By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist
Happy Jewish Book Month to writers and readers everywhere!
I decided to reach out to Merna Ann Hecht after the Seattle Times did a lovely profile of her and her poem that won a place in the King County Metro poetry on buses competition.
As co-founder and co-director of “Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project” at Foster High School in Tukwila, Merna helps immigrant youth tell stories of their roots through poetry, working in one of the most linguistically diverse high schools in the country. (The 2010 census indicated half of Tukwila residents speak a language other than English at home.)
When Merna noticed that this year’s Metro contest theme was “home,” she thought, “that’s what these kids write about…they write about missing home.” She entered almost 20 students in the contest and eight of them won.
“At the last minute I typed up my poem and submitted it and [also] won.”
Her poem, about breads from different cultures, reflects her love of cooking.
“I love to bake,” she notes. “I put a lot from my own culture [in writing] and food is really central to me.”
Making challah and beet borscht from scratch are among her specialties, and “I still have my grandmother’s old wooden chopping bowl and knife,” with which she makes charoset every Passover.
Merna, who grew up in Kankakee, Ill., is also a storyteller, active in the Seattle Storytellers Guild. She’s performing at Haller Lake Community Center in Seattle on Dec. 19, “telling stories of gratitude, light, and Hanukkah.” One will be an adaptation of “nine spoons,” a true story about women in a concentration camp who pilfered — at great risk — spoons to make a menorah. She will also speak to Jewish Family Service’s Endless Opportunities group at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle on Jan. 20, 2015, about the importance of storytelling in Jewish tradition.
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“They just both happened to happen at about the same time,” says Jed Myers of his two books of poetry published this year. Jed enters lots of contests and explains that he usually has many manuscripts in circulation. Sometimes, as with his chapbook “The Nameless” (Finishing Line Press), a manuscript doesn’t win a contest, but the publisher chooses to publish it. Other times, as with the full-length, “Watching the Perseids,” the manuscript wins and is published — in this case by the Sacramento Poetry Center.
“Watching the Perseids,” focuses on Jed’s father’s illness and death from a brain tumor.
“I think I had in mind — when I learned my father’s diagnosis — that I was going to cope… in part by writing,” he says.
“Writing is an exploration of experience, [and] a therapeutic process for me,” he adds.
As he developed the manuscript, he found other “poems I had already written…that fit in,” mostly on family themes.
A psychiatrist with a private therapy practice, Jed is also adjunct faculty at UW Medical School. He hosts a twice-monthly poetry open mics at Bai Pai Thai restaurant in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood, one of three Easy Speak Seattle venues (www.easyspeakseattle.com). A guitarist, harmonica player and singer, he performs music there, too.
You can find Jed’s books at Third Place Books in Ravenna, Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Wallingford (one of only two poetry bookstores in the U.S.!), on Amazon.com, and through the publishers. There’s more information at www.jedmyers.com.
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“It Looks Worse than I Am,” is poet and novelist Laurie Blauner’s latest book, her seventh poetry collection and her 12th published book.
As a poetry student of Richard Hugo and Madeline Defrees at the University of Montana in the early ’80s, Laurie once insisted she would only write poetry.
“I never, never, thought I would write fiction,” she says, recalling a short fiction class in which she needed “the entire quarter to write one short story.”
But as she got older and had more time, she decided to turn to fiction and to date she has published three novels and a novella.
“You can spread out more” with prose, she says, and observes that now fiction and poetry “inform each other” in her work. “There’s poetry in my fiction and fiction in my poetry.” Her new book, appropriately enough, is a collection of prose poems.
Laurie grew up in Manhattan and moved to Seattle in 1987, meeting her husband David Dintenfass just one month later. They are active in Seattle’s Emmanuel Congregation, where he is co-president.
Hear Laurie on Dec. 11, as the featured reader for the It’s About Time series at the Ballard Library (www.itsaboutimewriters.homestead.com) and buy her book at Open Books and Amazon.com. There is a sample poem and a list of her work at www.laurieblauner.com.
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Short Takes: Former JTNews board member Dan Mayer was named executive director of Book-It Repertory Theatre, which will hold its second performance of “Letters to the Editor,” which tells the history of our community through this very newspaper, on Sat., Dec. 13 at 6 p.m. at the Royal Room in Columbia City. Don’t miss it!
Across Borders
I braid my grandmother’s old world
recipes into each new day,
join others who dream
of beloved hands
slapping tortillas,
mixing injera dough,
knowing scents and flavors travel
with us across borders —
pickled herring, chili peppered stews,
samosa, pita, challah —
our hearts full
with pungent spices of home.
— Merna Ann Hecht