“Green Light Send-Off”: Graduation Reception this Saturday

Saturday, May 18th

@ 4:30 pm

CWP House Backyard

May 18 is graduation day at Hamline University, and alumni are invited to come back and help us celebrate at the annual Green Light Send-Off. CWP and Moveable Feast will be hosting this gathering, which follows immediately after the commencement ceremony. (The party should start around 4:30 or 5 pm.)  CAtch up with old friends and come congratulate everyone with us!

Try Your Hand at Book Arts with Elizabeth Carls

Tuesday, May 14

6:30-8:30 pm

CWP House

There is a lovely tradition of our alumni presenting a gift to our graduates at the Green Light Send-Off. This year, we’re learning new book arts techniques and creating beautiful gifts for members of the 2013 graduating class under the guidance of MN Book Arts maven and yogini Elizabeth Carls. Don't worry if you have never done anything like this. This event is the perfect time to give it a try. Meet us at the CWP House, and bring a glue stick, bone folder and exacto knife if you have them. If not, that's okay too. Hope to see you there!

Moveable Feast planning January 13th

Please join Moveable Feast on Sunday, January 13 for a New Year's Explosive Planning Brunch at Haley Lasche's house at 1703 Ashland Avenue, Apt 7 in St. Paul at 11:30 AM (please bring a dish to share). We'll be discussing the next several months' events, and we'd like to have your thoughts to make this organization strong. Come to share your ideas or just to help vote. Our organization is nothing without you. We need you, and we need to continue to work toward being a successful organization. Won't you help us do that?

If you'd like to contact us for more information, email our FB page or our email address glsalumnibrd@hamline.edu.

Accepting Poetry Book Club Suggestions for 2013

Dear Friends,

I would like to change the night and week of Poetry Book Club, and wanted to give you all a chance to give feedback. I would like to move it to MONDAY night and make it the second Monday of the month. This isn't perfect, I'm sure, but hopefully will help to avoid holidays. Second Monday: any feedback? Also, the start time will move up a half hour to 7pm. So 7-8:30pm.

As far as books for 2013, we talked about it at our last book club and agreed that recycling a few from months when we ended up not meeting would be great. Nevertheless, I've discovered only 4 of those from the past 2 years, so there's room for more. If you would like to nominate a book or two, please feel free to email me. I'm also thinking about Holaday mason's Dissolve because she emailed us a few years ago when we read another of her books and suggested this one. I am planning on starting with Heid Erdrich's National Monuments on Monday, January 14th, 7:00-8:30pm, if y'all don't protest unanimously about the change in the day of the week.

Please get back to me this week if you have any ideas!

All the Best,
Jean Larson

Moveable Feast birthday party this Saturday

Join your fellow alumni for a party to launch the Alumni Association’s new name: Moveable Feast. (Yeah, we know the name changed a while ago, but we still want to celebrate it.)  The festivities will begin at 5:00 pm at Cayuga Neighborhood Park in St. Paul with a touch football game and then move a few blocks north to Sarah Hayes’s backyard around 6:00 pm for a bonfire and gathering.

Stop by the park for some football – to play or to cheer your fellow alums on – and then finish up the evening relaxing by a fire and enjoying some great conversation, a steaming mug of mulled cider or some pumpkin cake.  It's autumn bliss all wrapped up for you!

Touch Football Game

5:00 pm

Cayuga Neighborhood Park

198 East Cayuga Street, St. Paul

Launch Party and Bonfire

6:00 pm

Sarah Hayes’s House

1055 Agate Street, St. Paul

Questions, directions, etc? Contact Sarah at 651.269.6290 or sarah@innerrealms.net. (Also check out our Facebook event page . . .)

Join us for drinks after the Book Festival on Saturday

The Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival runs from 10-5 at the Fairgrounds on Saturday, October 13.  The fun doesn't end at 5, though.  Moveable Feast invites students and alumni to join us for libations and camaraderie at Stout's Pub (1611 West Larpenteur Avenue, just north of the State Fair Grounds) at 6:30. Be sure to stop by, catch up, and refresh yourself after a day of swimming in literary culture! (We'll update here and on Facebook if the time moves.)

Have We Got a Feast for You: Fall 2012 Events

October 6th is Colloquium at Hamline during Homecoming/Alumni weekend.  You can hear some standout graduates from last year talk about process.  That evening, be sure to head over to the Co-Kisser Film Festival, which will be showing poetry films and having an open-mic from 5:30-6:30.  You are specially invited to come and read a poem or two and celebrate this marvelous melding of film and poetry!

October 13th we're having a Happy Hour to celebrate new faculty member John Brandon's reading on October 12th and the Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival at the State Fairgrounds on the 13th.  Volunteers always wanted!  Meet us at Stout's (near the Fairgrounds on the NW part of the Snelling and Larpenteur intersection) at 6:30, and watch Facebook to help us get a head count to reserve a table.

October 20th is our Moveable Feast Launch Party (in belated honor of our name change) and Touch Football Game (and then bonfire at the lovely back yard of Sarah Hayes).  Players and spectators wanted!

November 2nd is the Faculty Appreciation Dinner at 5:30 and then the Water~Stone reading at 7.  It's our annual potluck style bash to celebrate and talk to our lovely faculty members and each other.  Watch Facebook for mouth-watering postings of who is bringing what delectable food this year.

November 14th is the long-awaited publishing panel (we sincerely hope).  A panel of publishers/editors will talk to alumni about the ins and outs of publishing in the Twin Cities and beyond.

All this on top of our monthly writers group and poetry club!  If you have an event or blog or website you would like us to post about, let us know.  And if you have an idea for something you would like to contribute to this blog to make it better for alumni (a monthly column or whatnot), get in touch with us.

Full slate this fall and full steam ahead.  Look for details here, on the Facebook page, and maybe in your actual mail box.  Hope to see you soon!

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Help us add some more spice to this moveable feast August 28th!

Join us at 6:30 on Tuesday, August 28th to plan out the semester and sketch out the year for this fair alumni association.  If you'd like to help out but can't make it, let us know.  (And if you have any fabulous ideas to share but can't make it, let us know, and we'll be sure to discuss them.)

We will convene at Ginkgo Coffeehouse (just across Snelling from Hamline University). If you need more info about Ginko, you can check out their Web site: http://www.ginkgocoffee.com/.

Hope to see you there!

Upcoming Poetry Book Club

Thursday, May 31, 2012: Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds by Angela Ball. First of all, I love the title. Second, she's a Mississippi poet who I don't hear about all of the time, and I'm curious about poets on the other end of our river. Third, in Donald Revell's review, he calls the poems "ghostly hotel assemblages of Joseph Cornell". Maybe it's just too close to Halloween, but I'm dying to read this!
Suggested by Haley Lasché

Thursday, June 28, 2012: Whorled by Ed Bok Lee's (new book)
Suggested by Sarah Spleiss

Thursday, July 26, 2012: What Work Is by Philip Levine
Suggested by Kathleen Keller

Thursday, August 30, 2012: Dread by Ai. I saw a reading in memorial to the poet Ai at AWP last year. She is not someone whom I am all too familiar with; however, Marilyn Chin, Major Jackson and Eavan Boland were all reading her works to celebrate her (and I really like all of them). The book Dread is full of characters, each poem creating a portrait in a single long stanza. I've only flipped through it, but I'd love to read it with you guys!
Suggested by Haley Lasché

Thursday, September 27, 2012: Invisible Strings by Jim Moore
Suggested by Jean Larson

Thursday, October 25, 2012: Willow Room Green Door by Deborah Keenan
Suggested by Libby Casey Irwin

Anything tempting you to read and come discuss with us?! Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).  It's always a good idea to give them a call before you head over in case they're having a hard time getting ahold of the book.

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.  You can also get Facebook Invitations if you join the group.  See you there.

Congratulate new graduates at the Green Light Sendoff on May 19th

Yes, it's that time of year again when we bid the new graduates farewell.  As soon as their ceremony is over, they'll stop by to talk to professors, current students, and alumni.  Some will bring their families.  They'll pick up the gifts we made them, and then they will belong to us!  (This is not sinister at all, it's just that they'll be alumni and part of the alumni association, and . . .)

Green Light Sendoff

May 19th

4:30-6
CWP House

* * * * * * * * *

And if that's not enough fun for you, when you're done with this party, head on to the West Egg After Party.  It's their end-of-semester party, and there will be a cook-out.  They require that you bring your cheerful self and a healthy non-self-destructive attitude towards alcohol consumption.  If you're feeling ambitious, you can bring a delicious dish or beloved beverage to share.  Both animal and vegetable food grills we be going.

Songs may be sung, poorly. Poetry may be recited, spontaneously. Stories may be shared, gratuitously.  Fun will be had, memorably.

Location: The Burgess Street Poetry House - 1026 Burgess Street; St. Paul, MN 55103

With love, respect, and unflinching support, now as ever,

The West Egg Literati

Help make gifts for graduates!

The Best Gift You'll Ever Make (Book Arts with MC Hyland)

Thursday, May 10 @ 6:30 PM

CWP House @ 1500 Englewood, Saint Paul

This year, we’re creating beautiful gifts for members of the 2012 graduating class under the guidance of MN book arts maven, poet and publisher MC Hyland. Don't worry if you have never done anything like this. This event is the perfect time to give it a try and a great time to get ideas for your own handmade gift books. Meet us at the CWP House, and bring a glue stick, bone folder, and exacto knife if you have them. (If not, that's okay too. :) Hope to see you there.

MC Hyland was born in Washington, D.C., raised in Massachusetts, and after stints in Boston, Philadelphia, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has found her way to Minneapolis. She is a poet, letterpress printer, and bookmaker, and runs DoubleCross Press, a publisher of chapbooks and broadsides by (mostly) emerging (mostly) poets. She also runs the Pocket Lab reading series and works as an administrator at the Minnesota Center for Books Arts, a letterpress and writing teacher through local nonprofits, and a cheesemonger. Poems from Neveragainland have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Slant, H_NGM_N, The Paris Review, apocryphaltext, LIT, 751 Magazine, Platte Valley Review, 42 Opus, Fairy Tale Review, among other places

Poetry Book Club 2012 edition

Well, it's going to be a great year for the poetry book club! 

Thursday, January 26, 2012: Red Bird by Mary Oliver

Thursday, February 23, 2012: Talking to my Body by Anna Swir
Suggested by Beth Gedatus

Thursday, March 29, 2012: Given Sugar, Given Salt by Jane Hirschfield.
Suggested by Kathleen Keller

Thursday, April 26, 2012: Coming to That by Dorothea Tanning -- the 101-year old former visual artist who just published through Graywolf. She thinks of herself as "the oldest living emerging poet." Very intriguing -- and Dan Chiasson wrote two full pages of review. (Kind of amazing.)
Suggested by Paulette Warren MOST VOTES!!!

Thursday, May 31, 2012: Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds by Angela Ball. First of all, I love the title. Second, she's a Mississippi poet who I don't hear about all of the time, and I'm curious about poets on the other end of our river. Third, in Donald Revell's review, he calls the poems "ghostly hotel assemblages of Joseph Cornell". Maybe it's just too close to Halloween, but I'm dying to read this!
Suggested by Haley Lasché

Thursday, June 28, 2012: Whorled (Ed Bok Lee's new book)
Suggested by Sarah Spleiss

Thursday, July 26, 2012: What Work Is by Philip Levine
Suggested by Kathleen Keller

Thursday, August 30, 2012: Dread by Ai. I saw a reading in memorial to the poet Ai at AWP last year. She is not someone whom I am all too familiar with; however, Marilyn Chin, Major Jackson and Eavan Boland were all reading her works to celebrate her (and I really like all of them). The book Dread is full of characters, each poem creating a portrait in a single long stanza. I've only flipped through it, but I'd love to read it with you guys!
Suggested by Haley Lasché

Thursday, September 27, 2012: Invisible Strings by Jim Moore
Suggested by Jean Larson

Thursday, October 25, 2012: Willow Room Green Door by Deborah Keenan
Suggested by Libby Casey Irwin

Anything tempting you to read and come discuss with us?! Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).  It's always a good idea to give them a call before you head over in case they're having a hard time getting ahold of the book.

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.  You can also get Facebook Invitations if you join the group.  See you there.

Planning brunch Sunday!

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It's that time of year again! Please join us on Sunday, January 15th for a New Year's Explosive Planning Brunch at Annette’s house 1202 Adams St. NE, 11:30 AM (please bring a dish to share).

We'll be discussing the next several months' events, and we'd like to have your thoughts to make this organization strong. Come to share your ideas or just to help vote. Our organization is nothing without you. We need you, and we need to continue to work toward being a successful organization. Won't you help us do that?

If you'd like to contact us for more information or to share suggestions or ideas, email our FB page or email us.

See you there!

- your glsbrd

Water~Stone deadline and next GLS Alumni Writers' Group meeting

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Water~Stone postmark deadline is Thursday, December 1.  Now that we're not students anymore, we can submit.  Yay!

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Monday, December 5, 2011

7-10 pm

The Sarah Hayes Residence

Please join us as we kick off the Hamline GLS Alumni Writers’ Group!

This multi-genre writers’ group meets the first Monday of every month at 7:00 pm, giving participants a chance to start the month off focused on writing.

The goals for this group are to build community, have fun, and support fellow writers as we strive to keep writing an active part of our busy lives. You are invited to bring pieces to share and/or workshop as well as any concepts or ideas you’d like to explore or get feedback on.

Come to one meeting, come regularly… It’s up to you.  For more information, including directions, and/or to get on the Writers’ Group mailing list, email Sarah at sarah@innerrealms.net.  You can also join the group on Facebook and get reminders sent.

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This Thursday (Poetry), Friday (West Egg), and Saturday (Save the MALS program)

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Thursday, November 17th
7:30 - 9pm

Poetry Book Club will be at Har Mar Mall Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the corner of Snelling and County Road B.  Sarah Spleiss and a few others will secure some tables in Starbucks within the bookstore.  Enjoy discussing Red Bird by Mary Oliver!   Map here.

And for poetry book club lovers, Jean will email the nominations for next year out out for voting by the end of this coming weekend.  (This gives any stragglers one last chance to submit.)  Let her know!

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club usually meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (except for the Thanksgiving month exception). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.

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Friday, November 18th
7:30pm - 9:00pm

Rock Paper Scissors LAUNCH PARTY and Liver Demolition at the Turf Club

Celebrate the launch of this year's r,p,s and hear some readers from its golden pages!

1601 University Ave.
Saint Paul, MN 55104

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Saturday, November 19th
3:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Satish Jayaraj invited you to
Save the MALS program Planning meeting

1600 Englewood apt 103
St Paul MN 55104

 

From Satish:

 

"As some of you may know, a decision was made by the VP of Hamline, David Stern, to halt new students entering the MALS program and to shut it down after current students (myself included) graduate. I am going to be fighting this tooth and nail. I always loved the MALS program even as an MFA because of how well our beloved faculty integrated the two programs. If the MALS program is shut down over frivolous reasons, ( reasons which we will discuss) how much will the MFA deteriorate as a result? I am very afraid of how far this slippery slope will go. Some of us MFA grads know how remarkable the Hamline program is when we talk to MFA's in other programs, so it is as much an MFA concern as it is a MALS." 

 

"I am holding an emergency meeting at my apartment to brainstorm all the different creative ways at our disposal to put a plan into action and act on it. At the very least it will be a letter/essay writing workshop. At the most we'll do so much on multiple levels and reach several audiences that we'll overwhelm the V.P. into repealing his decision.  I'm looking to hear big, small, cliche, repetitive, weird ideas and anything between and beyond."

"I have a decent amount of writing instruments, but bring your own in case and bring your laptops if you have any (For research) Food and beer to keep us going will also be appreciated. I lack furniture for a large crowd, but I have plenty of soft carpet, no I will not be insulted if you think it prudent to bring soft cushions, or anything else for that matter that my pad might be missing. RSVP (612-568-7660) so I know what to expect, and it's never too late to start shooting out ideas and asking questions."

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Faculty Appreciation Potluck November 4th

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Friday, November 4

5:30pm - 7:00pm
Giddens Learning Center: Gallery Room

GLS alumni are getting together with our past faculty to thank them for their wonderful influence. Start thinking about what dish you'd like to bring.  Post your ideas on Facebook or at glsalumnibrd@hamline.edu.  Afterwards, you can head straight over to the Water~Stone reading if you'd like.

This is a great, low-key event where you can thank those great faculty members one more time for all they contributed to your education and growth as a writer.  Also a great place to try some amazing food.  And talk to your fellow alumni.  We'd love to see you there.

- your glsbrd

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Friday, October 14th Happy Hour and Reading

Friday, October 14th

5-6:30 Happy Hour

7:00 Reading

You may have heard that Deborah Keenan and Barrie Borich will be part of a reading featuring contributors to American Tensions: Literature of Identity and Social Justice.  (This is one star-studded anthology, holy cow!)  The reading starts at 7:00 pm in the Kay Fredericks Ballroom in the Klas Center.

If you plan to attend the reading or if you just want to say hi, we'd love to invite you to join us at a happy hour at Old Chicago in Roseville before the event. (The 8" pizzas are $3 until 6!)  We’ll be there from 5‑6:30 pm at the Old Chicago located at the corner of County Road B & Snelling Avenue.

Hope to see you there!

- your glsbrd

Poetry Book Club meets September 29th (correction!)

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s September book is Flood Song by Shewin Bitsui. We'll be meeting at Jean's from 7:30-9 and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates.

Publisher's weekly describes Flood Songs as "a sequence of untitled fragmentary lyrics, which, taken together, form a long poem that is part stream-of-consciousness road movie of the Southwest and part visionary investigation of personal memory."  Sherman Alexie likes it, too (high praise in my book).

Poet Haley Lasche, who suggested the book, says:

I’m starting to realize that in my literary tastes, I’m being drawn more frequently to the same publishers. I didn’t mean for this to happen; however, in the last six months, I’ve accidentally bought four books from Copper Canyon Press. The poetry collection Flood Songs is one of those titles. At first, it was the landscape of the page, how the white space created in the bloated top margins meet the first lines which began to feel like the morning horizon. And then it was how the human body senses the world surrounding it: both what is natural and what is man-made. In Bitsui’s acts of lyricism, I forget about my own needs for narrative. I am reminded that there are many ways to meditate.

Sound like something that makes you want to read and come discuss with us?! Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.  (We'll be taking suggestions for the next year of poetry goodness soon, so be sure you're on the list!)

GLaaS Fall Planning Meeting Monday September 12th

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September 12 

6:30 

Ginkos Coffeehouse (just across Snelling and one block south of the Hamline campus)

Want to get involved in talking about ideas for and creating events for fall semester?  

See you there . . . :)

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Poetry Book Club meets August 25th

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s July book is The House of Belonging by David Whyte. We'll be meeting at Jean's and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates.

Reviewers seem to universally agree that this is powerful stuff.  "We owe a debt of gratitude to David Whyte for work which lacks the obscure, murky, digressive qualities often associated with poetry and which are responsible for turning large segments of the reading public away from quality literature.  He writes with exquisite simplicity about life's monumental concerns: love, creativity, aloneness, beauty. These are the very things which, by virtue of their universality, should be easily perceptible, but which we have made endlessly complicated," B.A. Brittingham says.

Here's what Beth Gedatus, who suggested this book for the club, has to say about it:

"Perhaps I read some of his work during National Poetry Month. I am not sure. One thing is certain whatever it was I read/heard struck a cord in me. When this happens I become compelled to research the poet/writer.  Anyway, shortly after that I found his book, The House of Belonging in a women's clothing store- they probably had 3 different books in the entire store but as Whyte had just come to my attention I viewed the discovery as clandestine and happily paid the clerk.

"I am drawn to the poetry of the common day, the common life and the commonality of human emotion. For example in the poem THE WINTER OF LISTENING, Whyte speaks of solitude 'No one but me by the fire,/ my hands burning/ red in the palms while/ the night wind carries/ everything away outside.' He goes on to call our attention to, 'All this petty worry.' And that is exactly what it is, 'petty worry' and I imagine each and every one of us can lay claim to spending countless minutes and hours within our days on just that, petty worries. I like to be reminded of this so perhaps in the future I will recognize when I am uselessly burdening myself with petty worries.

"Further on in the poem the exquisite stanza; 'Inside everyone/ is a great shout of joy/ waiting to be born.' Whyte's poetry is accessible which is important to me. At times I find myself adrift in some contemporary poetry, questioning whether I am 'getting it'. As an apprentice to poetry I enjoy work that allows a gentle immersion into the art form; work that rewards with insight and perspectives worth pondering.

"I learn so much from the group discussions and I look forward to hearing how others feel about the book. I rely on others to help me deepen my appreciation for, and understanding of, this magical genre we call poetry."

Sound like something that makes you want to read and come discuss with us? Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.