Alaska Women Speak<\/a> is the name of both a nonprofit and a quarterly journal \u2014 both of which are devoted to sharing Alaskan women\u2019s expression of ideas, literature and art.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s so important,\u201d said Carmen Davis, president of Alaskan Women Speak\u2019s board of directors, Thursday evening at Hearthside Books in Nugget Mall before introducing the event\u2019s keynote speaker Mary Lou Spartz.<\/p>\n
Spartz spoke to a crowd that filled an overstuffed sofa, folding chairs and spilled into aisles about writing in general and writing in Southeast in particular.<\/p>\n
She said there\u2019s no better place to pursue writing, and talked about how the action of writing can be involuntary to those familiar with the impulse.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d Spartz said. \u201cYou just do it. Your muse comes along and kicks you in the butt, and you\u2019re going to do this. The muse is an interesting part of you. Sometimes it\u2019s very, very generous. Very loving. Sometimes it just takes a vacation, and you can\u2019t find it anywhere. So you just have to live with that possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also spoke about Alaska\u2019s \u201ctremendous\u201d literary legacy and gestured toward a wall of Alaskan-authored books.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a legacy, what a place to be,\u201d Spartz.<\/p>\n
She mentioned Nora Dauenhauer, author Susi Gregg Fowler, who was in the audience, and others as part of that lineage before turning the microphone over to six accomplished writers from the southeast.<\/p>\n
Those who read included Amy Pinney, Kate Boesser, Margo Waring, Miriam Wagoner, Dianne DeSloover and Katie Bausler.<\/p>\n
Some read poems and others read prose. Subject matter included first-day-of-school clothing, the objects unearthed by thawing snow and the literal steps across an icy I-beam that ultimately lead to divorce \u2014 and those were just the poems read by Waring.<\/p>\n
Waring told the Capital City Weekly after her reading that while her poems may reference her girlhood, she came to writing well into adulthood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no impulse for creative writing until I was much older,\u201d Waring said.<\/p>\n
She chalked it up to banking enough life experience on which to reflect and write.<\/p>\n
Others read about their doomed childhood poems, surviving abuse, weather and even quantum physics.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything is vibrating energy,\u201d was the refrain of one of Pinney\u2019s poems.<\/p>\n
Pinney has a wildlife and plant biology background and said pairing subject matter with poetic forms is something that takes some experimentation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s kind of random,\u201d she said. \u201cI think of the topic, then I\u2019ll run through a list of forms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pinney said trying out different types of poems makes poetry more fun.<\/p>\n
It was already much more colorful than the just-the-facts science writing training to which she no longer adheres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m trying to break it all the time,\u201d Pinney said.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at 523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @capweekly.<\/em><\/b><\/p>\n
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