get to know kcmetroverse

Since the cold snowy February night in 2005 when Kansas City Metropolitan Verse, the Kansas City Chapter of the Missouri State Poetry Society was founded, our core membership has held strong and has added new voices true to our mission statement: Our objective is to celebrate poetry in all its forms, contemporary and classic, to encourage the value of poetry within the community, and to support enthusiasm for this art form.

Kansas City Metropolitan Verse made our first outreach effort by collecting poetry books, marking them for BookCrossing.com and sprinkling them around the city. Any book found on restaurant tables, or movie theater counter tops, or other public shelves left there by chapter members were to be read, listed on the internet connection to be tracked, and passed on. Such fun! And free poetry for the community. That first year KC Metropolitan Verse also provided a scholarship to a student from a school in south Kansas City for a writer’s workshop to help hone the skill of this young poet.

By the second year our chapter decided to publish our own volume of work. With National Poetry Month as a goal, a tradition began. The group was featured this April at the Second Friday Art Crawl in Excelsior Springs, MO, reading from volume 5!

The Kansas City Literary Festival brought opportunity to share space with WriterHouse and Park University on the city’s Country Club Plaza, and a venue for sharing our work. The Plaza, teaming with writers, country-wide and local, provided our first public reading.

As a meet-up group the members of kcmetroverse attend poetry readings around the city. We have heard Ted Kooser, featured poet, as well as Missouri’s first poet Laureate, Walter Bargen, when we hosted the state convention of the Missouri State Poetry Society in 2009. We have attended readings of Donald Hall, Charles Simic, BF Fairchild, Robert Pinsky, Kay Ryan, Billy Collins and countless others as we get together at readings around the city. Kansas City is alive with poetry and we go on a poetry quest. Sitting on the front row at the downtown library we even spent an evening with Langston Hughes (portrayed by a talented re-enactor).

This past spring one of our poets brought a poetry form to our attention, the renga. We attended the launch of a national movement to share art and ideas using this form, America: Now and Here, which linked some of our nation’s finest poets in Crossing State Lines, an American Renga, followed by The K.C. Renga: Ghost Over Water with many of our city’s talented poets. Inspired by these creations, we linked with our own Revival Resurgence Renewal: a kcmetroverse renga. It was published in the Missouri State Poetry Society newsletter, Spare Mule, and was featured in a read-around in a Chicago area circle of creative writers and poets.

Poetry has moved from the pages of our journals to numerous on-line publications as well as published books of poetry. Two poets in our chapter are winners of the Crystal Fields Award for Poetry. Another was nominated by the National Association of University Women for the Thorpe-Menn Award. Among national contributing poets, one of our own was featured with his work in a collection of poetry-inspired abstract paintings displayed in a local gallery. We are also very proud of the four published poets in our circle.

Sunset Poems

At our last meeting, we discussed "renga" poems and talked about the possibility of creating an ongoing renga.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term and who didn't read Brenda's explanation of it, the short description is that it's actually a sequential series of poems, each a follow-on or response to the prior one, written by two or more poets. No clear (to me) decision was reached as to the subject of the renga, or exactly how it would be produced, so this discussion may continue at next month's meeting.

At the end of the meeting, we did some writing, based on the prompt "sunset." Here are some of the poems produced:

Sunsets

I have seen sunsets over mountains, the China Sea,
Pennsylvania, big cities, and villages.
The most glorious was on a mountain
Overlooking Taipei, Taiwan.

It started shy and started to blossom in light.
Then matured to a blood red glow
Blending with the city's turned on lights
And it kissed one and all goodnight.

        Don Fessler


Amarillo Sunset

Today there is only one sunset
not the memory of one
across the widest, flattest terrain

We road out across the vast
immenseness
did i mention the flatness
of the terrain?

The roasting ground wrapped arms around
The fiery orb
shuttered as he settled below
that flat, immense terrain.

        Brenda Conley


Sunset Options

She said, "I prefer sunrises,
It means I'm still here."
Just diagnosed with cancer
I could touch her fear.

As she travels
the chemo road
and radiation tracks
Please, lighten her load.

Await the day
She will be glad
And claims..............
"Sunsets....another day to add."

        Kay Klinkenborg


Sunset

Sunsets over the ocean are best
Watching that burning orb vanish into the water,
Wondering why it doesn't all turn into steam
Or expecting a big sizzling sound
As the hot coals are extinguished.

Why isn't the Sun still wet the next morning?

Do people on the other side of the ocean spend all night
Drying it off
Squeezing the last drops out
Wiping off the last moisture
Just in time for dawn?

        Ralph Acosta


Well, that's it. If you want to submit a sunset poem you've written, i'll post it in the next blog.
Send the poem to: lastMinuteMouse@hotmail.com

Join poets and poetry lovers in this FREE event.

2011 Montserrat  Poetry Festival  

June 5, 2011
1 p.m. to 8 p.m.

check out the website for details:

http://www.kmos.org/Poetry/Index.html


Performance Schedule

1:00 E. John Knapp, Jefferson City

1:20 Alex Wales, Warrensburg

1:40 Faith Bemiss, Sedalia

2:00 Neal Torrey, Bolivar

2:20 Carol Gorski Buckels, Rocheport

2:40 Gustavo Adolfo Aybar, Kansas City

3:00 Brent Martin, Jefferson City

3:20 Tony Shaffer, Warrensburg

3:40 Diana Chang, Fulton

4:00 David Clewell, St. Louis

4:40 Columbia Writers’ Guild (Larry Allen)

4:40 Columbia Writers’ Guild (Eva Ridenour)

4:40 Columbia Writers’ Guild (James Coffman)

5:10 Bernard Hartg, Chamois

5:30 Clarence Wolfshohl, Fulton

5:50 Connie Koch, Sedalia

6:10 Christina Pacosz, Kansas City

6:30 Tantra Zawadi, New York City

7:00 Robert Milton Ingram, Independence

7:20 Evelyn Aholt, Glasgow

7:40 Daniel Mollenkamp, Warrensburg

Kansas City Metropolitan Verse - vol 5 2011

The proof copy is being printed as we speak! If all is as it should be (as I'm sure it is or will be) the bulk order will be submitted to the publisher in plenty of time for a National Poetry Month Book Release.  Advance orders are being taken until Monday, March 21.  The cost is $10. (postage paid by the chapter for advance orders). Mail (or drop by the check ) to 877 NW South Shore Dr. KCMO 64151. The anthology will be available on Amazon.com within a few months.

Hunkered Down by Frank Adams

Hunkered Down -



Forecasters call for a winter storm

then suddenly, as if by magic,

even the trees are quiet

the squirrels are gone

there are no birds at the fountain



people rush to the grocery store

buying milk and liquor

chips and bread

sandwich meat, processed cheese food -

lunches for the kids

fortifying themselves

for the night ahead

the day home from work

hunkered down

praying the heat does not go off

that the power stays on

and that the television

and computer work



doctors call for his pending death

it might be anytime now –

no way to tell

and the world goes silent

the birds do not sing

as the family shops

for milk and eggs

liquor and chips

to fortify themselves

for the night ahead

the day home from work

the waiting

praying it’s soon

praying for it to be over




Frank Adams

WINTER!

think it's gonna snow? 
as i waited for the january poetry submission for this forum and realized it isnt coming, i decided to use this time just to check in and let readers know there is still a blog.  March! i know it will be here soon. then we can climb out of cyberspace and all get together across the table from each other and share some poetry!

the vol 5 anthology submissions are being collected and this volume promises to be as enjoyable a read as those from our past.  the diversity of our voices continues to be our stength.

stay warm and stay safe...  see you in the spring.

december featured poetry by pat berge

Blaze



Blinking awake from night

Reddish orange sky

Covers thrown back

Bare feet hit the floor

Run to the porch

Nose to the screen

Watch golden trees gulp sunrise



Once, she ran toward

The edge of the prairie

Dragging him by the hand

Hurry! Hurry!

It happens so fast!

They sat by corn stalks and

Watched bloodred leak into sky

While Blaze lowered herself

So slowly the eye could not see

Letting poetry play hide and seek

Rising and falling

Rising and falling



She called

Can you meet?

Yes, in an hour.

You bring the sandwiches.

I’ll bring the wine.

Where?

Down by the river.

On an Indian throw

Under a River Birch

Glasses of Sauvignon clinked

Hours of telling and laughing,

Devouring

Croissants and honey crisp apples

Finally quiet, they watched

As trains and cars crept along

The horizon.

Bridges turned black

Against the last