Live Poetry: Marion Boyer & Barbara Sabol
Schedule
Sat, 13 May, 2023 at 07:00 pm
Location
Visible Voice Books | Cleveland, OH
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Marion Boyer’s Ice Hours is mesmerizing and haunting," writes final judge Carol V. Davis." At its core is the question, what motivates people to want to be a part of something whose success seems impossible? This is acknowledged even in the recruitment of crew, offering, 'Smallwages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful.' The book follows the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, whose goal was to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. It traces this journey from Antarctica where, 'Pink-golden mists of pollen wafted across/ deep valleys' to a winter freeze that sends, 'Violent wind, black waves roiling.' Boyer’s precise language dazzles in portraits of historical figures, letters to a fiancé back in England, and descriptions of brutal weather, the sea, boats, animals, and people. There may be no answer to the central question of Ice Hours, but the reader is riveted by the vision and obsession that sparked this historic expedition." Visit her website at https://www.marionstarlingboyer.com.Marion Starling Boyer is the author of five poetry collections. In addition to Ice Hours, her work includes The Sea Was Never Far, The Clock of the Long Now, and Composing the Rain, winner of Grayson Book’s Poetry Chapbook competition. Her poetry’s been nominated for Pushcarts, the Lenore Marshall Award, and the “Best of the Net.” A professor emeritus for Kalamazoo Valley Community College, Boyer served on the executive board for Kalamazoo’s Poetry Festival, the planning committee for Lit Youngstown’s Literary Festival and conducts workshops for Lit Youngstown and Lit Cleveland. She lives in Twinsburg, Ohio famous for its world record gathering of twins every summer.
The poems in Imagine A Town reveal how a confederacy of places—a hometown, adopted city, a neighborhood—conspires to shape identity, especially when one’s sense of self butts up against the values and expectations embraced by that place. These narratives convey how a girl’s long view is foreshortened by smokestacks, slim resources, and the rough Alleghenies circling her blue-collar existence. Self-discovery also manifests through a reckoning of events outside the kitchen window, and in the wider world. Conversely, distance from the speaker’s origins gently tightens the grasp of that place as she reconciles inevitable losses and regrets exacted by her departure. Memories of coming-of-age in a time of milkmen and trolley cars prompt a visitation to a hometown that’s taken up residence in the poet’s imagination as she journeys through place and time. Also infusing these poems is the tension of a constructed suburban world imposed on the natural world, such that the sight of a buck in a neighbor’s yard startles a renewed connection with nature, and an awareness of deeper losses. The concept of home, a longing to belong, and the risks and rewards of carving an outsider existence lie at the beating heart of this collection.
Barbara Sabol is the author of the poetry collections Imagine a Town (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2020), which won the Sheila-Na-Gig Editions’ Full-Length Poetry Manuscript Prize, and Solitary Spin (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017), as well as two chapbooks, The Distance Between Blues (Finishing Line Press) and Original Ruse (Accents Publishing). Her poems have appeared most recently in The Comstock Review, San Pedro River Review, Literary Accents, and Voices de la Luna. Barbara's writing also focuses on Eastern forms, such as haiku, tanka and haibun. Poems have appeared in Modern Haiku, Acorn, Akitsu, Frogpond, Presence, Canadian Haiku Journal, and Never Ending Story, among others. Barbara's long- and short-form poems have appeared in numerous anthologies. Visit her website at https://www.barbarasabol.com.
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Where is it happening?
Visible Voice Books, 2258 Professor Avenue,Cleveland,OH,United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
