“I HEARD THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY!”
Visual Artists and Poets Respond to The News
In A Creative Collaboration of New Works
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A Unique Media Exhibit: June 22 - July 29, 2011
Opening Reception and Poetry Reading: June 30, 7-9 p.m.
Find out what's happening in Beniciawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Under the direction of Benicia Poet Laureate Ronna Leon
Sponsored and hosted by the Benicia Public Library
Marilyn O’Rourke Gallery, 150 L St., Benicia, CA 94510
This coming June, twenty-eight highly recognized poets and visual artists, from fourteen California Bay Area and Central coast cities, will collaborate in their creative response to the news. Participants were selected from a national competition and paired into fourteen teams according to news categories of coverage. Each team has selected one news article and will translate that story into an experience of the human heart.
The poems and visual works of these creative teams will inspire us to ask and revisit questions we hold about the role, value, and consequence of The News in our lives and our society.
Opening Reception and Poetry Reading: June 30, 7-9 p.m.
The Heart Roused: The News Through the Artist’s Eye
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
“That is William Carlos Williams, on poetry as the news we need. A doctor concerned with our welfare, he is writing of his heart’s desire to bring us news from despised poems; he said, it is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. We die, not just for hard-hitting, earth-shaking, late-breaking headline news, but for news the way artists have always grappled with, redeemed, and shared it with us. This news is as old as the hills. Art heeds and seeds the "new" and needed in the news. I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy! will show us our world through the artist’s lens, an ancient and the most enduring way we get the news without which we die miserably every day. I am honored to be part of this creative collaborative venture.”
Dr. Barbara Mossberg, Host, The Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM ("news you need") BarbaraMossberg.com, and Poet in Residence, Pacific Grove, CA.
EXHIBIT PARTICIPANTS – their cities and news story topics
Participants are from the following California Bay Area and Central coast cities: Alameda, Benicia, Berkeley, Campbell, Crockett, Los Altos, Martinez, Oakland, Pacific Grove, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Vallejo. David Starkey, former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, will participate from Rome partnered with Mehrdad Khatael, who is in Tehran, Iran.
Participant pairs:
Nils Peterson, Santa Clara - Rebecca Palmer, Los Altos
Valerie Ibarra, San Francisco - Rebecca Martinez, San Francisco
Jannie Dresser, Crockett - Freddy Camargo, Benicia
Barbara Mossberg, Pacific Grove- Stephanie Martin, Santa Cruz
David Starkey, Rome - Mehrdad Khataei, Iran
Mary Rudge, Alameda - Jan Cook, Vallejo
Lois Requist, Benicia- A Gaul Gulley, San Francisco
Maria Rosales, Martinez - Debra Stuckgold, Oakland
Sandra Lee Stillwell, Benicia - Katya Madrid, Benicia
Dan Cooper, Cooper - Jose Luis Sequra, Jr., Vallejo
Donna Rudolph, Benicia- Carol Dalton, Benicia
Ken McKeon, Berkeley - Thomas Stanton, Benicia
Joel Fallon, Benicia - Nikki Basch-Davis, Benicia
Joseph Martino, Benicia -Mike Kendall, Benicia
News story topics covered in exhibit:
- The mysterious death of more than a hundred birds in Geyserville, California
- Censorship in Iran blocking TV, radio, and telephones, while Internet proves difficult
- Bay Area unemployment is second highest rate of increase in nation, same for college and non-college graduates
- Sierra Red Fox seen in new territory near Yosemite
- The Afghan War, in its tenth year
- “Maternity Tourists,” coming to U.S. for automatic citizenship for their offspring
- Israeli demolitions of Bedouin villages
- History of racism in California – politics and its effect on the current financial crisis
- U.S. Navy ceding 3300 acres to San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge
- How wells for extracting natural gas are a growing source of energy but also hazardous
- A vendor protesting brutality rattles the Arab world and sets off a chain reaction of events throughout the Middle East.
- Article on noise abatement program at Muir Woods and other national parks.
- Opinion: Relevance of triangle shirtwaist fire that killed 148 workers in New York in 1911 to current labor conditions and practices.
- 3300 acres of land being ceded by U.S. Navy to San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
