Month: March 2013

Acadiana Wordlab (3-2-13)

/ Clare L. Martin

What I really get out of participating in Acadiana Wordlab is that we are writing raw and uncensored in a group—and that is uncomfortable. I am forced to write outside of my comfort zone and it is scary. We had such an amazing group yesterday. There were nine of us and I led the session. It was kind of a topsy-turvy set up, which I will not elaborate upon, but I was able to focus and we all got to writing. We had great synergy and energy.  It was a rewarding experience and the writing produced that was shared by the group was strong and interesting.  I thank Jonathan Penton for organizing this project. It’s really catching on and people are writing new because of it. That is success.

This poem-in-progress was written from a free-write produced at Acadiana Wordlab yesterday (3-2-13) I do not have a title for it.

Birds fly and drop around us
into trees dressed in smoke.

The air we breathe
is a blade in our lungs.

We run into the lake
to escape a burning death.

What have we lost on a blue
morning illuminated by fire?

We live for a time in the belly
of the sleeping lake.

We raise our children
to speak fish, to know

the name of the mountain
under our feet

worn to an indecipherable
multitude of pebbles.

/ Clare L. Martin

Louisiana Aesthetic (Reggie Michael Rodrigue) has kindly published a poem I wrote after the Acadiana Wordlab session he led. Thank you, Reggie for your magnanimous words.

louisianaesthetic

LUBA ZYGAREWICZ Petrified Time 12 Years of My Life Folded and Neatly Stacked

LUBA ZYGAREWICZ, “Petrified Time: 12 Years of My Life, Folded and Neatly Stacked,” sculpture/stacked dryer lint, tags and rope

Last month I hosted a meeting of the Acadiana Wordlab thanks to the graciousness of the lab’s founder Jonathan Penton who also publishes the literary journal “Unlikely Stories.” During the lab, I exposed the attendants to a wide variety of my favorite contemporary works by artists from Louisiana and discussed the merits and relevance of them and their works.

It was great pleasure, and I personally got a lot out of the lab due to the quality and variety of ekphrastic responses I received from the attendants. If you’re wondering what an ekphrastic response is, you’re not alone. I had no idea what one was until I hosted the lab.  Once I found out what one is, I felt a little stupid. It’s what I do here all the time –…

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Summer Day, 1984

/ Clare L. Martin

fishframe

I am pregnant; fifteen years old. I am fishing with my father. The bayou is a darkened mirror. Father stands in the slow-dancing boat and draws back effortlessly to cast the line. Water silvers; streams like snakes. There are snakes, too, black ones that appear plastic and fluid: shadows of water.  There is a faint stream of motor oil—a finger-trace in the water which rings a floating Budweiser can. Cattle egrets in breeding plumage float above the bank. Father pulls in a sun perch. Its iridescent tail fans the light. We cast again, again in silence.

After my son was born my daddy told me he made a wish for me as he rolled his wrist to reach the spot where the mysteries of fish exist:

To not regret, to hold to the promises I make.