April 2009

Inkberry’s Crit Night is like the friend who tells you about the leftover salad ingredient between your two front teeth. No. No, wait a minute! That’s not it. It’s more of a full length mirror in the front hall, just before you leave the house with your shirt tucked into your underwear.

Or think of it as a play date, maybe, for the draft of a short-story article that reads like a prose poem, kind of. Because maybe it bears a resemblance to an awkward kid who still requires supervision in social situations. You just don’t feel comfortable yet, turning him over to that gangland of a schoolyard known as an editor’s inbox.

Something along those lines. You get what I mean?

Wednesday Crit’s the place to go when you need to find out whether a metaphor is working or not.

You’ll find people there who care about writing-who care enough about their own writing to open it up for honest examination, and enough about your writing to encourage what makes it work and to gently disassemble it and look at the mechanics of it with you — the mechanics of language, of punctuation, and of ideas. It’s a place to get a clearer understanding of the interplay between the words fresh out of your mind and the images, meanings and emotions they conjure in someone else’s.

The Eclipse Mill Gallery invites Inkberry writers to participate in another form of interplay between the linguistic and the visual. From September 4 through October 4, 2009, “The Imaged Word” will present a synergistic dialogue between literary and visual works, where the two forms of expression gain from dual consideration. Poetry or prose will be displayed with, or incorporated into, one or more visual works that offer illustrations, points-of-view, counterpoints, or commentaries. The show will include collaborations between writers and artists as well as works that defy any distinction between the two modalities. While collaboration is not required, a curatorial team has formed in order to help match-make between writers and artists who would like to work together on combined, paired or grouped works.