Casting Update: Heartland's EARNEST Begins Its Bunbury Business September 7

Heartland Theatre Company and director Don LaCasse have announced who'll be pretending to be Earnest (spoiler alert: there is no Earnest or Ernest) when Oscar Wilde's delightful period comedy The Importance of Being Earnest opens September 7th.

The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, which is also when it's set. Earnest takes place in fashionable English settings like a London flat and the garden of a country house, and its cast of elegant characters are generally floating around in gowns with giant leg-o-mutton sleeves and feathered bonnets (the ladies) or silk cravats and high hats (the gents). Wilde is sending up society and puncturing its pomposity, which means you must see what that society looked like in 1895.

The most memorable character in the play and the clearest example of snobbery among the finer classes is Lady Bracknell, the formidable dragon who sniffs at her daughter marrying a man whose pedigree cannot be ascertained. After all, Jack Worthing was abandoned as a baby, left in a handbag at the railway station. A handbag! She also has all the best lines in Wilde's deliciously witty play, like this one: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."

Because it's such a wonderful role, men have strapped themselves into Lady Bracknell's corset quite a lot, with acclaimed performances from the likes of Brian Bedford, Geoffrey Rush and David Suchet. Still, my favorite Lady Bracknell is Dame Edith Evans in the 1952 movie version of the play. Apparently director LaCasse is also a fan of the female Lady Bracknell, since he's cast local favorite Kathleen Kirk to play Lady B for Heartland.

The four lovers in the play -- Algernon, Jack, Cecily and Gwendolyn -- will be played by Kyle Redmon, Timothy Olsen, Emilia Dvorak and Jessie Swiech. Joining them will be Julie Riffle as Miss Prism, Cecily's governess, and Dean Brown as Dr. Chasuble, a local rector, with Chuck Pettigrew and Larry Eggan as Merriman and Lane, the perfectly composed manservant and butler who bring in the tea (and possibly cucumber sandwiches) at inopportune moments.

Wilde called The Importance of Being Earnest "a trivial comedy for serious people," but it's actually not at all serious as long as it skates along with the proper fin de siècle feel.

You'll find The Importance of Being Earnest on stage at Heartland Theatre beginning with a Pay What You Can preview on September 7, followed by Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances through the 23rd. For the complete list of performance dates and times, click here. For reservation information, see this page.

A "Wryly Beguiling" LANGUAGE ARCHIVE Opens Tomorrow at Heartland

It seems there has been a concerted effort to address the "female playwright" problem -- the fact that plays by women are much less likely to get produced than plays with male names on them  -- in Bloomington-Normal. As the Department of Theatre and Dance at Illinois State University launches a fall season that includes work by Sarah Ruhl, Quiara Alegria Hudes and Lynn Nottage, New Route Theatre is holding auditions for a new performance piece by A. Oforiwaa Adruonum and Heartland Theatre opens its first of two plays written by women.

Julia Cho's The Language Archive is up first, opening tomorrow, and that will be followed by Falling by Deanna Jent, an Illinois Wesleyan University alum, in November. Last spring, Heartland's season-ender was Rona Munro's Iron and three of its ten-minute plays were written by woman.

It certainly gives BloNo theatre audiences a chance to see if they think work by women is demonstrably different from work by men or if women are just as individual, as theatrical and as successful on stage as anybody else. (Answers: Probably not and definitely yes.)

The Language Archive is a beautiful piece of writing, showing Cho's skill with weaving real emotion and real life with a little bit of magic and fantasy. It centers on George, a fairly hapless language archivist who has spent his professional life recording lost languages for posterity. If George can collect and preserve language, he cannot really communicate all that well with his fellow human beings, who include his wife, Mary, reduced to leaving cryptic notes in his pockets, his books and even his teacup in an effort to be heard; his lab assistant Emma, who harbors a major crush that he has failed to notice; and Alta and Resten, a couple newly arrived from a faraway land to put their own native tongue, an almost-obsolete language called Elloway, into the archive. Will Mary ever get through to George? Will Emma find the courage to tell him she loves him or to learn Esperanto? Can Alta and Resten stop fighting long enough to speak a few words of Elloway?

Resten (Mark de Veer, L) and Alta (Nancy Nickerson, R) experience a failure to communicate while George (Bruce E. Clark) looks on.

Cho winds all that together beautifully, along with visits from a man named Baker who is indeed a baker, a forceful language instructor who brooks no failures to communicate, and a strange gent who purports to be L. L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, the universal language. Look for humor as well as sadness in The Language Archive as Cho looks at what it means to be human and to feel love even when the words don't come easily.

I don't know that there's anything essentially female about The Language Archive, but it certainly does find fertile ground in the idea that language is fragile, powerful and exasperating, especially when it comes to love.

If you want to know more about Julia Cho or The Language Archive, you might be interested in this interview or this piece about Cho, a review of the first production of Language Archive at South Coast Rep, or Chris Jones' Chicago Tribune review of the Piven Workshop production last February in Chicagoland.

The Language Archive opens tomorrow night at Heartland Theatre with a Pay What You Can Preview, followed by performances September 12 and 13; 18, 19, 20 and 21; and 25, 26, 27 and 28. Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances begin at 7:30 pm, while Sunday shows start at 2 pm. Note that a panel discussion follows the Sunday matinee on September 21 -- panelists include ISU professor Connie de Veer, who acted as dialect coach for The Language Archive; Susan Ryder, co-pastor at New Covenant Community who has a special interest in the Tower of Babel; and Hank Campbell from Friends Forever, a program devoted to bringing together children from cultures in conflict to promote friendship and understanding.

Click here to see the list of showtimes and here to see reservation information.

One Acts Take Center Stage in NEW PLAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND

Heartland Theatre began its life as a home for new works. Although that mission has changed over the years, Heartland still makes a place for brand-new plays, with a festival for 10-minute plays in June and a program of one-act plays in July. Both projects solicit scripts from playwrights and then select the cream of the crop for staging. The 10-Minute Play Festival, which just finished up its 13th year, accepts submissions from all over the world, with eight winning plays fully staged and performed on Heartland's stage. The New Plays from the Heartland, on the other hand, celebrate new work written by Midwestern authors. And Midwestern authors only!

When the New Plays from the Heartland have been sorted through, discussed and considered, only three winners emerge. This year, with the theme Escape, two winners hail from Illinois and one from Wisconsin, but their work covers a range of issues. There's a look at what represents escape and what represents a trap for a woman in the 1950, a philosophical musing on the nature of theatre, and a filmic piece about how a boy's life can be changed in the space of a summer when he leaves home to stay with his aunt. The plays are:

AN ESCAPE PLAN FOR WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE 
by Lori Matthews, Stoughton WI
It's 1950, and Harriet is smart, accomplished and committed to her future. The question is what that future should hold. Marriage, wealth, privilege? Or perhaps her life should be a bowl of cherries.

MERELY PLAYERS 
by Michael Leathers, Chatham IL
When two very different men come to the theater, they think they'll just take their seats and settle in for a show. But this is no ordinary theater...

ALCHEMY
by Pamela Lovell, Bloomington IL
For Josh, "escape" might be spending the summer with his aunt. For Aunt Julie, it might be living alone in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. For both of them, it might be finding a way to talk, to grow, to ride out the storm.

As a play development project, the plays are presented as staged readings, with actors performing with scripts in hand along with some props, costumes and set pieces. Director Don LaCasse has an acting troupe of eight that includes some of the area's best actors, with Colleen Longo, Katie McCarty, Danny Rice and Ann B. White appearing in Escape Plan, Nathan Bottorff and Rick Jensen in Merely Players, and Harrison Gordon and Cristen Monson in Alchemy.

Kathleen Kirk served as dramaturg for the project, shepherding the scripts from entry to performance, and she also worked with Scott Klavan, the New York playwright, director and actor who acted as the final judge this year. Klavan will meet with the three winning playwrights in a special workshop designed just for them, and he will also conduct a forum on playwriting at the theater on Thursday, July 17, at 7:30 pm. That forum is free and open to the public.

Performances of the New Plays from the Heartland will take place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Heartland Theatre, with a 7:30 pm curtain on Friday and Saturday and a 2 pm matinee on Sunday. Since this is a special project and not a part of Heartland's subscription season, Flex Passes are not accepted, but tickets are priced at only $5 to make the project accessible to everyone. Reservations are a very good idea as some performances fill up quickly. 

Poetry to Sustain the World April 22 in Normal

It's National Poetry Month! Take a moment and recite a poem to yourself. Any poem. Mary Had a Little Lamb. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Tyger! Tyger! burning bright. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Once upon a midnight dreary... "Hope" is the thing with feathers. If. O Captain! My Captain! somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond... No Man Is an Island. How do I love thee? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

What poetry sounds like and what role it plays may have changed over the years, but there has always been poetry and there will always be poets.

In celebration of National Poetry Month as well as Earth Day, which happens on April 22, local poet Kathleen Kirk, who is also poetry editor at international online arts magazine Escape Into Life, will join Scott Poole, a poet from Vancouver, Washington, who also works with Escape Into Life, along with Central Illinois poets Judith Valente and Susan Baller-Shepard, for a program they are calling "News That Stays News: Sustaining Our World Through Poetry."

This poetry reading, which will take place on Tuesday, April 22, from 7 to 8:30 pm at the First United Methodist Church on School Street in Normal, is hosted by Bruce Bergethon, General Manager of WGLT and producer of "Poetry Radio."Admission is free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by the Parret Endowment for Religion, Culture & the Art.

For more information on "New That Stays News" or the poets who are participating, click here. While you're there, you may want to check out other arts and art forms at Escape Into Life. Definitely a nice place to visit!

New Route Untangles GIDION'S KNOT

You may not have heard of Johnna Adams, but her play Gidion's Knot has emerged as a favorite in a lot of quarters. Adams and Gidion's Knot were nominated for the American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Award as well as the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the whole play was published in the pages of American Theatre magazine.

The idea behind the play is certainly topical, something that catches you immediately. A 5th grade boy was suspended, with tragic consequences. His mother, desperate to understand, arrives to talk to his teacher. But there are no easy answers. Was he a bully or being bullied? Where can fault and blame be fixed?

New Route Theatre and Artistic Director Don Shandrow are now bringing Gidion's Knot and its tangled issues of parenting and society, of where violence begins, of how to spot and how to handle troubled children, to Bloomington-Normal in an unusual production staged inside a classroom at what used to be Bloomington High School and is now Mt. Moriah Christian Church, at 510 East Washington Street. "Since the action of the play takes place in a school classroom during a parent/teacher conference, we felt that the location would make for a more exciting theatre experience," Shandrow notes on New Route's Facebook page.

The New Route production is directed by Shandrow and stars Kathleen Kirk and Gabrielle Lott-Rogers. Performances begin March 28, followed by performances on March 29 and 30 and April 4, 5 and 6. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 7:30 pm, with Sunday performances at 2:30 pm. Tickets are priced at $10 or $8 for seniors and students, and reservations can be made by calling 309-827-7330 or emailing new.route.theatre@gmail.com

And because the idea of supporting female playwrights is close to my heart, I'd like to note that 2014 is shaping up as an extraordinary year for Bloomington-Normal when it comes to plays written by women, with Gidion's Knot at New Route later this month, just after The Exonerated, directed by Cyndee Brown for ISU, which was a collaboration between Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. That will be followed by Rona Munro's Iron at Heartland and Emily Mann's Mrs. Packard at ISU, both in April, and then Sarah Ruhl's Vibrator Play, Lynn Nottage's Meet Vera Stark and Quiara Alegría Hudes's Water by the Spoonful, all at ISU in the fall. Illinois State University just completed a production of Diana Son's Stop Kiss, directed by Leah Cassella, as well. And there will almost certainly be additions to that list when we hear about Heartland's 10-minute plays and New Plays from the Heartland, as well as Heartland's and Illinois Wesleyan's fall choices. Wouldn't it be nice if this were just business as usual, instead of extraordinary?

Plotting an ESCAPE for New Plays from the Heartland

Heartland Theatre has announced the theme and some of the details for its second new play contest. The first one -- this year called FOWL PLAYS -- is looking for ten-minute plays with some connection to birds, with eight winning plays to be presented in June, 2014. The second contest, NEW PLAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND, involves one-acts, here defined as 20 to 35 minutes in running time, or approximately 15 to 30 pages long.

In memory of Heartland's former Artistic Director, Mike Dobbins, who passed away last summer, the name of this contest, one which was very dear to Dobbins' heart, has been officially changed to the Mike Dobbins' Memorial NEW PLAYS FROM THE HEARTLAND Midwest One-Act Play Competition.

The theme chosen for these news plays is ESCAPE, and here's how that's defined:

Escape can be wonderful. But it can also be difficult or even desperate, whether you’re planning a vacation to Tahiti, taking steps to get out from under a dead-end job, dreaming of the day you can leave a terrible relationship, digging a tunnel one spoonful of dirt at a time, scrambling to flee a room with a ticking bomb, hanging upside-down in midair in front of a packed audience trying to pick seventeen locks and untie a strait jacket, looking for a way off a 4th story hotel balcony without giving up the diamond jewelry you just pinched from Lady Astor, wielding a sword to get away from post-Apocalyptic warlords, or simply looking for a path to the roof to see the stars.

Whether the escape in your play is good or bad, positive or negative, is up to you. As long as it's dramatic. So what else do you need to know to write a play for NEW PLAY FROM THE HEARTLAND?

This "Midwest" playwriting contest is open to playwrights in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. If you live in one of those nine states, you are eligible.

The end result is a three-day event, including staged readings of the winning plays scheduled for July 18, 19 and 20, 2014 at Heartland Theatre, a master class for winning playwrights on Friday the 18th, and a public forum on Thursday, July 17, to introduce the "master" playwright to Heartland audiences.

Other requirements for your play: No more than six characters and no fewer than two, no musicals or children's plays, electronic submissions only, and only new plays. Oh, don't forget that Escape theme.

Another good piece of news is that Heartland is offering a prize of $150 to each of the three winning playwrights whose work is chosen.

Those three winners will also earn the right to participate in the master class at Heartland Theatre in July. This year, that workshop will be under the direction of New York playwright, director and actor Scott Klavan. Klavan has appeared as an actor on and off-Broadway and in many regional theaters, plus he acted as Script and Story Analyst for legendary actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward for twenty years. He also worked in that capacity for companies including HBO, CAA in Los Angeles, Viacom, Warner Brothers and Universal. He now teaches therapeutic arts classes to seniors and teens and writes theatre reviews for "Escape Into Life," an online journals of the arts. Klavan is indeed a master of his craft(s) and his presence at the workshop at Heartland Theatre in July should be a big incentive to new and emerging playwrights.

Kathleen Kirk will act as dramaturg for the New Plays from the Heartland this year, and she will guide the scripts through the judging process as well as oversee the special master class with Klavan.

If you have a one-act play that fits the Escape theme and you live in the Midwest, this is a very special opportunity to hone your craft, see your work performed in a staged reading and win a cash prize along the way. For all the details, click here for the scoop on the theme and deadlines, here for rules, guidelines and entry info, and here for a general overview of Heartland's NEW PLAYS project.

If you have questions, you are directed to email newplays@heartlandtheatre.org

Who's at the Discovery Walk, Part II: Kirk, Smith, Sutliffe andWickart

It's been a week and a bit since we looked at four of the actors in this year's Discovery Walk at Evergreen Cemetery. I have been remiss in filling in the blanks, but there's still time to fill you in on the remaining four actors before the Walk starts up again on Saturday for four more rounds of performances.

The Discovery Walk is, of course, the annual celebration of Bloomington's past put together by Illinois Voices Theatre, the McLean County Museum of History, and Evergreen Cemetery. Judy Brown, who directs the actors who present real people who lived and worked and made an impact in our town, has chosen some veterans, like Rhys Lovell and Gwen de Veer, and some newcomers, like
Leola Bellamy and John Bowen, as we discussed last time.

The last four actors are that same mix, with two returnees in Kathleen Kirk and Kevin Wickart, and two actors trying out the Discovery Walk experience for the first time in Marcus Smith and Cathy Sutliff.

Kirk has, of course, performed as part of this event many times. She's a well-known local actress and poet with plenty of appearances on local stages. This year, she's portraying Georgina Trotter, a tireless advocate for education and the public library in Bloomington. In the Museum's biographical material linked under Trotter's name, they note that "The Pantagraph called her 'one of the most remarkable women Bloomington has ever claimed as a citizen.'" Kirk will also be playing Georgina Trotter in the dinner-and-drama salute to educators called "Spirit of Educators Past" coming later in October.

Marcus Smith and Cathy Sutliff co-starred in Heartland Theatre's Superior Donuts last spring, and they're both making their Discovery Walk acting debuts this year. Smith is playing Ike Sanders, a local entrepreneur who started the Workingman's Club, a popular restaurant that served miners and railroad workers in downtown Bloomington. Sanders was the first African-American to own and operate a restaurant (he actually had three of them over the years) in town.

Sutliff is the current president of the Area Arts Roundtable and former president of the board at Community Players. A 25-year resident of Bloomington-Normal, she is also an experienced costumer, and has acted as costumer for the Discovery Walk before. Her role is Charlotte Ann Perry Scott, the wife of Judge John M. Scott, a character whose script I wrote for the Discovery Walk in 2002.

Rounding out the cast is Kevin Wickart, who's been seen recently at Heartland in Mauritius, at Eastlight in Les Miz, and in Prairie Fire's Damn Yankees. Last year, he played John Roeder, the wild-eyed soldier who served with the Union Army hunting down "bushwhackers" in Missouri, and this year, he's taking a very different turn with Benjamin "Trott" Funk, the seventh of ten children born to Isaac and Cassandra Funk, founders of Funks Grove. Trott was a respected politician who served five terms as mayor of Bloomington, making welcome improvements to city sewers and streets and the water supply.

Tours begin at 11 am and 2 pm on Saturday and Sunday, and tickets are available at the McLean County Museum of History, the Garlic Press, Casey's Garden Shop and Evergreen Cemetery. For more information on the characters in Discovery Walk 2012, click here. For ticket information and general details, click here.

Actors Assigned for Discovery Walk 2012

Judy Brown, Artistic Director of Illinois Voices Theatre, which collaborates with the McLean County Museum of History and Evergreen Memorial Cemetery to present the Discovery Walk every year, has announced casting for this year's celebration of historical figures from Bloomington's past.

Brown wrote, "Welcoming back Kathleen Kirk, Rhys Lovell, Kevin Wickart, and Gwen de Veer and wishing our newbies Marcus Smith, Leola Bellamy, Cathy Sutliff, and John Bowen a terrific acting experience unlike any other that I am familiar with."

Kathleen Kirk and Rhys Lovell have appeared in this historical reenactment event often, most recently as Southern sympathizer Martha Rice and wounded Union soldier Lewis Ijams in the 2011 Discovery Walk. Gwen de Veer and Kevin Wickart were also present last year; she played Frances Ela, half of a sweet young couple divided by war, while he was John C. Roeder, a German immigrant who became a raider to catch Confederate outlaws.

Kathleen Kirk as a ghostly Martha Rice in Discovery Walk 2011

You may've seen Marcus Smith and Cathy Sutliff, both newcomers to the Walk, in Heartland Theatre's production of "Superior Donuts" last spring, while John Bowen was on stage with Heartland in "Proof" and "The Diviners" in 2011 and at Community Players in "Hauptmann" earlier this year. Leola Bellamy is part of the cast of New Route Theatre's "Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine," which begins August 28 at their theater tucked inside the Bloomington YWCA.

Rhys Lovell as Lewis Ijams

Brown did not make mention of which actor is matched to which role, but we've seen the list of personages represented this year.

A few I know:  Gwen de Veer and Leola Bellamy are playing Madame Annette, the pseudonymous newspaper writer who interviewed local celebs, and fortune-teller Sophia Huggins, while Marcus Smith will take on Ike Sanders, owner of the Workingman's Club restaurant.

And we only have two female characters other than Annette and Huggins, so that means Kathleen Kirk and Cathy Sutliff will divide Georgina Trotter, a "dynamo," and Charlotte Scott, wife of prominent judge John M. Scott, between them. I'll go with Kirk for Trotter and Sutliff for Scott, just as a wild guess.

That leaves John Bowen, Rhys Lovell and Kevin Wickart unaccounted for. I'm going to predict Bowen gets Jerry Wonderlich, the racecar driver/Hollywood Romeo, but I haven't got a clue who's who between charismatic politician "Trott" Funk and W.C. Hobbs, the Beau Brummell of Bloomington-Normal. Lovell for Funk and Wickart for Hobbs?

I could be on target here, or I could be absolutely wrong for everyone!  I expect a few of the actors to set me straight soon enough, but for the total picture, I will clearly need to show up for the Discovery Walk (September 29-30 and October 6-7) to find out.

Tickets will be available after September 4 at the Garlic Press in Normal, Casey's Garden Shop in Bloomington, Evergreen Cemetery, or the McLean County Museum of History. They range from $4 for kids to $10 for Museum members and $14 for the general public.

Photo credits: Dana Colcleasure

Local Poets Kirk and Kerr Put Their Poetry in Re:Verse

This just in: Kathleen Kirk and Kathryn Kerr will be reading selections from their poetry tomorrow night as past of the Re:Verse reading series (which takes place every second Tuesday of the month) at TheatresCool in downtown Bloomington.

Kirk has posted about it on her blog, Wait! I Have a Blog?! That post, which she's titled "The Locals," gives you the inside info on the event, which pairs Kirk and Kerr, local poets whose names are close enough to cause some misidentification issues. As she writes: "Kathryn and I like to appear together now and then to prove we are not the same person. Our names are so similar, and we both write poetry, and we've done some of the same things--Illinois State Writing Project at ISU, AWP Conferences in Chicago, college teaching, chapbook publication--that sometimes people think we are each other. And, of course, we are both 'local poets.'"

TheatresCool calls this a Double KK Poetry Reading, although I might go for K Cubed myself. In any event, Kirk and Kerr will appear at TheatresCool from 7 to 8:30 pm on Tuesday, May 8, 2012. A $5 donation is recommended. The poetry reading will be followed by an open mic, which means spectators can perform their own works if they'd like to jump in.

Kirk promises, "a mix of humor, tenderness, beauty, awe, intense observation of human and animal life, ordinary speech, and, perhaps, 'local color.'" in the Kirk & Kerr part of the evening.

"Ekphrasis" Poetry Reading Next Thursday at MCAC

Next Thursday, February 23rd, at 7:30 pm, the McLean County Arts Center will host an event called "Ekphrasis, a Poetry Reading," with four area poets reading poems specifically created in response to artwork. The artwork they are responding to is described as "well known works from art history and contemporary photographs by Rhondal McKinney and Jin Lee and pastel drawings by John Cassidy, the current exhibits at the McLean County Arts Center."

Candace Armstrong, Jannett Highfill, Kathleen Kirk and Janice Witherspoon Neuleib are the four poets who will be reading their work at this "Ekphrasis" event.

Kirk teaches an Ekphrasis class at the McLean County Arts Center, and Armstrong and Neuleib are both participants in that class. They are scheduled to read new work on February 23rd.

Kathleen Kirk, editor of Escape Into Life, is also  the winner of the 2011 Ekphrasis Prize from Ekphrasis Journal. She will read a few poems from "Nocturnes" (seen here, with cover art by Nashay Jones), scheduled to be out this month from Hyacinth Girl Press.

Guest poet Jannett Highfill, who often incorporates art into her poetry, has a new book out from Finishing Line Press called "Light Blessings Drifting Together." (Book cover shown at right.) Highfill teaches economics at Bradley University and edits their Global Economy Journal.

EKPHRASIS, A POETRY READING
Thursday, February 23, 2012
McLean County Arts Center
601 N. East St., Bloomington, IL
309-829-0011.

Kathleen Kirk's "Living on the Earth"

Local poet Kathleen Kirk shares information about her new release with us.

Living on the Earth, by Kathleen Kirk, poetry chapbook to be published by Finishing Line Press in spring 2010 in their New Women’s Voices series; expected release date, April 30, 2010.

This is a book, quite simply, about “living on the earth” in some pretty basic ways: standing and walking with the earth’s gravity, eating what grows on the earth and even cultivating our food, living among the beauties of nature, living with earth’s various creatures, living with other humans, and living with our own struggles and imperfections. Sometimes it even means living with alienation—there’s a poem called “Living on the Moon” in which I imagine literally living on the moon as a way of expressing the feeling of being alienated from fellow citizens of earth. There’s another called “Resurrection on the 4th of July” in which I imagine I have come back to life (like a lady Lazarus) from some period of deathlike estrangement. But most of the poems are set in nature or my own backyard, observing the gently cultivated nature of gardens, say, or a spider interacting with a water bottle or a laundry basket. In another poem I encounter a coyote in the parking lot of a swimming pool in my own hometown; he’s hungry enough to come into town for pigeon roadkill. What does that say about 21st-century American life? In this book I look at cornfields and wildflowers, I listen to women and crickets singing, and sometimes I become things other than myself.
--Kathleen Kirk


What others have said, via testimonial blurbs for back cover:

These smart, elegant poems—speaking to us sometimes in the voice of a lover, once in that of a resurrected body, occasionally as if from within a flower or from a crater on the moon—invite us to see the natural world and ourselves with renewed wonder and delight. And they move us to see beyond the known world so as to engage with yet another level of pleasure that can only be called spiritual. They are lyrical love poems to the earth and to our human capacity to cherish it.
--Bill Morgan, author of Sky With Six Geese

Kathleen Kirk's poems remind us of what a gift and mystery it is to reside on this living entity called Earth. Sometimes she is astute observer, sometimes grateful inhabitant of the very objects she writes about, but always the bearer of a very necessary message. As she writes, "It's hard to give up/ a belief in kindness/ when even the heads of wildflowers/ bow down in the yellow rain,/ when a whole bean field goes gold/ in the push to harvest." These are poems for a wounded world so much in need of kindness.
--Judith Valente, author of Discovering Moons

Pre-order info:

Kathleen Kirk’s upcoming poetry chapbook, Living on the Earth, is available for pre-order now, with a release and shipping date of April 30, 2010. Advance orders are very helpful in determining the print run and keeping publication on schedule. To order by mail, send a check for $14 + $1 shipping, per book, to
Finishing Line Press
P. O. Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324

You can also order online, via PayPal, at the New Releases page of Finishing Line Press:
http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm

Living on the Earth contains poems of earnest spiritual questing, human connection and alienation, and straightforward observations of nature, culture, and agriculture. The cover photograph of a cornfield in winter is by local photographer Ken Kashian.

After the book is released it will be available at Babbitt’s Books in Normal, and online at Amazon.com, as is her current chapbook, Broken Sonnets. Online ordering for non-new releases at Finishing Line moves to their Bookstore page, which links to Amazon, and Amazon links back to Finishing Line Press. Babbitt’s also carries Kirk’s first poetry chapbook, Selected Roles, which contains theatre and persona poems and references to Heartland Theatres in its “program notes.”

Sample Poem:

Blind Gentian

I was ready to open: dew hung from my leaves.
I was like all the others
in a wet thicket beside the tall trees.
A boy asked me why I didn’t kiss him—
so I did, his lips soft as petals, closed.

I waited.

You are waiting now for what will happen
next. I cannot tell you. I wait, still.
I have spread into the damp meadow now,
toward the ragged creek. The meek, the meek,
I pray daily, bare toes digging in.

“Blind Gentian” appears online in the current issue of Apparatus Magazine at:

http://www.apparatusmagazine.com/V1I7Cover.html