Culture

Final Spring 2018 Spoken and Heard Taking Place June 14

Posted on: Monday, June 11, 2018

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The Dairy Barn Arts Center is announcing its final Spoken & Heard event of the spring, Thursday evening, June 14, 2018 at 6 p.m. The fourth and final installment of the spring series, “Spoken & Heard, Poetry of Departure and Relevance,” will be hosted by Athens Poet Laureate, Kari Gunter-Seymour, and will feature Appalachian poets Pauletta Hansel and Roy Bentley.

“We are so excited to not only have Athens’ very own Poet Laureate, Kari Gunter-Seymour hosting the event, but to also feature Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, Pauletta Hansel, and revered poet, Roy Bentley,” says Jane Forrest Redfern, Director of the Dairy Barn Arts Center.

Pauletta Hansel is the 2017 winner of the Weatherford Prize for Poetry and her poems and prose have been featured in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, The Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. She is author of six poetry collections and co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative.

Roy Bentley is the author of Starlight Taxi, winner of the 2012 Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, and The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana, winner of the 2005 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and Boy in a Boat, which won the 1985 University of Alabama Press Poetry Series.

This event is free to the public and doors will open at 5:30pm. There will be a cash bar. Those who attend are invited to bring a poem to share with the audience during the open mic session following the evening’s performance.

The Spoken & Heard series will resume events in October 2018 with Ohio Poet Laureate, Dave Lucas, kicking off the fall series. For more information about the Spoken & Heard events please go to www.dairybarn.org or email Kari Gunter-Seymour at gunterseymour@gmail.com.

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Pauletta Hansel is the 2017 winner of the Weatherford Prize for Poetry and Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate (2016- 2018). Her poems and prose have been featured in journals including Atlanta Review, Talisman, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage and Still: The Journal, and on The Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. She is author of six poetry collections, most recently Palindrome (Weatherford Prize, Dos Madres Press, 2017) and Tangle (Dos Madres Press, 2015). She is co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Pauletta leads writing workshops and retreats in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond.

Roy Bentley is the author of Starlight Taxi (Lynx House: 2013), which won the 2012 Blue Lynx Poetry Prize. Books include The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana (White Pine: 2006), which was the winner of the 2005 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, Any One Man (Bottom Dog Books: 1992), and Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama: 1986), which won the 1985 University of Alabama Press Poetry Series. Recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, six Ohio Arts Council fellowships, and a Florida Division of Cultural Affairs fellowship, his poems have appeared in Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Rattle, Blackbird and elsewhere.

“If pressed as to my style,” says Bentley, “I’d have to say that poems are my way of answering the world. Each time out, I try to give voice to the story of being here now. To be less obtuse, I’m big on work that addresses me in the way Walt Whitman addresses readers: with a degree of intimacy and reverence that allows the Real News to come to the fore (the Real News being, what constitutes this American moment).”

Opening poet will be Athens own Kari Gunter-Seymour. Twice a pushcart nominee, Gunter-Seymour’s chapbook Serving was chosen runner up in the 2016 Yellow Chair Review Annual Chapbook Contest. Her poems can be found in many fine journals and publications including Main Street Rag, Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The LA Times and on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. She is the founder/director of the Women of Appalachia Project and  an Instructor in the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.