Category — Poetry Series

Sping’s finally here!  I’ve got the doors to the office open and giant dust bunnies are blowing off the ceiling fan.   That explains my sinus headache….

We had a wonderful wetland event yesterday and the pictures are already up on flickr.  I’m working on getting our facilitators more appropriately acknowledged.  Check ‘em out.

Last week’s poetry reading was awesome - many thanks to Stephanie Barrows with the Lawrence Poetry Community for the hours and hours she’s spent coordinating the Spring Poetry Series.

That’s the short & sweet for now.  The calendar has info about wetland learners events that are coming up.

Spring in Kansas is notoriously unpredictable - the variability is part of what we love about it here but geez, winter just doesn’t want to let go. It’s starting to impact our field season. The Wetland Learners event scheduled for last Friday had to be postponed.

We’re still all systems go for Lawrence’s Rain Shower’s to Water Towers event tomorrow but I’m definitely going with the layered look.

Wild Birds Unlimited in Shawnee, Kansas, has stocked up on copies of Exploring the Kaw Valley. These are now officially out of print so catch ‘em while you can! As many of you will recall this book, authored by Lynn Byczynski and dedicated to KVHA’s founder Joyce Wolf, has a series of annotated driving loops of natural and cultural interests in the Kansas River Valley.

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The last event in the Westport to Wakarusa Poetry series is set to take place next Thursday, 4/24, at the Haskell Cultural Center and Museum at the Haskell Indian Nations University 7 to 9 pm. Smokey McKinney and Ken Lassman will be sharing some of their writing and insights. The poetry series is a KVHA Partner Project with the Lawrence Poetry Community.

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Odds & ends from the last few days… -Alison Reber

Friday 3/28/08 Bob and I attended KU’s Hall Center for Humanities Annual Oral History Workshop (Learning to Hear the Stories IX)

This year’s theme, “Beyond These Hallowed Halls—Educating America”, encourages us to take a critical look at the connection between our past and our future as we turn to projects in individual and group history that have had a significant impact upon our public memory. (sound familiar?…)

There were several old friends in the mix - Mike Watowa & Gloria Throne from the Kansas Folklore Society. Ruth Turney, Pat Kehde, and Burdett Loomis were also in the mix.

[Read more →]

The 2nd event in our 3 part poetry series will be Thursday, February 28th at the Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union from 7 to 9. The Oread Bookstore is hosting the event.

Local poets Elizabeth Schultz, Denise Low, and Dennis Etzel will share their poetry and thoughts on our place in the natural world. Please join us for a reading and discussion.

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THANK YOU to
January Poetry Event Sponsor

About: Signs of Life is a bookstore, art gallery, and espresso bar all rolled into a big wonderful place whose purpose is to be a blessing to the community. We opened our doors in March of 2003 with the intent to be a place where people could find good books, not just any old book, but books worth owning, thoughtful books, books that tackle big ideas. And not just books, but fine art too! Our professional sales gallery represents artists who want to present beautiful images - not vapid fairytale images, but work that grapples with the mystery of life and finds reason for hope.

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs004/1101274774513/archive/1101954710829.html

Bob Burkhart, Stephanie Barrows, and I have been collaborating on a project designed to spark ideas and conversation about personal relationships within the natural world and how they carry forth into the future.

Many of you know that this topic is especially fascinating for me.

From one side of the state to the other, 10 year olds to 90 year olds, I’ve guided group discussions about where people live and what they hope is different in the future. Generally speaking, people like where they live and they hope that in the future others will valued it more than they do now.

With Mudscapes thousands of young people have worked together as neighbors to plan out their ideal watershed. Not unsurprisingly they create something that mirrors what they see in the world around them. Urban, rural, good, bad, ugly…and equally fascinating.

Several years ago Bob and I began having indepth conversations about teaching approaches that spark collaborative learning. For me when that happens it’s like a moment in time freezes and I try to become invisible before the “students” suddenly realize they’re learning from each other without “teacher-directed curriculum bumpers”. Bob and I have been refining guided storytelling techniques that build shared visions of the future.
We met Stephanie through the Wetland Learners Project. She has a talent for tenacity, a passion for poetry, and a calm capacity to channel creative chaos. She also taught me a cool word — diachronical, which means changes that happen over time. Stephanie’s been wearing the letters off her keyboard trying to work out the details for this and several other poetry endeavors.

In mid-December we hosted a poetry reading at KVHA’s office. From there we decided to launch a spring series - recording the events with the hope of connecting the poetry with several of KVHA’s other projects.

Details about the events in this series are shown above. If all goes well, we plan to hold a special event in June to share and celebrate these new endeavors. -ALR