The Poets

All of the poets who were in attendance (Vision/Verse 2011): Stella Nessanovich, Julie Kane (newly appointed poet laureate of Louisiana), J Bruce Fuller, Michael Shewmaker, Rita Costello, William Coppage, Darrell Borque (outgoing poet laureate of Louisiana), and Tree' George.

Vision/Verse (June 4th)

Time:
Saturday, June 4 · 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Location:
Art Associates Gallery
809 Kirby Street, Suite 208
Lake Charles, Louisiana


Vision/Verse, the annual poetry and art exhibition produced by Yellow Flag Press, is back for its third year in Lake Charles. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, June 4th, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Art Associates Gallery located in the historic Central School Arts and Humanities Center. A reading of all the exhibit's poems will be held at the Central School theatre at 7 p.m. during the evening.

The exhibit reinforces the bond between the literary and visual arts by encouraging artists and poets to examine their own creation process and how it can be influenced by another art form, specifically how art inspires poetry and how poetry is influenced by art. It brings together artists and poets across Southwest Louisiana as well as across the nation, including Darrell Bourque, the current Louisiana Poet Laureate, and Julie Kane, Louisiana's next Poet Laureate.

The exhibit's opening reception is the end to a six month long collaboration between ten poets and ten artists. Each of the ten artists created a new piece of artwork based on one the originally submitted poems; simultaneously, each of the poets wrote a new poem based on artwork by one of the artists. At the end of the process, the exhibit is composed of forty pieces of work -- twenty of which were created for the exhibit.

Yellow Flag Press, a local press that specializes in limited edition broadsides and chapbooks, publishes the Vision/Verse poems as broadsides, visual representations of poetry. Each poem will have ten limited edition broadsides for sale. The first edition of each broadside is framed and hung in the gallery with its complementary piece of art.

Poets:

Maya Beerbower
Darrell Bourque
Kolleen Carney
William Lusk Coppage
Rita D. Costello
Trée George
Ava Leavell Haymon
Julie Kane
Stella Nesanovich
Michael Shewmaker

Artists:

Graham Austin
Lauren Brasher
Martin Castillo
Brendan Egan
Meghan Fleming
Tony Forrest
Josh Guimbellot
Heather Ryan Kelley
Chris Marcello
Allison Weeks Thomas

Reading this Friday night (June 3rd)

The Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana and the Porch Coffee House & Café will present a reading by two local poets, Rita D. Costello and Trée George on Friday, June 3rd, at 7 p.m. at the Porch as part of the First Friday Reading Series. The reading series, which began in January, has showcased the talents of poets and writers in Southwest Louisiana and has helped to generate interest locally in building the Lake Charles literary scene.

Trée George was born and raised in Baton Rouge and received his B.A. and M.A. in history at LSU. He has lived in Tennessee and worked in sales and management training before starting a studio where he works to produce multi-layered artwork with photography, poetry, and fiction. His poems work closely with the prose poem instead of the more traditional forms of poetry. “As a visual learner, my poetry is almost always the byproduct of an image,” George stated. “I see first, write second.”

Originally from New York, Rita D. Costello has lived all over America and China. She is Director of Freshman/Sophomore English at McNeese State in Louisiana and co-editor of the anthology Bend Don't Shatter. Her work has appeared in journals such as: Glimmer Train, ACM, Baltimore Review, and Hawai’i Review. Costello has won the Glimmer Train Poetry Prize and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Testing iWatermark again

Testing iWatermark

First Card Design

Happy Mother's Day (a bit early)