Lucidity Ozark Poetry Retreat

Mark your calendar for the 15th annual conference—April 10, 11 & 12, 2007.

Poets from across the country attend this yearly event in the heart of the Ozark Mountains each spring, and the number of attendees grows every year. We have been happy to add new friends to our numbers, and we look forward to adding more. Can we look forward to meeting you?

PROGRAM TO INCLUDE:

Lectures
Workshops
Read-Arounds
Awards Banquet
Book Tables

Full details should be available in October 2006, and will be announced in the PITA newsletter.
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Highlights of Lucidity 2006

OUR ATTENDANCE THIS YEAR WAS 56 AND WE HAVE COME FROM KENTUCKY, WEST VlRGINIA, IDAHO, MlCHlGAN, MISSOURI, OHIO, WYOMING, OKLAHOMA, ARKANSAS, KANSAS, ILLINOIS, AND TEXAS. THlS IS UNIQUE & FABULOUS!

The lecturers, Tom Padgett and Laurence W. Thomas, captivated the attendees while providing their keen insights.
Tom's lecture on the structure of poems examined the factors considered by contemporary poets in deciding on such factors as line breaks and stanza breaks.

Larry's review of representative poems published by leading publications over the last three years included an eye opening focus on the prose poem.

Tom Padgett

That Tom Padgett celebrates small-town life in his poetry should be no surprise. He was bom in Mountain View, Missouri, attended school there, and has lived in six other small towns in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. After his university years, he taught three years as a secondary school teacher and thirty years as a professor at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri.

Writers often find small towns claustrophobic. Padgett found temporary escape—all the escape he needed—in reading and traveling.

Besides family trips to all fifty states, he conducted student and faculty groups to New York City, Europe, and Asia. He also taught two terrns in China (in Yantai and Lanzhou) and one term in Russia (in Rodniki).

After retirement from university teaching, Tom collected six chapbooks from his published poems. His latest book, The Way We Live: New and Selected Poems, was published in July of 2004. Formerly the chancellor and currently the webmaster of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies and also currently the secretary and webmaster of the Missouri State Poetry Society, he edits Thirty-Seven Cents, a poetry e-zine monthly now in its sixth year. He also edited the state society's poetry anthology, Grist, for five years, and Spare Mule, the state poetry newsletter, for seven years.

Tom and his wife, Shirley, live in Bolivar. They continue to travel, but more often are at home with the families of their three daughters and twelve grandchildren.

"Enjoy what you do and do what you enjoy" fits both the life and the works of Laurence W. Thomas, educator, lecturer, writer, and traveler. After wetting his feet in the ponds of high school and college teaching in the States, he crossed deeper waters to teach in Uganda, Costa Rica, and Saudi Arabia.

From 1986, when his first volume of poetry, Pursuits, appeared, to the present, Thomas has published poetry, essays, fiction, and creative nonfiction. His books include Songs Sacred and Profane, The Face in the Mirror, Three Autobiographies, and If Somebody Laughs It Must Be Funny.

For 12 years, Thomas has lectured and conducted workshops at the Lucidity Ozark Poetry Retreat in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. He also leads a poetry critiquing workshop at the Barnes & Noble at Ann Arbor, Michigan, teaches creative writing at Washtenaw Community College, and is active in the Poetry Society of Michigan.

The enjoyment Thomas derives from whatever he does is reflected in his meeting the challenges of all kinds of writing—poetry, which includes all types from the formal to free verse to the prose poem, fiction ranging from the dark side to breezy humor, and creative

Laurence W. Thomas

nonfiction: factual accounts laced with imaginative leaps to unexpected associations and conclusions. His subjects cover Iyrical nature poetry, philosophy, love, religion, protest, and avant-garde experimentation. His stories reflect the troubles as well and the inanities of the world.

One part of Three Autobiographies covers the author's take on his life in Saudi Arabia presented as creative nonfiction. Another section of the book creates the character, Robert Spencer Anderson, a roughly autobiographical depiction, highly spiced. "The Autobiography of Larry W. Larry" that makes up the rest of the book presents two boys, living and dead, during the developmental stages of their life.

Other lectures and readings included a presentation on the life and works of Stanley Kunitz by Priscilla Rehm of Rogers, Arkansas , and readings by featured poet E. Katie Gamill of Lerna, Illinois.

Priscilla says she has "lived in the layers," just as Stanley Kunitz's poem "The Layers" advises. The first layer was childhood, telling stories, playing out adventures, and by age 12 winning a national art award. The schoolgirl layer filled up with studies (Phi Beta Kappa) for a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. course-work in English Language and Literature from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, as well as teaching Rhetoric. The next layer was marriage and the birth of two sons, Cub Scouts, volunteer work–all that stuff, with a padding of teaching literature and composition courses at Northern Virginia Community College. Then followed the opaque density of Soviet analysis/writing for the US Government, visiting the former Soviet Union during the aborted coup of 1991, with a rivulet of study of poetry therapy with Peggy Osna Heller at the Wordsworth Poetry Therapy Institute then in Maryland. Now in the "retirement" layer, still to be defined, perhaps Priscilla is pushing the metaphor but it seems to apply.

Priscilla began writing poems when she was about five years old, and she still has the little notebook to prove it. She says she was

Priscilla T. Rehm

probably influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. She is a "slow" writer, and she is working on two related projects: a "Spoon River" family portraits series and a historical novel based on genealogical research of her family, especially their coming together in Kansas in the 19th century. Priscilla considers herself an interpreter of poems and poets, and her pleasure is to make their words come alive for an audience. But, like Emily Dickinson, she thinks it dull "to be somebody/how public like a frog," and she prefers to concentrate on the words.

Critique groups were conducted by Pat Laster of Benton, Arkansas, Harding Stedler of Cabot, Arkansas, Mark Tappmeyer of Boliver, Missouri, and Tom Padgett and Larry Thomas.

The banquet and presentation of awards ended the official activities, but the unofficial post conference party at the El Carribe Bar & Grill provided added opportunity to socialize.

Click here for the results of the poetry competition, and photos taken at the conference, banquet and post conference party can be seen here.

Web site and promotional support provided
courtesy of Poetry in the Arts, Inc.

The lecturers, Tom Padgett and Laurence W. Thomas, captivated the attendees while providing their keen insights. Tom's lecture on the structure of poems examined the factors considered by contemporary poets in deciding on such factors as line breaks and stanza breaks. Larry's review of representative poems published by leading publications over the last three years included an eye opening focus on the prose poem.

Tom Padgett That Tom Padgett celebrates small-town life in his poetry should be no surprise. He was bom in Mountain View, Missouri, attended school there, and has lived in six other small towns in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. After his university years, he taught three years as a secondary school teacher and thirty years as a professor at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. Writers often find small towns claustrophobic. Padgett found temporary escape—all the escape he needed—in reading and traveling.		Besides family trips to all fifty states, he conducted student and faculty groups to New York City, Europe, and Asia. He also taught two terrns in China (in Yantai and Lanzhou) and one term in Russia (in Rodniki). After retirement from university teaching, Tom collected six chapbooks from his published poems. His latest book, The Way We Live: New and Selected Poems, was published in July of 2004. Formerly the chancellor and currently the webmaster of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies and also currently the secretary and webmaster of the Missouri State Poetry Society, he edits Thirty-Seven Cents, a poetry e-zine monthly now in its sixth year. He also edited the state society's poetry anthology, Grist, for five years, and Spare Mule, the state poetry newsletter, for seven years. Tom and his wife, Shirley, live in Bolivar. They continue to travel, but more often are at home with the families of their three daughters and twelve grandchildren.

"Enjoy what you do and do what you enjoy" fits both the life and the works of Laurence W. Thomas, educator, lecturer, writer, and traveler. After wetting his feet in the ponds of high school and college teaching in the States, he crossed deeper waters to teach in Uganda, Costa Rica, and Saudi Arabia. From 1986, when his first volume of poetry, Pursuits, appeared, to the present, Thomas has published poetry, essays, fiction, and creative nonfiction. His books include Songs Sacred and Profane, The Face in the Mirror, Three Autobiographies, and If Somebody Laughs It Must Be Funny. For 12 years, Thomas has lectured and conducted workshops at the Lucidity Ozark Poetry Retreat in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. He also leads a poetry critiquing workshop at the Barnes & Noble at Ann Arbor, Michigan, teaches creative writing at Washtenaw Community College, and is active in the Poetry Society of Michigan. The enjoyment Thomas derives from whatever he does is reflected in his meeting the challenges of all kinds of writing—poetry, which includes all types from the formal to free verse to the prose poem, fiction ranging from the dark side to breezy humor, and creative		Laurence W. Thomas nonfiction: factual accounts laced with imaginative leaps to unexpected associations and conclusions. His subjects cover Iyrical nature poetry, philosophy, love, religion, protest, and avant-garde experimentation. His stories reflect the troubles as well and the inanities of the world. One part of Three Autobiographies covers the author's take on his life in Saudi Arabia presented as creative nonfiction. Another section of the book creates the character, Robert Spencer Anderson, a roughly autobiographical depiction, highly spiced. "The Autobiography of Larry W. Larry" that makes up the rest of the book presents two boys, living and dead, during the developmental stages of their life.

Other lectures and readings included a presentation on the life and works of Stanley Kunitz by Priscilla Rehm of Rogers, Arkansas , and readings by featured poet E. Katie Gamill of Lerna, Illinois.

Priscilla says she has "lived in the layers," just as Stanley Kunitz's poem "The Layers" advises. The first layer was childhood, telling stories, playing out adventures, and by age 12 winning a national art award. The schoolgirl layer filled up with studies (Phi Beta Kappa) for a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. course-work in English Language and Literature from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, as well as teaching Rhetoric. The next layer was marriage and the birth of two sons, Cub Scouts, volunteer work–all that stuff, with a padding of teaching literature and composition courses at Northern Virginia Community College. Then followed the opaque density of Soviet analysis/writing for the US Government, visiting the former Soviet Union during the aborted coup of 1991, with a rivulet of study of poetry therapy with Peggy Osna Heller at the Wordsworth Poetry Therapy Institute then in Maryland. Now in the "retirement" layer, still to be defined, perhaps Priscilla is pushing the metaphor but it seems to apply. Priscilla began writing poems when she was about five years old, and she still has the little notebook to prove it. She says she was		Priscilla T. Rehm probably influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. She is a "slow" writer, and she is working on two related projects: a "Spoon River" family portraits series and a historical novel based on genealogical research of her family, especially their coming together in Kansas in the 19th century. Priscilla considers herself an interpreter of poems and poets, and her pleasure is to make their words come alive for an audience. But, like Emily Dickinson, she thinks it dull "to be somebody/how public like a frog," and she prefers to concentrate on the words.