Comedy of Errors

Once again, Matt is spending the summer at the Utah Shakespearean Festival.  He’s playing Dromio of Ephesus in Comedy of Errors, which starts previews on Monday (the Festival has posted some photos; check out this one of the two Dromios, once again failing to see one another), and Ben Weatherstaff in the musical The Secret Garden.  Miri and I are planning to go see the opening of Comedy and to return later, when both shows are open, to spend more time in Cedar City.

Comedy has never been a particular favorite of mine, though it’s one of the first Shakespeare plays I remember seeing, at the Essex (MD) Community College’s summer Cockpit in Court.  I’m probably not alone in becoming impatient with drama, even Shakespeare, that hinges on a single piece of knowledge that the characters don’t know.  We know that there are two Dromios and two Antipholi, but they don’t!  Isn’t that a hoot?  Oh, and Antipholus of Ephesus keeps beating up his Dromio–even more hilarity!

The best Comedy of Errors I have seen was at the Stratford (ON) Shakespeare Festival.  It was cut by about a quarter, with a running time of an hour and a half, and it was on a double bill following a similarly abridged Titus Andronicus: Titus, intermission, Comedy. 

However, I’ve never seen Comedy at Utah; I’ve never seen Matt in this play at all; and I’m not sure I’ve seen Comedy since the one at Stratford in 1989, so I’m looking forward to this.

 

dA Center for the Arts Poetry Contest

dA Center for the Arts 2009 Poetry Contest

David St. John, Judge

First Prize: $250

Winner and Finalists will be invited to participate in an awards ceremony, reading, and reception at the dA Center for the Arts. The prize does not include publication.

Contest Rules

Postmark deadline: April 30, 2009 Entry fee $15.00 for up to six pages of unpublished poetry (multiple entries are permitted.) Manuscripts must be typed. No more than one poem per page. Author’s name, address, and phone number (and email address, if available) must appear on cover sheet only. Please include poem titles in addition to contact information. No names on poems, please. Simultaneous submission is permissible if we are notified when work is accepted elsewhere or awards received. For announcement of winners, include a SASE (self addressed, stamped envelope). Please, no email or fax submissions. Entries are screened and judged anonymously. Poems with which the judge has had prior contact are ineligible. Poems must not have received monetary awards or previous publication. Entries must adhere to all guidelines. Manuscripts will not be returned.

David St. John was born in Fresno, California, in 1949, and educated at California State University, Fresno, where he received his B.A. In 1974, he received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He is the author of six books of poetry, including Prism (Arctos Press, 2002), Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems (1994), No Heaven (1985), and Hush (1976). His awards include the Discover/The Nation prize, the James D. Phelan Prize, and the Prix de Rome fellowship in literature. He has also received several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. St. John currently teaches in the English Department at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Submit poetry and check or money order (no cash) with submission: Poetry Contest: dA Center for the Arts, 252-D South Main St. Pomona, CA 91766-1630 Phone: 909.397.9716 (www.dacenter.org)

 

Rolling admissions, rolling along

As I mentioned, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference switched to rolling admissions this year.  We began accepting applications on March 1, and are now encouraging e-mailed applications, as well.  (In the past, we accepted these only grudgingly and mostly from overseas applicants; now we’re set up to do so with few glitches.) 

The good news, from our point of view, is that many strong applicants are applying early.  Our only concern is that we will have to disappoint later applicants who won’t be able to get into their first-choice workshop–and may even end up turning away some people who would certainly have been admitted in the years when we had a universal deadline.  If you’re considering applying, please get your application in now.  If you have questions, please email me at nvwcpoetry ~at~ gmail dot com.

Scholarship applicants have until April 15 to apply so that we can consider the entire pool at once.  Still, it helps us if scholarship applicants apply earlier.  We will hold spaces in the workshops for anticipated enrollment by scholarship recipients.  A few of those, if not filled, will go to waitlisted applicants.

We think we’ve thought this through, but there will surely be a few unexpected results.  You can help us by getting your application in soon.  I’ll be sending out the first round of acceptances in a few days.

 

L.A. Stage Scene Examiner

Evan Henerson (Matt’s brother), who reviewed theatre all over Los Angeles and the Southland for years as the L.A. Daily News’ theatre critic, is now the L.A. Stage Scene Examiner on Examiner.com.  He blogs about the Los Angeles theatre scene, one of the arts areas that’s now critically underserved as the Los Angeles print media shrinks and shrinks.  His recent posts include coverage of the national tour of Frost/Nixon, Armin Shimerman’s upcoming appearance in Shaw’s Misalliance at the Odyssey Theatre, Kirk Douglas’s one-man show at the eponymous theatre, Anne Hathaway’s plans to play Viola in Twelfth Night for the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park, and the Taper’s decision to stage Mamet’s Oleanna instead of a planned Uncle Vanya. 

Evan has opinions–lots of them–so why not go over there and leave him some comments?

 

Poems wanted for the 2009 Asian & Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Calendar

From a posting on LA CultureNet.  The deadline is March 16:

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs is a proud supporter of Los Angeles’ 2009 Asian & Pacific Islander American Heritage Month. This celebration will promote and encourage an awareness of the significant contributions made by our City’s Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in culture, education, politics, business, technology, and the arts. As part of this celebration, our Department is once again creating a comprehensive calendar and cultural guide that will list the numerous events, exhibitions, lectures, and festivals related to this annual celebration of African American [sic] culture. We invite poets to submit their work for consideration to be part of the 2009 Asian & Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Calendar.

If selected, artists will receive credit and special thanks (with optional contact information) in our Calendar Artists section. In addition, we will mail artists copies of the calendar for personal use and distribution. Please send 3-5 poems as they are to be published via attachment to marta.stork@lacity.org Maximum line length not to exceed 100. Maximum line count 50. All forms, lyric, prose poems, experimental, traditional, and subjects are acceptable. Profanity and “obscene” material cannot be published. All rights revert to author after publication. Poems must be sent with the following information: -Artist’s name -Artist’s contact info (info you would like printed in the calendar Please send the work by March 16, 2009. Please send poems to: Martica Caraballo Stork marta.stork@lacity.org Department of Cultural Affairs City of Los Angeles 201 N. Figueroa St., Suite 1400 Los Angeles, CA 90012

 

Prufrock

 

Putting this here so that I can show it to a class.

 

Facebook’d

I created a group on Facebook for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.  If you are a past participant, a faculty member, or someone who hopes to attend the conference someday, please go and join!  I put up a few photos from recent years, and I hope we’ll be able to add more soon.

Meanwhile, we are changing the way we accept applications.  We will start taking applications on a rolling basis on March 1, earlier than in previous years, and responding at intervals of two weeks.  If you apply by March 1, we will respond by March 15; if you apply by March 15, we will respond by April 1, and so on.  For priority admission and a better shot at your first-choice workshop, we recommend you apply by April 1.  The scholarship deadline is April 15, so we will be reserving spots in workshops for scholarship applicants.  We hope that this system will help our participants arrange their summer travel and plans farther in advance, which many of you have told us you would appreciate.  If you have questions, please drop me a line at nvwcpoetry@gmail.com.

 

Glenn Goldman

So sorry to hear this.  From Book Soup, an announcement of the death of the store’s founder, Glenn Goldman:

We are proud to honor his memory by doing the thing he loved most: selling good books to good people.

LA Times obituary and appreciation here.  Apparently the store will be sold.

 

January at the Hammer

The Hammer Museum features Frank Bidart, Jim Shepard, David Lehman, and Sven Birkerts in January.  First up is Frank Bidart on January 15 at 7 P.M.  I remember the first time I heard him read–around 1990, in the Sunset Canyon reading series at UCLA:  Stephen Yenser gave an introduction in which he praised the surgical precision of FB’s punctuation.  Not until I came to read the poems–like “To the Dead,” a poem that still elates and pierces me–did I really understand what he meant.

Matt and I both go back to work tomorrow–teaching for me, and rehearsals for Candida at the Colony Theatre in Burbank for him (he plays Mr. Burgess).  I’ve never read this Shaw play, and I can’t even think of when I’ve had the opportunity to see it, so this will be a fresh experience indeed when it opens in early February.

 

Poetry Faculty 2009

The poetry faculty of the 2009 Napa Valley Writers’ Conference will be:

• Jane Hirshfield (our every-other-year headliner and treasured F.O.C.–Friend of the Conference)
• Elizabeth Alexander (taught brilliantly for us in 2007)
• Carl Dennis (for the first time ever!)
• David St. John (taught smashingly for us in 2007 and one or more times pre-2002, where my institutional memory stops)

The conference website will be updated soon with the 2009 application deadline and other information.