After record rains here in February, March and the entrance of spring will perhaps be more “mud- / luscious” and “puddle-wonderful” than usual, as E.E. Cummings wrote in his poem “[in- Just-].” As creation bursts into bloom, don’t overlook the following local ways to enjoy human creativity—and nurture your own—in poetry and prose writing.
Sunday, Mar. 10: Poetry in the Boro at Murfreesboro Little Theatre presents poet Navita Gunter and, back by popular demand, a short feature of MLT actors reading poems. An hour of open mic will follow.
Gunter arrived on the Nashville poetry scene several years ago as the host of a weekly open mic at Kijiji’s, the African-American-owned-and-operated coffee shop on Jefferson Street. These days, she is a Murfreesboro resident and a regular at Poetry in the Boro. Locally, she’s also performed her poetry at the Boro Art Crawl. She’s soon launching her first-ever book of poetry, N2Words. A cervical cancer survivor and founder of the Cervical Cancer Coalition of Tennessee, Gunter is also the author of the book The Day My Vagina Tried to Kill Me. She is the recipient of numerous community service awards, including a 2017 Unity Award presented by MTSU.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the features begin at 7. Open mic time follows. For more details, including this month’s word challenge, see Poetry in the Boro on Facebook.
Other upcoming events:
Saturday, March 9: The Southeastern Young Adult Book Festival, held at MTSU, is free and open to the public. (March 7 and 8 are for ticketed school groups only). Writing workshops, most open to all ages, are also offered, although pre-registration is required. See seyabookfest.com for a full schedule of author appearances and workshop details.
Saturday, March 16: MTSU Write offers one of its Spring Saturday installments, a free memoir master class with Dorin Shumacher at MT Center. Schumacher is the author of Gatsby’s Child: Coming of Age in East Egg, and her writing appears in The New York Times, PANK Magazine, Quiet Lunch and other publications.
Saturday, April 6: MTSU Write offers another of its Spring Saturday installments, a free fiction master class with Jennie Fields. Fields is the author of four novels, most recently Age of Desire, based on the life of American writer Edith Wharton.
For details on these classes, see the Events page at mtsu.edu/write.
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Poet Mike James recently moved to Murfreesboro with his family. “This One Songwriter” is a prose poem that appears in his most recent book, First-Hand Accounts From Made-Up Places, available from publisher Stubborn Mule Press, Amazon or Barnes & Noble. James’ work has been widely published; learn more about him by visiting mikejamespoetry.com.
This One Songwriter
by Mike James
Centered his work on obscurity. There was the song about James Buchanan’s love life. And the one about Candy Darling’s passion for limburger cheese. There was the one his mother liked about the many purposes of Mr. Spock’s ears. And his own favorite about the woman he took out for coffee who left while he was pouring sugar.
Sometimes he forgot the lyrics and just hummed as he picked and poked at his taped up guitar. He was never very good at guitar tuning. Easily distracted, he often imagined guitar strings as Rapunzel’s golden hair.
