Three April Pop-up Poetry Events not to miss in Truckee

Help us celebrate National Poetry Month with the 2020 Sierra Poetry Festival April 18^th at the Miner’s Foundry in Nevada City, CA. Enjoy some of our most exciting local, national and international poets and performers. Readings, workshops, an activity fair for all ages and youth performances!

Saturday, April 18, 2020 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Miners Foundry, 325 Spring St, Nevada City, CA 95959

 

The Sierra Poetry Festival 2020 is preceded by a month of pre-festival pop-up poetry events throughout the community. 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.

Truckee will feature three Pop-up Events leading up to Sierra Poetry Festival 2020:

1.      Exploring Voice: on the page and at the mic

April 2nd, 5-6:15 pm 

Workshop led by Karen Terrey, MFA, of Tangled Roots Writing

Truckee Library, 10031 Levon Avenue, Truckee, CA 96161

• What is “voice”? How do you capture your out-loud voice on the page? We will discuss ways to recognize your own strengths and originality, generate new writing through prompts inspired by poets featured at this year’s Sierra Poetry Festival coming up April 18^th , as well as share tips and techniques for reading poems out loud at local open mics. We will create our own community of writers who can follow up this workshop by attending the Open Mic at Philosophy this same evening!
  

Workshop bonus: Become familiar with poetry by poets to be featured at the Sierra Poetry Festival in Nevada City, CA: Ellen Bass, Coleman Barks, and Lee Herrick. At the festival, you will have opportunities to hear and meet these poets!

2.      Word after Word Open Mic @ Philosophy downtown Truckee

April 2^nd 6:30 – 8 pm

Philosophy bar, 10412 Donner Pass Rd., Truckee, California 96161

• Open Mic at Philosophy bar in downtown Truckee. We are excited to collaborate with Philosophy to feature local writers paired with great drinks and food. Please invite family and friends to come out and enjoy a meal or drinks as well!
  

Hosted by Karen Terrey of Tangled Roots Writing

3.   Word After Word Books Writing Series Workshop with Karen Terrey of Tangled Roots Writing

April 8^th 6:30 – 8 pm

Word After Word Books, 10118 Donner Pass Rd #2, Truckee, CA 96161

• How do you start a poem? What is your process? In this workshop, we will learn techniques to write through inspiration from other writers. Become familiar with poetry by poets to be featured at the Sierra Poetry Festival April 18^th in Nevada City, CA: Ellen Bass, Coleman Barks, and Lee Herrick. At the festival, you will have opportunities to hear and meet these poets!

After Word Books, Philosophy bar, and Tangled Roots Writing are proud to support this celebration of National Poetry Month and to host Sierra Poetry Festival pop-up events in Truckee!

 

The January air is grey as the sky today and as I write begins filling with mindless falling snow. White shifts like light on water ripples as the wind picks up.

We have a lake wind advisory for today until 10 pm. Sunset is at 5:08 pm this evening.

Last night a new creative writing workshop session gathered in my living room, sharing snacks from Zuri Coffee while we contemplated voice and originality and intentions for this winter. I love the long winter nights for how they allow quiet and the calm of darkness.  Winter nights in the mountains support inner reflection, reading, writing, and creativity.





Tangled Roots Writing offers a new winter schedule of workshops beginning this month:

• Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop 6 week series: 3/2-4/6
• Master Class in Revision for Fiction and Nonfiction: 2/13, 3/12, 4/9, 5/7 and 6/4
• Write a ten minute play - workshop series
• Write a blog that stands out in a crowd - 3 hour workshop
• Write a newsletter worth your clients' time - 3 hour workshop
• Navigate Submissions and Get Published - 3 hour workshop

I offer customized workshops and individual writing coaching for book projects and business writing, including editing and coaching for blogs, newsletters, website content, and social media.

Literary events in our community:

This year the Sierra Writers Conference is about getting to the roots of your writing and branching out. They have two keynote speakers, Grant Faulkner and Pam Houston, speaking on both of days of the two day conference, 1/31 in Rocklin and 2/1 in Grass Valley. So many readers and workshops and opportunities to write and grow and network!

Sierra Nevada College’s Writers in the Woods brings well-known poets and writers from all over the country to the campus for intimate readings and workshops, where audience members can meet and exchange ideas with the guest writers.On February 7th and 8th June Saraceno and Gayle Brandeis will read and present. The readings are Friday evenings, 7 – 9pm. Free and open to the public.
The Workshops are Saturday mornings, 10am – noon. Free to students, $50  for community members.

Word After Word bookshop presents open mics, workshops, author readings, and the best book recommendations ever - go talk with one of their booksellers. They are between the fudge shop and the wine shop in downtown Truckee.

Saturday, April 18th, 2020 help us celebrate National Poetry Month with the 2020 Sierra Poetry Festival. Enjoy some of our most exciting local, national and international poets and performers. Readings, workshops, an activity fair for all ages and youth performances will be preceded by a month of pre-festival pop-up poetry events throughout the community.

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