warm up the night with our poetry coffeehouse
Herland kicks off the fall season with a series of coffeehouses to help you through those cold winter months. The first of our Winter Coffeehouse series will be on Saturday, November 17, at 7:30 pm and will feature the poetry of a four-woman intergenerational group collectively known as Calyx. And, we will have a barista on hand that evening to make cappuccinos and espressos (for a small donation). This event is free, but all donations are greatly appreciated. Here is a little about our each of our featured poets for the evening.
Dorothy Alexander is a retired attorney trying to reinvent herself as a poet/writer/editor/publisher. She writes and publishes in western Oklahoma where she was born and reared by country people. She celebrates the heritage, virtues, humor and foibles of a rural upbringing in her poetry and stories. She is co-owner and co-editor of Village Books Press, a two-woman publishing house established, along with her partner, Devey Napier, in 2002 at Cheyenne, Oklahoma, where they also host writers’ and artists’ retreats, run a bookshop and a complex of small art galleries. Dorothy edits and publishes the Broomweed Journal, a literary magazine. She has authored two poetry chapbooks, The Dust Bowl Revisited, and Rough Drafts, and a poetry collection, Borrowed Dust, edited two collections of local stories for an official Centennial Project. Another poetry collection is in progress, with the working title: Lessons from an Oklahoma Girlhood, due out in 2008.
Abigail Keegan is a Professor of English at Oklahoma City University where she teaches British and Women’s Literature. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Feast of the Assumptions and Oklahoma Journey, and recently her chapbook of poetry received a Merit Award in Byline’s 25th anniversary poetry contest. She is the former editor of Piecework: A Poetry Magazine for Women. For those interested in pop culture, gay studies and queer theory, her book, Byron’s Othered Self and Voice: Contextualizing the Homographic Signature, presents Bryon as a Romantic poet, privately anguished and yet a publicly adored superstar of his day. His creation of poetry is enmeshed with a period of English history where the Vere Street executions of homosexual men are horrific occasions of social oppression with consequences surpassing the Salem Witch Trials.
Jane Vincent Taylor lives and writes in Oklahoma City, OK. She holds an
M.A. in Creative Writing from University of Central Oklahoma, a Master of Library & Information Science and a B.A. in Women’s Studies from University of Oklahoma.
Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals. A companion book of poems, By the Grace of Ghosts, written with the poet Judith Tate O’Brien, was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award 2004. She
has taught creative writing for several years at Ghost Ranch Conference Center in New Mexico during Creative Arts Week, as well as the Fall Writing Festival. She was a fellow at Virginia Center for Creative Arts in 2006
where she finished a collection of poems, Benediction in the Dark. The full benediction will come when it finds a publisher. Amen.
Moose Tyler states: I have been a magic rock dealer, the president of a lawn mowing service, an umpire, a photographer, and a peddler of expensive vacuums. My responsibilities have included feeding anorexics, wiping the elderly, issuing cigarettes, and keeping an eye on people who see ants crawling all over their shoes. In record time, I’ve dropped checks, delivered oysters, filled coffee, boxed leftovers, shaken martinis and crafted daiquiris. I can bean count and number crunch, counsel and educate, smooth talk and copy sling. Currently, I’m a mother, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a warrior, a poet, a jester, a dreamer, and the leader of my own lip sync band.
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