Hopkins Black Box Theatre Lets Local Baton Rouge Poetry Shine

I'm closing in on five years in this town that many residents affectionately refer to as the Red Stick, but in many ways I've only just arrived. In the summer of 2002, in my little silver Hyundai weighted down with random possessions, I journeyed down I-90 to kickoff my graduate student career. After three years of hard work, personal successes and failures, and a serious case of tunnel vision, I got my MFA in Creative Writing in May of 2005. Part two of my education began sometime last summer, when I finally noticed that people other than LSU English Graduate students lived in Baton Rouge.

Some amazing things are happening in this town, practically every day.

A veritable cornucopia of artists and thinkers populate this space which is beautifully trapped between identities, part city/part small town. All you need to do is know where to look. Since my personal predilection is for the literary lagniappe, and apparently an affinity for alliteration, I have made it my personal goal to keep you fine people in the linguistic loop.

For example, the Hopkins Black Box Theater hosted an event in February highlighting the work of four pioneering poets: Christian Bok, Jon Woodward, Megan Volpert, and David Brinks.

Bok read from his experimental book, Eunoia, originally published in 2001 by Coach House Books. The text works within a number self-imposed constraints. It is five chapters long; each chapter is titled for and uses only words composed with a single, specified vowel. The book's title, Eunoia, is the shortest word in the English language to employ all vowels and is translated commonly as "well mind," though Bok defines it as "beautiful thinking." Additional constraints include a strict adherence to paragraph length: all paragraphs are 12 sentences long. Bok is an experimental poet from Canada.

Woodward, a photographer at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology is the author of two books of poems, Mister Goodbye Easter Island (Alice James Books, 2003) and Rain (Wave Books, 2006). Rain is a collection of poems which question humanity's role in the universe, on both a cosmic and personal level. The poems are both largely accessible, grounded in common language, and yet seem to transcend that language. From small moments of curiosity and apparent linguistic and imagistic disconnect, the reader is invited to examine what it means to actually connect.

Volpert is an Illinois native, sometime Baton Rouge-ian, currently living in Atlanta, where she teaches high school English. While completing her MFA degree in Creative Writing at LSU, Volpert regularly performed (as "Dr. Madelyn Hatter") at local performance poetry venues around Baton Rouge and across the country. Her first collection, face blindness, was released this month from Megan VolpertBlazeVOX books. Volpert's work is normally both decidedly personal and highly political. She draws constant connections between the individual journey as specific and unique, yet rooted in the communal. She regularly uses extremes to her advantage, juxtaposing hyperbole with understatement, asking her audiences to decide where to place the emphasis. Volpert, a friend and friend and former colleague, is a natural performer who will dare herself bare.

Brinks is also an alum of the LSU Creative Writing MFA program. He lives in his native New Orleans with his wife, Megan Burns (also a poet) and their two children. Brinks might be the most crucial contributor to the current New Orleans arts' scene. He is the proprietor of the Goldmine Saloon in the French Quarter which is host to a weekly poetry series featuring nationally and internationally renowned poets, as well as painters, musicians, dancers, and more. Brinks is also the founder of the famed new Orleans School for the Imagination, publisher of Trembling Pillow Press, andDave Brinks editor of Yawp: a Journal of Poetry & Art. His literary talent is possibly only exceeded by his commitment to community. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Brinks converted his pool tables into a space for book-sharing to help locals rebuild their personal libraries.

Bok, Woodward, Volpert, and Brinks represent a complex array of people dedicated to pushing the boundaries of language, relationships, and our relationships with language.