Every year, Laramie County Community College (LCCC) puts on a Literary Connection where the college invites two authors and speakers to come to Cheyenne to talk with the writing community. This year they invited Allen Kurzweil, author of The Whipping Boy, and poet George Bilgere. Both have been nominated and recognized in the creative writing world.

Last year, I attended both days, one being a free day and the next a paid day (only $30) where LCCC has great food, snacks, and all day coffee. I had a good time with my writing buddy, Luana, where we met Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One. I could only attend one day this year, which was the free day, but I was so happy that I was able to because the speakers always have a unique way of drawing me in.

The first speaker, George Bilgere, had a dry sense of humor and made all of us like him immediately. He read some poems from the platform and asked the audience questions about the poems and any thoughts we had about the poems.

Now I’m not into poetry as poetry is my husband’s and grandmama’s gift. So some of the poems didn’t make sense until people started to comment on it. As you can imagine, the comments got pretty funny as an adorable older man began to comment on the poem we read called For the El Camino by Steve Straight.

George requested that we write a poem about something we miss or we used to have, but don’t anymore – as that is what Straight’s poem was about. Since poetry is not my strong point and I am a child at it, thinking if it doesn’t rhyme, then it isn’t poetry, I came up with a poem that I don’t mind sharing with you, as long as you don’t judge.

My mom has corningware and it wasn’t until after I reached adulthood that I understood that these were from my mom’s generation, a must have for that time period. So I wrote a short poem about these dishes:

Blue and White Glassware

Ol blue and white glassware

How I miss your wonderful glare

I remember putting food in your belly

And then eating some jelly

Ol blue and white glassware

You were everywhere

In the cabinets and on a shelf

You were a little bigger than a elf

Ol blue and white glassware

Now I wish you were in my care

As I would like your clean white shine

So it can be all mine

Ol blue and white glassware

I wouldn’t mind having a pair

For it reminds me of mu Georgian home

Where I can still see your timeless shone

 

Cheezy and could use some work, eh? Well I thought it was good despite my lack of poetry-ness and given 10 minutes to work on it. George started to share with us a poem by Tony Hoagland entitled, “Lawrence”, which is about him ranting about the people who made fun of the popular poet, D.H. Lawrence, who was described as being too “romantic” or “sensual” of his time.  In the poem, he’s mad at the people for making fun of this great poet and at himself for not saying, or defending, Lawrence, who he considered a fantastic poet.

After this poem, George encouraged us to write a rant poem and afterwards, hearing the participates poems were interesting and funny. I am not going to share this one I wrote as I feel it may not be appropriate for this blog. However, if you contact me, I might share it with you 😉

The next speaker was Allen Kurzweil, who had an array of strange items on a table in front of the platform. These items were of books, a potato, pictures, paper, a bag of some sort, and many more strange things.

He then took us on a journey of his life, and every object on the table played a part of his journey. He went from writing non-fiction to children’s novels, then to researching and writing a book about his journey to finding his childhood bully (that story is truly incredible!) and then to writing a book about the pharmaceutical industry because his mom suffers from taking too many pills.

It was fascinating to hear his life story. Kurzweil does not have a genre, nor does he even attempt to stick with one, which I found was interesting. He wrote about things where his heart took him. One observation my friend made was that he wrote in order of his life – he wrote children books (the Leon series) when he himself had a child who was beginning to read, then he went on to discover and reacquaint himself with his childhood bully in The Whipping Boy, and how he’s working on researching on how to improve taking pills for the elderly as he watch his mom take pills.

Both speakers were diverse and unique – George Bilgere got us in touch with our poet side and Allen Kurzweil reminded us to go with our hearts.

I highly recommend going to any literary workshops in your area as these workshops are for your benefit of learning and encouraging you to continue to learn! I hope you enjoyed my poem and learning about these two authors!

In the meantime, continue to learn and grow my friends!