POETSWEDNESDAY & More

Leslie Heywood at Barron Arts Center, Wednesday, 7/10/13

PoetsWednesday

582 Rahway Ave., Woodbridge,
NJ732-634-0413

 

 

Wednesday

July 10, 2013, 8PM

Featuring

Leslie Heywood

 

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Open Mic to
Follow

------

Workshop at 7:00PM

with

Leslie Heywood

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Free

Refreshments
Supplied by Wegmans

Donations Are
Greatly Appreciated

Thanks to Cynthia
Knight, BAC Director, Brandon Powell, staff, and

The Woodbridge
Cultural Arts Commission with the

support of Mayor
John McCormac

 

PoetsWednesday
Site: http://wednesdaypoet.typepad.com/

 

Directions: http://www.twp.woodbridge.nj.us/Departments/BarronArtsCenter/BarronArtsCenterDirections/tabid/754/Default.aspx

Contact: Deborah
LaVeglia, Poetry Director, at [email protected]

Featuring on
Wednesday, August 14, 2013: Leigh Phillips

Crossing the Channel, 1926 by Leslie Heywood

Crossing the Channel, 1926

(Gertrude Ederle)

 

Five men

Have done it, no girls

But I broke my first world record

When I was twelve

And though I’m nineteen now

When I slide through the water

I feel I am a hundred men,

My breath, my arms, won’t slip.

You have to look out

For the jellyfish that sting.

A poison creeps into your blood

And you freeze when the waves go rough,

Your arms, your shoulders blocked.

What poison creeps in

When they call you “girl”?

When they say

Can’t and can’t and can’t and can’t

And you begin to freeze?

The Channel is not an ocean,

It is a song, clear notes

calling. These waves could

Drown me, yes, but I am a song above

That hinged boy’s voice when he told me

Forget it, you’re a girl.

I knew right then

I’d drown if I stayed on shore.

 

                                          --by Leslie Heywood

                                              (from Lost Arts, Louisiana Literature Press, 2013)

 

 

Leslie Heywood

 

Leslie Heywood is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University. Her
poems have been widely published, both in her books, including "The Proving
Ground", "Natural Selection" and the memoir "Pretty Good for a Girl", and in her
new volume of poetry, "Lost Arts". She has also been published in leading
literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner and Women's Studies Quarterly.
Dr. Heywood's interests and professional activity extends into gender studies,
distance running and evolutionary neurobiology. She writes, "From the
beginning...my research has explored connections between kinesis, consciousness,
and embodiment as these are articulated by a specific set of themes—body,
gender, affect, and identity—posed from a number of different perspectives:
literary historical/feminist; sociological/cultural; evolutionary;
neurophysiological and neuropsychological; and creative."