Andrea Spofford
“These sudden ends of time must give us pause,” writes Richard Wilbur in his poem “Year’s End.” For all the universal truths and traditions surrounding the new year, poetic responses to it vary as much as poets.
W.S. Merwin says the new year is where we come with our hopes “untouched and still possible.” Kim Addonizio says “Today I want / to resolve nothing.”
A similarly wide variety of voices are welcomed and celebrated at the monthly gatherings of Poetry in the Boro. This month’s event will be Sunday evening, Jan. 13, at Murfreesboro Little Theatre. Featured poets will be Andrea Spofford and Frank Frizzy Sykes.
A writer of poems and essays, Andrea Spofford is poetry editor at Zone 3 Press and an associate professor of poetry at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville. Her work appears in journals such as Cimarron Review, The Account, The Portland Review, Puerto del Sol and more.
Spoken word artist Frank Frizzy Sykes is a former law enforcement officer and self-described “country boy” from Columbia, Tennessee. He’s become known on the Middle Tennessee poetry scene for both his own work and for his role in producing Poboys and Poets Nashville.
Frank Frizzy Sykes
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the features begin at 7 p.m. Open mic time follows. For more details, including this month’s word challenge, see Poetry in the Boro on Facebook.
Also in January:
Friday, Jan. 11, local spoken word poet Christopher Williams will be producing another edition of Under 1 Roof, a “night of talent and creativity” in poetry, comedy and live music for adults 21 and up. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Heritage Room adjacent to CJ’s Restaurant. Food and a bar will be available. Tickets are now available online; check Facebook or Eventbrite for details.
Wednesday, Jan. 15, registration opens online for the Southeastern Young Adult Book Festival Book Fest (SE-YA). This event, founded by four Rutherford County librarians, is now in its fourth year of connecting middle and high school students with authors. This year’s schedule includes over 40 authors, two days—March 6 and 7—for school group visits and a community day that includes optional writing workshops on Saturday, March 8. Tickets are free but pre-registration is required for groups and the writing workshops. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or interested reader, get all the details at seyabookfest.com.
Saturday, Jan. 26, the MTSU Todd Art Gallery will host a Spoken Word Performance event from 12–2 p.m. An open mic will follow scheduled performances that relate indirectly or directly to communication, text, literacy, social constructs, socioeconomic systems and power relationships. More information is available by contacting gallery coordinator Eric Snyder at eric.snyder@mtsu.edu.
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“Denotative Meanings” by Andrea Spofford first appeared in New South. Spofford is one of two featured poets appearing at Poetry in the Boro on Jan. 13.
Denotative Meanings
by Andrea Spofford
To say the landscape looks like a quilt from the air, the
farmland
all sewn together by threading of roads between fields,
the stitch
of cornrows as stitches through overlay, not cotton but
dirt, is
to say I want to be buried beneath it, to lounge and tumble
as a
Sunday morning.
These days are the jars we place on high shelves in pantries
like
full ripe peaches slick in orange syrup so wet that when the
jar
breaks the house smells of peaches for days after.
Consider this
act of saving, the crashing of glass into hardwood floors,
the impossibility
of indentation—how to fix this scar in the wood. Scent
is the mental construct of this thing—scent is sawdust in
piles on
the floor.
