Hollace M. Metzger
June 1, 2010
Of Memory, Space, and Place
Hollace M. Metzger is an architect, visual artist, and poet. Growing up in the American mid-West, Metzger wasn’t particularly rooted. Her interest in travel developed after accompanying her mother on several trips to various countries in the Caribbean. Later, she earned a degree in architecture from the University of Kentucky, where she experienced a different style of American culture in the South, and where she also received the opportunity to travel abroad to study architecture in Venice. From Italy, to New York, and on to most countries in Western Europe, Metzger’s life became about the expression of mobility.
Her poetry and artwork frames that momentum, drawing listeners and viewers worldwide. As a way of honoring a particular time and space, each of Metzger’s artistic expressions is also unique and site-specific. Her poetry collections reveal that intimacy, yet Metzger’s words and their rhythm remain accessible, her imagery captivatingly familiar. She evokes a rare kindness and an inspiration to honor our private and public spaces.
Within an empty space, Metzger discovers what needs to be there artistically. You might say that she can sense the same about the human spirit and the need for art in our communities. Where that empty space is growing, Metzger already plans to eventually fill it with community-oriented, art based idea centers.
In Transcriptions of Time (2009), you will find her interest in the effects of an environment on people. She enunciates the pulse of those around her, of the passing scenery, the jostling of life, and others with their own artistic creations. She is all encompassing in her desire to blend the fields of poetry, art, architecture, and psychology. Since 2007, when she created her first book, Observing the Labyrinth from Heaven, Metzger has collaborated with a wide array of musicians, from djs to a symphony. She has undergone an artistic debut that includes recording an audio book. TranSYNphony (2010) includes more than six hours of audio from the poetry collections. The book Why the WilloW (2010) is Metzger’s latest poetry publication and includes 64 of her own black-and-white photographs. Metzger recently opened the architectural venture MiDEA Studio and is currently developing projects for European design competitions.
- Shana Thornton-Morris, Contributing Editor
Follow Hollace online
www.hollacemetzger.com
virb | myspace | facebook
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Collaboration credits :: Bottled Soul – dubbed to “Music for Galleries”, composed for Vernissage Hollace M. Metzger (Paris 2009), by Norman Fairbanks (Germany, 2008), Last Five Dollars – music by Torus Biglane, for the Ballet National de Marseille (Belgium, 2009), My World Exists – mixed by Hendrik Vogel (Germany, 2009), Return Ticket – music by Tiago Benzinho (Portugal, 2008), Underneath Parisian Streets – music by Tiago Benzinho (Portugal, 2007), Why the Willow – a vocal collaboration with Laurent Plazannet (Paris, 2010).
Win a signed copy of Why the WilloW!
In June and July, purchase any one of Hollace’s poetry collections or make a donation to HCE and register to win the Postcards from Paris contest. Ten randomly-selected entrants will receive a personally written postcard from Ms. Metzger, posted from Paris, while one lucky winner will receive a postcard, signed photographic print from her recent exhibition, and a signed copy of her latest book, Why the WilloW. To enter, email your purchase receipt or HCE donation confirmation to office@hollacemetzger.com with “Her Circle Contest” in the subject line. complete contest details
Why the WilloW Clifford Henderson
March 6, 2010
About the Author
Clifford Henderson, author of The Middle of Somewhere and Spanking New, lives and plays in Santa Cruz, California. She runs The Fun Institute, a school of improv and solo performance, with her partner of eighteen years. In their classes and workshops, people learn to access and express the myriad of characters itching to get out. Her other passions include gardening and twisting herself into weird yoga poses. She’s pleased to have recently completed recording an audiobook of The Middle of Somewhere with Dog Ear Audio. Her third novel, Maye’s Request, is coming out in 2011.
The Middle of Somewhere
Eadie T. Pratt sets out on a road trip in search of a new life and ends up in the middle of somewhere she never expected.
Start with one independent, urban lesbian who cashes out her life in San Francisco for a second-hand travel trailer and sets off to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in search of a new life. Add to this a broken-down ’66 T-bird, a bunch of small-town Texas Baptists, a ton of fried food, and a church scandal. Pepper this with a hot love interest and a dash of greed, and what you get is Eadie T. Pratt’s road trip gone awry.
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Leslie McMurtry
March 6, 2010
About the Author
Leslie McMurtry is from Albuquerque and received her BA from the University of New Mexico. She also holds an MA in creative writing from Swansea University. Leslie has published in several poetry collections as well as having performed in the first Poetry on Tap. She aspires to write for radio and has had excerpts of her plays performed in the UK and France. She received the Elizabeth George Foundation grant in 2009 to research the life of John Milton, and is an editor of The Terrible Zodin.
Dwarves Without Giants
Leslie loves to write historical fiction, and “Dwarves without Giants” is based on the life of Anna Swan of New Annan, Nova Scotia. The author is grateful to Jeff Harrop, Ashley Cunningham, and Shawn Wilson, authors of “Anna Swan: Nova Scotia’s Remarkable Giantess,” and The American Social History Project/Center for History and New Media, authors of The Lost Museum.
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Lily Poritz Miller
March 6, 2010
About the Author
Lily Poritz Miller was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and came to the United States with her family when she was fifteen. She began her editorial career in book publishing in New York at The Macmillan Company and later McGraw-Hill, then moved to Toronto, where she was senior editor and McClelland and Stewart for eighteen years.
She has written three plays, which were performed in New York and Toronto, and received a Samuel French national award for her play The Proud One. Her short stories were published in the anthology American Scene: New Voices. She has also written for film. She presently divides her time between Toronto and New York. Visit her online at www.lilyporitzmiller.com.
In a Pale Blue Light
A story of loss, defiance and change emerges from the magnificent setting of Cape Town in the late 1930s through the outbreak of World War II. Young Libka Hoffman is struggling with the loss of her father and the social conventions that frown upon her relationships with her most trusted friends. Libka’s exploration of socially forbidden territory eventually brings her to expulsion from her school and ostracism by her peers. Powerfully told in a unique voice, “In a Pale Blue Light” achieves an authentic and rarely achieved insight into Jewish life in South Africa during the tumultuous times around World War II.
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Only a few days left to submit your work for the International Women’s Day Virtual Festival!
January 27, 2010
Have you made your submission yet? If not, there’s still time to get involved in one of our exciting events.
Returning this year is the One World Cafe Virtual Reading series, featuring recorded works by some of the best and brightest emerging women authors.
Have a recently published title or new release coming out? Her Circle publishes original book reviews and we’d love to tell everyone about your work. Send us a copy!
Or if you would like to share some of your hard earned insight, be a guest blogger in our ‘The Writer’s Life’ blog.
To learn more about the International Women’s Day Virtual Festival, these opportunities and more, visit the Events page.
Best,
Misty
Sharanya Manivannan
April 1, 2008
Off the Page and Off the Hook
If seeing is believing, hearing is conceiving: of a new day and way for poetry. Sharanya Manivannan is conceiving a new poetry. Born in India in 1985, she grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. She currently lives in India and has performed in the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale in Indonesia, the Singapore Writers’ Festival, and Poetry with Prakriti in Chennai. “Art,” Manivannan said in an interview with TELL Magazine, “if done right, transcends boundaries.”
Manivannan does it right.
She is a novelist (Constellation of Scars), poet (Iyari; Witchcraft), and spoken word artist. With spoken word she melds her considerable gifts for story and image into white-hot performance. Her solo show, Ochre As The Earth, rocked the Kuala Lumpur arts scene when first performed in June 2007, generating rave reviews of work that “negotiates the intricacies of imagined exile, combining the core concepts of ananku (Tamil), iyari (Huichol) and duende (flamenco).” These may seem like abstract theories, but Manivannan brings them to life in surprising ways, weaving the three strands with dexterity, passion, and precision.
“Ananku” is an ancient Indian concept of sacred power that exists in dangerous places. In the boldly titled poem Clitoris we hear: “god wakes up between my thighs.” The sacred power of women’s sexuality is also made manifest in Linea Negra: “this is no mere pigment….this dark line of convergence…you’re a girl with a heart like jacarandas and I am a dangerous, dangerous, woman.”
“Iyari” is a Huichol Indian concept of “heart memory.” Her poem Witchery casts a spell with the arresting line: “I am the hemorrhage of memory.”Although difficult to define, duende may be understood as the force that inspires the art of the flamenco dancer. Federico García Lorca wrote that the duende “works on the body of the dancer like the wind works on sand.” This force always courts death in pursuit of its expression.
In the sparely titled, Poem, Manivannan exudes sexual confidence that flirts with disaster: “thunderstorms should make love to me…they’re the most erotic things in nature and I think they might enjoy it.”Manivannan believes that “performance poetry is definitely more accessible than poetry on the page” (TELL Magazine). It would be difficult to read a book of poems in under half an hour, but this 24 1/2 minute
-Kimberly L. Becker
One World Cafe Performance
How To Eat A Wolf
Witchery
Parampara
Cante Jondo In The Neytal Vein
This Hummingbird Heart
Clitoris
Linea Negra
Duende (The Gypsy Prayer)
A Horse Named Notoriety
Poem
Aquamarine
And If You Still Must Leave
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More on Sharanya Manivannan
http://sharanyamanivannan.wordpress.com
www.myspace.com/sharanyamanivannan
http://ochreastheearth.blogspot.com
http://invokingfrida.blogspot.com
Diana Ferrus
February 3, 2008
About the Author
Diana Ferrus is a writer and performance poet. Her poem, “I have come to take you home – a tribute to Sarah Baartman” was instrumental in the return of the 19th century figure’s remains to her home in South Africa. Ferrus was born in 1953 in Worcester, 100 km from Cape Town, a town known for its vineyards and wine. She completed her secondary education at Esselen Park High School in Worcester and her tertiary education at the University of the Western Cape, where she currently works as an administrator in the Department of Industrial Psychology.
Ferrus has attended several literature festivals internationally, including the International Poetry Festival in North and South Korea in 2005. She received two awards for her work, including one from the Department of Arts and Culture for her work with grassroots women writers. In addition, she established her own little publishing house and hopes to publish writers who would not normally be published by mainstream publishers. Ferrus published her first Afrikaans poetry collection, “Ons Komvandaan,” and co-edited “Slaan vir my ‘n masker, Vader,” a book on fathers. She released a CD of storytelling with musical accompaniment. Her next publication will be an English collection of poetry entitled, I Have Come To Take You Home.
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One World Cafe Virtual Reading Series: Women Writing in the New Ireland
January 19, 2008
Join us Sunday, March 9th for a reading with the ladies from across the pond.
WWInI is a new initiative aimed at facilitating a dialogue between women writers in the New Ireland. The intention is to promote the creative work of women writers living in Ireland who are from migrant and new communities and to encourage contact between these writers and other women writers who were born in Ireland or who have lived here for a long time.
Women Writing for (a) Change
January 18, 2008
About Women Writing for a Change
Join us Saturday, March 8th for this very special reading from Women Writing for (a) Change.
Women Writing for (a) Change is a feminist writing community located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1991 by Mary Pierce Brosmer, teacher, speaker and published poet, Women Writing for (a) Change has grown in scope and in depth from its first small, rented home for fifteen writers to a movement in which women and girls “practice their voices” and go into the larger world to add women’s stories and women’s views to the critical conversations of our times. Women Writing for (a) Change offers weekly writing classes for women who are open to the change that a writing practice can bring into their lives. Daytime and evening classes meet for 15 weeks and form close-knit communities; over 80% of participants return from semester to semester. Since its beginnings, more than 800 adult women and 300 girls have been writers at Women Writing for (a) Change.
Restoring balance by amplifying and strengthening the “voice of the conscious feminine” is the heart of the mission of Women Writing for (a) Change. In 2001, it’s sister organization, Women Writing for (a) Change Foundation, was established to support the program of Young Women Writing for (a) Change—creative writing programs for girls and young women in grades 4 through first-year of college— as well as to offer scholarships for girls and women to attend its creative writing courses. In addition, the Foundation supported the development of our weekly radio show broadcast on WVXU, 91.7 from 1999-2005 (now available through our website) as well as School Partnerships, which offer after-school Young Women Writing for (a) Change programs at local schools. With the recent purchase of a permanent home in Cincinnati, 6906 Plainfield Road in Silverton, the Women Writing for (a) Change movement can now plant roots and continue its growth and deepening work of bringing the conscious feminine to the world.
Women Writing for (a) Change continues to grow out into the world, inspiring the founding of seven sister WWf(a)C schools in Bloomington, IN; Birmingham, AL; Burlington, VT; Grand Junction, CO; Indianapolis, IN; Portland, OR; and opening soon in Traverse City, MI. The movement has influenced organizations – nonprofits, schools, and businesses – throughout Greater Cincinnati, as both women and men attend its programs, and as consultants trained in WWf(a)C practices serve directly in social service, academic and other settings.
For more information, please visit our website: www.womenwriting.org.
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Alison Aston
January 16, 2008
About the Author
Originally from the South West of England, Aston has lived in London, San Francisco, and Marseille. Her credits include work in women’s style magazines like ELLE and Harper’s Bazaar. Currently she works for BBC magazines, in addition to freelance work for Time Out. Aston lives with her civil partner in Bristol.
Closet
At 23 years old Rebecca Johnson is the epitome of success: she’s got a jealous-making job working for British society mag Reine, a fab flat in London and a continuous stream of attractive men passing through her sheets. This all sounds rather impressive, but in reality Becks sells the ads, shops in H&M and would rather go home with a girl in Manolos than Prince William in Armani.
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