In winter/all the singing is in/the tops of the trees, writes Mary Oliver in her poem “White-Eyes.” It’s a time when nature invites us to turn inward, to settle and contemplate. If you’ve ever read a poem and contemplated the story that might have inspired it, the December Poetry in the Boro is for you. Poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, who was born and raised in Nashville, will appear with his father, Steve, at Murfreesboro Little Theatre on Thursday, Dec. 20. The duo will tell a story of literal darkness and light in the form of a harrowing trip to Lost Creek Cave in White County, Tennessee.
Andrew will also share his poem about the experience.
“The story and the poem are wildly different,” he says. “This will be an experience that is not only entertaining but examines the relationship between story, verse and the self.”
Several stories told by Steve McFadyen-Ketchum are integral to the structure of his son’s poetry book, Ghost Gear. Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum is an award-winning author, editor, ghostwriter, activist and meanderer. He is acquisitions editor for Upper Rubber Boot Books, founder and editor of poemoftheweek.com, founder and editor of The Floodgate Poetry Series, and professor of creative writing at Colorado Community College.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the feature begins at 7. Open mic time with host Nick Bush follows. For the Winter Solstice Eve event, writers are challenged to share a poem or short prose piece that reflects this month’s themes of light and darkness or winter.
For more details, find Poetry in the Boro on Facebook.
Also in December:
Thursday, Dec. 13 is the deadline for proposal submissions to the MTSU Todd Art Gallery for their Spoken Word Performance event scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 26. Student, emerging and mid-career artists are all encouraged to apply. Performances should relate indirectly or directly to communication, text, literacy, social constructs, socio-economic systems and power relationships. More information is available at tinyurl.com/mtsuspokenword or by contacting gallery coordinator Eric Snyder at eric.snyder@mtsu.edu.
Friday, Dec. 14, local poets will read a mix of original and well-known seasonal poems at the Boro Art Crawl. Short poetry readings will be intermingled with a caroling quartet at the Center for the Arts from 6–9 p.m.
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Kory Wells, Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, will be reading at the Boro Art Crawl on Dec. 14. “And This Will Be Sign” appears in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee.
And This Will Be a Sign
by Kory Wells
To wake in this small room, where all night long
the steady furnace clicked and hummed soft warnings
to wolfish winds. To rise from quilted refuge,
don flannel robe and fur-lined slippers, pad
to chilly kitchen, brew the coffee, pour
the cream. To hold a cup that brims with comfort
and—dare you say it?—hope. As skeptics must,
you think this peace can’t last, but how you wonder:
An old frame house. Thin walls and drafty sashes.
A Mason jar of holly twigs, a bauble
hanging here and there. Three presents wrapped
and waiting.
Spare.
Enough.
For even now
your loved ones come this way, on frosty roads
in dazzling sun, their faces bright and open.
