Monday, March 16, 2009

Matt Mason at Peru State College



Matt Mason, Nebraska Best Poet Under 40, reads at Peru State College

On Thursday, March 26, at 11:30 in the ARC Conference Room, The PSC English Club and Creative Writing Series sponsored Matt Mason, who shared his thoughts and his poetry.


Though lightly attended, the reading affirmed Matt's excellence. As the images from the fun attest, the audience heard and watched an excellent performance.

I recorded a number of poems on You Tube for your viewing pleasure. The poetry includes the wonderfully humorous "When The Baby Goes to Sleep, We Celebrate" and the biting satire of "Code Orange."

Coffee and Astronomy will also make you smile, as will Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Baby.

I also recorded two of Matt's most well known Slam Poems, The Baby That Ate Cincinnati and Make Star Love and Not Star War.






You will learn a lot about Matt Mason and his partner in poetry and in life, Sarah McKinstry-Brown a various sites on the internet, but their dual site offers the best information, including many photographs and video performances.




As his profile on Wikipedia notes, he has one more than one Nebraska Book Award: "His full-length book, Things We Don't Know We Don't Know (2006), was published by the Backwaters Press and debuted at #12 on The Poetry Foundation's Contemporary bestsellers list. The anthology Slamma Lamma Ding Dong (2005), which Mason co-edited, was made available through iuniverse and won the 2006 Nebraska Book Award for Best Anthology."

"Slamma Lamma Ding Dong" contains a wonderful collection of Slam Petry by various Nebraska poets.

As you will discover, that Matt and Sara have won
Slam Poetry Contests all over the country. And he will certainly pay Peru State College another visit.

Matt also read a bird poem, which act, as you might imagine, pleased me a great deal. I sent him the following photograph. He wrote that the image fits perfectly with the poem, so I will certainly make available a video to match the picture of a Red-winged Blackbird in sunset flight.









No comments: