Texas Pages

I wanted to open my day with poetry.

Birdsong had already done its warm-up act.

So I went to hear the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, the daugher of a Palestinian father and an American mother. She spoke of poetry that busts loose from immigrants and immigrant children--fitting, of course, because this was a conference on newcomers.

Intelligence has no gender.

That was the rallying passion for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th century nun who fought to be educated.

And a chain of homages to her poetry, her prose and her spirit are linking fans through the United States. Saturday, some 400 persons poured into the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas for the Sor Juana Festival. The festival included a movie, music, discussion and a play all focused on the Mexican poet and writer.

(Image courtesy Latino Cultural Center)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Millions watched Elizabeth Alexander read a poem last month at President Obama's inauguration. But few, so far, have wanted to buy it.
Alexander's Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration, has sold just 6,000 copies so far, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75 percent of sales. The poem was published Feb. 6 as a paperback by Graywolf Press with an announced first printing of 100,000 copies.
The inaugural reading by Alexander, a highly regarded poet, apparently lacked the spark of predecessor Maya Angelou, whose "On the Pulse of the Morning" -- read at President Clinton's 1993 inaugural -- became a million seller.
Alexander was just the fourth inaugural poet, following Robert Frost, Angelou and Miller Williams.

Poets recently honored by the Poetry Society of Texas will be reading 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Benbrook Public Library.

On the schedule are Naomi Simmons, Mike Baldwin, Paul Holcomb, Barbara Berry, Susan Maxwell Campbell, Marilyn Komecek, Budd Mahan, Hank Longcrier and Jeannette Strother, president of the society.

(Thanks to Susan Vogel Taylor for the tip.)

Paul Guest's My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is reviewed today on GuideLive. Here's a sample of his work, provided by HarperCollins.

My Arms
By Paul Guest

My arms are mostly cosmetic. When I say this
to a stranger, often he'll wince
like he wants to hide inside his eyes.
Vanish from the day. I shouldn't laugh,
should be tired twenty-one years
into the telling of a poor joke,
made of pain, nerves snuffed like wicks. Back
then, I was a boy. No secret
that I fell through that
summer like a star. And here I am
wanting spring and birdsong
after tedious winter. Once I prayed
my arms might serve me
again, roll toothpaste from the tube,
dump rice into boiling water,
swat dead the mosquito
drilling its derrick face
through my skin. That symmetry,
left and right, one and one--
it's not a math I know,
not anymore. There are days I want
to lament broken glass
or put my fist through the door
or throttle the blue sky's silent
throat. There are nights
full of ache, full of nothing nimble.
No music but smashed guitars
would be enough. How many clasps
and how many buttons
did I try with my teeth
until her hands did for me what I could not?
Untrue to say I lost count
of what I never hoped to keep.
A lie to say that when
she held my hands to her hips
and her body above mine,
I loved such need, I did not hate us both.

Here's something pleasant and Texasy to start the day. It's John Updike, reading a poem titled "Atlanta-Dallas/Ft Worth, 11:10 p.m."

Somewhere in Texas, a drill team has been immortalized.

Mr. Updike's The Widows of Eastwick is due out Oct. 21.

Shin Yu Pi, one of the original bloggers on Texas Pages, departed for cooler climes awhile back. But fans will be able to find her work in a new project, Haiku Not Bombs, being published by the Booklyn Artist Alliance.

Our New York readers will be able to catch her 8 p.m. July 9 at Think Coffee, 248 Mercer Street, where several of the contributors will read from the book in what is promised to be a multimedia extravaganza. Dallas readers -- raise a ruckus, maybe we can persuade her to drop by for a local presentation.

If you're in Dallas, you can at least look forward to this event on Friday:

Cliff Roberts, founder and president of the Fort Worth Haiku Society, will read 7 p.m. that dat at Priya Yoga Studio, 6337 Prospect.

If you're not in Dallas, a lovely sample of his work can be found here.

Has DART really been displaying poetry on its buses and trains for a whole decade now?

Yes, it has. And the newest samples were revealed this morning.

These newest posters, DART says in a press release, feature Texas poets Joaquin Zihuatanejo, "an award-winning poet and teacher who captures pagan and Christian influences in the duality of his Chicano culture," and Natasha Carrizosa, whose "poems spring from her dual heritage of African- and Mexican-American."

Work by Dallas poets Martha Heimberg and Jerry McElveen are also included.

The Poetry Grind in Dallas is presenting a three-day invitational poetry slam, featuring 16 teams from seven states.

According to the press release, the 11th annual Southwest Shootout kicks off at 8:30 p.m. June 19th at Poetry Exposition Park Café, 841 Exposition Ave.

You can click here for the full schedule, but please note this detail, the best I have seen in any press release all year:

Saturday's Haiku Death Match is free and open to the public.

Susan Vogel Taylor reports that poets Joaquin Zihuatanjo and Natasha Carrizosawill do a reading 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Barnes and Noble, 1620 S. University Dr., Fort Worth.

Robert Wynne will host an open mic beforehand.

I'm on a cloud floating by and I've gone mad but madness flows away in a tall shining work of Art and I'm standing in front of a fountain and the world's ringing down through me and there are no fields of migrants mixing hair and bone into concrete.

This line originally appeared in The DMQ Review. Rauan will be tonight's featured reader at the Dallas Poets Community open mic at 7 p.m. at Half Price Books on Northwest Highway.

The last, the very last, so richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing against a white stone.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

She had eyes like two turntables mix(h)er in between my dreams and reality blend in ancient themes the bas(e)is of isis cross-faded to ankh the beat drops like a cliff overlooking my heart.

From The Associated Press:

Gary Snyder, a poet known for his verse about nature and spirituality and a former member of the beat movement along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, has won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, awarded annually by the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation.
"Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself," Christian Wiman, chair of the selection committee, said in a statement Tuesday.
Mr. Snyder, who turns 78 in May, has published such collections as Regarding Wave, No Nature and Turtle Island, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975.

The weight of this sad time we must obey/Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

*This line was suggested by Dallas poet M.A.M. Redmond. Please share your favorite lines of poetry by submitting a comment or e-mailing me.

The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine.

Hoagland will be at the Round Top poetry festival this weekend.

Before poetry month slips away, here's a brief tribute to a couple of gifted women.

The first is the author of one of my favorite poems, Ann Darr. She wrote "Before Dawn," wherein she talks of the nasty things she will do to a bird that has awakened her. The last lines are:

I shall debird him. Hold.
On what do I sharpen my cry?

Ms. Darr, it turns out, trained in Sweetwater, Texas during WWII, as one of the pioneering WASP pilots. She died late last year.

His father lifted him, tucking his arms under the shoulders and knees of a son lighter than origami, pieta flowering as he carried the boy.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

According to Academy of American Poets, this is the 3rd most popular poem clicked on by Texas readers.

I know that many of you have been enjoying Michael Grabell's "Morning Verse" selections.

So be sure to catch him, along with Jack Myers, Tammy Gomez and Charlot Nace at The Writer's Garret's National Poetry Month Reading 7 p.m. Friday at Paperbacks Plus 6115 La Vista Dr.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

According to the Academy of American Poets, this is the 2nd most popular poem clicked on by Texas readers.

Here is a line of poetry to celebrate Earth Day:

And when the sun goes down, her voice among the aisles incites the timid prayer of the minutest cricket.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, rage, rage against the dying of the light.

According to the Academy of American Poets, this is the most popular poem clicked on by Texas readers.

Last night marked the end of Dallas' poetrifecta with three former poet laureates (Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky and Robert Hass) reading in the Dallas area in just 50 days. Hass, who earlier this month won the Pulitzer, read at Arts & Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Describing Dallas as a "dazzling city," Hass said that after attending the museum's J.M.W. Turner exhibit, he walked through downtown, marveling at the mixture of skyscrapers and older merchant buildings. "Every perspective was amazing because of the architecture downtown," he said. The older buildings, "looked like something out of Edward Hopper."

It was fitting for a night that featured poetry, art and poetry inspired by art. Hass began by reading several poems he had translated from Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz reflecting on various artworks. He then read a poem that tried to mimic the squeegeed blur of artist Gerhard Richter's works and another poem that featured Vermeer's "Milkmaid." The night ended with a series of spoken word poems by Dallas teenagers inspired by works in the museum.

The introducers spoke highly of Hass' humility. Indeed, the first four poems he read were "Envy of Other People's Poetry," "The Problem with Describing Colors," "The Problem with Describing Trees" and "Time and Materials," which starts and stops as the speaker says, "The object of this poem is ..."

In my love's body it is Sunday.

-M.A.M. Redmond, "In Praise of His Hands"

Joan Hunter Dunn, who inspired John Betjeman's classic poem "A Subaltern's Love Song," has died at 92.

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. (aside: This could be the start of some really bad jokes.)

Here's a line from the one I'm carrying:

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

David Taylor sends along this link to the presentation made by Robert Michael Pyle, keynote speaker at last Friday's conference. (It opens with RealPlayer.)

David himself has a new book of poetry, Praying Up the Sun. He'll be giving a reading 7 p.m. Saturday at Salon Mijangos, 1906 S. Flores in San Antonio.

I do not know which to prefer, the beauty of inflections or the beauty of innuendos, the blackbird whistling or just after.

White dew on the jade stairs;
In the long night it has wet her silk stockings.
Now she lowers the crystal screen
And watches through the beads an autumn moon.

I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed.

-Robert Hass, "Meditations at Lagunitas"

Robert Hass, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, reads Friday night at Arts & Letters Live.

I'm not saying life won't continue
with its cups and its keys and rivers to cross
but sorrow will always buzz, iridescent
on black-veined wings...

Howells, a longtime member of the Dallas Poets Community and managing editor of its journal, Ilya's Honey, recently published a new chapbook, Black Crow in Flight.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
...
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Monday for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."
Daniel Walker Howe won for history for "What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848."
John Matteson won for biography for "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father."
Saul Friedlander won the general nonfiction award for "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945."
Two prizes were awarded for poetry: Robert Hass for "Time and Materials" and Philip Schultz for "Failure."
-- The Associated Press

Green Buddhas on the fruit stand. We eat the smile and spit out the teeth.

Water pouring into a plastic bucket sounds like fingers on a drum.

Many small hands issuing from a waterfall means silence mothered me.

Lee will read tomorrow night at the Beall Poetry Festival at Baylor University in Waco.

Glory be to God for dappled things--for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty"

To celebrate National Poetry Month, I'll be posting a new line of poetry every morning on Texas Pages for a little feature called "Morning Verse." The lines will span from ancient haiku to slam poetry and include a variety of voices from Shakespeare to Allen Ginsberg to Lucille Clifton. Every Friday, we'll feature lines from our very own poets in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Feel free to tell us what you think, send us a poem inspired by the line or recommend your own favorite lines. Dallas poets, especially, please send me the best lines from your poems for the Friday feature.

Without further ado, here is the first line:

I was about to have my hair combed into the new music everyone was singing.

Anthony Douglas is scheduled to read from his poems and the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Barnes and Noble, 1620 S.University Dr., Fort Worth.

This just in ... or at least, just discovered in my mailbox:

Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate and recent author of the well-received Gulf Music, will speak 7:30 p.m. March 5 at Temple Emanu-El, 8500 Hillcrest Ave.

With Billy Collins appearing at Collin County Community College at 7 p.m. Wednesday, it's a rather glorious season for poetry fans.

Shin Yu Pai, an original and entertaining Texas Pages blogger until she had to leave us for cooler climes, will be back in town Feb. 26-28 at the Richland College Literary Festival.

She says:

"The line-up for the 3-day fest will include Alvaro Cardona-Hine, Sheryl St. Germain, myself, and a few other presenters. I read on Thursday morning, 2/28, at 11 a.m. for 1 hour and will do a slide show/reading presentation, to be followed by a 50-minute poetry-writing workshop. The festival is free and open to the public."

More details as I receive them.

Poets are invited to join in a reading 7 p.m. Friday at Starbucks
Montgomery Ward Plaza 2600 West 7th Street, Fort Worth.

Avis Herndon is host.

(Thanks to Susan Vogel Taylor for the heads-up, as always.)

The Fort Worth Community Arts Center presents Michele Baker tonight at 7:30. Her bio says:

Tammy Gomez will be featured tomorrow at 1919 Hemphill.
There's an open mic from 8 to 9:30 p.m.; she's scheduled to go on at 9:30.

Nancy Churnin has receieved word that LaMisha , 113 N. Kentucky St. in McKinney, is planning open-mic poetry 7:15 p.m. Sunday.

Would-be poets are asked to arrive early to register.

It's been a while since I've posted, but I recently came across a poem that has my mind going in circles.

I'm taking a class with Brian Clements this weekend at The Writer's Garret (where I volunteer and teach), and he's assigned us to read Saints of Hysteria, a book on collaborative poetry. Collaborative poetry is essentially when two or more poets trade lines back and forth to create a poem.

One of the poems is a sestina called "Crone Rhapsody" by Kenneth Koch and John Ashberry. For the uninitiated, a sestina is made up of six six-line stanzas and one three-line stanza. The last words in the first six lines repeat in a strict pattern throughout the rest of the poem. For example, in one of the most famous sestinas - "Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop - the first six lines end with house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac and tears. The next stanza ends with tears, house, almanac, grandmother, stove, child. And so on and so on.

Well, that apparently was too easy for Koch and Ashberry.

In "Crone Rhapsody," every line must also have a flower, a tree, a fruit, a game, a famous old lady and the word "bathtub."

Born in New York City in 1950, Arthur Sze is a second-generation Chinese American. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, Sze is the author of eight books of poetry, including Quipu (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 (1998), and Archipelago (1995).

He is also a celebrated translator, and released The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese in 2001.

About his work, the poet Jackson Mac Low has said, "The word 'compassion' is much overused—'clarity' less so—but Arthur Sze is truly a poet of clarity and compassion."

He is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, three grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and a Western States Book Award for Translation. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe.

Arthur Sze will read from his work at the Trammell Crow Collection of Asian Art at 2010 Flora Street on Thursday, October 11, at 7 pm. This event is FREE to the public and co-sponsored by WordSpace.

From The Associated Press:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Author Robert Jordan, whose Wheel of Time series of fantasy novels sold millions of copies, has died of a rare blood disease, his aide said Monday. He was 58.

Forwarded by Susan Vogel Taylor, here's news of a happening tonight at 1919 Hemphill in Fort Worth. (I haven't been there, but it looks as if you might want to scrape the "W" sticker off your Land Rover before you attend.)

Trusty correspondent Susan Vogel-Taylor sends news of the following:

The Panther City Poetry Open Mic has switched to every Monday, 7 - 9 p.m.at the Panther City Coffee Co., 2918 W. Berry, Fort Worth. Crystal Dozier and Tim Thompson are co-hosts.

Basement Poetry takes place at 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month at Recycled Books and Records, 200 Locust Street, Denton. The host is Samika Swift; the next one is scheduled for Sept. 26.

Regular correspondent Susan Vogel Taylor sends a reminder about the 2nd Tuesday Poetry Series at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

From her e-mail:

2nd Tuesday Poetry Series Presents "Extension Time Blues"
...in which Poets Respond to the Sorrows and Aggravations of Income Tax Preparation.

Originally scheduled for April as "Tax Time Blues," the program was canceled due to bad weather. Let's hope we don't get rained out this time.

The Poetry Grind will present The 2nd Annual Dallas Invitational Poetry Slam Weekend at Pugsley's Library, 2443 Walnut Hill.

From the press release:

7 p.m. Aug. 3, New York poet Roger Bonair-agard performs. Tickets: $5 at the door, $3 with current Student ID. (For more information on Bonair-agard, visit www.rogerbonairagard.com .)

1 p.m., Aug. 4th, Bonair-Agard will teach a writing/performance workshop at Pugsley’s Library. Fee: $10.

7 p.m. Aug. 5 -- Fifteen Poetry Slam teams from Boston to Berkley and Seattle to Atlanta will converge at Pugsley’s Library to battle in 3 minute rounds. Two National Slam Team Champions, two Individual World Poetry Slam Champions (Buddy Wakefield and Ed Mabrey) and 15 HBO Def Poetry Jam Poets will be competing. $12 at the door, $10 in advance, $8 with Valid Student I.D. Advanced Tickets available at Pugsley’s Library or on line at www.poetrygrind.com

A look at some of the writers who will be appearing at the Texas Unbound Literary Festival:

Alysa Hayes received a B.A. from Texas A&M University, where she won the 2005 Gordone Award in Poetry. She has participated in workshops under various noteworthy poets including Yusef Komunyakaa, Natasha Trethewey and Afaa Weaver.

RITUALS: THE BAPTISM

Father, dipping me into water,
your little girl’s gone blue –
fish eyes all wide and ready
for the fork.

I won’t ever stop breathing
in this river’s blood,
this high current rumble.

From below,
the sun is a good star
and we are not ourselves.

I know you, and I know
this is not you.
Give me a good push,

one good push down
and I swear, poppa,
I won’t ever come to
a man’s hands again.

previously published in Callaloo 27:4

Sojourn at the University of Texas at Dallas is inaugurating a new poetry reading series this summer at the UTD Pub. Tentative schedule below the jump.

Here's the link to the PennSound archive, a treasure trove of free, downloadable recordings. (The story is attached below.)

The May/June issue of Nha Magazine features my profile on piece Vietnamese-American poet and artist Mong Lan. Dallasites may remember Mong Lan from her residency at the Dallas Museum of Art and the now defunct Southside on Lamar Artist Program in 2005. Though born in Viet Nam, the poet grew up in the Sugerland section of Houston, where her studies in visual art began. The piece looks at Mong Lan's most recent poetry book Why is the Edge Always Windy? (Tupelo Press), her influences, and her recent projects.

For those who missed it, an interesting debate is shaping up on the subject of the new Poet Laureate of Texas.

I had wondered whether people thought he was the right person for the job. And a few people are not shy about saying what they think. Just read the comments ...

The Fort Worth Youth Poetry Slam has a new deadline -- May 5 -- and is now open to youths from outside Tarrant County.

A couple of events should appeal to those who like their poetry slammed.

The Fort Worth Youth Poetry Slam, open to students ages 11 to 18, is coming up on May 8th at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, 1300 Gendy Street. The deadline for entries is May 5. For entries or information, e-mail Michael Guinn at jordanmichaelg@yahoo.com (Put YOUTH SLAM in the Subject Line) or call him at 817-412-3964.

Over on this side of town, poets will be competing for a spot on the Dallas Poetry Slam team during the annual Grand Slam, 8 p.m. Friday, at the Soda Gallery, 408 N. Bishop Ave., Suite 101 in Dallas. Donation: $5. For more information call 214-293-3865 or visit www.myspace.com/dallaspoetryslam or www.thesodagallery.com.

[Updated April 27th with new deadline for the youth slam event.]

For those of who looking for rhyme and reason in your tax forms, here's a reminder:

The 2nd Tuesday Poetry Series at The Fort Worth Community Arts Center presents "Tax Time Blues ... in which Poets Respond to the Sorrows and Aggravations of Income Tax Preparation" 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the center, 1300 Gendy St.

Coordinator Susan Vogel Taylor forwarded some additional samples. which are posted below. (We ran some earlier work here when the contest was announced.)

Consumers of the Virginia Tech story might know Nikki Giovanni as the professor who gave the convocation address or the creative writing instructor who refused to allow Cho to stay in her class because his poetry scared the other students. What they might not know is that she is also one of the best-selling poets. According to the Poetry Society of America, her volume, Acolytes, was No. 8 and her book of collected poems was No. 9.

Susan Vogel Taylor -- one of the folks behind the "Tax Time Blues" poetry contest we mentioned awhile back (note the extened deadline below that item) -- passes along this list of Fort Worth poetry venues she compiled.

(Venues come and venues go, so it's wise to call ahead before showing up with your masterwork.)

I picked up some interesting tidbits at poet and professor Mary Jo Salter's lecture on the music of Emily Dickinson last night at SMU. For example, did you know that most of Dickinson's poems can be sung to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas"?

Here's a link to the song to familiarize yourself with the tune. Try it yourself with "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" after the break.

Tom Mayo's poetry quiz on Sunday was fun.
He mentioned Wislawa Szymborska, who's among my favorites.
Her name may be off-putting to Westerners, but her poems are some of the most accessible a poetryphobe (or poetryphile) could hope to find -- in translation, they are, anyway. Check out the one about a cat roaming a room after its owner has died. Here's another site about her.

Marla DeShong Alupoaicei of Frisco has been announced as one of four $10,000 first-prize winners in the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Competition.

She's a freelance writer and editor who has written five collections of poetry and has won several other writing competitions, including the Purdue University Writing Competition and the 2005 Writer's Digest Poetry Competition.

You can find samples of her work at the above link.

Try telling that to Kit Carson.

(Photo provided by www.gutenberg.org)

He's the star of "Blood and Thunder," Hampton Sides' excellent history of the Southwest frontier. Carson was someone tough enough to walk 20 miles barefoot through a cactus-filled desert, cold enough to kill a man on the command of a superior, clever enough to get out of scrapes that would have killed just about anyone else. (And I'm only halfway through the book.)

He was also illiterate. But here is what happened when someone read him poetry in a Washington, D.C. parlor:

Tom's quiz for National Poetry Month appears in Sunday's books section.

Here's some reading he recommends.

What rhymes with "1099-R"?

If you have an idea, you need to take part in the "2nd Tuesday Poetry Series/
Special Tax Poetry Reading" 7:30 April 24 at Fort Worth Community Arts Center
1300 Gendy St., Fort Worth

The filing deadline is April 17 -- just like the IRS. Here are the organizers' rules:

Poems should present your take on preparing your tax information.
Maximum entries - three poems, of no more than fifty lines each.
Poetry may be in any style or form.

Please send a 50-word bio with your poetry submissions.

Previously written work may be submitted.

You do not have to be present to have your poem read.

E-mail your poem to Susan Vogel Taylor, at blizmadriztm@yahoo.com with a cc to Robert Wynne at robert.wynne@sbcglobal.net

Here are some examples:

The Richardson Public Library is holding its annual poetry competition, for people at least 16 years old and/or in 10th grade. The deadline is 6 p.m. April 21; the maximum length is 50 lines.

And there's cash involved: $50 for first place. (Place eighth, and you can still pick up $20, which will still buy a lot of quills and parchment.)

For information, call 972-744-4350, or visit www.richardsonpubliclibrary.com.

The Lift Every Voice Family and Community Development Project plans a poetry read-in 7 p.m. Friday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Senior Center, 2922 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Dallas. The event aims to raise awareness of the issues faced by adult survivors of sexual assault.

"Can We Talk About It?" will feature Mike Guinn of the Fort Worth Poetry Slam. Call 1-866-361-7467 for details, or click here.

Future Texas Pages blogger Shin Yu Pai will be among the poets reading tonight at a reading of this year's DART Poetry in Motion kick-off, 6 p.m. at Border's, 3600 McKinney Ave.

If you ride DART, you know how nice this program is. Nothing takes the edge off a crowded train than looking up and seeing ... poetry!

Here's what the Shin Yu Pai poster will look like:

You can see previous posters at DART's own site.