Hey Artist, and a Happy Holiday to you All!
I wanted to update you on the happenings of the group activities and give you future dates for the coming year for you to add to your calendars. We do have the website for everyone to sign up, www.poetry.meetup.com/506/, and realize not everyone can make every week events. If you could just please say a yes or no on the sight, so we have some idea of who is coming, this would help me.
The past few months have really been great. Our attendance has grown, and participation has extended greatly with many new talent and voices of spoken word. The crowds on the last Tuesday night in Robbinsville were tremendous, and helped give many of us more confidence in our performance skills. I thank all of you for your efforts in helping this happen!
My vision when starting this was to be exactly where we are now and grow a community of fellow artist that could build a bond of friendship and more. This has taken shape as many of you desire as well. We have had some time constraints put on us recently, having to wind things down at 8:30, but I am not going to let this hold me back. We have too many other opportunities to go perform at other venues that have no time constraints for the time limit is well over what we need. Dates and opportunities have opened up to us through such venues as Mercer County Community College, presented by Tim Allen- Poet, a once a month Friday night event that will be posted on the calendar. Classics Book Store in Trenton, we are performing at least every other month on Saturday afternoons, and another opportunity just came our way, a school in Trenton that works with students has asked us to come and do a performance for them in late January.
I will try and keep this short, but Karl and I both have spoken about doing some performances for adult living communities, and other outreach type venues. Some of you may feel you want to just stay in the coffee house situation, but I feel any audience is a good one! This opportunity at the school would be only a one time deal for now, but held on a Saturday, and they provide us with lunch. The director has asked that we hold our usually performance, but with extra time for any of their students to stand and share as well.
I hope that you see by us doing events like this it is a chance to bring back the old style ‘Open Mic’ and show people what we are all about. I do see each of you as individuals, but also as a unit bonded by common thread of expressing ourselves through our words and music, and that has to be shared with others. This gives them an opportunity to grow and become the wonderful people you are today.
I am posting the dates, and will send out reminders for dates through the website only, as not to over ‘email’ you with them. If any of you are going to participate in the extra venues outside of the coffee house, please let me know, so I can make arrangements for these events. I also have added below a link to a blog spot I set up for posting news about us. If anyone has a bio or other information, send it my way and we will do a piece on you. Free publicity helps!
Thank you again for all your efforts!
Read, write, sing, play, perform, and Peace!
E
Dates: New Coffee House time: 6:30-8:30
December- 9th/Robbinsville, 16th/Plainsboro
January- 13th/Robbinsville, 6th & 20th/Plainsboro 17th/Classics in Trenton 2-4 PM, 31st/Isles Youth Build School, 1-4 PM
February- 1oth/Robbinsville, 3rd & 17th/Plainsboro
Anyone that is interested in car pooling let me know- Also family & friends are welcome to attend any other venues!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Treasures
In the past eight years I have really begun to appreciate poetry written by poets of the past. Such as Shakespear, Robert and Elizabeth Browning and now Robert Frost. My husband stopped by a yard sale and noticed a small poetry book. Green but faded by time, the pages slightly so yellow and worn, and just this morning began to read one of its poems, The Road Not Taken.
As I listened to him struggle to put the sentences together in rhyme as poets intended, I recognized its words, line by line. A poem popular through the years, and its lines belted out so many times in schools, on television, and many other ways.
I finally asked to see my gift, and would read its words in its intended form. I began to flip through the pages, going from front to back; then back to front. Noticing that their was a name on the front inside cover, Robert Frost, Amherst, and then a few more pages forward a handwritten poem, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening. Curiosity took me to the next few pages that would tell me in what year was this published, and what printed edition it would be.
To my surprise, this small pocket book as they called them in those days, was a first edition, and had been Robert Frost very own book. He had a habit of writing poems in the first few pages of books, and a recent discovery of an unpublished poem was discovered written in one of his personal friends books.
As I begin to read all twelve poems that represent the twelve months of the calendar year, I can in vision what he is seeing at that point and time. His extra poem and the fact that he wrote his name and the college, Amherst, at where he was teaching at the time, make me think this was his very own personal book.
I will treasure this gift from my loving husband who wishes to shower me with his own poetry, feeling that words do not come as easily as mine, but his love is poetry enough for me!
As I listened to him struggle to put the sentences together in rhyme as poets intended, I recognized its words, line by line. A poem popular through the years, and its lines belted out so many times in schools, on television, and many other ways.
I finally asked to see my gift, and would read its words in its intended form. I began to flip through the pages, going from front to back; then back to front. Noticing that their was a name on the front inside cover, Robert Frost, Amherst, and then a few more pages forward a handwritten poem, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening. Curiosity took me to the next few pages that would tell me in what year was this published, and what printed edition it would be.
To my surprise, this small pocket book as they called them in those days, was a first edition, and had been Robert Frost very own book. He had a habit of writing poems in the first few pages of books, and a recent discovery of an unpublished poem was discovered written in one of his personal friends books.
As I begin to read all twelve poems that represent the twelve months of the calendar year, I can in vision what he is seeing at that point and time. His extra poem and the fact that he wrote his name and the college, Amherst, at where he was teaching at the time, make me think this was his very own personal book.
I will treasure this gift from my loving husband who wishes to shower me with his own poetry, feeling that words do not come as easily as mine, but his love is poetry enough for me!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Cultural Art Expression- Open Mic
I host an open mic here in NJ and am excited about our first official public performance, Performance & Art. I am displaying some of my art work with another artist and friend Gen. Acoustic music and poetry will be presented during the night as we enjoy the environment of a relaxed coffee house setting. I can smell the beans roasting right now!
Hopefully this venue has caught on; its free and fun for the whole family. I first got involved in open mic during the early 90's in Dallas, an area known as Deep Ellum. There was a bar listed in that district, Chumley's, and a friend asked me if I wanted to go check it out. She had no idea I was even a writer. I had not written in quite a while. I had a chronically ill daughter who need a lot of attention and did not go out much, or have the mental capacity to concentrate on my art forms. Once I got up on that stage and watch the more seasoned Spoken Word Poets, I was hooked!
If anyone out there writes and feels shy about it, give it a try, and keep going until you start belting it out in your sleep. I find writing a drug of unimaginable proportion. Give me the largest dose, and let me have the microphone...
Friday, October 3, 2008
Spoken Word is Self Expression
When we stand in front of someone and express our feelings about what a shitty day we had, or the great vacation we just took, or even about the great meal we cooked just for ourselves...that is Spoken Word. Just write it down, and it turns into prose, break it down, and it turns into poetry or free verse. I believe that if something is own our mind and we write it down, it becomes the thought on that piece of paper; it is still ours, but we have separated ourselves from it. Especially if it is a negative thing that becomes part of our magnetic aura and then we draw in more negative vibes that screw our whole day or life up.
I wrote this piece after a few months of opening my own cafe inside a woman's health food store. I had a hard time fitting my style into her space, and this is what came out. After I wrote it, I loved coming to work and the humor of it helped me see clear of her situation-
Kitchen Rant
Morning drain
Smells like sewage and shit
Scented candles burn surreal relief
Enters the store police
Pantry shelves filled with clutter
She moves through door, the store, my mind
Preemptive remarks sounding like mutter.
(sing with rhythm ) move the pans to the top
From underneath the pots
Bare cabinets now leave
Wasted space to heave
Sweep up with the mop
Sling food around the juicer
Its m u s i c and n o i s e
Carrot, beet, celery, and apple hip hop
Front door opens, smiling faces
At any cost all ready to share
Buying food products to repair
Some check out today’s menu…
maple salmon, BBQ beef, fake meats
Caribbean grits, 3 kinds of soup
Salads of all kinds….
Carrot apple raisin, apple slaw
Crunchy raw brownies to finish it all
Lets regroup… purely all healthy cuisine
Here nor there… so what’s a little disorder
As long as we roll and bounce
Through the days short mortars
Sweeping around the change
Our work feeds the soul
Merits of this and that
With little technique, just more cooperative ingredients
But Monmouth of grief if not obedient
Covering and disguising what’s really going on…
high rent and bad location, location, location
Too many chairs and not enough tables
Damn to no oven and no menu fabrications
What’s good is the food, company present and regular creations
Counter space seating and talk of the nation
To the end of the day, dishes piled high
Food splattered aprons, needy floors and counters
To letting sleeping dogs lie.
- E, 2008 © All work displayed on here is the property of Elizabeth Stelling, CookAppeal, LLC
I wrote this piece after a few months of opening my own cafe inside a woman's health food store. I had a hard time fitting my style into her space, and this is what came out. After I wrote it, I loved coming to work and the humor of it helped me see clear of her situation-
Kitchen Rant
Morning drain
Smells like sewage and shit
Scented candles burn surreal relief
Enters the store police
Pantry shelves filled with clutter
She moves through door, the store, my mind
Preemptive remarks sounding like mutter.
(sing with rhythm ) move the pans to the top
From underneath the pots
Bare cabinets now leave
Wasted space to heave
Sweep up with the mop
Sling food around the juicer
Its m u s i c and n o i s e
Carrot, beet, celery, and apple hip hop
Front door opens, smiling faces
At any cost all ready to share
Buying food products to repair
Some check out today’s menu…
maple salmon, BBQ beef, fake meats
Caribbean grits, 3 kinds of soup
Salads of all kinds….
Carrot apple raisin, apple slaw
Crunchy raw brownies to finish it all
Lets regroup… purely all healthy cuisine
Here nor there… so what’s a little disorder
As long as we roll and bounce
Through the days short mortars
Sweeping around the change
Our work feeds the soul
Merits of this and that
With little technique, just more cooperative ingredients
But Monmouth of grief if not obedient
Covering and disguising what’s really going on…
high rent and bad location, location, location
Too many chairs and not enough tables
Damn to no oven and no menu fabrications
What’s good is the food, company present and regular creations
Counter space seating and talk of the nation
To the end of the day, dishes piled high
Food splattered aprons, needy floors and counters
To letting sleeping dogs lie.
- E, 2008 © All work displayed on here is the property of Elizabeth Stelling, CookAppeal, LLC
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