Spoken Word presents Poet Carol Ann Russell for March First Friday

The Art Center Spoken Word Committee invites you to join us on March 1^st as a part of the First Friday Art Walk for a reading by Poet Carol Ann Russell.  Along with reading selected poems from previously published books she will be sharing work from her new manuscript.  Reception begins at 5:30, reading at 6 pm with Q&A and signing to follow. This event is free and open to the public.

Poetry Workshop Offered - In conjunction with the reading the Art Center will be hosting a writer’s workshop with Carol Ann Russell – on Saturday March 1^st from 9 am to noon.  $40 for Adults / $20 for Students.   Space is limited.  

Collage created by Zoey Schelmper

The POEM as Kaleidoscope -  An individual’s poem contains not only a map of undivided consciousness, but also the potential for generating work in other genres:  creative nonfiction; memoir, short fiction; experimental writing.  Bring 3 pages of your typed poetry for discussion and critique.  Will include dynamic exercises and ideas to stimulate new writing. 

For more information on the workshop go to our link.

Learn more about about Carol Ann Russell.  Hear her read her poem “Things We Talk About at Home”  on KAXE’s – The Beat.

To register, call the art center at 218-444-7570.  The BCAC is free and open to the public.  Visit the BCAC and Shop 426 at 426 Bemidji Ave N (upper level of the Historic Carnegie Library on 5th St) or at www.bcac.wordpress.com  For information contact us at (218) 444-7570 or at bcac@paulbunyan.net  Hours are Tues. to Fri. 12 to 5pm and Sat. 10am to 2pm.

 

Full March First Friday Listing.

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Special Spoken Word Event

The BCAC Spoken Word Committee presents a book release and reading with author Deborah K. Jensen and her debut novel “Beyond Escape”.

Stop by for this Special Event Reading on Tuesday October 30^th in “The Forks” at Sparkling Waters.  Book sales, signing and cash bar during the Social Hour from 5 to 6:30 pm reading begins at 6:30 pm with Q and A to follow.

Join us early and grab a bite before the reading.  Happy Hour in the Waves Lounge is from 3 to 6pm.  Sparkling Waters is located between the lakes at 824 Paul Bunyan Dr. S. in Bemidji.  For more information contact the BCAC at 218-444-7570.

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Writers Meet and Greet at Art Center

The Bemidji Community Art Center (BCAC) Spoken Word Committee invites those interested in writing to attend a meeting with others sharing that interest.  Get acquainted and talk about past experiences with writing groups.

Explore many ways to team up, from mixed to specific genres, from beginners to career authors, from pairs to small groups.  There will be no pressure to join a group. The event is a meet and greet and a platform for making connections.

Please join us at the ArtCenter’s upper level in the historic CarnegieBuilding (426 Bemidji Avenue)  at 7 p.m. Monday, October 1, 2012.  Published authors, tentative beginners and all those in between are welcome to experience the motivation, inspiration and skill development of belonging to a writers’ group.  It is also a rare opportunity to simply enjoy the evening in conversation with other writers.

You might decide to try a start-up group on for size or perhaps just enjoy one of those rare evenings of interacting with writers in our area.  (The meeting is open to all who are interested–bring a friend.)  Already belong to a group?  Share your advice with us and consider joining a second group, if your schedule allows.

Hope to see you there!

Lorie Yourd
BCAC Spoken Word Committee

For more information call us at 218-444-7570 or email bcac@paulbunyan.net

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October First Friday presents final Spoken Word Event for 2012

You are invited on October 5th to the BCAC for a reading by critically acclaimed author Kevin McColley.  Along with reading excerpts from his novels,  McColley will discuss his beginnings as a writer and the origins of several of his novels.

Please note: mature content – the reading is intended for adult audiences.  Guests should be 18 and older.

Reading – Friday October 5th / 5:30 opening reception – 6pm reading with Q&A and signing to follow.

Workshop – Saturday October 6th / 9 am to noon – lower level of the Carnegie Library Building.

How to Write a Great Novel in Only Three Hours -  Not really.  How to begin to write a novel, the things to look for and the things to avoid, and how to stick with the novel until it’s finished without abandoning the manuscript to your underwear drawer.  Fee for workshop: Adults $40 / Students $20  Space is limited.  For more information on the workshop or for to register, contact the art center at 218-444-7570.

Kevin McColley is the author of six published six novels. Both Praying to a Laughing God and The Other Side were nominated for the National Book Award. Praying to a Laughing God was also a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett Prize for best crime novel published in North America. He is the recipient of both a Bush Artist Fellowship and a fellowship in literature from the McKnight Foundation.

This event is made possible, in part, by a Region 2 Arts Council Grant through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund passed by the Minnesota Voters on November 4th , 2008.

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Spoken Word presents Wendell Affield and Muddy Jungle River

In January 1968 Wendell Affield went to Vietnam as the cox’n on Armor Troop Carrier 112-11 with the Mobile Riverine Force. At seventeen he enlisted in the navy and was half way through his first tour in Vietnam when his class graduated from high school. Affield, the third of nine children, grew up on a small farm north of Bemidji. After receiving an honorable discharge in 1969, he found work as a meatcutter apprentice in the Chicago area and, a few years later, became a manager, a position he held for almost thirty years. In 1980 he and his family returned to northern Minnesota where he worked at Luekens Village Foods for many years. After retiring in 2001 Affield enrolled at Bemidji State University, where, over the years, his Vietnam essays evolved into Muddy Jungle Rivers. During his time at BSU Affield attended many writers’ workshops where he made significant connections that contributed to his work. He plans to continue his studies at BSU as he moves forward with his writing.

 Awards

• 2006 Stenerson Scholarship for academic excellence
• 2012 Individual Artist Grant, Region 2 Arts Council

Affield has been published nationally in Vietnam, a history magazine. Over the years he has published several essays in the Bemidji Pioneer. 

• Muddy Jungle Rivers is in the process of being catalogued by the Navy Department Library as a research document.
• His memoir has been selected as a text book for a BSU history program Fall 2012.

Muddy Jungle Rivers does not glorify war. It explores the boredom and the moments of horror for the young who were sent to fight in Vietnam and the angst of the men who returned home.

 “Lullaby for the Lost,” a poem that inspired the title for his memoir, came to Affield one evening as he rocked his infant granddaughter, Kadance, and mourned those who never had the chance to hold children or grandchildren: 

Autumn’s rain echoes overhead

As I rock my granddaughter tonight

Another tune, staccato,

Lulled you to sleep

On a muddy jungle river

Join us for a reading, Q&A and book signing by Wendell Affield on Saturday June 16th at the Headwaters School of Music and the Arts – 4:30 to 6pm.  A portion of the book proceeds goes to the Bemidji Food Shelf.   This event is sponsored, in part, by the Bemdiji Library Book Festival and is a part of the Bemidji Legacy Destination Weekend.

For more information on the book festival events go to the Bemidji Book Festival and other Legacy Week events go the Visit Bemidji page

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The GTCPRS joins us for the May Spoken Word Event

Day One – The BCAC presents the “Great Twin Cities Poetry Road Show” as a part of the 2012 Spoken Word Series.  This exciting two day event kicks off on Friday May 11th from 5:30 to 7pm for an artist reception and reading featuring Matt Mauch, Paula Cisewski, Sean Hill and LouAnn Muhm.   Friday nights reading will be at the Headwaters Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at 522 America Ave.  Reception with refreshments start at 5:30, reading begins at 6:00pm with Q&A and book signing to follow.  The artists will be reading their own work including selections from “Poetry City,USAVol. 2″  This event is free and open to the public.  

Day Two – Saturday May 12th – work with the GTCPRS writers in a morning and afternoon workshop.   All levels of experience welcome.  Limit 20 per workshop – early registration recommended. Fee $45 for one session, $80 for both ($20 for students with school ID)  The Writers Workshops we be hosted at the Bemidji Library Conference Room at 509America Ave NW .  To for more information or to sign up contact the art center at 218-444-4757 or email at bcac@paulbunyan.net

9 a.m.-12:00 noon  Poetry Workshop 1 – Cisewski/Mauch - The poetic axiom “No discovery for the writer, no discovery for the reader” relies on the surprises that language, freed of the shackles of intention, can deliver. This kind of poem-and-poet changing discovery oftentimes requires that a poet be forced to take the sorts of risks with language that aren’t undertaken in solitude by the poet at home writing alone. Participants will play surrealist parlor games, generate some collaborative work, and bring poems-in-progress to the workshop to rediscover. Via various exercises, we will direct poems to walk the diving board of language, wringing new discoveries out of original work pushed to the edge.

1:30 p.m.- 4:30 p.m. Poetry Workshop 2 – Hill/Muhm  - Past Inspiration: Using Historical Research in Poetry and Creating Found Poems from Historical Documents.  Finding inspiration for new poems is often a challenge for the poet. In this workshop, will delve into history through poetry and vice versa. The poet Sean Hill will discuss his and other poets’ strategies for creating poetry with the materials provided by history—from the odd language of primary sources to the blunt facts about events and lives lived before us, the lives that made us. These strategies include textual and visual prompts aimed at helping writers to focus on concrete, detail-oriented writing. He will also discuss techniques for exploring local histories to keep the writing relevant and necessary for the writer. The poet LouAnn Muhm will walk the workshop through working with the elements of found poetry, looking to historical documents for nuggets of inspiration we can turn into our own, original poems. Her exercises will include erasures, cut-ups, and chance operations.

The 2012 Spoken Word series is funded in whole or in part by a Region 2 Arts Council Grant through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund passed by the Minnesota Voters on November 4, 2008.

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Spoken Word Committee presents Susan Carol Hauser

BemidjiCommunity Art Center October Spoken Word Event features Susan Carol Hauser for a Reading and Workshop.  Join us on Oct 7^th during the First Friday Art Walk with writer Susan Carol Hauser as she reads from, My Kind of River Journey: Seeking Passage on the Mississippi.   The reading will take place at the BCAC.  Reception starts at 5pm with the reading at 6pm. This event is free and open to the public.

As a part of the event Hauser will also be presenting a Writers Workshop entitled - What Did I Say?  on Saturday October 8^th from 9am to 12pm.   In this three-hour workshop with Susan, participants will learn some ways to read their writing the ways others do, including recognition of values and meanings expressed in the work. It is hard for writers to read their work afresh – they tend to “hear” what they thought they said or meant to say rather than what they actually said.   For more information regarding the reading and the workshop go to our Spoken Word page.

What the reviewers are saying about My Kind of  River Journey……

From the University of Chicago Press, Distributed for Center for American Places on My Kind of River Journey…..”The latest in a moving series of memoirs from the Center for American Places that celebrate the connection between individual and place, My Kind of River Journey takes the reader to the storied Mississippi River through the eyes of poet Susan Carol Hauser. Drawn, as many have been, to the siren call of the country’s longest river, Hauser and her husband traveled the Mississippi, from St. Paul to the Gulf of Mexico, on a repurposed ocean trawler. Here, she not only chronicles their experiences on this adventure, but also tells the story of the river, its movement and undercurrents, and its role in her personal transformation. ”

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BCAC Spoken Word Series Presents Heid Erdrich

The BCAC is proud to present poet Heid Erdrich as their featured writer for the June Spoken Word Series and as a part of the Bemidji Library Book Festival. 

Winner of the 2009 Minnesota Book Award for National Monuments, Michigan State University Press, Heid E. Erdrich has authored four books of poetry and co-edited Sister Nations: Native American Women on Community. Heid grew up in Wahpeton,  North Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe. She attended Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University. Heid taught college writing for two decades, including many years as a tenured professor. Since 2007, Heid has worked with American Indian visual artists as a curator and has founded a press to publish Ojibwe language books.  She regularly serves as a visiting author for colleges, universities and libraries.  Heid offers writing workshops and retreats through Split Rock Arts and the Madeline Island School of Art.

READING – June 16th – 7pm at the Native American Resource Center Heid will be reading poetry and brief non-fiction.  The reading is free and open to the public.  WORKSHOP – June 18th - 9am to noon - Bringing in the Sheaves, a multi-genre workshop on writing with an eye toward creating a book.  Limted space – $35 per person, $20 for students. 

You can find more information on Heid’s reading and workshop and other BCAC Spoken Word Events here.

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Mark Christensen for April Spoken Word Event

The Bemidji Community Art Center’s Spoken Word Committee is pleased to present poet and nonfiction writer Mark Chistensen for a special event on April 30th as a part of the Bemidji Legacy Destination Weekend, April 28th to May 1st.

Mark Christensen, a Bemidji native, has had a thirty-five career as an English teacher at levels ranging from junior high school to graduate studies.  He has earned several degrees, published two books and scores of articles.  For some years he maintained an occasional column in Bemidji’s Pioneer newspaper.  He continues to teach, write poetry, creative nonfiction, and scholarly essays, as well as maintain interests in singing, acting, and photography.

WORKSHOP:  ”Creating Nonfiction:  Telling Truths Artfully”, from 1:00 to 4:00.  Writers interested in generating creative nonfiction in forms such as memoir, biographical essays, or journalistic feature stories will received ideas and practice in beginning, drafting, and crafting revisions of specific pieces.  Workshop members are encouraged to bring along a piece they might like to share, though that is not required.  Workshop fees with be $35 - $20 for students.  There is limited space for the workshop so please call the BCAC for reservations at 218-444-7570.

READING: from 4:00 to 5:00, Q&A to follow. A dedicated Professor of English at Bemidji State University, Mark also has many published works to his credit including a collection of poetry, Faith in Ice Time, and a textbook, The Familiar Essay.   The reading will include short pieces of creative nonfiction and several poems, the contents of which will be accessible to readers who are teenagers or older.  The 4:00 reading is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served.

The Legacy Destination Weekend program has been brought to Minnesotans through Minnesota Citizens for Arts, Conservation Minnesota and Explore Minnesota to share with our communities how Legacy grants have been used on a local level.  We are honored  to be one of 12 Destination Locations for 2011.  Other partners for the Bemidji’s Legacy Destination Weekend are; Visit Bemidji, Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce,  Beltrami County Historical Society, Bemijdi Symphony Orchestra, City of Bemidji, Lake Bemidji State Park, Paul Bunyan PlayHouse, the Region 2 Arts Council, Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resouces, Conservation Minnesota, and Explore Minnesota Tourism.

For more information on the Spoken Word Series and upcoming writers visit the Spoken Word page.

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