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Recent & Past Events
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DICK
ALLEN – CT POET LAUREATE
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I've
always liked a very simple definition of poetry as "language
measured and supercharged," for it seems to combine poetry's
two basic elements: some kind of rhythm and poetry's great intensity.
For me, it's the sound of poetry that most often initiates a poem...
I love how lines and phrases can be held in the memory... I like
how poetry can "leap" so suddenly from here to there...
I love the simile, the analogy, the allusions, the secret codes,
and how narrative and meditative poetry can move so rapidly and
beautifully from aspect to aspect, time to time, person to person.
I love poetry's passion. And I love the craft of poetry....
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Dick
Allen, one of America's leading poets, is preeminent among poets
who encourage new sensibilities in poetry and who have brought
to contemporary
poetry
a large array of subjects other than the "self" and
styles other than confessional free verse.
A masterful poet of wide reputation, Allen has published in the
nation's premier journals includingPoetry, the New Yorker, Atlantic
Monthly, Hudson Review, New Republic, and New Criterion, as well
as in scores of national anthologies. He has published seven poetry
collections and won numerous awards including a Pushcart Prize,
the Robert Frost prize, fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts and Ingram Merrill Poetry Foundation, and six inclusions
in The Best American Poetry annual volumes. Allen's most recent
collection, Present Vanishing: Poems (Sarabande Books), received
the 2009 Connecticut Book Award for Poetry.
An acclaimed public speaker and poetry reader, Allen has led poetry
workshops
and seminars and served as a judge for various competitions and
selection committees in Connecticut (including Poetry Out Loud
State Finals in 2007 and a POL workshop for teachers in 2009)
and at the national level.
His poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor's
Writer's Almanac and in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry,
as well as recently on the national websites of Tricycle, where
he was a guest poet writing on Zen Buddhism and poetry, and on
the Smartish Pace poetry website.
Prior to his early retirement, Allen was Charles A. Dana Professor
of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University
of Bridgeport (UB) where he taught
from 1968 to 2001. During his distinguished teaching career, he
was highly
regarded and well-loved by students of all ages - particularly
for his generosity of spirit and ability to mentor and nurture
both beginning and accomplished poets. While at UB, he directed
the University's Visiting Writers Series (open to the general
public) which brought fifty of the nation's leading poets to Connecticut,
and created and taught a wide range of courses, including international
poetry and fiction, to a diverse student body.
THE SELFISHNESS OF THE POETRY READER
Sometimes I think I'm the only man in America
who reads poems
and who walks at night in the suburbs,
calling the moon names.
And I'm certain I'm the single man who owns
a house with bookshelves,
who drives to work without a CD player,
taking the long way, by the ocean breakers.
No one else, in all America,
quotes William Meredith verbatim,
cites Lowell over ham and eggs, and Levertov;
keeps Antiworlds and Ariel beside his bed.
Sometimes I think no other man alive
is changed by poetry, has fought
as utterly as I have over "Sunday Morning"
and vowed to love those difficult as Pound.
No one else has seen a luna moth
flutter over Iowa, or watched
a woman's hand lift rainbow trout from water,
and snow fall onto Minnesota farms.
This country wide, I'm the only man
who spends his money recklessly on thin
volumes unreviewed, enjoys
the long appraising look of check-out girls.
How could another in America know why
the laundry from a window laughs,
and how plums taste, and what an auto wreck
feels like--and craft?
I think that I'm the only man who speaks
of fur and limestone in one clotted breath;
for whom Anne Sexton plunged in Grimm; who can't
stop quoting haikus at some weekend guest.
The only man, in all America, who feeds
on something darker than his politics,
who writes in margins and who earmarks pages--
in all America, I am the only man.
-Dick Allen
Visit his website for more poetry:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rallen285/
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RICHARD
HARTEIS
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Since
2007, Richard Harteis has worked as the president of the William
Meredith Foundation, www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org)
a 501.c3 organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the
late US Poet Laureate, who was his partner of 36 years.
Mr.Harteis served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia,
worked as a physician assistant in North Africa and Asia and spent
a Fulbright year as writer-in-residence at the American University
in Bulgaria. For his work in the culture, he was accorded Bulgarian
citizenship by decree of the President and Parliament in 1996.
Mr.Harteis has taught literature and creative writing at a number
of institutions over the years including The Catholic University
of America, Creighton University, Mt. Vernon College, and Connecticut
College. For two years he directed the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project
and created the NPR radio program THE SOUND OF WRITING serving as
writer/director and host. He has received honors and awards for
his work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the
Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts, and the Ford Foundation.
He is the author of ten books of poetry and prose most recently
the novel, SAPPHIRE DAWN,
a new and selected poems, PROVENCE, and a memoir first published
by W.W. Norton in 1989 entitled MARATHON to critical acclaim (and
re-issued through: www.Vivisphere.com).
His series of elegiac lyrics, THE REVENANT was published by Little
Red Tree Publishing (www.littleredtree.com)
in the summer of 2010. In 2008 he produced a 35 mm, 90-minute adaptation
of MARATHON (www.marathonthemovie.com),
which won Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography in the 2009 New
York International Film Festival as well as the Bronze Palm at the
2010 Mexico International Film Festival.
He is currently working with colleagues on a new film project, COMES
LOVE which is set in New York and Hollywood between the great wars.
He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida and Uncasville, Connecticut
where his home, "Riverrun," was added to the Connecticut
Registry of Historic Places in 2007 and now serves as the William
Meredith Center for the Arts. (www.WilliamMeredithFoundation.org)
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THE REVENANT
Daisy stretches herself out like a mermaid on the kitchen floor.
She throws her head back and wails for no apparent reason.
It could be comic:
Her luxurious cocker ears fall in a chocolate cascade
like the Sun King's wig or a Dutch Burgomaster.
Why so inconsolable, Daisy?
The cookie jar is out of view;
There is no toy you can not reach,
no siren sounds that I can hear.
I have not packed my bags to leave you.
"They look at something we can't look at
yet," you said once of the ghosts of the house,
"averting their sad glance when we're clumsy with
one another."
Are you playing with us now dear ghost, tossing
an unseen ball to Daisy, trying to cheer us up a bit?
Does she see you through her clouded cataracts, the
way you come to me at the edge of sleep?
Do not tease
us please, my dear; Come in full,
if apparition. You've left us lonely beyond measure,
turned Daisy to a banshee, and my poor brain again a tree
of frantic birds.
Richard Harteis
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Rececnt and Past Film Festivals for Marathon
ACCEPTED
Delray Beach Film Festival
6th Annual from April 11 to April 17, 2011
ACCEPTED
International Film Festival Thailand
2 Annual from July 13, 2010 to July 17, 2010
ACCEPTED
International Film Festival Egypt
4 Annual from April 04, 2010 to April 08, 2010
ACCEPTED
International Film Festival South Africa
4 Annual from November 01, 2010 to November 05, 2010
ACCEPTED
Swansea Bay Film Festival
5 Annual from May 08, 2010 to May 16, 2010
ACCEPTED
International Film Festival Ireland
3 Annual from September 04, 2010 to September 11, 2010
ACCEPTED
Treasure Coast International Film Festival
3 Annual from February 18, 2010 to February 21, 2010
WINNER - BRONZE PALM AWARD
Mexico International Film Festival
4 Annual from May 28, 2010 to May 30, 2010
Notify date: 01-Apr-2010
ACCEPTED
Beijing International Movie Festival
4 Annual from June 25, 2010 to July 06, 2010
Notify date: 21-Apr-2010
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