Just a heads up to say I’m reading as part of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour this Sunday, September 18, at Green Meadows Farm, from 3-5 pm. More details are available on facebook.
The theme is “Harvest/Moon,” and I’m looking forward to the combination of music, food, and celestial phrases! Hope to see you there.
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I also have an article recently posted on MassPoetry about incorporating scale into your writing:
The World in a Grain of Sand: Incorporating a Sense of Scale in Poetry
I had a fantastic time at Readercon, so much so, in fact, that I totally failed to take pictures or tweet more than about twice. I did take about a thousand pages worth of notes, not just of the thought-provoking things people were saying, but of ideas that I was generating for stories, and things to keep in mind when revising stories I’m already working on. And clearly, there was a lot to absorb, which is why it’s taken me nearly a week to write up my reactions.
Readercon is, of course, run by humans, well-intentioned yet possessed of blind spots, so there were a few moments in panels I attended where I winced. Others have covered those moments with more authority than I, however, and overall I was positively impressed with the level of dialogue and discussion in the panels I attended. (I wasn’t at some of the others that caused raised eyebrows.) Given Readercon’s reputation for listening to and responding to feedback, I hope next year will be better. Meanwhile, all my personal interactions with folks were fabulous, and I particularly enjoyed my two shifts at the Broad Universe table in the Bookstore room, getting to know my fellow New England broads.
The highest hilarity of the weekend for me was the “My Character Ate What?” game show on sci-fi fantasy and food. I went because I so enjoyed watching that video of Mary Robinette Kowal breaking Pat Rothfuss’s brain, and I was sure she would not disappoint here either. She didn’t, and the rest of the panel of author ‘experts’ were equally hilarious, earnest, and full of beans in turn. (Both this and the engineering panel were led by Fran Wilde who also gets kudos for being a spiffing moderator.)
Guest of Honor Catherynne Valente was gracious, snarky, and inspiring by turns, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the panels I attended that she was on, as well as her solo reading. I even managed to get a couple of books signed and say ‘hi’ without making a complete fool of myself, so go me. (Author-encounter word-vomit is a thing, I’m sorry to say, but I did avoid it this weekend.)
I won’t attempt to transcribe my gazillion notes for you, but here are some highlights and particularly cool thoughts from some of the panels I attended.
Speculative Retellings – Fabulous kickoff to the con for me. Retellings of myths and fairytales and folklore are *so* much fun, and the folks on the panel clearly agreed. The quote from Cat Valente above was from this panel, as is the picture of my notebook. The conversation ranged from superheroes to saints, origin stories galore, the retelling opportunities present in both senses of identification with a story and senses of confusion or other-ness (‘this story isn’t really meant for me, but what if it was?’). We re-tell stories either because we love them or we hate them and want to fix them (hello, fandom!). Frustration as inspiration, and questions about the currency of sacrifice–what are you willing to give up, to walk the path of the hero? What are the stories or characters that need second chances? Or choices? (Cat Valente pointed out that no one ever asked Eurydice if she *wanted* to leave the underworld with Orpheus, after all. Maybe she wanted to stay…)
Strong Female Characters and ‘Lady Bromances’ aka Female Friendships in Literature – I’m lumping my summary of these two panels together, because for me one fed into the other. There was a lot in here, and there’s room for more. I liked Mikki Kendall‘s point about Zoe Washburn in Firefly, and how she’s a perfect example of how the fact that women who possess the ability to compartmentalize in crisis are often not given the narrative room to have their grief or other emotional reactions once the crisis is passed. This is a trope that disproportionately affects black female characters; based on the evidence of Melinda May in the Marvel Universe and a few others I would think it affects other female characters of color as well. After all, Peggy Carter (whom I love, even recognizing the flaws in the show) gets a very rare but very real and necessary moment of grief for her roommate, who dies in the first episode after about 2.5 minutes of screen time. It’s a great moment, and more characters regardless of gender or race deserve the narrative space to be fully-rounded human beings. In counterpoint, the discussion of female friendships was great, because friends are part of what help make us fully rounded characters, and show different sides than might otherwise come across. Girlhood friends, adult friends, intergenerational friends; it was a good list of stories and characters that the panelists mentioned, and there were both books I now have to read and stories I now have to write.
Engineering in Fantasy – Definitely one of my favorite panels of the weekend. “Buildings have to get built, regardless,” said John Chu, and from there it was off to the role of engineering in worldbuilding (more than just how people get around; not only on what, but do they have roads? irrigation? cartographers?) and the way good engineering is invisible until it breaks. This means breaking your engineering is a good story point; when something fails, what takes its place? Was it working for its original purpose and only broke when it was repurposed? What happens to a society’s structure when new tech is introduced? How much engineering can your world have without the theoretical science to back it up? (Because you can make things work without knowing why…) What about social engineering, the structures that make feudal systems and militaries work, among other things? What about a kind of educational and cultural infrastructure, the role of political and religious elites in spreading and sharing knowledge? Plus there are the benefits of looking at the way different cultures find different ways to solve the same problems and what that tells you about them, which is engineering as a kind of cultural shorthand, ie. the bridges of the Elves vs. the bridges of the Dwarves in Tolkien. (Several people in that session now want to write the story about “OSHA goes to Moria…”) Many kudos to both the panelists and the people in the audience who asked brilliant follow up questions!
Magic in Space – Jedi are space wizards, and that’s a very fine thing. But who else is writing cool magic in traditionally sci-fi milieus? This was a really fun panel talking about working mythology and magic systems into sci-fi: techno-mages, for instance, or mythical monsters in charge of alien planets, the concept of interstellar travel as its own sort of epic fantasy. Mikki Kendall said something interesting about how the differences in sci-fi versus fantasy are essentially just a matter of tone: “You have power. Period. How you choose to use that power is up to you,” which led to a neat discussion about spellcasting equivalents to computer programming, fears as inspirations, about magic being about control or accepting the loss of same, and when is magic a science (part of the rules of how that universe works) or something else (which breaks or bends the established rules of that universe). Does magic or sci-fi better answer the questions of why we seem to be alone in the universe? Is it just because the scale of space and time is just so vast, or are we being avoided? Will we recognize life when we find it? What about that space-jellyfish in Star Trek? Hasn’t there been magic in sci-fi all along? And isn’t it an example of magical thinking just to imagine the ways that life could be better or different, the way sci-fi writers naturally do?
Keytars in SF – Music is such an integral part to culture; it’s as worth considering (or considering its deliberate lack) in worldbuilding as engineering is. Discussion in this panel included everything from Earth music of past times being re-interpreted in the future (Star Trek TNG‘s Riker plays jazz and Data plays classical violin, Doctor Who declared Britney Spears the fitting soundtrack to the final explosion of the Earth) to alien instruments (Spock’s lute/harp thing, Dixieland-style music in Star Wars ANH‘s cantina) to the challenges and benefits of describing music and mood and enviroment as opposed to being able to show/play it in live media. The major thought-provoking statement from this panel for me (which I’m pretty sure was one of Cat Valente’s points) was thinking about music starting point being in the body; dance, rhythm, the physical requirements of instruments that need breath or digits or tentacles. (Now I want to write about an alien rock band…)
Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Short Story Structure (for Novelists)” workshop/lecture was a real writers’ craft highlight. Unfortunately, as she said in the beginning, she had ‘2 hours worth of content and only an hour to deliver;’ had the program wizards given her a 2 hour block, we would surely all have stayed. [Much as I appreciate the rapid-fire blocks of 50 minute sessions, I’d actually argue for a few more longer sessions for this level of quality content.] Fortunately, she did get through all the content delivery, though our ‘workshop’ was limited to ‘write down a whizzbang idea.’ She did, however, mention that she has writing exercises available on her website, which I intend to use. The diagnostic tools she introduced (average wordcounts for introducing locations and characters, levels of complexity involved in number of plot elements) were really helpful; looking back at some of my stories that have ballooned past what could reasonably be considered ‘short’ I can now tell why! I will definitely be using the plot sequencing idea (open and close your plot threads like html tags) to revise some of my short stories as well.
It’s difficult as a thinking, feeling, breathing human being not to be incredibly distressed by the needless violence of the last week, from the horrific ISIS bombings in Medina and Baghdad to the senseless deaths of both civilians and cops here in the US. Life is messy, and people can be horrible, and standing in my place of privilege and safety much of what I can do is put my donations and my vote behind the people I believe have the best interests of the whole country, the wider world, and safety and peace for all at heart. So that’s what I’m doing. Also, please register to vote, if you’re eligible and you’re not registered yet. One person, one voice, one action can make a difference. (Just look at Brexit. Let’s not be Brexit, okay?)
In the meantime, this weekend there’s a chance to celebrate imagining better, more inclusive, more positive worlds, so I’m going to Readercon. If you too should happen to be in Quincy, MA this weekend, here are some of the places you may find me:
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Any other time:
As always, the Mass Poetry Festival was awesome. The sun shone on the small press fair and the Poetry Circus, the readers were in good voice, and it was fabulous catching up with friends. I particularly enjoyed the “embodied creativity” yoga & writing workshop and the poets who read their works written in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. My thanks and compliments to everyone involved in carrying out the festival: the hard-working staff at MassPoetry, PEM, and the scores of volunteers.
As part of the festival, I had the pleasure of leading another workshop at the Peabody Essex Museum on connecting poetry to visual art, this time focusing on the idea of incorporating scale. I had a group of about 30 people and loved getting to introduce them to the Art & Nature Center’s current show, Sizing it Up: Scale in Nature and Art.
We started by defining ‘scale’ for the purposes of the workshop:
To get our brains in gear, we did a ‘constructed scale’ poetry writing exercise, where people picked a piece of paper that was not their usual notebook size (register tape, index cards, post-it notes) and drafted a poem where the lines fit the size of the paper exactly, no line breaks too short or too long for the physical space.
Then we went into the gallery to read a few poems that use scale, next to visual art works that evoked the same feeling.
Searching for Goldilocks, by Angela Palmer, is an artwork that depicts all the exoplanets (planets found outside our solar system) including ones in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ that might contain recognizable life like our own Earth. (You can read more about planets in the Goldilocks zone here) Next to Searching for Goldilocks, we read “Kepler 62-F” by xYz, which is the pen name of Joanna Tilsley.
Metropolis, by Vaughn Bell, is an artwork that allows up to four people to get their faces at forest floor level by stepping under and up into a series of connected terrariums featuring local plantlife.
Next to Metropolis, we read “The Scale of Things,” by Margaret Tait (originally published in The Hen and the Bees, 1960)
The Scale of Things
by Margaret TaitThere’s a whole country at the foot of the stone
If you care to look
These are the stones we have instead of trees
In the north.
Our trees all got lost,
Blown over or cut down
Long long ago, and some of them lie there still in the
peat moss
Or fossilized in limestone.
At the shady foot of trees
Certain things grow,
But at the foot of stone grow the sun-loving
wind–resisting short plants
With very small bright flowers
And compact, precise leaves.
The wind whips the tight stems into a vibration,
But they don’t break.
The full light of the sun reaches right down to the
ground,
And reflects obliquely and sideways in among and
under the snug leaves,
And settles on the stone too,
Makes a glow there,
A sufficient warmth and clarified light.
The stunning frequencies seem to get absorbed
And if you stare closely at the stone
It’s a calm light, not too blue,
Precisely indicating its variegated surface.
The great stone stands,
On a different scale, in a way, from the minute plants
at its base.
A proliferating green lichen
Grows on it
As well as round golden coin-patches of another
common lichen,
And only in the earth right up to the very stone but
not on it
Grow the crisp grass
And all the tiny plants and flowers
Which, together interlaced and inter-related,
Make the fine springing turf which people and animals
walk on.
Then I set the workshop participants free to spend about 20 minutes in the gallery brainstorming in front of one or more pieces of scale-related art, after which we shared our reactions and results. It was especially neat to hear which artworks drew people in, and how many participants felt the same dislocation as Alice or Gulliver, feeling themselves suddenly much larger or smaller than ever before. Several people also headed back into the gallery to spend more time with the art after the workshop, which felt like success to me.
You can download the handouts (writing exercise directions, poems, and more) here: The World in a Grain of Sand handout. I highly recommend a visit to the museum while you’re at it!
Finally, here are a few cool scale-related links I used in my research for the program, if you’d like to explore more:
I had a great time leading two workshops at the Longfellow House/Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site to help celebrate National Poetry Month.
“Something New, Something Strange:” Found Poetry Workshop
This workshop included lots of discussion of found poetry in the 21st century, including the many ways the internet has made found poetry more possible, varied, and hilarious. We tried illustrated found poetry using Henry Longfellow’s poetry, and also pages from a mystery novel and a historical fiction, and talked about fun everyday found poetry from sources like Pentametron and GooglePoetics.
“Grace Unto Every Art:” Poetry and Visual Arts Workshop
This included getting to talk about the Longfellow family connections to the visual arts (Henry’s wife Fanny Appleton had a brother, Thomas, who was part of the founding of the MFA. Henry’s older son Charlie collected a lot of Asian art on his trip to Japan, and Henry’s younger son Ernest became a painter.) and taking a tour of the first floor of the house. Many thanks to the fabulous rangers who kept an eye on us and answered our dozens of questions as we each picked an object that inspired us to write!
Inspirational Books
I brought these to the workshops for people to leaf through for inspiration; you can find them at your local library or bookstore (or museum gift shop!):
Missed out on the workshops? There’s lots of cool programs coming up at Longfellow for their summer festival, and the Mass Poetry Festival is this weekend in Salem, MA. I’ll be at the Peabody Essex Museum talking scale in poetry & art on Saturday afternoon. Hope to see you there!
This weekend was Shakespeare’s birthday and 400th anniversary. In celebration, have a little Christian Borle from Something Rotten performing “It’s Hard to be the Bard,” because who says Shakespeare didn’t know how to party?
It’s National Poetry Month! Lots of fun poetry news and discussion to share with you this month.
I recently re-encountered an article from 2014: “Everybody Should Write Poetry” by Peggy Rosenthal. I had bookmarked it because I was drawn to the idea that “everyone needs to nestle down inside language to get to know its ways, to get comfy with how playful it can be, how expansive, how unexpected in its openings to new experience.” It reminded me of the kinds of conversations I’ve had in the other part of my professional life, among those of us who work in museums and in education and in the arts. Participating in something; taking a class in glass fusing, for instance, gives you an appreciation for the process and the artistic choices and the intricacies of both which you keep forever, however lopsided or surprising your own* efforts turned out to be. (*Meaning, of course, my own!)
On the same day I apparently bookmarked an article with suggestions on “How to Read Poetry” – not requirements, but suggestions on ways to approach it without the apprehension of ‘getting it wrong.’ Again, a discussion that we keep having in museums and symphonies and similar venues; how do we best let people know that, barring actual destruction, there aren’t really ways to be ‘wrong’ in such spaces? (Perhaps we should take some marginalia notes ourselves.)
So what do you think? “Should” everyone write poetry? (or make art? or play music? or fix a car?) What’s your favorite way to approach a new poem or experience?
Finally, a shameless plug, because I firmly believe that while ‘shoulds’ are odious, ‘go for its!’ are necessary and beautiful. Therefore, if you feel like writing poetry, go for it! and you can even do some writing with me:
“Something New, Something Strange: Found Poetry” at Longfellow National Historic Site, this Thursday, 4/7, at 6:30 pm
“Grace Unto Every Art: Poetry from Visual Art” also at Longfellow National Historic Site, Saturday, 4/16, at 2 pm
“The World in a Grain of Sand: Incorporating Scale in Poetry and Art” at the Peabody Essex Museum, Saturday, 4/30, at 3:15 pm (Part of the Mass Poetry Festival!)
National Poetry Month is still more than a month away, but I’m already in planning mode. (Meanwhile, did you know February is Library Lover’s Month? Go hug your favorite librarian!)
I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be leading three poetry workshops in April! If you’re in the driving-distance-from-Boston area, I hope you’ll stop by and join me for some playing with words and art.
Something New, Something Strange: Found Poetry
April 7, 6:30 pm, Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge
In Longfellow’s poem “Keramos,” a potter at his wheel says, “All things must change/To Something new, to something strange.” Recombine, illustrate, and give shape to old forms using found poetry techniques with poet and educator Meg Winikates as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month. Please call (617)876-4491 or email reservationsat105@gmail.com to reserve your spot!
Grace Unto Every Art: Poetry from Visual Art
April 16, 2:00 pm, Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge
Whether it was shipbuilding, smithing, sculpting, or singing, Henry Longfellow found poetry in all forms of art. Join poet and educator Meg Winikates to explore ekphrastic poetry, enjoy the Longfellows’ art collection, and write your own art-inspired pieces as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month. Please call (617)876-4491 or email reservationsat105@gmail.com to reserve your spot!
The World in a Grain of Sand – Incorporating Scale in Poetry and Art
Massachusetts Poetry Festival (April 29, 30 or May 1), Peabody Essex Museum, Salem
Galaxies and exoplanets, scanning electron microscopes, 4 million queries per minute on Google: in our ever expanding universe, is the human brain still ‘wider than the sky’ as Emily Dickinson said? What is the role of poet or artist in helping us understand how and where humans fit? Join poet and museum professional Meg Winikates to explore the use of scale in poetry and art in PEM’s Sizing It Up exhibition, experiment with physical and mental scale in your writing, and generate a poem idea (or three!) inspired by the artworks on view.
Buttons for the festival are not yet on sale, so keep checking the MassPoetry site for updates on button sales and scheduling!
So Arisia was a big, busy, beautiful mess of a weekend. I didn’t make it to all the panels I intended, I accidentally ended up in sessions that were awesome, and John Scalzi made me cry (in the good way).
I am not going to even try to cover everything, but here are a few highlights from this past weekend:
Nonstandard Paths to Magic
Honestly, I thought there would be more discussion of cool non-Latinate, non-Hogwarts, non-Western magic systems, but it was mostly a series of thought-provoking questions about the assumptions we make about magic, how it works, and who uses it. Some of my favorites:
Shifting the Language of SF
If you’re not super into the geekiness of language, scroll on. I *am* into the super geekiness of language, and there were points when I wanted to just throw up my hands and ask what the Klingon word for ‘surrender’ was. (I don’t actually think there is one, come to that. Klingons are not into surrender.)
This panel ranged wildly all over the discussion of language, from why you shouldn’t try to write dialect out phonetically, to the poetics of rhythm in language from different time periods, to what English might sound like if the Normans had never invaded (apparently you should read ‘Uncleftish Beholding‘ if you want to find out).
Here are a few of the panelists’ suggested ‘shortcuts’ to making your language not sound like 21st century English (with or without Tumblr-speak, a variation on netlanguage they didn’t get around to discussing, but I heard used by panelists in other sessions, because language):
Complexities of Voice
This built really nicely off the above language panel, and also one I went to on character interactions, which was a little basic but still interesting. (One did get the feeling that some of the folks in the audience asking questions were young, and as interested in getting ideas on how to interact in real life as they were trying to get their characters to talk to each other.) The best tips from this panel:
Other random bits of awesome:
So how did you spend your long weekend?
I have loved the several recent days of deep bright blue that is a sky color you never see in a hazy summer, but I have a certain affection for the fierce slate days as well.
Winter is a Dragon Day
By Meg WinikatesGray clouds have teeth;
their bite bloods my cheeks
and my breath boils.
With every gust I prove I am alive.
Sea Dreams and Time Machines 