for an afternoon of fun. Barbara Snow 541-343-9094

Friday, July 11, 7 PM: All lovers of poetry and poets, please mark your calendars and spread the word: Poets Danusha Lameris, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, and Maxine Scates, will converge for a rare evening of wisdom and heart. A word about the poets:

Danusha’s first book of poetry, “The Moons of August,” was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the 2013 Autumn House Press Poetry Contest. She lives in Santa Cruz , where she teaches writing workshops.

Dorianne, former Professor of Creative Writing at the U of O, presently teaches poetry at the MFA program at North Carolina State, as well as at Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA Program. She is the author of five books of poetry, numerous chapbooks, a book on writing poetry, has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and is a winner of the Oregon Books Award.

Joseph is the author of three books of poetry. He has won a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He presently teaches at Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA Program. He lives in N. Carolina with wife Dorianne Laux.

Maxine is the author of three books of poetry. She is a winner of the “Pitt” Poetry prize, an Oregon Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry throughout Oregon, most recently at Reed College and privately in Eugene, where she lives with husband Bill Cadbury.

Light refreshments will be served. (Free)

LANE WRITERS READING SERIES GEARING UP FOR ACTION

The new LANE WRITERS READING SERIES will feature local Lane County Writers at the River Road Annex (1055 River Road) every 4th Sunday from 4:30-6:00 pm. The first reading will take place on September 28, 2014, with poetry and fiction by Howard W. Robertson, Carter McKenzie, Alice Evans and Joan Dobbie. We look forward to seeing you there!

Howard W. Robertson is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Eugene, Oregon. He has published a short novel: Peculiar Pioneer (2013); and nine books of poems, including most recently: Odes to the Ki of the Universe, 2nd rev. ed. (2013); Ode to Certain Interstates (2013); and The Green Force of Spring (2013). He was the 2010 Henry Art Gallery Poet-in-Residence and the winner of the 2009 Sinclair Poetry Prize. His poems have been anthologized often, most recently in Literal Latté: The Anthology (iUniverse, 2008), and his poems have been published in many literary journals, most recently in Yellow Medicine Review. For more about Howard W. Robertson, go to www.howardwrobertson.com.

A founding member of Airlie Press, Carter McKenzie is the author of the chapbook Naming Departure (Traprock Books) and a full-length book of poetry Out of Refusal (Airlie Press). Her poetry has appeared in a various journals and anthologies, and her essay “A Simple Instrument” is included in the anthology The Berkeley Poets Cooperative: A History of the Times, edited by Charles Entrekin. Through affiliation with Young Writers Association and libraries, and through private arrangements, Carter teaches poetry workshops to students of all ages in Eugene, Oregon, and in the surrounding rural areas. She lives in the Cascade Foothills with her youngest daughter.

Alice Evans is communications specialist at the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society. She is coordinator of the CSWS Northwest Women Writers Symposium. A professional journalist with roots in creative writing, Alice has served as managing editor of publications for Holt International Children’s Services; editor of Midwifery Today magazine; managing editor for one of Advanstar’s trade publications; and bookseller at Marketplace Books. She has freelanced for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, Oregon Quarterly, Poets & Writers magazine, The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly, and many other publications. She has written dozens of book reviews for The Oregonian book pages since 1996. An assistant editor of fiction for Northwest Review in the early ’90s, she studied creative writing with Ralph Salisbury and Maggie Anderson. She was awarded a one-month residency at the Wolf Pen Writer’s Colony (Kentucky Foundation for Women) in the early 1990s. Her essays have been published in five Seal Press outdoor anthologies and her poems and stories have appeared in numerous small literary publications and anthologies. She is a former newspaper reporter and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Indiana University. She is a mother and grandmother.

Joan Dobbie, mother of two, grandmother of six, teaches hatha yoga and sometimes poetry in Eugene, has a 1988 MFA in Creative Writing from the U of O, recently published : BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND, Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012), THE MANY FACES OF HATHA YOGA (Kendall/Hunt 2012-13); and WOODSTOCK BABY, A Novel in Poetry (The Unforgettables Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and small press mags & zines. Several have won prizes, including “My Birth” which took 2nd place in the members only category of the Spring 2014 Oregon Poetry Association Contest and “My Sister’s Hen” which was given honorable mention. Her latest literary project has to do with this Lane Writers Reading Series which she’s co-creating with fellow Eugene author, Howard Robertson. Her website is: http://joandobbie.blogspot.com.

The Lane Literary Guild is a friend of the Lane Writers Reading Series.

Howard W. Robertson was just awarded the International Merit Award in the Atlanta Review‘s International Poetry Competition:

http://www.atlantareview.com/page75.html