Leaves of Bark

Nearing 50 Living Library Poets

In less than two months the Leaves of Bark blog has identified almost 50 living library poets around the world: 28 in the US, and 14 from various nations., including Namibia, Scotland, France, England, the Czech Republic, and Canada.

Thanks to everyone who has sent poems and biographical information. Keep on spreading the word and remember, we have a Contemporary Library Poetry page to highlight the poems of library-poets if you want to send us a sample or two.

Linda Doll : Information Architect & Poet

Linda Doll recently graduate Kent State University, with an MLIS and an MS in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management.  She used to be quite active as a poet, writer and editor, and is looking forward to being able to write more in the future.

Two of her poems have been added to the Library Poetry of Today series.

Jeanette M. Clough : Poet & Librarian

Jeanette M. Clough is a Senior Reference Librarian at the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles, CA.

She is also an accomplished poet. A list of her titles can be seen here, including four books of poetry, one book edited, and two artist books. A picture and bibliographic description of one of the lovely artist books, Stone, is here.

She tell us she has also written numerous journal articles.

Library Poets : Send Your Poems & Links

If you are a living library poet we are now accepting poems or links to poems so that you can share your work with colleages around the globe. Send up to 3 poems, either the work itself or a link online to it, and we will include the poems on our Library Poetry of Today page. (Send to barkingbards {at} deadpoes [dot} org)

2 Additional Living Scottish Bards

Staff at the Scottish Poetry Library have sent word of two more living Scottish bards. They are: A.B. Jackson and Richard Price. Jackson was "Born in Glasgow in 1965, and grew up in Bramhall, Cheshire, before moving to Cupar in Fife and attending Bell Baxter High School. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University, and is currently Senior Information Manager at NHS Education for Scotland.

His first book, Fire Stations, was published by Anvil in 2003 and was awarded the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A poem, "The Chemical Wedding" is online.

Richard Price was born in 1966 and grew up in Renfrewshire. He was educated at Napier College and the University of Strathclyde, where his doctoral thesis was on the novels and plays of Neil M. Gunn. He is the Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library.

Founder editor (with Raymond Friel) of Southfields and the current magazine Painted, spoken, he is a poet associated with the 1990s grouping of poets the Informationists, including W. N. Herbert, David Kinloch, Peter McCarey and Alan Riach. He is also a member of the London-based Poetry Workshop.

His publications include Marks & Sparks (Akros, 1995), Perfume & petrol fumes (Diehard, 1999), Frosted, melted (Diehard, 2002), and Lucky Day

Jessica Smith : Visualize Poetry ; Univ. of Buffalo

You must check out looktouch, Jessica Smit's well-crafted website, so full of surprises, including some great examples of Visual Poetry.

Jessica Smith, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, received her B.A. summa cum laude in English and Comparative Literature: Language Theory and her M.A. in Comparative Literature from SUNY Buffalo, where she participated in the Poetics Program and started the poetry magazine name.

Jessica is the author of one full-length collection of poetry, Organic Furniture Cellar. Since 2001, her work has been published in American Weddings, Anomaly, Antennae, apocryphaltext, Cannibal, The Continental Review, dANDelion, Drill, ecopoetics, Ferrum Wheel, Filling Station, FOURSQUARE, ixnay, Literature Compass, Mantis, name, OEI (in Swedish), The Other Herald, Outlet, Phoebe, Queen Street Quarterly, Rock Heals, rout/e, Serving Suggestion, Small Press Traffic, Small Town, xtant, and Zinhar (in Turkish), as well as in anthologies Face Time (Cy Gist Press) and A Sing Economy (Flim Forum).

Lisa Forrest : Buffalo, NY

Lisa A. Forrest is a Senior Assistant Librarian for SUNY College at Buffalo and the founding member of the school's Rooftop Poetry Club. A 2007 and 2008 Pushcart Prize nominee, Lisa's creative writing has been featured in eco-poetics, foursquare, Lake Affect, Yellow Edenwald Field and many other small press publications.  She is the recipient of the national Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRINDI) Award, June 2009 for her radio commentary And So This is Christmas, which aired December 2008 on WBFO, Buffalo’s local NPR station.

Lisa's first collection of poems, To the Eaves (2008), is available from BlazeVox Books, and you can hear an interview with her on the Joe Milford Poetry Show Interview.

With Lisa, that makes two from Buffalo.

Bruce Whiteman : Canadian Library Scholar & Poet

Bruce Whiteman got his MLS from the University of Toronto in 1979, and since then he has been publishing scholarly articles, biographies, books on printing history, and many books of poetry. He is currently the Head Librarian at UCLA's William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

Before coming to UCLA in 1996 he worked as a rare book curator and librarian at McMaster University Library and McGill University Libraries, in Canada.

His selected poems, Visible Stars, was published in 1995, and his long poem The Invisible World Is in Decline, in six books, was published in the fall of 2006.

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library is one of UCLA's major libraries for rare books and manuscripts, with particular strengths in English literature and history (1641-1800), Oscar Wilde, and fine printing

Celia White : Poetic Light

If you shuffle over to Buffalo you might discover Celia White, a poet and librarian. After many chapbooks came out, her book Letter was published in 2007 by Ambient Press. She has an occasionally updated blog, called Warm Wine, at http://celiathepoet.blogspot.com/ and a Flickr photograph collection.

Looks like she makes a wicked good pizza.

*In Maine, the term wicked good means something really, really good or cool. I have heard it said that the phrase comes from a certain part of England, from whence settlers first came to the Maine coast.

Robin Blaser (1925-2009)

"We" have had our first death here at Leaves of Bark. When I started this blog in May, I was given the name Robin Blaser as someone to add to our illustrious (and fast-growing) list of living library poets.

I've received word today that Blaser, who was born in Denver and went on to become a leading Canadian poet, died this past May.

A very lovely obituary was written by his friend Stan Persky.

A French and a Canadian Poet

walked into the library, and the blonde bartender said......

Here in Maine, where the current editor of this blog lives, we have French-Canadians. Today I've been given links to both a French and a Canadian library poet.

Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a fascinating philosopher-poet-writer-librarian from France. LIke many of the names which are sent me, for which I am very grateful, I had not heard of Monsieur Bataille.

Tom Eadie is a living Canadian poet with a distinguised library career. From the Library and Archives Canada we read this:

Poet, editor and librarian, Tom Eadie was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1941. He studied at Queen's University (B.A., 1968; M.A., 1971) and received his Master of Library Science from the University of Western Ontario in 1972. He has worked as a librarian at various university libraries. Eadie was editor of Quarry magazine, the student literary magazine of Queen's University, from 1962 to 1967. He was instrumental in transforming it, in 1965, from the annual student literary magazine, to a quarterly literary magazine open to writers from across Canada. In the same year, The Beast with Three Backs, a collection of poems by Tom Eadie, Tom Marshall and Colin Norman, was launched with the Quarry Press imprint. Eadie won an Ontario Arts Council Award for poetry in 1977, and published Dead Letters: Poems in 1996. Quarry has remained an important literary magazine in Canada.

Aline Soules: Librarian who loves poetry

Aline Soules works by day as a mild-mannered librarian at Cal State, East Bay, but by night she is... better let her finish this, I could already be in trouble for saying mild-mannered.

From the extensive list of courses, poems, and publications one can gather that she loves reading and writing poetry.

Nancy Kuhl : Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature

Nancy Kuhl has my kind of dream job: Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature. 

There is more about her poetry and work at the Phylum Press website, where she is co-founder and co-editor.

Online Projects:

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities:
http://brblroom26.wordpress.com/

Poetry at Beinecke Library:
http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/

African American Studies at Beinecke Library:
http://beineckejwj.wordpress.com/

Frances Leviston : Poet, editor in the UK

Frances Leviston has been working in libraries for the last two years (in Sheffield, UK) and is currently taking a year out to study for her professional Masters in Librarianship, in the Information Studies department at the University of Sheffield.

Her first collection of poetry, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007 and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. You can find more details on her website, www.francesleviston.co.uk.

She is also the editor and site admin for a new poetry archive called Verse Palace (www.versepalace.wordpress.com).

Thank you Frances. In the States, most people consider Eliot an American poet, as well as an English one. Critics often claim WH Auden as American, too. Hmmm, I wonder if either of them spoke to this issue (or maybe non-issue) of national identity in their prose or letters. I have always considered them both British and American poets.

Death Greatly Exaggerated...

Since most readers here are librarians, you will correct me if I am wrong in thinking that it was Mark Twain who, after reading of his demise, wrote that "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

We haven't heard from him (have we?) since those rumors were inevitably confirmed.

All that to profusely apologize the the following VERY LIVING POETS

A.B. Jackson
Richard Price
Tom Hubbard
Hamish Whyte
Douglas Dunn

Your fellow poet from across the pond, Frances Leviston, reminded me that you were temporarily on the Dead Poets List! Hopefully the Wayback machine did not capture that. You shall be happy to know that I have erased your deaths. Mr. Skold

Henry Gould : Rhode Island

Henry Gould has worked at the Brown University Library (I am envious) for 25 years!

His author's page at Amazon shows you the titles he has had published.

He maintains several blogs, one of which is on poetry & poetics, HG Essays & Reviews.

(Sorry for these necessarily short postings: I am getting a ton of great responses for list postings. I try to put in links that will give you access to the most material about the poet)

I like this, from his September 2007 Essay: The Poet and The Name

What the poet does, in playing with words, is strike those original sparks of imaginative apprehension - the first (& prehistoric) Promethean fire. Thus the poet reiterates verbal representation with the flavor, the sharp scent of that first encounter. This primal imaginative-intellective labor is what accounts for poetry's famous vividness; what Mallarme (and Eliot) meant when they spoke of their vocation as Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu (to render a purer sense to the words of the tribe).

Mankind the Word-Maker, the Playing Animal... one could go so far as to say that the poet, through free verbal play, recapitulates the human image - polishes it, in order to shine - a kind of microcosm of the human essence.

The poet must walk a tightrope between prosaic, utilitarian usage (which manacles naming under the sign of Necessity), and that arrogant artistic egoism and vanity which treats words as building material, as means not ends (splitting off words from their original naming function, and in doing so, deforming them).

Jeff Beam : Award-Winning Carolinian P/L

Librarian and Poet Jeff Beam, from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has posted a long, valuable list of the many books of poetry that he has had published. If you follow the link and see all the awards he has won, one wonders (how's that for alliteration?) just when he has time for library work!

In 2009 his poem, "Song of the University Worker", was designated the official staff poem of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lorraine Mariner : BBBBBritish BBBBBard

*******************************************************
Thanks for this link goes to Aidan Baker, the librarian at the Haddon Library of Archaeology & Anthropology, in Cambridge, UK.

"For your Living Library Poets list: Lorraine Mariner

(From Pan Macmillan Publishers) Lorraine Mariner was born in 1974, grew up in Upminster and attended Huddersfield University where she read English, and University College London where she read Library and Information Studies. She works at the Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. Her pamphlet 'Bye For Now' was published by The Rialto in 2005. In 2005 she also received an Arts Council Writer's Award and in 2007 her poem 'Thursday' was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best individual poem.

Julianne Buchsbaum : Kansas Librarian & Bard

This from the great State of Kansas:

I am the Humanities Librarian for English, Philosophy, and Classics here at the university. I got my library degree from U. of Pittsburgh, have an MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a PhD in Literature from the U. of Missouri. I have two books of poetry published: Slowly, Slowly, Horses and A Little Night Comes

I also know of at least a couple other living poet-librarians, John Latta and Stephanie Strickland. I believe Latta works at U. of Michigan and has two books out: Rubbing Torsos and Breeze. Strickland I think works (or used to work) at Sarah Lawrence College Library and has several books out: Zone : Zero, Ahsahta Press, 2008; V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L’una, Penguin Books, 2002; True North, University of Notre Dame Press, 1997; The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993; Give the Body Back, University of Missouri Press, 1991; Beyond This Silence, chapbook, State Street Press, 1986.

Julianne Buchsbaum, PhD, MLIS, MFA

University of Kansas Libraries

Thanks very much for the tips, Julianne.

John Donlan : Canadian Library-Bard

This from John Donlan, in Vancouver, BC.

I've been publishing poetry since 1966, and received my MLS from the University of Western Ontario in 1974.  Examples of my work are on my website, www.onlink.net/johndonlan.

I like this:

Indian Summer

Year follows year, meadowhawk dragonflies
dry new wings, black-veined, wrinkled windows.
What we think we know is the same strait-jacket,
what we lack the same lack,

all the time in the world.
Leaves turn to brilliant going-away
presents: envious, you'd love to learn
festive, spectacular good-byes

to the visible remembered world,
more than resigned, considerately cheering
the living with incandescent memento
mori, mimicking exemplary

loving humans, as well as other creatures
oblivious of you as cloud formations:
fast, strong fliers, fall's last
butterflies: Mourning Cloak, Question Mark.

21 October 2003

Stephanie Sesic Greer, MLIS : Teaher/Poet Kent State, Ohio

Thank you for letting us know about your work, Stephanie.

I am a published poet (under the name Stephanie Sesic) who just received her M.L.I.S. in May 2009. I'm not employed by a library yet, but I do volunteer as an instructor for the Young Writers Group (ages 12-18) at the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library in Stow, Ohio. I also teach English composition and creative writing at Kent State University. My chapbook, The Intimate Verge, was published in 2008 by Pudding House Publications out of Columbus, Ohio (www.puddinghouse.com). My work can also be found at the following online literary magazines:

"Sky" at Eclectica volume 11 number 1

"Erotic Haiku--Winter" at Word Salad Poetry Magazine volume XV number III

"Ashes to Ocean" at Willows Wept Review Issue 3 Spring 2009

"Superpower" and "Sycorax's Daughter" at Unlikely 2.0

"Now Appearing" at Literary Mama

Marek Sekyra: Poet-Librarian in The Czech Republic

Marek Sekyra works as librarian in Liberec, Czech Republic.

He has published one book of poetry in 2007 (Modré hodiny – Blue hours) and one bilingual book in cooperation with Mr. Otokar Simm with his translations of German prewar poets from Liberec (Ještědské květy/Jeschkenblumen = The flowers from Ještěd hill).

Turner Cassity: Georgia, Mississippi, South Africa

Turner Cassity (1929-2009). From the Georgia Enclyclopedia:

Cassity attended Columbia University in New York City on the GI Bill and received a master's degree in library science in 1955. After graduation he worked for the Jackson Public Library and then moved to South Africa, where he worked from 1958 to 1960 as a librarian, first in Pretoria and then near Johannesburg. He then returned to the Jackson Public Library for one year before spending four months in Europe.

In 1962 Cassity accepted the position of librarian in the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University in Atlanta, from which he retired in 1991. He also cofounded the Callanwolde Readings Program, which highlights poets and writers, with poet Michael Mott.