Writers of Kern

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Annis Cassells

The Ready-Set-Go of Open Mic Mondays

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Do you want to become more involved with Writers of Kern and your fellow writers? Want to find a welcoming place to read and share your work?  Beginning Monday, October 5th WOK members are invited to participate in Open Mic Mondays over Zoom.

Open Mics offer a friendly environment of like-minded people for you to share your work with, but you are also welcome to just come and listen to others read.

You may be nervous about reading your work. You may even be thinking, Hey, I’m a writer, not a performer! Daunting or not, public speaking is an important skill for a successful writer. You want to be ready when your award-winning poems and short stories are published or your break-through novel or screenplay is optioned for a film.

So plan ahead for Open Mic Mondays with these steps:

  1. Choose your material. Search your files and find something that:
    • Represents you and your writing well
    • Lends itself to being read aloud
    • Can be read in the allotted time
  2. Take time to prepare your material.
    • Print out your selection. Double space. Use a 14pt. (or larger) font so you can see it easily. Number the pages, but do not staple them together.
    • Read through aloud two or three times. Notice where you stumble, and notice where you want to emphasize or change your inflection. Highlight or use a BOLD font  for those areas before you reprint the page.
    • Check to see if you need to polish anything in your piece.  Do you need to: add or delete a word or two? Rewrite a sentence for clarity?
  3. Rehearse.
    • Read aloud to yourself. Read aloud to your mirror. Read aloud to your pet. Read aloud to another person.
    • Record yourself reading aloud.
    • Check your timing and cut where necessary.
  4. Show up on the first Monday of the month for Open Mic.
    • Be sure to Register for the event each month.
    • The flip side of nervousness is excitement. Feel the nervousness, but transform it into the energy you put into your reading.
    • Be proud of yourself for taking this step in moving your writing career forward.

Writers of Kern is dedicated to assisting writers of all levels in meeting their writing goals, and we’re proud offer Open Mic Mondays for our members.   You can go directly to the Eventbrite site to register by clicking HERE. You must register to attend.

We hope to see you there—as a reader or as part of the welcoming audience.

If you have further questions, contact us by email at [email protected].

30 April 2020 | NPM Poetry Webslam

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Wild Words
by Anke Hodenpijl                               
 
 
be warned now
this street will fill again
with kids riding bikes
muslims walking their constitutional
weight watchers jogging
homeless collecting cans
teenagers with ear buds in, oblivious to it all
dogs on leads, wondering what happened
the smell of family barbecues
basketballs bouncing
motorcycles roaring
pickle ball and preschoolers at the park
 
boomers around the propane campfire
lounge lizards on the driveway
sipping on an ice-cold beer
“Well, we dodged another catastrophe.”
 
be warned
we will one day leave this street
on our way to a place
not nearly as important
 
be warned
you will hear wild words
I love you
Let me help you
Thank you
 
be warned
be ready
it will happen
 
 

Anke Hodenpijl is a bedside singer, poet, gardener and safe spot for animals. She is inspired by nature, family, history, friendships and unfinished stories. Mostly, she is a grateful person.

29 April 2020 | NPM Poetry Webslam

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Fields of Poppies
by Christopher Nielsen
 
 
Gold doors shimmering winds
touching back and forth.
 
Poppies bend in the breeze
flowing caress feeling spirits.
 
Grateful seasonal flowers
end and begin again.
 
Organic cameras lightly
capture replays heartfelt.
 
Fields growing of seeds
blowing, fall growing.

Christopher Nielsen resides in Bakersfield, California. He is a photographer, writer, web designer and consultant. Traveling the many back roads of California has provided a wealth of inspiration and he feels most at home out in nature. Poetry has become his primary form of written expression. Christopher has been the featured poet at Kern Poetry’s Open Mic at Dagny’s. His photography has appeared in Barren Magazine and West Texas Literary Review. Christopher’s poems have appeared in CSUB’s Sound 2019, CSUB’s Writing Fields 2020, Rabid Oak and in Mojave Heart Review.
 

Author website:
 chrisnielsenphotography.com

28 April 2020 | NPM Poetry Webslam

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Touching
by Judy Kukuruza
 
Had to go to the store for milk.
Mask on, mentally psyching up.
Straight to the milk – grab it.
To the checkout, staying six feet back, waiting.
 
Cashier, tired eyes—“Is this all?”
“Yes.” Smiling beneath the mask, I add,
“Thank you for coming to work today.
Be safe.”
 
Her tired eyes overflow.
A tear wets her mask—“Thank you” I hear.
I look away, my own mask now wet.
Don’t want to embarrass her or myself.
 
Then I turn back—
Why not?  Let her see my tears,
As she showed hers.
Let our compassion show.
 
We have touched.
Heart to heart.
Maybe not physically,
But we have touched each other.

Judy Kukuruza ~ Retired college instructor from CSUB and Bakersfield College.  She published her memoir One Body/Many Souls in 2018, and later Poems to Ponder, Little Stories to Play with in Your Mind, and Letters.  She publishes her blog, “Our Spiritual Journey” through Word Press, participates in the WOK blog challenge and is published in both the WOK Anthology 2018 Reaching for the Sky and the CSUB poetry antholology, Writing Sound. 

27 April 2020 | NPM Poetry Webslam

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WE FIND HONEY OTHERS MISS
By Catherine Abbey Hodges
 
reads the H&R Block sign.
It’s April of course and I’m charmed
by this as I am by the scrawl of early lilacs
 
in the alley. Even when I realize
I’ve mistaken an M for an H, it’s a slip
neither Freud nor I mind, a mistake I’m
 
happy to have made.
Decades, really, of error and blunder
are how I’ve found honey
 
in the least likely places,
where bees had no business, and how,
eating it raw by the spoonful
 
or sucking it straight from the comb,
I’ve gone places I had no business going.
My dear
 
mistakes are how I found my life.

Catherine Abbey Hodges’ most recent book is In a Rind of Light (Stephen F. Austin State University Press 2020). She is the author of two previous full-length collections: Instead of Sadness, selected by Dan Gerber as winner of the 2015 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, and Raft of Days (2017). www.catherineabbeyhodges.com