This weekend: Triangle Bake-Off & FB live interview with RDU on Stage

04 Saturday Apr 2020

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playwriting, triangle bake-off, upcoming events

#1: WANNA WRITE A PLAY THIS WEEKEND?

THE TRIANGLE BAKE-OFF HAS BEGUN.

This is a quick and (hopefully stress-relieving) short playwriting competition. There’s a youth category if your kids are looking for something to do – OR – perhaps this will be a way for you to blow off some steam using writing as a tool.

On Friday, April 3 at 7:00 am, the Women’s Theatre Festival released the list of “secret ingredients” that each script must include. Submissions must be received by 7:00 pm on Sunday, April 5 to beconsidered.

Here are the ingredients:

For more information, read this blog post: Calling All NC Playwrights! Announcing the Triangle Bake-Off!

#2: WANNA SEE/HEAR ME ON FACEBOOK LIVE? EEEP!

I’LL BE THERE, SUNDAY EVENING.

On Sunday evening after you’ve turned in your play, I’d love for you to hop online and listen to a conversation with me and Lauren Van Hemert of RDU On Stage.

Lauren has put together an amazing series of guests over the last few weeks, and I’m feeling honored to be included in the line up. We’ll talk about the Piedmont Laureate-ing, writing audio fiction, and parenting during this bonkers time while trying to make art and get things done. (Spoiler alert: life is confetti and what is time).

We’re scheduled for a Facebook Live event this Sunday, April 5 at 8pm EST.

Hope to talk to you then!

Twitter Haiku Writing Challenge and Free Poetry Party at Duke Gardens!

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by Mimi Herman in Mimi Herman, Poetry, Uncategorized, Writing Advice

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duke gardens, haikai no renga, haiku, upcoming events

Writing haiku, like riding a bicycle, is one of those things you never forget. Even if you’re a few years out of elementary school, you probably remember how it goes: three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third.

Here’s a haiku by Matsuo Basho, a famous Japanese poet who lived from 1644 to 1694. Note: this is a poem in translation, so in English it doesn’t exactly follow the 5-7-5 syllable format.

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from https://www.flickr.com/photos/131326857@N03/27176352086/in/photostream/

Over the next few weeks, I invite you to haul out your haiku skills from the garage of your brain and take them for a spin on Twitter. Here’s all you have to do:

Go to @PiedLaureate.
Check out the most recent haiku you see there.
Write your own haiku that follows naturally from the one before it. Use 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line and 5 in the third.
Feel free to be funny. There’s no rule saying all haiku have to be serious.
Let’s see how many haiku we can create! You’re welcome to add as many as you like.

Then on Saturday, April 8^th, you’re invited to join me at a free Poetry Party at Duke Gardens from 10:30 am to 12:00 noon, where we’ll leave the training wheels of Twitter behind and write poems together in person.

You don’t have to be a poet to come — or even to have added a haiku to our Twitterku (though I hope you will). Just come out and enjoy writing poetry in the beautiful Duke Gardens in springtime.All ages and writing abilities are welcome! Bring your family and friends!

For those of you like to know how things get started, haiku began in medieval Japan, when poets would travel miles to meet for a poetry party of their own. Once the party started, one poet would compose the first stanza, known as the hokku, in honor of the host, making a reference to whatever season it happened to be. The host would then write the next stanza, responding to the first one, and from there on out, everyone would get to take turns writing stanzas for the haikai no renga, or “linked verse,” alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 syllable stanzas with 7-7 syllable stanzas until they’d reached a hundred stanzas altogether. And, just to make the party more fun, they made up rules about when you could mention the moon, or flowers, or each season or…love. That first verse, the hokku, eventually became a poem by itself, a haiku.

If you really want to geek out on haikai no renga, here’s a great article: http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv5n1/features/Arntzen.html. And here’s another one, with the rules we’ll be using for our Poetry Party: http://www.ahapoetry.com/Bare%20Bones/RBless6.html

So take up the Twitterku challenge and join me in writing your own haiku on Twitter, then bring your fabulous haiku writing skills to Duke Gardens on the morning of April 8th for our Poetry Party!

Piedmont Laureate Twitterku Challenge: @PiedLaureate.

Poetry Party at Duke Gardens
Date: Saturday, April 8, 2017
Time: 10:30 am to 12:00 noon
Location: Meet at the Doris Duke Center to be escorted to the poetry party

Piedmont Laureate Coming Attractions

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Mimi Herman in Mimi Herman, Poetry, Uncategorized

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upcoming events

It hasn’t been much of a winter, despite a couple of good days when I got to break out my yard sale cross-country skis and tour the snowy neighborhood, doing my best to stay upright and make forward progress at the same time. So when we achieved bathing suit temperatures last week, I felt guilty. How could we be getting spring so soon, when we hadn’t even endured winter yet? Surely we didn’t deserve such beautiful weather. Maybe this weather was being given to those of us who believe in global warming so we could say, “See, it really is true.”

But as someone who needs lots of light to stay upright and make forward progress, the sunlight and warmth came as a welcome gift, and got me even more excited about some of the events I’m planning as Piedmont Laureate. Now that the temperatures have dipped a bit again, here are a few tidbits about upcoming events to keep you going until the next warm spell.

In the upcoming months, I’ll be holding an Art Poetry Treasure Hunt at each of the Friday Art Walks, followed by an open mic reading to share the poems you’ve written. The first one will occur at Second Friday on April 14^th in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, where you’ll receive your own treasure map of art galleries, a pad of paper to carry with you as you explore those galleries, and a variety of ways to write poetry. Then we’ll all gather to read the marvelous poems you’ve created on your art adventure.

On April 8^th, from 1:00 to 2:30, I invite you to join me at a Poetry Party in Duke Gardens to celebrate spring. In ancient Japan, poets traveled miles for poetry parties. We’ll travel to the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum for our inspiration and collaborate to write a 100-stanza Haikai no Renga style of poem, considered the origin of modern haiku. No poetry experience or knowledge of Japanese needed, just the desire to enjoy nature and beauty in great company. All ages and writing abilities welcome! We’ll meet at the Doris Duke Center to be escorted to the poetry party. In my next blog post, on March 29^th, I’ll tell you more about Haikai no Renga, and you can start practicing with Twitter haiku.

Over the next few months, I’ll be offering various free workshops at libraries throughout Orange, Wake and Durham counties, with subject ranging from “Innovative Approaches to Revision” to “The Geography of Your Life” (where you’ll create three-dimensional maps of your life) to “Flirting with Your Reader.”

Then, keep looking ahead to autumn, when I’ll team up with the amazing educators from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for a paddle and science poetry tour, so you can exercise your body while you strengthen your powers of observation.

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