‘Little Owl Festival’ for Chattanooga Audubon Society

Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil

Saturday, March 31st, 2012 Chattanooga Audubon Society invites you to attend the inaugural ‘Little Owl Festival‘.    There will be two stages set up with musicians and spoken word artists slated to perform.   Save Our American Raptors will fly birds of prey over the fields at Audubon Acres that Saturday afternoon.

Here’s the schedule of performances:

1:00-2:00 p.m. Raptors arrive and set up
2:00-2:45 p.m. Birds of Prey Raptor show by SOAR
1-2p Dance demonstration from “Emerald Hips Belly Dance Instruction” teacher Suzanne
Rambo. She will also do hooping.
1-2p Chattanooga Kirtan Band in the field including the following instruments: Native
American flute, Vocal, Sitar, Harmonium, Tabla and Jymbe drums,and other percussion.
Orchard Stage
NOON Opening song by Gilbert Sewell & welcome by Bill Fisher
12:10 Bob Carty, Announcements/giveaways
1:00 Hara Paper
1:30 Frank Eaton
1:40 Announce the Birds of Prey Show
2:00 Birds of Prey Show
2:30 Uncle Lightning
3:00 Jack Pine Savages String Band w/ Gilbert Sewell/poster
contest winner announced
3:30 Troy Underwood
4:00 Jerre Haskew
5:00-6:00 Dalton Roberts

Porch (Spoken Word) Stage
Ray Zimmerman – MC
12:00 Robin Burk
12:30 Jim Pfitzer
1:00 Grant Fetters
1:30 Michael Gray
2:00 Break for Birds of Prey Show
3:00 Finn Bille
3:15 Chrystina Jensen
3:30Marcus Patrick Ellsworth
4:00 Janie Dempsey Watts
4:20 Dr. Susan Hickman
4:40 Ray Zimmerman
5:00 Ginnie Strickland Sams
5:30 Peggy Douglas

Listen to story with spoken word artists Ray Zimmerman, Finn Bille and Peggy Douglas:

“Southern Light; Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets” published by Ford, Falcon & McNeil

Reporting: Monessa Guilfoil

Here’s a brief synopsis of this book of poetry:

Southern Light is a diverse, perhaps eclectic, collection authored by twelve southern poets. Over 180 poems celebrate both regional traditions and life in the New South. Many of the works are published in this volume for the first time while others are well known award winning. All speak with a unique voice. Southern Light includes poems by: Robert Morgan, Penny Dyer, Bill Brown, Bruce Majors, Jenny Sadre-Orafai, Rebecca Cook, Ray Zimmerman, E. Smith Gilbert, Helga Kidder, K. B. Ballentine, Finn Bille and Dan Powers.

Several of these poets are members of the Chattanooga Writer’s Guild where these photos and brief bios are published:

Finn Billie

K.B. Ballentine

Bruce Majors

Ray Zimmerman

Book editor, Ed Lindberg writes introducing this collection of poetry:

The poets in this volume have one thing in common. All are native to or have spent some sizable portion of their lives in the distinct physical and cultural geography of the Southern United States. This book presents some of the best examples of poets currently working in the South. Some of these poets are well recognized while others are not widely known. Some are academicians; some shun the academy. Some are young; several are past sixty. In this volume we show the vigor and variety of contemporary Southern poets.

The label “Southern” can be expressed as a form of striking depiction supported by a certain perspective on the contents of the heart. A huge body of written work from poems to novels to songs continues to come from this geography. This intense flow of words may have some common source and in­fluence. Some suggested origins of this diverse output of work have been religion, separatist politics, ethnicity, the language of the King James Bible, and Elizabethan English. Other components include land worked, struggled and fought for, the hard dignity of integrity, and various story telling forms and traditions.

I think whatever informs and impacts the lands of place and heart is the definition of what generates this considerable literary effort labeled “Southern”. A central component of important stories is the cost of things and how things come to be. If they are anything, good poems are stories and are put down to tell of what has come upon or to their writer from whatever source named or unnamed, nameable or unnam­able. Experience is the heat that ferments the passion to tell.

“Southern Lights” is available for purchase at Winder Binder Gallery, New Moon Gallery, the Chattanooga Convention Center and online through Amazon.

Listen to the Story: