How to know what we don’t know: a writer’s response to What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forche´

 “What are we looking for?”

 

Carolyn Forche´ asks this question in the first 15 minutes of her new memoir.

About 20 minutes later, she is asked,

“What do you know about military dictatorships?” 

“Not much,” she answers.

“Good, I’m glad you know what you don’t know.”

Why is this memoir, What You Have Heard is True, describing her travels to El Salvador in the late 70s, so relevant today? 

Where do we begin our stories about immigrants arriving at the US border with Mexico? With their arrival and detention by ICE?

What if we started their stories with the story of El Salvador in the late 70s, and the history that stretches from then to now? What is the story of the parents of these parents?

Here in Tahoe we are lucky to have frequent opportunities to meet Forche´ and hear her read and discuss her work, as she has taught for the Sierra Nevada College Low-residency MFA in Creative Writing.

The title of her memoir is the first line of one of her arguably most well-known poems, “The Colonel”. Her writing, poems and prose, challenges her reader to pose their own questions, to know what they don’t know.  She presents the physical experience of her presence as she met this individual in his house:

 “ears on the floor pressed to the ground”

 “like pressed peach halves”

“there is no other way to say this” (“The Colonel”)

The only way for her to say it is to help us experience the visceral present through her use of language. She asks us to “read for witness”.

The moment in her memoir that stands out to me the most after finishing her book is from a surreptitious visit to a prison. She walked into a dark room in which small boxes were lined up with small wired windows.  She could see hands inside holding onto the wire.  These were prisoners who sometimes were held in the box for a complete year. When they were released, they could no longer stand as their bodies had atrophied.  

Here in 2014 she reads two poems from her second book of poems, The Country Between Us. Her poem “The Visitor” seems to recall this prison visit. The image of the hands repeats in this poem and echoes the image of the hands I was so moved by in her memoir, written 20 years later.

“The Visitor” by Carolyn Forche´

In Spanish he whispers there is no time left.

It is the sound of scythes arcing in the wheat,

the ache of some field song in Salvador.

The wind along the prison, cautious

as Francisco’s hands on the inside, touching

the walls as he walks, it is his wife’s breath

slipping into his cell each night while he

imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country.

There is nothing one man will not do to another.

1979.

References

Forche´, Carolyn. What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance. Penguin, 2019.

---. The Country Between Us. Harper Perennial. 1982.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsOITnYFVfo

Sierra Poetry Festival 2019: April's Poetry Month Finale

Nevada County Arts Council presented its 3rd Annual Sierra Poetry Festival on April 27, 2019 at Sierra College in Grass Valley, attended by some of our most exciting local, national and international poets and performers. In addition to its mainstage event, Sierra Poetry Festival marked National Poetry Month from the rolling foothills of California’s Gold Country to the rugged High Sierra, bringing our rich literary community together to celebrate the spoken word and reach out to brand new audiences in fresh ways. Readings, workshops, music, an activity fair for all ages and youth performances were preceded by a month of pre-festival pop-up poetry events.

CAPITAL PUBLIC RADIO Beth Ruyack interviewed Keynote Speaker, Poet and Pulitzer winner Forrest Gander and Nevada County Arts Council Executive Director Eliza Tudor. I was honored to follow Forrest onstage to read new poems I've written this past winter.

For the morning workshop session, my partner-in-crime Barbara March and I attended Beyond the Self in the Personal Poem presented by Blas Falconer. We explored poems as models to ask Is every poem somehow an intimate glimpse into the poet's life? When does writing the personal poem become problematic? We considered ways to move beyond ourselves while still engaging our own narratives.

Barbara and Ray March participated in the Poetry Fair to spread the word about Surprise Valley Writers' Conference, a unique and beautiful 4 day workshop in rural Cedarville, CA.

In the afternoon session, we joined Marcello Hernandez Castillo for Introspection and Form in Poetry. This workshop inclined towards prose through multiple and spontaneous processes of introspection, We explored taking liberties within the rigid form of such ancient verses as the Ghazal and the sonnet, as well as practiced the possibilities of Duende as described by Lorca.

When I met Sara Borjas at the inn we were both staying in for the weekend, I immediately recognized she had things to teach me. In her workshop, she says definitions of “poetry of witness” are shifting as poets seek to defy the inherent passivity of the term “witness.” Increasingly, poets are interrogating the safety afforded by time and distance, engaging legacies of trauma, including those they have inherited or been proxy to, in order to confront the past and their own participation. She challenges writers and readers to create innovative forms that require the engagement and excavate often-invisible layers of participation, eschewing language of witness in favor of a poetics of active accountability. I want to learn more about witness and engagement for my own writing.

Write a Ten-Minute Play Workshop Series with guest dramatist / director Conrad Cecil

 Write a Ten-Minute Play Workshop Series

Friday, April 19th, 10 am – 1 pm

Friday, May 10th 10 am – 1 pm

These workshops include snacks, tea and coffee, and writers collaborating in a cozy living room in beautiful downtown Truckee. Hone your skills in dialogue, scene, drama, and character.  No drama experience necessary. Learn how to recognize and build the drama in your idea for a play or develop the crisis scene in your novel. The deadline for ten-minute play submissions to the Truckee Community Theater Labor Day Weekend Ten Minute Play Festival is June 1^st, 2019. Workshops are $120 if you sign up for both or $65 each. Call for further details 530-386-3901. www.karenaterrey.blogspot.com

Conrad Cecil studied Directing & Dramaturgy at RADA and King's College London. Conrad runs workshops at Beyond Baroque literary arts center in Venice CA, and is Nevada County coach for Poetry Out Loud. In Paris, he founded a theatre company under the patronage of award-winning playwright Roland Dubillard and has directed at the Avignon Festival and on the Champs Elysees, assisting German filmmaker Werner Schroeter. Bibliography includes a bilingual book on performing arts production and preparing an original orthography edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets for hand printing.

Karen Terrey is a writer, editor, and writing coach, offering coaching, developmental editing, and creative writing workshops in Truckee through her business Tangled Roots Writing for clients of all ages.  She has taught at Lake Tahoe Community College, Sierra Nevada College, and Sierra College and has served as a poetry editor for the literary journals Pitkin Review and Quay. Her poetry chapbook Bite and Blood is available from Finishing Line Press and local bookstores. 

3rd Annual Sierra Poetry Festival looking for Vendors! April 27th

Nevada County Arts Council will present its 3rd Annual Sierra Poetry Festival on April 27, 2019 at Sierra College in Grass Valley, attended by some of our most exciting local, national and international poets and performers. Opportunities to join our family of benefactors are now available.

Sierra Poetry Festival encourages both a strong local presence and international and universal themes. Each year we choose a special anchor for these themes. For 2019 our anchor point is Breath and Shadow, breath indicating the ebb and flow of nature and the seasons, and shadow being symbolic of our ephemeral existence and self-reflection.

At the literaryvendor fair, Poetry Place, you can present your business, books, activities, and other materials related to the themes and values of the event. Our theme is Breath and Shadow and this is open to your interpretation, and we encourage you to have fun with it. Poetry Place will be open to festival goers from 9am–3pm on Saturday, April 27.

The cost for an all-day vendor space is $45. Preference is given to vendors with interactive activities.

What we offer exhibitors: An excellent location at the heart of our festival, The Gym flanks the Multi-Purpose room, where our mainstage readings take place:

1. A 6x3 foot banquet table or round table (If a round configuration works for your activity, please let us know)
2. Free listing in the  Sierra Poetry Festival Program (500 printed copies + unlimited online)
3. 10% advertising discount in our  Sierra Poetry Festival Program (500 printed copies + unlimited online)
4. The opportunity to donate an item/s or premium for our Swag Bag. This is an excellent promotional tool and ensures that your products reach upwards of 200 festival goers
5. Opportunities to sponsor the  Sierra Poetry Festival. This will support Poet Leaders as well as attendance by young people via student scholarships. 

In addition to its mainstage event, Sierra Poetry Festival marks National Poetry Month from the rolling foothills of California’s Gold Country to the rugged High Sierra, bringing our rich literary community together to celebrate the spoken word and reach out to brand new audiences in fresh ways. Readings, workshops, music, an activity fair for all ages and youth performances will be preceded by a month of pre-festival pop-up poetry events.