Celebrate National Poetry Month with San Diego poets, a rebel ‘Dickinson’ and more
Maybe it was Amanda Gorman’s stirring inauguration poem, “The Hill We Climb.” Maybe it’s the need to do something besides climbing the same mountain, all day, every day. Or maybe it’s the arrival of spring and the desire to give yourself an emotional refresh.
Whatever the reason, if you are aching for a literary shot in the arm, National Poetry Month is here for you and your weary synapses. From free online workshops to a decidedly unbound Emily Dickinson, here are some cultural and community resources to help you find the right words for this weird time.
San Diego Poetry of Resilience project
Challenging times call for creative thinking, so what better way to respond to our roller coaster lives than by writing about the ride?
Just in time for National Poetry Month, the city of San Diego is launching a digital platform for poetry. The centerpiece of the platform is a series of monthly online poetry-writing
workshops curated by San Diego poet laureate Ron Salisbury. It is part of the San Diego Poetry of Resilience project, which Salisbury started last year to provide some light during the pandemic darkness.
On the first Friday of every month, the new digital platform will post a new on-demand poetry workshop. The workshops will include talks by Salisbury and guest poets, writing tips and writing prompts. In the April 2
workshop, Salisbury discussed “The Nature of Poetry Today,” where he examined four dramatic shifts in the American poetry scene that shaped the way poems are being written now.
After viewing the workshops, participants have the option of submitting a poem of resilience. Up to 30 poems will be selected by Salisbury to appear in a special section of the 2021-2022 San Diego Poetry Annual. The workshops will run through September.
A poetry reading and open-mic event for poets, workshop participants and the public is tentatively scheduled for the fall. If you’re thinking it or feeling it, poetry can help you make sense of it.
Go to the San Diego Poetry of Resilience site (poetry-sandiego.hub. arcgis.com) for information.
“Dickinson” on Apple TV+
Are you ready for an Emily Dickinson who swears? And kisses girls? And shares a carriage with Death, who is played by rapper Wiz Khalifa? Ready or not, it’s the Emily Dickinson you will get in “Dickinson,” the Apple TV+ series that gives us a version of the Belle of Amherst that is anything but dainty.
Now in its second season, “Dickinson” is set in the 19th century, but it looks at the iconic poet and famous shut-in through a lens that
is so modern, it could belong to your iPhone camera.
As envisioned by creator Alena Smith (“The Affair”), this Emily (played with red-blooded verve by Hailee Steinfeld) hates chores, loves her brother’s fiancée (Ella Hunt) and burns with the desire to write her fingers to the bone. She is moody, sarcastic and rebellious. And when she finally finishes writing “Because I could not stop for death,” she triumphantly crows, “Nailed it!”
The Emily of “Dickinson” is a thoroughly modern soul champing at her 19th-century bit, a battle that Smith sets to a time-warping soundtrack featuring Billie Eilish, Lizzo and Mitski. But our heroine is still the author of the quietly stormy poems — “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”; “Hope is the thing with feathers,” “Wild nights Wild nights!” — that have been speaking to unquiet hearts for generations now.
To its credit, “Dickinson”
pays tribute to the poems and the poet, as we see the inspirations behind some of her most famous works and feel the rush of emotions that fueled her creative fever. The series plays with language, music and mood, but it doesn’t mess around with the poetry.
“I have one purpose in life,” Emily says in the first episode. “And that is to become a great writer.” Yeah, she nailed it.
“Why to These Rocks” anthology
The works featured in this rich new anthology are all the product of the Community of Writers, an annual gathering of poets who hunker down in the wooded beauty of Squaw Valley for a week of intensive workshops, writing marathons and readings in the most beautiful setting possible.
The anthology celebrates the 50th anniversary of the program with poems from its staff poets, a powerhouse group that includes Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds and UC San Diego professor Kazim Ali. There are also poems from writers who have participated in the program, a stellar group that includes Cal State San Marcos professor Brandon Cesmat, SDSU professor Blas Falconer and Imperial Valley native Jennifer Givhan.
From Givhan’s “The Cheerleaders,” a pointed, passionate response to the people “here at the mountain camp” who wrote off cheerleaders as being antifeminist, to Ali’s “The Failure of Navigation in the Valley,” which looks at all the ways a person can get lost (“No body is fixed in position no one can be known”), these exhilarating poems are inspired by the beauty of the place and the freedom of being set loose in your own head. Also the freedom of being released from your own head, if out of your head is where you need to go.
“Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry From the
Community of Writers” is out April 13 on Heyday Books. There will be a virtual reading on April 21 at 6:30 p.m., featuring anthology editor Lisa Alvarez, staff poets Francisco Aragon, Katie Ford, Dorianne Laux, and many others. Go to heydeybooks.com to register.
Art Produce community workshops
Catherine Kineavy has been the the poet-in-residence at Art Produce in North Park since March, and she will be sharing her skills and insight with the community through free online workshops that will use poetry to bring our virtual selves together.
On Saturday, the topic is “The People’s Poetry: Cultivating Civic Imagination in Democracy,” which will bring new life and relevancy to the language of politics through the language of poetry. On April 24, Kineavy will help us expand our bubble lives with “Poetry of Space, Poetry of Place: Exploring Home and Environment.” The workshop will get everyone thinking about how the last year has uprooted us, and how poetry can be used to create a sacred space inside the places we know all too well. Free verse, indeed.
Catherine Kineavy’s free community workshops will be held on Zoom from
10 a.m. to noon Apri0l 1`and 24. To register, go to artproduce.org/poetryworkshops.html.