THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604050203
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
It's poetry time in Portsmouth.
A four-day celebration presented by Ports Events starts April 17 at the Portsmouth Museums Arts Center and continues at other locations on consecutive nights through April 20.
The poetry readings were started three years ago.
``We wanted to add a cultural side to our image,'' said Linda Lamm, director of Ports Events. ``We didn't want people to see us as just a festival of beer and T-shirts. We wanted to do something away from the waterfront to promote our museums and galleries.''
The participants are chosen by a committee of writers and teachers from around Hampton Roads, Lamm says.
This year's schedule:
``Hymn to Chesapeake'' by Robert P. Arthur will be presented in a staged version by Arthur and a cast of several people at 7 p.m. April 17 at the Arts Center, corner of High and Court streets. The presentation will be followed by a wine-tasting by Pfeiffer's Books and Cards.
Arthur is a Virginia Beach resident and has been a professor of English at Tidewater Community College since 1973. He is now director of humanities for the school's three campuses. He has degrees from the University of Richmond and the University of Arkansas.
He has received numerous awards for writing, including the Baucom Fulkerson Award for Literary Excellence, the University of Arkansas Creative Writing Award and the Seay Fellowship.
A number of his plays have been produced in the area, including ``Floyd Collins and the White Angels of Sand Cave'' at the Wells Theater in Norfolk, and ``The Libertine'' at James Madison University.
``Hymn to Chesapeake'' has been presented both as a staged reading and a full musical production in several locations.
A trio of poets will read at the TCC Visual Arts Center, corner of High and Court streets, at 7 p.m. April 18, followed by a reception and book-signing.
The poets are Lynn Dean Hunter, associate editor of the literary fiction publication, Crescent Review; Jay Paul, chairman of the English department and director of the honors program at Christopher Newport College; and Tim Seibles, a creative-writing teacher at Old Dominion University.
Seibles, a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in 1990, recently received the Open Voice Award from the National Writers Voice Project. He is the author of three books of poetry: ``Body Moves,'' ``Hurdy Gurdy'' and ``Kerosene.'' Recently his work has been featured in New England Review, Ploughshares, The Artful Dodger and an anthology called ``In Search of Color Everywhere.''
About 200 of Paul's poems and shorts stories have appeared in magazines around the United States including Poetry Northwest, the Christian Century, Southwest Review, New Virginia Review, the New England Review and Southern Poetry Review. His story, ``Aunt Titus Nusbaum Toots in from Toonerville,'' received honorable mention in Houghton Mifflin's ``Best American Short Stories.''
Hunter says her writing ``focuses on the feminine in nature and culture.'' She has published poems, fiction and non-fiction and is a book reviewer for The Virginian-Pilot. She has a bachelor's degree from Beloit College and a master's degree from ODU and has been literary editor of Ghent magazine and City Magazine.
Award-winning poet Bettie Sellers, Goolsby Professor of English at Young Harris College in Georgia, where she has taught for 30 years, will be featured at the April 19 reading at the home of Capt. and Mrs. William R. Klemm, Quarters A, at the Naval Shipyard.
Seven books of poetry by Sellers have been published, and in 1992 a biography, ``The Bitter Berry: The Life of Byron Herbert Reece,'' was published.
The book on Reece, a Georgia mountain farmer and poet, followed the release of a documentary film of the same title in 1988. The film, written and co-produced by Sellers, was widely recognized with awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the American Film and Video Festival, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Sinking Creek Film Festival. In addition, Sellers published a number of articles on Reece.
Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Arizona Quarterly, the Georgia Review, Appalachian Heritage and the Green River Review. Her work also was included in a college text published by Little Brown, ``Literature: An Introduction to Poetry,'' and Prentice Hall's 1987 book, ``Women in Literature.''
Sellers, who has studied in France, England, Greece and Crete as well as at several major universities in the United States, has received many honors including Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry in 1979 for ``Spring Onions and Cornbread,'' in 1982 for ``The Morning of the Red-Tailed Hawk'' and in 1989 for ``Wild Ginger''; also, American Pen Women Poet of the Year in 1982, the R.G. Beyer Award in 1979, the John Ransome Lewis Award in 1980 and the Governor's Award in the Humanities in 1987.
The final day of the festival will feature winning entries from a poetry contest for Hampton Roads elementary school children read by Shirley Hurd and Bentley Anderson at 10 a.m., April 20, at the planetarium in the Children's Museum of Virginia.
Student winners will be treated to a free museum visit and planetarium shows plus prizes from the museum gift shop.
The children's event at the museum is by invitation only and reserved for winners and their families.
The first three days of events are free and open to the public; however, seating is limited so reservations are required. To reserve a seat at any event, call the Ports Events offices at 393-9933.
Poetry in Portsmouth is sponsored by InfoLine, WFOG and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. For more information, call Ports Events. For directions to locations of events, call InfoLine, 640-5555, ext. 7678. ILLUSTRATION: Lynn Dean Hunter
Associate editor of Crescent Review
by CNB