Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Andrew Motion was the son of a brewer, and grew up in an environment that he describes as “very unbookish indeed.” Yet he went on to become a critically acclaimed literary biographer, established the Poetry Archive project and website in the United Kingdom, and was England’s Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009.

His background is often reflected in the imagery and diction of his poems. The setting is often domestic or rural, and the tone of the poems decidedly understated. We feel both comfortable and welcomed. Within the first few lines of “A-1 Mechanics” we feel that this poet is a guide we can trust, taking us to a place immediately recognizable.

The vivid images Motion creates with such lucid language bid us enter deeper into his poems. We go willingly because we feel we know the place and the speaker. Once we enter fully into an Andrew Motion poem, we discover, again and again, that beneath the inviting surface more troubling emotions and memories lie submerged.

Motion’s many poetry collections include: Selected Poems 1976-1997, Public Property, and most recently, The Cinder Path. His Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Award; and his life of John Keats, Keats, are considered essential reading for students of these two poets.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Kurtis Lamkin is a contemporary American embodiment of the ancient West African griot tradition, which blurs the boundaries between poet, singer and storyteller.

The griot, bard or troubadour has been a fixture in all cultures since before the advent of written language. It is believed that such bards passed down the legends of the Trojan War and Beowulf for generations before they were set down in the versions now familiar to us, and that Homer himself likely half-chanted half-sung large sections of the Illiad and Odyssey and accompanied himself on the lyre.

When he performs, Kurtis Lamkin often accompanies himself on the kora, a twenty-one-stringed West African harp-lute. He not only composes on and plays the kora, but he makes them by hand. This sense of the intimate bond between performer and instrument is also part of the griot tradition.

In recent decades, there has been much debate in academic circles in the United States regarding the place of politics in poetry. But in the griot/bardic tradition, there is no debate. The poet is seen as someone directly involved in the life of the community, and commentary on events that impact the community is not only accepted, but expected.

We assume our troubadours will sing us love songs, and Lamkin gives us one, but they have also been seen as the chief chroniclers of their times. In Elizabethan England, the news stories of the day were passed on through popular ballads. Like Lamkin, the griots and bards of the past always performed this function with humor and satire.

Lamkin has released a number of CDs of his work, including: My Juju (1995), El Shabazz (1998), and Queen of Carolina (2001).

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

When Lucille Clifton set out to be a poet she had no models to follow; the figures in the canon did not look or speak like her, did not have her stories to tell.  She realized if she was going to have a life as a poet, she would have to make it herself.  And she did.

To hear Lucille Clifton read was to know immediately you were in the presence of an authentic voice.  She once said, “I don’t write to be admired.  I write to be understood.”  And, we might add, she wrote to understand.  She questioned and explored every aspect of her own life and experience, and turned an unrelenting gaze onto the times and the nation she lived in.

Under the force of her determination to communicate whatever she saw, she compressed and pared down language to a fierce clarity.  And she did not turn away from anything her vision revealed, regardless of the sorrow, regret or fury it might bring her.  Instead, she invited us to “celebrate with me/ what i have shaped into/ a kind of life.”

For anyone lucky enough to have witnessed them, her readings at the Dodge Poetry Festival remain indelible reminders of what poetry can aspire to and inspire in us.  Everyone at the Dodge Foundation is deeply saddened by her passing.  At the end of her poem, “sorrows,” she asks, “but who can distinguish/one human voice/amid such choruses of desire?”  We can answer her easily.  We can, Lucille.  We will know your voice anywhere and everywhere we hear or read it.

A generous sampling of Lucille Clifton’s poetry can be found in Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000.  More recent collections include Mercy (2004) and Voices (2008).

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

If you are a regular reader of the Dodge blog, you know that we’re constantly encouraging you to join us on Facebook and on Twitter too. And not just because we want to share Dodge Foundation & Poetry Festival information with you. We see these social media tools as a learning opportunity for us – we love to hear about the work our grantees and partners are doing across the state. Moreover, we want to share your ideas, information and success stories as broadly as possible. We welcome your comments, conversation and links on our Facebook page, and we look forward to following you and hearing from you on Twitter.

So consider this is an open invitation – particularly to all current Dodge grantees – to email us at blog@grdodge.org if your organization has a Facebook fan page and/or you are on Twitter. We want to connect with you. In the coming weeks, we will share who is using these tools so that you can connect with them too.

I’m going to get you started. Here are environment groups – recent or current Dodge grantees and all members of the New Jersey Keep It Green Coalition – who are on Facebook:

American Littoral Society
Appalachian Mountain Club
Bayshore Discovery Project
Clean Ocean Action
Conserve Wildlife Foundation
Edison Wetlands Association
Greater Newark Conservancy
Hackensack Riverkeeper
Heritage Conservancy
Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance
Isles, Inc.
Land Conservancy of New Jersey
Natural Lands Trust
New Jersey Audubon Society
New Jersey Conservation Foundation
New Jersey Future
New Jersey Highlands Coalition
Passaic River Coalition
Pinelands Preservation Alliance
Regional Plan Association
Skylands CLEAN
Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association
The Nature Conservancy
Trust for Public Land

We love the preservation success stories that Keep It Green shares on Facebook.

Becoming a fan is just a click away!

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

In “Romantic Moment,” which he read at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival, Tony Hoagland manages to turn both love poetry and nature poetry on their heads.

For centuries, poets have asserted that poetry forces us to stop and look more closely at the world around us. Like the thousands of nature poems that have come before it, Hoagland’s poem pays meticulous attention to detail. The more specific his descriptions become, the greater the absurdity of the images evoked, and the louder the audience laughs. Although he never states it directly, the poem forces us to wonder at the absurdity of the elaborate protocols that dominate human courtship.

And yet, there is gentleness in his treatment of the couple, who finally decide to simply get some ice cream at this stage of their particular mating ritual. There is always heart at the heart of Hoagland’s humor. Although the poems can often be biting—there were several points during his readings at the Festival when the audience shared a collective gasp—Hoagland turns his wit most often against himself.

Poets have also asserted that poems force us to look inward, at ourselves. Hoagland is a relentless observer of human behavior and motivation, constantly digging into the deeper layers beneath what consciousness typically allows us to acknowledge about ourselves. His is not an escapist’s or a cynic’s humor. It is rooted in tenderness toward our human foibles and faith in our potential. He invites us to laugh, and we do because sometimes when we hurt, laughter offers greater relief than crying.

The text of “Romantic Moment ” can be found in the chapbook Hard Rain. Tony Hoagland’s most recent full-length collection was What Narcissism Means to Me, and Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty will be out soon.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead, including Linda Hogan, Taslima Nasreen and others.

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Follow Dodge on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook