California Writers Club Featues Dublin’s Poet Laureate
CALIFORNIA WRITERS CLUB FEATURES
DUBLIN’S POET LAUREATE
Ronnie Holland, the City’s current Poet Laureate, was the featured speaker at the Tri-Valley Branch of the California Writers Club. The presentation and luncheon took place on Saturday, February 20th, at the Oasis Grille in Pleasanton. Ms. Holland shared her experience in breaking back into the poetic tribe as Dublin’s first Poet Laureate, and spoke about how she taps into the poetic, universal time of her Muse and organizes functional time to complete chapbooks, contest entries and host or attend events. She briefly described her writing background and experience to date as Poet Laureate; gave specific suggestions for increasing available creative time, weaving in some of her poems as examples of specific points; then answered audience questions. She encouraged attendees to share their wisdom and get their story out there, and to attend the upcoming “Open Mic” program during the St. Patrick’s Day Celebration, and the annual Pleasanton April Poetry and Prose Festival. Holland also read two of her poems; Ghost, If We Were Children, Epiphany, and Shannon Revisited. Here is Ghost, her first published poem, written while studying with Mark Strand (later U.S. Poet Laureate 1990-1991)
GHOST
What fun to be a ghost!
Neither here nor there
Imagined, suspect, denied.
Squeezing through clicking keyholes
Not for the scaring
But for the moving unseen
It makes me feel dangerous.
I pound the floor without a sound
Just for the exercise.
To learn more about Dublin’s Poet Laureate Ronnie Holland, visit the Poet Laureate
website (under the Cultural Arts heading) at www.ci.dublin.ca.us. For more information
about the Tri-Valley Writers, visit http://trivalleywriters.org/.
