Culture
Columbus Poets Set to ‘Rock the House’ at Dairy Barn Arts Center Nov. 30
< < Back toOn November 30, 2018, the Dairy Barn Arts Center is throwing open its doors to welcome long-time friends Sandy Feen, Rikki Santer, and Chuck Salmons, who in 2017 formed a poetry troupe as a way of fulfilling a dream of touring the U.S. and giving poetry readings, much like a rock band. Since then, they have gigged their way throughout Ohio and Indiana as Concrete Wink.
The reading, which promises to put on the heat, is the last event in the fall poetry series “Spoken & Heard, Poetry of Departure and Relevance.” Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and poetry begins at 6 p.m. in the AEP Performing Arts Center. The evening will be curated by Athens Poet Laureate, Kari Gunter-Seymour. There will be a cash bar.
John Burroughs, founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press and author of The Eater of the Absurd and Beat Attitude says, “Highly recommended. Powerhouse poetry troupe. Three of Ohio’s most thoughtful and engaging writers. Book ’em, Danno!”
Sandra Feen currently works as a poetry editor. and has been a featured reader in venues in and out of Ohio, for over 30 years. In addition, she performs work by Holocaust writers in the Anahata Music Project. A collection of her poems was recently named finalist for The Lascaux Review’s 2018 Lascaux Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Fragile Capacities: School Poems highlights her 32-year teaching career in an urban school system.
Native Columbus resident Chuck Salmons is currently President of the Ohio Poetry Association. He is the recipient of a 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship and 2011 winner of the William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, sponsored by The Poetry Forum of Columbus. His chapbook, Stargazer Suite, was released in December 2016, and his second chapbook, Patch Job, in 2017. Chuck loves science, which often influences his poems, and is thrilled about the discovery of water on Mars and gravitational waves. He currently works for The Navicor Group.
Rikki Santer has worked as a journalist, a magazine and book editor, co-founder and managing editor of an alternative city newspaper in Cleveland, and a poet-in-the schools. Her work has won honors from The Poetry Forum (the William Redding Memorial Contest), Black Lawrence Press (the St. Lawrence Book Award Competition), the Ohio Poetry Association, the Best of Ohio Writer Contest sponsored by the Poets’ & Writers’ League of Greater Cleveland, two Pushcart and Ohioana Book Award nominations, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Two of her published poetry collections have explored place: Front Nine (the Hopewell earthworks of Newark, Ohio) and Kahiki Redux (the late Kahiki Supper Club of Columbus, Ohio). Clothesline Logic was published by Pudding House as finalist in their national chapbook competition, with Fishing for Rabbits coming soon after. Her fifth collection, Make Me That Happy, was nominated for an Ohioana Book Award. Her latest collection, Dodge, Tuck, Roll is just out. She is currently the director of a writing center in a Columbus-area high school.
Athens’ own Becca J.R. Lachman works in the magical world of public libraries and will serve as opening poet. Editor of A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford, she’s also the author of two poetry collections: Other Acreage, an ode-elegy to her family’s 1840s dairy farm, and The Apple Speaks, which explores being a wife/daughter of loved ones doing nonviolent peace work in war-torn places. Recent poems and essays appear in Connotation Press, Consequence Magazine, Image, and So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language & Art.
Poetry events are free. For more information about the Spoken & Heard events please go to www.dairybarn.org or email Kari Gunter-Seymour at gunterseymour@gmail.com.