February 2004

Greetings from Inkberry!

The novelist Paul Auster — about whom more in a few paragraphs — wrote (and I’m paraphrasing here, as I read the line in a back issue of the New Yorker while plodding away on the treadmill at my gym) — “poetry is a wonderful thing, but it’s not worth freezing your ass off for.” With all due respect to Mr. Auster, our recent “Evening of Regional Poets” gave lie to this statement, as a good-sized crowd of hardy souls braved the cold snap to hear the works of Shawn M. Durrett, Adrie Lester, Chivas Sandage and Kirtland Snyder. I hope that those who attended got their poetic appetites whetted for our “Celebration of Poetry” on April 3. I also encourage anyone who was unable to attend (including your humble correspondent. Bad Associate Director! No coffee!) to visit http://www.inkberry.org — about which more in a few paragraphs — to find out about this exciting day-long celebration in honor of National Poetry Month.

January saw us rushing headlong into 2004, with the aforementioned “Evening of Regional Poets”, the inauguration of our “Wednesday Night Writers” workshop (led by our own formidable Emily Banner), the first in our monthly series of online workshops, “Introduction to Creative Writing” (with the indefatigable Sandy Ryan at the helm) and the world premiere broadcast of our smash hit cable access show “Inkberry’s Bookshelf” (with special guest and all around friend of Inkberry, the redoubtable Kira Maginnis). We devoted our January show to the oh-so-timely subject of com-ics/ix.

Unfortunately, there was one bit of scheduled programming that didn’t go live as expected. Our “Lives in Pictures” class (taught by the wise and terrible Rachel Barenblat) went from being rescheduled to being indefinitely postponed due to circumstances beyond our control. I’m especially disappointed, as, in light of upcoming events, this means I can’t use the word “synergy” with a straight face. We’re really excited about doing more with comics, so rest assured that in the months to come, we’ll be telling you about some exciting new ways in which Inkberry is going to work with both words and pictures.

And that starts this month. February is shaping up to be a full-fledged comics-palooza, a vertiable hootenanny of sequential art. We’re over the moon excited to be hosting a reading and discussion by comics creator and recent Berkshire County transplant Howard Cruse.

Howard Cruse’s comic strips and humorous illustrations have appeared in Playboy, The Village Voice, Artforum International, Harpoon, Heavy Metal, The Advocate, Starlog, and numerous other national magazines. Five books have been published compiling Cruse’s own comic strips and stories from underground comic books and elsewhere: Wendel (1986); Dancin’ Nekkid With The Angels (1987); Wendel on the Rebound (1989); Early Barefootz (1990); and Wendel All Together (2001). Cruse’s critically acclaimed graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby was published in 1995 by Paradox Press, a division of DC Comics, and has since appeared in German, Italian, and French editions, with a Spanish version currently in the works. Spanish and French translations of his complete Wendel series are also in production.

A finalist for both an American Library Association Gay/Lesbian Fiction Award and a Lambda Literary Award, Stuck Rubber Baby was the winner of Eisner and Harvey Awards as well as a United Kingdom Comic Art Award and a British Comics Creators Guild Award. Andreas Knigge’s translation won a Luchs literary award in Germany. The French translation was honored with the 2002 Prix de la critique award at the International Festival of Comic Books in Angouleme, France.

All of which is by way of saying Howard Cruse knows his comix! And Inkberry’s got him! Live and in person on Saturday, February 7 at 7:30 p.m! Tell a friend! Tell two!

Of course, February is also the month when our friend, Mr. Groundhog, does his thing. After the bitter cold in January, I suspect I’m not alone in hoping for an early spring this year. Still, love it or hate it, the winter season stirs up plenty of emotion in those of us who endure it. Why not find an outlet for that emotion this month through our course “A Certain Slant of Light: Appreciating Winter in the Details” (as facilitated by the indomitable Kate Abbott)?

For information about any of these offerings, including class schedules, fees and enrollment information, please visit the new Inkberry Online at http://www.inkberry.org. That’s right; I said new. As in: New content! New features! New Design! New benefits exclusively for Inkberry members! As we move forward, we’ll be expanding our Web presence with new online-only course offerings, members-only areas (writing exercises, message boards, and our “Straight Dope on MFA Programs” library). Also, don’t miss the store where you can purchase Inkberry memberships (the better to enjoy the crunchy bits of the site) and register for classes and workshops. Inkberry will always be literature’s home in the Berkshires, but we’re equally committed to becoming an online destination for a wider community of writers.

Smacks forehead

Lest I forget, there’s one final piece of Inkberry programming I ought to mention. On Friday, February 6 (the night before our big Howard Cruse event. Did I mention Howard Cruse is coming to Inkberry?) we’ll once again be participating in First Friday on Main Street in North Adams. While our doors will be closed, our storefront window will be lit, and we’ll be offering passersby what we’ve been calling an Artbreak. We’ll have a generative exercise posted in the window, paper and pencils available for anyone who wants to respond to the exercise, and an envelope to collect all the responses, which we’ll collect and post. In addition, we’ll have information available about a Mass MoCA project by the artist group Haha, which is looking for messages from the community to use in their upcoming installation.

With everything that’s going on, sometimes it’s hard to remember I’m still settling into my place in this community, but I like what we’re doing so far. It’s tremendously rewarding to see what happens as ideas develop, take shape, and move toward becoming (I fervently hope) a successful part of the Inkberry canon. In addition to my core responsibilities as Rachel’s good right arm, I’m also taking the lead in expanding our programming into the teen/young adult and senior communities. We’re working on what I think is going to be an exciting new teen program, but I think I’ll wait until the next Inkmail to make the Big Announcement, just to make sure everything is in place before we go public with the news. As for working with seniors, we have some solid ideas — mostly in the area of oral history projects — but turning these ideas into effective programming is going to take some serious long-range planning. In the mean time, I’m trying to make the most of my time in the office, I’m meeting some terrific people, and I’m hoping that by our next “Inkberry’s Bookshelf” taping I manage to loosen up a bit and don’t seem like such an Ed McMahon-ish boy.

I’m also hoping to teach an online course in the coming months. I’m trying to decide what to offer. So I put it to you, Inkmail readers: is there something Inkberry isn’t currently offering that you’re desperate to take? Let’s leave aside the question of whether I’m, you know, qualified to teach it (although it’s best if we limit ourselves to prose offerings) and just send along your suggestions to tom@inkberry.org.

I’m writing a lot more than I’m reading these days, but that’s not saying all that much. I’d love to recommend something, but I’ve got an ever-growing stack of books in my queue, but they’re books that require more of an investment of time and concentration than I’m able to make at the moment. Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver keeps taunting me from its place on the shelf (as does Fred Kaplan’s The Singular Mark Twain), but from past forays into Stephenson’s prose, I know that without the opportunity to attack and conquer the first 150 pages of the novel, I just don’t stand a chance. Indeed, the last thing of substance I read was Tapping the Dream Tree, Charles de Lint’s most recent collection of Newford stories. I really enjoy the way he weaves various mythic systems (Celtic, Native American), with music, art, writing, and technology, and ties it all together with characters (some new faces as well as many of de Lint’s roster of recurring Newford regulars) who seem so real — and whose problems seem so familiar — that you could imagine sitting down with them over a cup of coffee.

Fortunately, my daughter is picking up a lot of the reading slack in the Bernard-iverse these days. I’m endlessly fascinated watching the process by which she learns to read, and the way it opens up her world, not just to the joy of reading Dr. Seuss or Marc Brown, but also to the more mundane messages of street signs, jelly jars and junk mail.

All of which brings me, if only tangentially, back to Paul Auster. He seems to be popping up in odd corners of my life of late. A New Yorker item I read at the gym. A “Fresh Air” interview on the car radio. I hate to read too much into it, aside from the fact that having a new book out makes him uncharacteristically ubiquitous at the moment, but for some reason, these random moments of Auster-ity stick with me more than the usual daily Affleck-tions, the Spears and arrows of outrageous fortune, or the recent omnipresence of the Kutcher in the rye. I don’t necessarily believe that coincidences have any deep etheric significance, but I can’t discount the fact that these particular coincidences are making an impression. Perhaps it’s just that I pay more attention to writers, but I also think it has something to do with the fact that what Auster has to say on the subject of writing — the tics, quirks, habits, routines and compulsions that become part of a writer’s process — resonates with my increased awareness of my own process. All of which, I suppose, is a convoluted way of saying “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.”

Until next month, all the best in reading, writing and constructive madness,

Tom