Deborah Mayaan on Stories as Legacy

Readings & Workshops Blog
4.5.12

Writer and energy-work practitioner Deborah Mayaan recently co-taught a workshop for people with cancer and their loved ones in Tucson, Arizona, with Rabbi Stephanie Aaron. The workshop was co-sponsored by Congregation Chaverim and the Readings/Workshops program.

In a recent workshop on embodying our values, a woman wrote about her frustration with her mother, who had agreed to take care of a collection of large household items that had great meaning to her mother. We had been working on extracting the positive values from happy memories, and finding the life lessons in challenging experiences. When searching for what she might learn from this, the woman in the workshop first thought about the benefit of simplifying and not collecting things, because they can be a burden on future generations. But she was open to other perspectives, and several people suggested that the collection could be seen as a gift to be enjoyed rather than curated, and could even be dispersed throughout the family.

We agreed that stories can be the best legacies: They take up very little space in paper form and virtually none electronically. No one needs to dust them or move them from house to house. And when more than one person wants this legacy, there is no fighting over it; it can be shared infinitely among people.

When written down, a story has an enduring quality, so that the original writer’s thoughts and feelings are conveyed intact. And yet, it is still alive. Even when the story is received by someone with no memory of the event, or even of the writer, the reader’s  perspective continues to evolve over time. This last point was especially important to one participant who had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer, who was considering the legacy he would leave his children.

At all three venues where Rabbi Stephanie Aaron and I taught this winter—the Arizona Cancer Center, Casa de la Luz Hospice, and Congregation Chaverim—people felt the power of stories to help us clarify our values and strengthen us so that we can make the most of each moment, and share our legacies with those around us.

Photo: Deborah Mayaan (standing) tells a story about values learned from her mother. Credit: Rabbi Stephanie Aaron.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Tucson is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

National Poetry Series Launches Spanish-Language Book Prize

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.5.12

In collaboration with Miami Dade College, the thirty-four-year-old National Poetry Series has established a new book award to accompany its five annual prizes, for a collection of Spanish-language verse.

The winner of the inaugural Paz Prize for Poetry will receive five hundred dollars, and Akashic Books will publish the winning book in a bilingual edition.

The competition, open to American poets writing in Spanish, will begin accepting manuscript entries on May 1 and will close on June 15. Finalists will be announced in July, and a winner, selected by Puerto Rican American poet Victor Hernández Cruz, will be named in September.

"In our increasingly diverse nation, poetry in translation is not just desired, but necessary," says Alina Interian, executive director of Miami Dade College's literary hub, the Center, in a press release. "It allows for shared experience across cultures and greater understanding, and for even more beauty in our world."

Complete guidelines for the Paz Prize are available on the National Poetry Series website.

Ross Gay, Michael Waters Judge Two New Book Contests

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.4.12

Trio House Press, a new poetry outfit in Staten Island, New York, is accepting entries for two book awards. The prize for a first or second poetry collection, judged by Ross Gay, will award publication and one thousand dollars. A second one-thousand-dollar award, judged by Michael Waters, will grant publication of a manuscript by a poet in any stage of her career.

In addition to publication and the monetary prize, the press will also offer winners a role behind the scenes at Trio House. The press has adopted a cooperative structure, so winners will become part of publishing operations for a twenty-four month period (similar to the model employed by, for example, Alice James Books and Calypso Editions) and be involved, each joining one of four committees, in the publication of subsequent books. (Trio House plans to release three titles a year.)

This year's judge in emerging poetry, Gay is the author of two collections, Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006). He is a Cave Canem fellow and a professor at Indiana University and Drew University's low-residency MFA program.

General prize judge Waters, also a teacher in Drew University's program (as well as a professor at Monmouth University in his home state of New Jersey), is author of ten collections, most recently Gospel Night (BOA Editions, 2011). He is also coeditor of the most recent edition of Contemporary American Poetry, published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin.

For both of Trio House's competitions, poets residing in the United States may submit manuscripts of forty-eight to seventy pages with an entry fee of twenty-five dollars by April 30. Entries are accepted via Submittable (formerly Submishmash).

In the video below, Gay recites a poem at the Page Meets Stage reading series in New York City.

One Line

The Time Is Now
4.4.12

Look through your poem drafts, notes, and writing fragments. Choose one line that you like and refine it until it feels as complete and polished as one line out of context can be. Use that line as a refrain in a new poem. When you've completed a decent draft, try writing an additional draft of the poem without the line, using it instead as the title.

Hierarchy of Regret

The Time Is Now
4.4.12

Think about big and small regrets you have in your life—things you wish you had done, people you wish you had treated better, directions you wish you'd gone. Draw a chart that represents a hierarchy of your regrets. It can be simple or decorative, straightforward or complex. Then write an essay that explores what you see when you look at it.

Blast From the Past

The Time Is Now
4.4.12

Conjure someone you haven't seen or talked to in over ten years. Imagine you receive a phone call from this person today. Why are they calling? What do they want? Write a story about it.

Find the Unfamiliar

The Time Is Now
4.3.12

Take a walk that you know well—through your neighborhood, around the block where you work, or your route to the train or bus. Study this familiar landscape carefully, and try to find a detail that you hadn’t noticed before—a piece of graffiti, a certain row of trees, the pattern in which the sidewalk is cracked. Write about this new observation, small as it may be, starting with physical description and then allowing your thoughts to wander.

Bob Flor: Pinoy Words Expressed

Readings & Workshops Blog
4.2.12

For the month of April, P&W–supported poet, playwright, and presenter of literary events Robert Francis Flor blogs about his writing life and role as co-founder and director of the literary organization Pinoy Words Expressed Kultura Arts. A Seattle native, Flor has published poems in Soundings Review, 4 and 20 Journal, Poets Against the War, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, among others, and his debut play “Daniel’s Mood–Mestizos,” a Studio Lab selection at Freehold Theatre, was published in 2011.

In 2006 I co-founded Pinoy Words Expressed Kultura Arts with a friend—Maria Batayola. Our objective was to introduce the public to Filipino American writers, and we quickly discovered a number of Filipinos producing poetry, literature, and plays. This led us to launch our first reading at the Pagdiriwang Festival. Since then, writers such as Oliver de la Paz, Rick Barot, Geronimo Tagatac, Peter Bacho, Tess Uriza Holthe, Marianne Villaneuva, Toni Bajado, Oscar Penaranda, Donna Miscolta, Ben Gonio, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, and Angela Martinez Dy have been featured. This month I am hard at work coordinating our 2012 reading series.

Poets & Writers, Inc., has supported Pinoy Words Expressed Kultura Arts readings since 2008. This past year, P&W funded the series at Seattle University and the University of Washington. Peter Bacho, author of Leaving Yesler, and Donna Miscolta, author of When the de la Cruz Family Danced, read from their recent novels. The funding supports the continued success of the readings and has elevated the profile of local Filipino writers. It’s also fostered the interest of the community, and several students have been inspired to embark on writing careers.

Pinoy Words Expressed will also be collaborating with the United Filipino Students at Seattle University and the Filipino American Students Association at the University of Washington to host readings from the anthology Hanggang sa Muli—Homecoming Stories for the Filipino Soul.

Photo: Robert Francis Flor.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Seattle is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

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