October 2001

Greetings from Inkberry!

This month we kicked off our fall term. Emily’s intermediate mixed-genre workshop and my introductory poetry workshop are in full swing, as are our book groups (“Family Matters” has our largest book group enrollment yet). Enrollment for our oral history workshop was too low to keep the workshop open, but we’re looking into offering a shorter oral history workshop in the winter or spring.

October was a fun month for publicity; we three Inkberries had the pleasure of our first television appearance, thanks to Helen Wassell and Pittsfield Community Television. The one-hour show was taped on the 20th, and should be airing on local cable-access networks at various times this fall (check our website for details). The show includes conversations about everything from Inkberry’s history and aspirations to slam poetry to Internet publishing and its impact on creative writers, so check it out when it airs!

(As an aside, if you miss the television show, you can also listen to us on WAMC’s The RoundTable on November 19th at 10:07 a.m.)

October 20th was, if Emily will pardon the phrase, a banner day: television interview in the morning, poetry reading at night. David Lehman gave a splendid reading for us, our first in Williamstown (thanks to the Williams College English Department, which kindly lent us a beautiful hall for the evening). Audience members came from far and wide (the longest-distance award goes to Maria, who came four hours from the New Hampshire border north of Boston), and David read a wide variety of poems, from his last two books of poetry and from the as-yet-unpublished Evening Sun. Then we spent a while on Q-and-A, discussing fictional Ashbery interviews. Thanks for a lovely evening, to David and all who were there.

October was also a good month for collaborations; we organized an open-mic night at Papyri Books as our contribution to the Americorps-led “Reading Makes A Difference” week, and we firmed up an official partnership with the Berkshire Writers’ Room, the region’s longest-running organization for writers. You can find them now on the “partners” page of our website.

Now we’re rushing headlong into November. Our workshops will continue on apace; meanwhile, we’re preparing for our annual fund drive, nailing down the details of our winter term, and finalizing lease plans for our very own space. (More on that next month — stay tuned…)

Meanwhile, speaking of our new space, we’ve drafted a “wish list” of things we’ll need to outfit our new home; it will soon be online at our website, so please check it out, and if you’ve got anything we can use, let us know. We’re a federally-recognized nonprofit under section 501(c)3 of the internal revenue code, so anything donated to us is tax-deductible.

In other news, we’re excited about our November reading, featuring North Berkshire writers Abbot Cutler and Patricia Crane (at 7:30pm on November 14th at the Main Street Stage in North Adams). Abbot will read poetry; Patty will read essays.

Abbot teaches writing and literature at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts; his first book was published by Rowan Tree Press of Boston and his second, The Dog Isn’t Going Anywhere, was published this year by Mad River Press. Patty, who writes poetry and non-fiction, was a student in Inkberry’s first writing workshop last spring. Her works have been published in The Berkshire Review and The Women’s Times. Her poem, “Holding,” was nominated to appear in the Pushcart Press National Anthology in 2002. You can learn more about both of these writers at the “readings” page of our website.

As usual, the reading is free, so we hope to see a lot of y’all there.

I’ve been reading a lot in the last few weeks. The best novel I’ve read lately is Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, a mystery story told by a narrator whose Tourette’s Syndrome provokes constant tics and surprising utterances. I don’t usually read mysteries, but this one is a terrific crossover between the mystery genre and the genre of “serious” literary fiction — the whodunit elements are captivating, and the narration is absolutely fantastic. I recommend it heartily.

Poetry-wise, I’ve been enjoying Thomas Sayers Ellis’s The Genuine Negro Hero, new from the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series. Thomas was one of my professors in graduate school, and I’d heard some of these poems at readings; it is a pleasure to be able to read and re-read them on the page. “Zapruder” and the Bruce-Nauman-inspired “Balloon Dog” are my favorites in the book so far, but every time I read it I notice something else that I like. Ellis’s consummate skill with language never ceases to amaze me.

That’s the news from Inkberry! We hope to see you at the Cutler/Crane reading in a couple of weeks; and if you have requests for readings or workshops, you’re always welcome to give us a call or drop us a line. We love to hear from you.

-Rachel