MDWNews-May 14 - Springfed Arts

Springfed Arts
John D. Lamb, Director
P.O. Box 304, Royal Oak, MI 48068-0304
(248) 589-3913 [email protected] www.springfed.org
May 2014
Newsletter
Words – poetry, prose and song. Works – spoken and sung.
Springfed Arts
2014 Writing Contest Finalists
Prose finalists
1st place
Rooms of Wonder by Karen Simpson
2nd place
The Latrine by Alexander P. Morgan
3rd place
The Gaslight by Ellen Halter
Honorable Mention
A Brief Vacation
by Maria A. Costantini
The Flowers by John Jeffire
Prose judged by Jack Driscoll
Poetry Winners
1st place
After Our Country Grandmother Died
by Mary Schmitt
2nd place
In The Henry Ford Museum Archives
by Mary Minock
3rd place
Cicada by Sophia Rivkin
Honorable Mention
Karen Simpson
Our Lady of the Rosary by Ken Meisel
Damballah by Melinda Weinstein
Can Words Create or Define Reality During Storms? by Donna Vinstra
Poems judged by Jim Daniels
There were 66 total contest entrants (43 poets and 23 prose writers).
Winners will read their winning entries at the Springfed Writers Series,
Monday, August 11, 7pm, Birmingham Unitarian Church, 38651 Woodward
Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304 (just north of Lone Pine Road). Wine,
coffee, tea and cookie kiosk. Free and open to the public.
Lamb's Jackson
Songwriter Showcase
Thursday, June 12, 7pm
John D Lamb
Michael Crittenden
Michelle Held
Josh Rose
Joe Cartoon
Weatherwax Hall at the JSO
215 W. Michigan Ave., Jackson, Michigan 49201, Doors open at 7pm. Show starts 7:30pm.
Springfed Arts Backyard Bash
c’è la luna (there is a moon)
Saturday, May 17, 6 pm
Honored guests will be Dorianne Laux, internationally acclaimed poet
and teacher, and Michele Ramo, violin, guitar and mandolin
composer/instrumentalist/teacher, appearing with his award winning
Michele Ramo World Jazz Orchestra. We will serve food from Royal
Oak’s Trattoria Da Luigi and Luigi Catering, handcrafted beer from Lily’s
Seafood and much more under the big tent. You can win raffle prizes and
bid on silent auction items. The proceeds of the benefit go toward building
scholarship funds for Springfed Arts’ retreats, writing classes and showcases.
It’s our only fundraiser of the year and we depend on a portion of the proceeds for help with our operating costs.
The benefit is chaired by Rebecca Vlasic and Lisa Galperin and will be held
at the Vlasic home in Birmingham. Tickets start at $60.
Tickets available online at
www.springfed.org or by phone at 248589-3913
Let us know if you plan to buy tickets at the gate.
Dorianne Laux’s fifth collection, The
Book of Men, is currently available from
W.W. Norton. Her fourth book of
poems, Facts about the Moon, is the
recipient of the Oregon Book Award and
was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall
Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of
Awake, What We Carry, finalist for the
National Book Critic’s Circle Award, and
Smoke, as well as two fine small press
editions, Superman: The Chapbook and
Dark Charms, both from Red Dragonfly
Press. Co-author of The Poet’s
Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of
Writing Poetry, she’s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a
Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts
and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Widely anthologized, her work has appeared
in the Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and
The Best of the Net. In 2001, she was invited by late poet laureate Stanley
Kunitz to read at the Library of Congress. Laux has been teaching poetry in
private and public venues since 1990 and since 2004 at Pacific University’s
Low-Residency MFA Program. In the summers she teaches at the Esalen
Institute in Big Sur, California and Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill.
Her poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean,
Romanian, Dutch, Afrikaans and Brazilian Portuguese, and her selected
works, In a Room with a Rag in my Hand, have been translated into Arabic
by Camel/Kalima Press. Recent poems appear in The American Poetry
Review, Cimarron Review, Cerise Press, Margie, The Seattle Review, Tin
House and The Valparaiso Review. She and her husband, poet Joseph Millar,
moved to Raleigh in 2008 where she teaches poetry in the MFA program at
North Carolina State University. Laux has been a Springfed Arts Writing
contest judge and has been on staff for several Springfed Arts retreats,
including the Walloon Writers’ Retreat.
Lamb’s Paradise Valley
Songwriter Series
Wednesdays in June, 11:30am – 1:30pm
Paradise Valley Park at The Carr Center
311 East Grand River, Detroit, MI 48226
www.thecarrcenter.org and www.springfed.org
June 4: Don Duprie , Teddy Richards, Carmel Liburdi
June 11: Amy Saari, Michelle Held, Mike Galbraith.
June 18: Duane Harlick, Emily Rose, Derek Daniel
Michele Ramo was born in the Mediterranean fishing village of Mazara
Del Vallo, Italy, on the coast of Sicily, population 300. His playgrounds were
vast grape-vineyards, rocky hillsides and olive orchards. He played guitar
with the barbers in the little town square and hid his school books in the
fields of ancient volcanic caves because he only wanted to play music. At
age 13 he entered music conservatory where he took up violin studies. By 17
he had his first professional contract with
the Italian State Opera House “Teatro
Massimo” in Palermo. After five years in
various Italian state symphony orchestras,
at age 23, Ramo made musical shock
waves within his circles by quitting and
moving to the United States to pursue his
work as a composer and instrumentalist in
jazz. His first stop was New York City.
Unable to speak English and soon out of
money, he went to Detroit where he knew
a friend from his village. He befriended
jazz greats such as trumpeter Marcus
Belgrave, pianist Harold McKinney, and
drummer Roy Brooks. In 1994, he married
singer Heidi Hepler, a former Miss
Michigan. They often perform together.
Ramo currently teaches Jazz Violin, Guitar
& Mandolin in his private studio and Jazz
Guitar at the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor. The Michele Ramo Jazz
World Orchestra have been featured at
concert events along with world renowned
artists including Yo Yo Ma, James Galway,
Ertha Kitt, Barbara Cook, James Levine
and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
Ramo’s newest CD is A Cigar and a ScotchLive at Jenuwine, featuring 8 original
compositions fusing elements of
Traditional Jazz, Afro-Brazilian Samba,
Cuban Montuno, Bossa Nova and Jazz
Ballads with some of the top-notch musicians of Detroit.
June 25: Greater Alexander, Audra Kubat, Marlon Morton