Join Theresa Rodriguez on Zoom—Thursday, October 1st, 2020 at 6 pm.

 

Join Theresa Rodriguez on Zoom!


When: Thursday, October 1st, 2020 at 6 pm


Where: TinyURL.com/VirtualBard to reach us on Zoom


If required, please enter the Meeting ID 759 062 6042


And below is a sample poem from our featured poet: 

 

My Journal

Within my world there is a sacred place,
Where I can hide and then reveal my heart;
Where thoughts and feelings go, and become art;
It is a sanctuary, hallowed space.
Creating something new and touched with grace,
I put my mind to pen, and then impart
My soul's outpourings through my mind, to start,
Then show my whole raw self with open face.

And when complete, I then perfect my words,
And get them ready for the world to see;
I take them from these pages, then display
Them out for those who read, and hear. This girds
Me up for naked vulnerability.
Indeed, I offer all I am this way. 

Friends Helping Friends Fundraiser via Boscov's for Local Nonprofits, Including Berks Bards.

Every year, Berks Bards is a part of Friends Helping Friends, a fundraising event hosted by Boscov's across communities where stores are located. Customers who participate during one day or both days of this two-day event are able to support the nonprofit of their choice during their shopping because 5% of total sales are donated to the ones you note wanting to benefit from your purchase. There is also a 20% off discount on a wide variety of products for sale, as a perk.

Please be sure to select Boscov's Berkshire at checkout in shopping online to be able to search and find Berks Bards from the available drop-down options of nonprofits to support.

Shopping in-person and online will all count toward this fundraising offered by Boscov's.

This year, Boscov's simplified the process in a new approach due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so instead of those of us helping to run nonprofits selling tickets for the perks, how the rules have worked in the past, all you have to do is note what participating nonprofit you want your purchases to benefit if you're at a register, and if you shop online, you choose the nonprofit you'd like to support at the checkout before finalizing your order.

With state arts grant funding impacts due to the pandemic meaning funding we normally apply for and receive may not be offered at all in 2021 as a usual part of our support in keeping our programs in local communities, this fundraising is an incredibly useful opportunity for Berks Bards and many other vital nonprofits. 

We ask that if you have any shopping to do at Boscov's in-person or online flexibly by mid-October, please mark your calendar, and help to support our efforts as you shop. We are so grateful for the support we receive and how it helps us to stay active in communities in a time when poetry is showing its deep value even more at the surfaces of daily living in a far from easy world we're all sharing nowadays. Thank you, and please pass word of this along if you know of anyone who may have some shopping plans in mind in mid-October!

Remembering Berks County Poet Doug Arnold, Former Host of Our BCTV Show Called, ''Poets' Pause.''

In late August, Doug Arnold, a local poet who hosted our show Poets' Pause on BCTV before it was in the hands of Berks Bards to manage—passed away at the age of 73. Here is his obituary.

Marilyn Klimcho, as a part of our team of volunteers for Berks Bards for decades, took the proverbial baton of hosting Poets' Pause on bctv.org from Doug a few years ago; she puts an incredible amount of time into scheduling local and regional poets in Pennsylvania as well as some from out of state, reading their books, and preparing for interviews with them. Seeing the work she does has taught us a lot about the television-specific dedication and investment Doug handled on behalf of the community, and for poetry, before her.

 

As a tribute to Doug, we wanted to share a poem by him, and this one, we feel, is ultimately a phenomenal example of how language has the unique ability to keep flowing onward and to help others by way of a certain writer's mind and heart through inspiration, relating, chipping away at the often complex art of healing in our hard world, and needed understanding. When we save and also share a poet's words, both the poet and the poem continue to teach us. We are honored to bring you this poem by Doug, now, and encourage you to pass it onward, if its impact stirs you enough to want it to keep floating along in our world.

 

The Travels
of Dangerous Thoughts
By Doug Arnold

Most thoughts pass casually through,
zephyrs, barely ruffling our meadows,
without enough presence to seize or shape
any finite space. Don't call them back;
they're all part of what was never meant to be.

However, once in a while, a solemn figure strides
from the tall grass, and at first glance we believe
it to be just another discredited unicorn. But,
the prudent eye sees that it is a substantive thought,
a real one with the symmetry of two horns,
and enough gravitas to anchor its hooves. Why else
except that it knew that time was in heat,
would it have now emerged? Eventually it'll be driven
into the herd where even this thought
will also be milked and then slaughtered,
Yet, unlike the others, it is not barren, so
                   its offspring bears watching.

This poem was written by Doug Arnold on the 22nd of May in 2011.

9th Berks County Poet Laureate Competition 2021: Now Accepting Submissions.

Submissions are welcome now into early December 2020 for the 9th Berks County Poet Laureate Competition, for 2021, sponsored by Reading Area Community College.

Berks Bards is honored to be a collaborating organization for this laureateship.

 

 This competition is for adults who are residents of Berks County, Pennsylvaina.

Visit www.racc.edu/poetry to see all details for the competition.

Join Randolph Bridgeman on Zoom September 3rd, 2020 at 6 pm

 

Join Randolph Bridgeman on Zoom!

When: September 3rd, 2020 at 6 pm

Where: TinyURL.com/VirtualBard

If required, please enter the Meeting ID 759 062 6042

Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:

when i write

sometimes i can hear the boy i once was
answering for things that wasn’t
my fault

in my writings like the spark of a welding
rod against the metal of conformity

or in my words that appear like those on
faded blackboards in empty summer
classrooms

they are as elusive as the moonlight was
in the tall grass around my secret
fishing hole

and are like a rope swing tied to a limb
above a dry creek bed

they chop at the air like that metal bladed
fan in my curtain less window

in that bedroom where i pumped up
my daisy BB gun until my arm
got tired

then shot a sparrow off the sill and watched
with a curious pleasure as it spiraled
to the grass below

there is something there in my writings more
than childhood cruelty

a meanness –

that comes with the determination of a bull fly
beating itself against a kitchen window

a secret shame –

the kind that comes only out of abuse
or from the turning of heads
and the loss of innocence

Read the biography of Randolph Bridgeman below:

Randolph Bridgeman graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland. He is the recipient of the prestigious Edward T. Lewis poetry prize. His poems are published in numerous poetry reviews and anthologies. He has five books of poems, South of Everywhere 2005, Mechanic on Duty 2008, The Odd Testament 2013, The Poet Laureate of Cracker Town 2015, and The Not So Happy Hour Poems 2020.

“The way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths….”

                 ~ Charles Bukowski

Saturday, August 1, 2020: May 2020 Poetry Retreat via Zoom.

Next month, Dr. Robert Fillman who teaches English locally at Kutztown University is hosting what’s called, “May Poetry Retreat 2020,” rescheduled to an online event from springtime, as a single-day retreat through Zoom, sponsored by King's College and Wilkes University. Poets can spend the day generating new material, sharing their work, and talking with other poets. Opt for any (or all) of three creative writing workshops, sign up for a spot at one of two Zoom readings, or spend some quiet time writing. There will be Zoom breakout rooms throughout the day for small group discussion on the side, as preferred. Poets of all experience levels are welcome.

When: Saturday, August 1, 2020

Time: 9 am - 3 pm

Cost: $15.00 per person

To Register: email kingswritingconference@gmail.com

Join Susan Sonde on Zoom August 6th, 2020 at 6 pm

Join Susan Sonde on Zoom August 6th, 2020 at 6 pm

Berks Bards welcomes Susan Sonde to join us online on Zoom!

When: August 6th, 2020 at 6 pm

Where: TinyURL.com/VirtualBard

If required, please enter the Meeting ID 759 062 6042

Below is a sample prose poem from our featured poet:

FELINE PASTORAL, FELINE BLUES

My black and white tuxedo cat stares up at me. His world was once a cane, the hours took turns beating him; hung him like a slab of meat in their abattoirs. Rage cut his tongue in two. Tonight the wind retaliates. The leaves prattle on and on without surcease. Dust hurls itself at passersby. UPS delivers daily

the long insomnia-riddled nights. Clocks grow surly and the Devil leaps from a deviant’s throat. East to west, stove tops hustle, pushing kettles beyond their boiling points. The world’s gone rogue, juggles live bands and hand grenades while it wire walks. Sighs and whispers say all’s ending, yet the clouds still patrol the morning skies, yellow-gray in their gray barges.

Query the sounds a mad woman hears. Query the thoughts her mind shapes, the cries snow makes falling knife-like towards her throat.

What if the fork that nestles in a napkin’s folds ransacked the cloth in which it shelters and thinking for itself just long enough, found a heart in which to thrust itself? What if sunset called and no one came, or the sand on beaches

decried their emptiness…absence of footfall saddening them. Oh sunset your ravens worry me, your chicks are poorly loved. Deafening are the blows dealt the one who receives them. In air silence resonates, holds secrets to the stars and compound interest.

Some believe in the benefits of believing; invest heavily in the concept of an afterlife: standing room only, angels crowding about them, wings stuffed inside Hawaiian shirts; leis caged around their pale white throats.

Oh child of aging bone and fur, oblivious on your cushion. I kneel beside you…starving inmate invited to a banquet. Let’s enter our eternal rest together: ours the chair in which no one’s ever sat, ours the sea in which no protozoan ever swam. No doors lead out that don’t lead in.

No knowledge there of the weather, none of the blues. No shuteye to offer the departing.

Read the biography of Susan Sonde below: