Westland Reads Poetry!

Thank you to all of the writers who made our 1st annual Westland Writes Poetry book a huge success. Thank you as well to all of the contributing writers who came out to read their work. It was a lot of fun to hear the poems in each of the author's voice (especially for me since i spent so much time formatting the publication and reading and re-reading poems to make sure they came out looking as spectacular as they came in).

It was also fun to meet all of the writers and see them all interact after the reading (it was as if we all collectively thought, "there's more of us here than i thought"). There were many happy faces at the sight of the book and the author's name and words in print- family and friends enjoyed it, but the authors were certainly the proudest.

We even had the added bonus (some might say nerve-wracking or hair-raising bonus) of WLND filming the event and promising a production DVD for the library and also to air on cable access. So look for it in the library soon- and I promise to let you know as soon as I do when it will come out on cable. (if you would like to check the WLND site yourself, you can do this at: http://ci.westland.mi.us/communityrelations/32.html

I hope this event serves to propel the monthly poetry group forward and upward. I really feel like there is so much talent that can be shared and nurtured here that it'd be a shame for us to keep it to our individual selves. Our next poetry group is scheduled for next Wednesday, June 3rd (Meeting Room C, maybe we can explode out of our tiny space there).

There has been talk of creating a Fiction writing group here. If anybody else is interested, please email me (at andy.schuck@westlandlibrary.org) or add a comment here.

Westland Writes ... Poetry reading date set

We will be hosting a poetry reading for the Westland Writes ... Poetry book. It will be in the library on Thursday, May 21st at 6 p.m. (if the library looks like it is closed, that is true. This will be a special "after hours" event for all of our poets and their families and friends)

I am trying to get all of the contributors to confirm (so far, I have 12 and am waiting on 8 others). Everyone who has contributed will receive a book, too- if we get to hear you read it, so much better!

Hope to see you Thursday!

p.s. If you're looking for a new book of poetry to read, I would recommend two recent ones that I have read: Patricia Smith's "Blood Dazzler" which takes on various personas involved in the Hurricane Katrina disaster and puts them to beautiful ends in mainly rhyming poems; and Paul Guest's "My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge", which reads like a cross between the Beat poets (Ginsberg kind of but closer to Ferlinghetti and Corso) and the New York poets (O'Hara's off the cuff, first-person sentiments with Ashberry's abstractness). Check them out!

Westland Writes ... Poetry

Well, I finally finished editing for our annual poetry month book, "Westland Writes ... Poetry". Everybody who contributed a poem or two (at least 20 of you) will be receiving a copy of the book I created on www.blurb.com 

If you want to take a look at it- or buy a copy b/c you forgot to submit a poem, but want a copy for your home- just go to the blurb website and type in our book name. We will be hosting a reading for those contributors (reading date TBA), but everyone is invited to come and listen. Keep your eyes and ears open for the date, which will hopefully happen before Memorial Day.

btw, the "Westland Writes ..." name is written like that b/c it is our hope to do books other than poetry in the future (memoirs, short fiction, etc.) and we can easily substitute the genre part after the "Westland Writes" part. Just fyi, if anyone wanted to know.

See you at our next meeting on Wednesday June 3rd from 7-8 p.m.