To celebrate National Poetry Month, the Tioga (NY) Arts Council sponsors a series of recordings of local poets reading a poem of their choice.
I’m pleased to say that my poem “The Bridge” is part of this initiative this year. You can listen to my recording here.
You can find the 2024 Tioga Arts Council recordings here, including offerings from fellow Grapevine Poets Merrill Douglas and Jessica Dubey.
Enjoy!
Binghamton, NY area folks are cordially invited to come hear me and six fellow Grapevine Poets read works by ourselves and others in honor of National Poetry Month at the Broome County Arts Council’s Artisan Gallery on Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 1:30.
This invitation comes to you as part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays series. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/04/24/one-liner-wednesday-parenting/
I am honored to have been selected for the fourth annual Glimmer Globe Theatre/Fenimore Art Museum Write Out Loud performance on Saturday, April 20th. There were 22 writers represented with a mix of poems, short story, essays, and even a short play, all written by people living within a 100-mile radius of Cooperstown, New York.
My daughter T and I decided to make a weekend of it. We visited the Museum in the afternoon. Our favorite new exhibition was “As They Saw It: Women Artists Then and Now.” It will be showing through September 2, 2024. We loved how it demonstrated the power of women’s artistic expression over time, both as individuals and in relation to other women across the generations. We also appreciated viewing the thoughtfully curated Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, which has had a home at the Fenimore since 1995.
After a delicious early dinner at the Council Rock Brewery in a room filled with vintage clocks, T and I headed back to the Fenimore for the performance. We arrived early so that I could attend a walk-through. I had the opportunity to meet Christine Juliano, the actor who would read my poem, “Some Time Else” from my chapbook, Hearts. I admit that the whole evening was much more relaxing because I didn’t have to perform myself. It made the walk-through more interesting as I could observe the microphone adjustment and lighting cues without having to worry about dealing with them myself. It was also a good reminder that having a mike is not an excuse to dial back on vocal projection.
We had a good house for the performance, filling the auditorium, which was exciting for me who is more used to wondering if the readers will outnumber the audience! A brief bio from each writer was read as they or the actor reading their piece took the stage. There were also accompanying visuals projected behind the stage that complemented each reading.
The range of topics was wide and it was fun to have a mix of genres represented. While the age of the writers skewed older, we did have some younger folks participating. Quite a number of the writers had been professors or editors or directors of writing series, so I, totally lacking in academic English credentials myself, felt honored to have been chosen alongside them. Submissions for Write Out Loud are read anonymously so the individual piece is selected, not the author. I was also surprised that a large majority of writers had chosen to present themselves; one of the things that had attracted me to submit was the opportunity to hear an actor read my work. I must admit, though, that some of the writers were so evocative in their performance that I couldn’t imagine an actor would have done better.
I learned that Write Out Loud began as a virtual performance during the pandemic, which then continued as a live event when restrictions were lifted. This year saw the largest number of participants thus far.
I’m not going into too much detail about the program itself because, on Saturday, April 27 at 7 PM, the recording will be released on the Fenimore Art Museum’s YouTube channel. Update: The video of Write Out Loud 2024 is now available here. If you expand the description, you will find the program, helpfully indexed to bring you to whichever piece you select.
Thanks to the Fenimore Art Museum and the Glimmer Globe Theatre, especially Mike Tamburrino, Manager of Performing Arts Programs at the Fenimore Art Museum and the affiliated Farmers’ Museum, for including me in this special event!
My poem “Some Time Else” from my chapbook Hearts has been selected for performance at the Fenimore Art Musuem through the Glimmer Globe Theatre in Cooperstown NY on Saturday, April 20 at 7 PM as part of Write Out Loud 2024; the recording will be released the following week and I will be sure to post it here at Top of JC’s Mind.
*****
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/04/17/one-liner-wednesday-a-what-kind-of-ritual/
Yesterday, I sang with the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton as we closed out our 45th anniversary season, which had concentrated on American themes.
This final concert was called “America Speaks” and focused on American poets. In an interesting twist, the poems were read by members of S.T.A.R. (Southern Tier Actors Read) before we sang the settings based on the poems. As a poet, I’m accustomed to hearing poets read, but actors enunciate and emote much more than most poets. I especially love that this concert took place during National Poetry Month.
(As it happens, I will have the opportunity to hear “Some Time Else,” one of the poems from my chapbook Hearts, read by an actor affiliated with the Glimmer Globe Theatre at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown on Saturday as part of Write Out Loud 2024. Stay tuned for more information.)
The highlight of the concert for me was performing Frostiana, Randall Thompson’s setting of seven poems by Robert Frost, written to celebrate the bicentennial of Amherst, Massachusetts. We were accompanied by members of the Binghamton Community Orchestra, so we could appreciate Thompson’s skill as an orchestrator as well as a composer. I especially liked the flute’s imitation of thrush calls in “Come In.”
What was most special, though, was that our artistic director, Dr. Bruce Borton, was able to conduct Frostiana for the performance. He has been battling a serious illness and this was his only appearance at our concerts this season. I began singing under his direction in 1988, when he was at the local university as a professor and began conducting the Binghamton University Chorus, which I had joined in 1982. I first sang “Choose Something Like a Star,” the final piece in Frostiana, under his direction relatively early in his tenure, so it was especially poignant to sing it yesterday.
I managed not to cry.
I hope to sing for Much Ado in the Garden this summer and for our 46th season. I’ll post details as they become available.
Binghamton NY area folks are invited to celebrate music and American poets this National Poetry Month with the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton at St. Thomas Aquinas Church on Sunday, April 14, at 4 PM.
This promotional message brought to you via Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/04/10/one-liner-wednesday-nuh-uh/
2023 Binghamton Poetry Project anthology
This spring is the tenth anniversary of my involvement with the Binghamton Poetry Project, which offers workshops to the area community, let by graduate students at Binghamton University.
Today, I’m sharing the link to the 2023 online anthology which became available at some point over these last weeks. Usually, an anthology release coincided with our final readings at the end of the spring and fall sessions, but, last year, for various reasons, no anthologies were published at those times. The link above has three poems from the spring 2023 workshops; I had submitted three from the fall, but they appear to have evaporated into cyberspace.
My poems, “With Nana” “After Cataract Surgery” and “The Way Home”, were written from prompts from our workshop leaders. “After Cataract Surgery” is closest to “real life”; the other two are more imagined. They were written and revised quickly because I needed to make the original anthology deadline, so no judgement on the level of editing!
A transition is underway with Binghamton Poetry Project which is now being re-named the Binghamton Writers Project. The plan is to offer community workshops in other literary genres in addition to poetry. Right now, we are still waiting to see what that will look like.
I owe a lot to the Binghamton Poetry Project. I’ve learned a lot about craft from their workshops. BPP connections helped me find the Grapevine Poets, with whom I workshop on a regular basis year-round and participate in readings. I was invited to write and deliver a poem at the Broome County Heart of the Arts dinner in 2016. A number of poems in my chapbook Hearts and in my still unpublished full-length collection began as Binghamton Poetry Project prompts.
I’m hoping (selfishly) that the Binghamton Writers Project will always keep a poetry offering available.
I wonder how long it will take me to stop calling it the Binghamton Poetry Project or BPP?
About my friend Angie.
(Hearts graphic by Angie Traverse)
Nineteen years ago today, my friend Angie died from lung cancer. She was only 54. She had never smoked or lived in a house with high radon or worked in a place with known carcinogens but, by whatever combination of genetics and living, cancer appeared and was diagnosed when she was fifty.
She was treated by some great doctors locally and in Boston and she fought hard for four years and some months, but passed away on Good Friday, 2005.
There have been a lot of developments in cancer treatment since then, some of which are advertised on television. I often wonder if any of those medications would have helped Angie live longer and better.
For years, I made contributions on March 25 and on Angie’s October birthday to the charitable fund established in her memory but, a few years back, the online page went away. Now, I just remember and write an occasional post. One of my favorite Angie posts is this one, written when I turned 54.
That year, I also wrote a poem about Angie, which was published by Wilderness House Literary Review:
Fifty-four
We were the October Babes,
You from 1950,
Me from 1960.
On your fifty-fourth birthday,
You managed coffee ice cream with hot fudge
Despite the metastases in your neck.
On my fifty-fourth birthday,
I raise a solo toast with your favorite Coke-with-a-lemon-wedge
To the October Babes being fifty-four together.
*****
This October, God willing, I will turn 64.
I wish Angie were still here, as an about-to-be 74-year-old grandma, mom, artist, and dear friend. The world could use her compassion, creativity, and spirit right now.
Gearing up for a Saturday, March 16, 2024 event from noon to 4 PM at our local Vestal, NY Barnes & Noble Bookstore, featuring five Grapevine Poets, including me. The Grapevine Poets take their name from The Grapevine Cafe in Johnson City where we meet regularly to workshop poems, talk, and eat, of course!
Merrill Douglas, Jessica Dubey, Carol Mikoda, Burt Myers, and I, Joanne Corey, will be at individual tables scattered about the store for book signing and conversation from noon to three. We will each have a stamp to mark your entry to a drawing for a Barnes and Noble gift card if you visit all five of us.
At 3:00 or so, we will have a reading in the music department. We are hoping that some of our Grapevine colleagues will appear, as well.
Please join us at whatever point you are able. You can say that you “heard it through the grapevine!”
Many thanks to Burt Myers for the flyer. Burt is a talented graphic artist besides being a talented poet.
Last week, I received my first ever royalties payment on the copies of my poetry chapbook Hearts, which was published by Kelsay Books in May, 2023.
The payment covered the copies sold through the Kelsay Books website and on Amazon in 2023. (If you are lucky enough to still have an independent bookstore near you, they can also order Hearts for you through Ingram.)
It turns out that I had sold more copies myself, in person and through mail order, than I had online.
Yay, me?
At any rate, I’m now working on 2024 sales, so feel free to order at either of the links above, through your favorite local independent bookstore, or directly from me. I can arrange to meet up or deliver locally or send by mail in the US. You may email me at jcorey.poet@gmail.com to make arrangements or for more information.
I’m also available to give readings at bookstores, book club meetings, libraries, or anywhere else that might want to invite me. I could discuss Hearts, which revolves around my mother in her final years, or, more likely, read a more wide-ranging selection of my work and take questions. I could even throw in some blogging discussion, if that is of interest. I’m open to travelling to your venue or appearing virtually, so feel free to make a proposal that would suit you and your group!
I’m still near the beginning of the learning curve on the whole promotion aspect of authorship, so, please, also feel free to send along any advice or tips you may have.
Thanks to everyone who has purchased or read Hearts, written a review, and/or communicated with me about their own reflections and reactions. It has been a special experience for me knowing that my poems reach people and remind them of aspects of their own lives.
I also appreciate the support of the readers at Top of JC’s Mind. I’ll continue to keep you posted about my poet-life, plus a whole lot more, here.
In gratitude,
Joanne Corey
Joanne Corey 