The Laguna Beach Library celebrates the power of poetry all month long
By MARRIE STONE
In the dark times
will there also be singing
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
–Bertolt Brecht, “Motto” (1938)
As the economy collapsed and fascism rose in Europe in the early 1930s, Bertolt Brecht escaped his German home and moved to Denmark. He wrote “Motto” while in exile as a reminder of art’s power to stir emotions and ignite a response.
The poem is making its rounds on social media these days. As Hannah Aizenman pointed out in the New Yorker in 2021, during our last “dark times,” Brecht’s poem not only highlights the resilience of the human spirit, but it also “articulates the stultifying effects of crisis on the imagination.”
During dark times, folks can’t help but incessantly talk about the dark times. It’s difficult to add anything useful or original to the conversation. Eventually, listeners are lulled to sleep.
“Brecht assumed a responsibility to keep readers attuned to the sound of his era’s brutality and banality,” Aizenman wrote. “He was less interested in song as a source of relief than in its power to awaken an audience – and provoke a reckoning.” That’s a worthy response to the now cliché question: What is the role of art in today’s tumultuous world?
As if to provide an answer, this month the Friends of the Laguna Beach Library are posing the “World of Wonders” poetry challenge. It’s an apt time to remind ourselves of the beauties and marvels of our amazing world at a time when we all need more hope.
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Courtesy of the Laguna Beach Public Library
The poetry contest theme is “Wonders of the World.” Prizes up to $100 gift certificates will be awarded in five age categories.
April is National Poetry Month, initiated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to encourage youth and adults to read and write poetry all year long, and this is Laguna’s 27th Annual John Gardiner Community Poetry Contest. Now through April 30, the Laguna Beach Library is accepting poems with no more than 25 lines of text and 230 words. Prizes will be awarded in five age categories, and the winning poems will be read on Saturday, June 7 at 11 a.m.
“Some amazing stories come out of this contest,” said Ellen Kempler, poet and Friends of the Laguna Beach Library volunteer. “Last year, we had a woman who was experiencing homelessness write a poem about a homeless man who is familiar in town. The poem won third prize, and she had just gotten housing the day of the reading.
“Miss Laura Silver, who teaches a creative writing program at Thurston, got her students to write a collaborative poem that won a prize. Then there are these tiny kids who can’t reach the microphone. Sometimes they have an older sibling or parent read for them or stand next to them. It’s a wonderful family event.”
John Gardiner, Laguna’s long-time favorite poet, oversaw this event for many years. With his sudden passing in 2017, the contest was thereafter named in his honor. The first prize adult winner in 2018 was Orange County poet Daniel McGinnis, a long-time friend and colleague of Gardiner’s, who wrote a poem about friendship dedicated to him.
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Photo by Mary Hurlbut
Poet John Gardiner, who passed in 2017, was a champion of poetry and literature in Laguna Beach for many years
Gardiner led the Laguna Poets Workshop for 15 years and was working on his 13th collection of poetry when he passed. He had good advice for poets when I interviewed him for a Laguna Life & People profile (click here) only days before his death in 2017. “Poetry is an oral art form,” Gardiner told me. “There’s the page poem and the stage poem. They both have to work. When you’re on stage you can dance, gyrate and draw attention to yourself. But then it has to work quietly on the page. It can’t be full of sound and fury.”
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Kempler largely picked up the poetry baton in the aftermath of Gardiner’s death. In 2022, she spearheaded Laguna’s Poetry Trail (click here), selecting 10 pieces of public art that stretched across roughly 1.7 miles of Laguna’s village, beaches and city streets. She then solicited poetry entries that responded to the art and, from 127 submissions, chose 10 poems. The booklet of poetry still exists online (click here) and folks are invited to take a stroll around town while reading them (note that the “Adventure” mural on Stop 4 has since been replaced).
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Submitted photo
Local artist Lisa Mansour stood with one of her favorite pieces in town, “Canyon Preserve,” in 2022 after writing a piece for the Poetry Trail
Kempler is also working with the city to bring a poetry box to the Laguna Beach Library. Poetry boxes allow visitors to leave poems and take poems (much like the Free Little Libraries around town). Kempler will announce its installation and the plans she has for getting both children and adults involved in contributing.
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Poet Ellen Kempler volunteers for the Friends of the Library and is an advocate for poetry and the literary arts in town
These aren’t the only leaves on Laguna’s poetry tree. Famed poet Charles Wright, who served as the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2014 and 2015, also lived in Laguna Beach. He won the National Book Award in 1983 for his collection Country Music and the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. In 1995, the New Yorker published Wright’s poem, “Looking West from Laguna Beach at Night.”
I’ve always liked the view from my mother-in-law’s house at night,
Oil rigs off Long Beach
Like floating lanterns out in the smog-dark Pacific,
Stars in the eucalyptus,
Lights of airplanes arriving from Asia, and town light
Littered like broken glass around the bay and back up the hill.
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Photo by Scott Brashier
Moonrise over Laguna
“All arts, as hallmarks of free and open societies, are especially important during times of turmoil,” Kempler said. “With their attention to sound, rhythm, metaphor and other linguistic magic, powerful poems are like music made of words.”
Kempler has her own collection of poetry out and available now at Laguna Beach Books. Fire in My Head/Flame in My Heart: Poems for the Pyrocene is an annotated collection of 32 poems in four sections (Thirsting, Mourning, Coping, Transcending) describing “the globe-shaped ache” of climate change and the wonders of nature that still offer hope.
Kempler introduces Section Two’s “Mourning” with an opening quotation:
Earthshell will crack
with urgent chick-taps.
This is not Ostrich Time.
Indeed, these aren’t ostrich times. These are times that call out to artists and creatives of every age to make sense of the world, remind us of its wonders and make it a better place for us all to live.
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Submitted photo
Library Branch Manager Nadejda Hickam (right) with second place winner Aria Shen (the daughter of LBHS History Teacher Jun Shen) at last year’s reading
Laguna Beach Library is located at 363 Glenneyre St. Submit your poem within the body of an email to Laguna Beach Library by clicking here. Include the following information: name, phone number and grade level or “adult.” No attachments, please.
Winning poems will be read on Saturday, June 7, at 11 a.m. Only one unpublished poem accepted per person. The poem must be no more than 25 lines of text with a limit of 230 words. It should answer to the theme, “World of Wonders.” Winners will be awarded in five age categories.
