 All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. The show is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week and it is posted to our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and our archives are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have here on the show. For those of you who are not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska and that's for all libraries. So you will find things on our program for public libraries, K-12 academics, museums, corrections librarians, anything and everything you'll find on there. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of service and products that we think may be of interest to librarians. So you can find all sorts of things in our show. We do have, sometimes we have Nebraska Library Commission staff do presentations, things about services and products we're offering through here, but sometimes we also bring in guest speakers. And today we actually have a mixture of that. This morning, as you can see on the screen here, we're going to be talking about poetry. Yeah. And with us, we actually have our newly, last year, appointed official, a few months ago, a new state poet, Matt Mason. Thank you, Matt, for joining us here today. We're going to talk about how he got that position. But also, we have Erica Hamilton right next to me here, who's the director of literary programs at Humanities Nebraska, the organization that runs things. Well, that's a partnership. Yeah. Also on the line remotely with us is Chuck Beak. Good morning, Chuck. He was on the selection committee for the state poet and Brad Modlin, who is the also new, newish Reynolds chair of poetry at the University of Nebraska in Carney. Good morning, Brad. Nice. And here with me, also farther on down the table, Rod Wagner is the director here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Good morning. And just a little out of camera range, we don't have a lot of room here is Tessa Terry, who is our communications coordinator here at the Nebraska Library Commission. So I think we're going to start with talking about the program, the Humanities Nebraska and here and what it's all about, like how do you become the Nebraska state poet? Well, the Nebraska state poet is appointed by the governor. But the selection process and the state poet is supported and selected by a partnership of the Humanities Nebraska and the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Library Commission. And it's a five year term right now. And so our previous state poet was Twyla Hansen. She had the term from 2013 to 2018. Yes. Yes. And there's no state poet for like two weeks. We suffered for a few weeks there. But the process has started in the January of 2018 where we started seeking public nominations. And so people, anyone throughout state Nebraska could send us a query asking, I would like this person to be state poet. And then they were invited to submit the nomination packet. They had five poets who were nominated. And then each one had to agree to be nominated because we don't want to select a poet who doesn't want to do the work, who doesn't want to spend five years traveling the state. It is, yes. It is a long term there. Yeah. And after we got their materials on the selection committee met and talked about the different, the five nominees chose their three finalists. And the finalists came in for an interview process back in, I think it was November, wasn't it? That sounds right. Late October, November. Right. And then when the selection committee decides who they want their, who they want to be state poet, their selection, then they have to forward it to the governor. And then it's a waiting game. And we waited for a couple of months. Yeah. Because if that was in November, it wasn't, like you said, it wasn't actually beneficial. And when was this January? January. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And we do have on our page here for today's session, what were the actual guidelines for 2018? So this is, is this the kind of thing that you send out to people who are potentially wanting to nominate somebody? Right. And we had this publicly available. We had press release about this. Anytime we received an email from someone saying, Hey, I would like Matt Mason to be in the Nebraska state poet. And then I would send these guidelines. What we're looking for, what the nomination should include the review criteria. We wanted someone who had published poetry, who had received awards in their field, but who was also willing and had experience traveling and working with public audiences to bring poetry throughout. Throughout the state of Nebraska. Sure. Sure. And so this has the eligibility criteria on here and information about how you do it. So this is something that will not happen again for another five years. Another five years. So we'll start the process again in 2023. When your, when your term is wrapping up. So there's. Yeah. Yeah. It's an online process. So it's not, this is something that would all do online, not like hand sending in a paper ballot or anything like that. And this is, this is part of the partnership with the Nebraska arts council. As you can see, we use their slide room. So even though I'm the coordinator, the staff person. I'm with Humane's Nebraska. We go through the Nebraska arts council's website and then the Nebraska library commission provides the space for us to do the interviews. Right. So that's how you, so you said you were, you were interviewed. How did that go? Was that. It was, it was interesting this time. Yeah, yeah. Come to a room full of people. It's a great conversation. I've read some poems, answer a lot of questions, but it was interesting. I was a finalist five years ago in 2013. And it's like, I thought the interview was amazing. I thought it went great. And then twilight state. Well, and then this did do great. I'm sure it was a tough decision. It was. No, twilight's fantastic. There's not a complaint, obviously, but, but then this time, you know, I went through the interview and everything. And I was like, Oh my God, I didn't say this. I didn't say this. I answered this horribly. Besides, it's like, oh, whatever. And then, and then I get state poets. So the lesson is mess up your interview. You improve your chances. It can be too perfect. All right. Well, we're glad that you were picked out. Absolutely. So what are the plans for the next five years? What is your plan for where you see yourself in five years now? Good question. Well, really over the next five years, I just want to get around the states. My whole project involves getting into different communities statewide. The, the loose benchmark is, can I get to all 93 counties and do a reading or a workshop or some kind of presentation, hopefully bringing in another poet or poets who live there in the community. Also, just shine a little bit of light on local poetry, especially. But I may not get to all 93 counties. I mean, because when I, my goal is just to get into as many communities as possible. So a lot of every county's got multiple communities. I want to get into prisons. I want to get into libraries. I want to get into schools. You know, I want to be on reservations, whatever different ways of getting out and kind of shining a light on poetry and hopefully raising interests locally statewide in poetry. I thought it was kind of, I don't know if it was on purpose, but last year's one book, one Nebraska was poetry and biology. And it's kind of, I think it's a nice follow up that we happen to be switching and so having the new state poet be coming like on the heels of that. And I wonder if that will. That was one of the things I was thinking about when that, when Nebraska Presence was selected as one book when Nebraska for 2018. I thought, well, that is perfect because we are trying to get Nebraska poets to be nominated. So yeah, that was, I don't know if that was part of the design. It wasn't planned. It just was lucky coincidence. Yeah, it's good. It's a great book too. So happy to see it there. So Chuck, we did want to ask you and I almost missed this. You were involved in the selection process and we were talking about the interview. What were you looking for as far as, you know, when you were discussing and picking who would be the state poet? We were looking for someone who would fail the interview so it would be uphill. Well done, Chuck. Well done. Well, among the things you're we're looking for is Matt just mentioned getting around the state. I think the interview committee has made up of a broad spectrum of people representing those three organizations and from around this. And we're looking for how many audiences do you think this person could engage with a workshop or in a reading or in a visit to the community or whatever. And you want someone who's not going to appeal to just one age group or one audience or one segment. You want someone who can broadly go out and do poetry with people so it becomes a meaningful experience where they where they are. And one of the things we thought was with the last state poet and with Matt as well was these are people who can work with many different audiences and get a response. That we think is vital because this is a service job. And it's wonderful to have an accomplished poet and an award winning poet and the poet who's been recognized by other poets. But in addition, this position has to be somebody who can work with the broad range of people to promote and sell poetry. I think one of the things that came across in Matt's interview was that he was certainly the person to do that. And the other thing that comes across in the interviews is it's always a tight race to the finish. I mean there's always competition for this. There are always people we think would be very, very good in the position. And this was no exception this year. There were two or three people who could have done an admirable job. And so I think it is something to say about Matt or about Twila before him that they rose to the top of a very talented heap of people. Anyone of whom might have been selected and it turned out we think we did the right thing both times. I think it's great that we have such a deep so many great poets in Nebraska that it's too many to choose from. Well Nebraska is so rich in it. I mean you look at the book Nebraska Presence which we mentioned or other anthologies of Nebraska poets, including the one that just came out for the 150th anniversary. There are so many amazing writers in this state. So Matt, you expressed as part of your presentation some goals for your time as a Nebraska state poet. Now that you've already gotten into doing some presentations and getting out, how do you think are those realistic in terms of what you have to do? I hope so. I think definitely realistic in terms of I've already presented in about nine counties in just the past few months. I've got more things lined up to go to Alma and Holdridge and other parts of the state over the next six months or so. Mostly in the fall and fall semester. But yeah, it's just a matter of now figuring out with my job. I run a nonprofit in Nebraska Writers Collective and it's full-time work and also my wife is in grad school and we have two kids. So there's some logistics to figure out. So I'm taking it a little slowly I think this first year as I get it figured out. Slowly but still I think I'll be. You've been pretty productive. I've done quite a lot actually. It's slower than I want because really this is the part of poetry that I love is getting into communities, doing readings, talking to people. And my work has kept me busier and busier the past few years. It's what got me into nonprofit work is I love going into schools. And the last few years I haven't been able to do that nearly as much. So getting back out into communities like this has been absolutely wonderful. I just did a reading on Saturday in Florence, the north end of Omaha at the Florence Mill. And everybody is expecting about 30 people and instead there's probably about 80 people. And it's one of those audiences that I mean a good poetry reading really needs a good audience. That's a bad I guess Walt Whitman said great great poetry needs great audiences or something like that. Which I think is both readership and in the room and when you've got great great energetic crowd in the room. It's going to be a good reading. I don't even have to do much so. How do those interested in inviting you to come to do a presentation? How do they go about doing that? How do they get in touch? I'm easy to track down either through Humanities Nebraska or the Nebraska Arts Council or directly. I've got a website at matt.vidverse.com or my email is mtmason at gmail.com. Anybody can get in touch with me we can try to set something up. And then Humanities Nebraska and the Nebraska Arts Council help fund it so that I don't go broke driving around the state in the next five years. But libraries communities schools can apply for a grant which is really easy to put together. If anybody has questions they can ask me but contact me we can figure out some dates that would work work with local schools or libraries come out for a couple days and do multiple. Events I would love to just kind of go in and bring some bring some energy to poetry to wherever. Yeah when you say applying for a grant from Humanities Nebraska it's really not a very scary process. No. It's a very easy speakers of your own form. Yes. But you just fill out that yes you've talked with Matt this is what where it's going to happen this is when it's going to happen. And then you pay a $50 application fee but then we pay his honorarium and all of his travel up to a point. Yeah. If you go all the way to Shadridge we might not be able to cover all that mileage but he does get paid so it's not all. Yeah and I do say it's a grant. You know I run a nonprofit so I know what grants can look like. These are basically a one page deal. That we help you with if you need help. Yeah and that's the thing. Humanities Nebraska and the Arts Council if you have any questions call them and they help you fill it out. I can help you fill it out. It's pretty easy. And here's the Humanities Nebraska page about submitting the grants. And actually that's for our grant system that's more of many grants and major grants. If you go to speakers. It's a speaker's bureau. Yeah you hit speakers and go down there. How to book a speaker page. Yeah that'd be a place to start. It's a good place to start. And that gives you the steps on how to do it. And as Matt said it's a very, you don't want to go into our many grant major grant process because that's a, and Matt's filled those out so he knows. I am, yes. Okay so this will be good to book a speaker through the Humanities Nebraska. And then step three you'll have that online application. There's that link there to log into our system and access our speakers bureau applications. And I said it was $50. Yeah $50 application fee. And then everything else is covered. Yep. And then the programs I do are very general so that they can be tailored to whatever your community needs most. I come into a writing workshop of a specific sort. Speak to a school group about certain topics or a certain curriculum that the teacher's looking at. It's kind of, we work together to figure out what will work most effectively for your community. And now you also mentioned that the Arts Council has, this is a whole different grant program. Yeah, if you want to go through the Arts Council instead of Humanities Nebraska you can also go through their Arts Council. It's a very similar grant, easy to fill out sheets and similar $50 of the fee would be paid by the organization and then the rest covered by the Arts Council. And there are lower costs for I think certain like low income communities. Yeah, right, because our fee I think goes down to $35 if it's a school, if it's a Title I school for reduced lunch. And that information is either on our website or you can call us at 402-474-2131 and talk with Liz Mikowski and she can get you that information. Matt, when you talk to the people who want to book you do talk about your different programs and whether or not they should apply through Humanities Nebraska or the Nebraska Arts Council? For the most part the distinction, I mean I talk about what they want and then I, so far there hasn't been a distinction that needed either humanities or arts. They both covered both. Yeah, I was wondering, what's the difference between, why would one you pick one or the other? Yeah, I think it's, well you will know better working for Humanities Nebraska. What is Humanities Nebraska looking for specifically? Well with humanities, well okay, one idea. I think it's the speakers. Yeah, it's more of a speakers but you also do a lot of writing workshops which also fall under Humanities Nebraska too. Those might also fall with the Nebraska Arts Council but Nebraska Arts Council is more of a performance related event. Yeah, so I mean with poetry I think the distinction is, I mean there is a distinction but I haven't seen it necessary. Because you're going to be performing your poetry. Yeah, speaking about it. That's the lovely thing about readings is because it's not just the poet or the writer standing up and reading. There's always an interaction with the audience and questions afterwards which makes it both an arts event and a humanities event. Yeah, and I think to a big extent what I try to do whenever the program is just make poetry accessible and entertaining for viewers. Just to kind of dispel some of the myths that poetry is smarter than us or harder than any of us could ever figure out. I think it certainly can be and it can be wonderful in that respect but I think a lot of times in events like these, I just want people to understand poetry and think it's fun when they leave. Other questions yet Rod? Well the question about your work with young people, you do writing exercises, but when you go to a school what typically would you do there? Mostly in a school. What age groups do you work with or the whole elementary through high school or sort of particular age groups? Over the past couple of months I've worked with K on Up which has been interesting because I used to be hesitant to do kind of K through 6. Is it something little kids can really understand? Yeah, it's tough. I think the attention span is lower. You go in, read a poem and say are there any questions? I saw a bunny. So I think in the past it's been much more difficult but actually going into, I've gone into about four or five elementary schools over the past few months and it's so much better than when I was not state poet. Because now it's like I'm introduced as state poet that like raises something so the kids listen better. They ask more relevant questions. It's really weird. Celebrity, they didn't know it existed. So they've been a blast. So yeah, I might have been hesitant before to do some of the younger groups but now it's like sure. But mostly what I do is I'll go in and I'll read some poems, answer questions, just talk a little bit about poetry and how I see it and ask them some questions about their own views of poetry or if they write or anything like that. So it's been a lot of fun. I mean, I'm not full on. I think Bill Klefkorn, previous state poet, who was state poet for about 35 years would come into a room. He might read four poems in an hour, mostly just be chatting and telling stories and it was just absolutely riveting. I'm not quite up to that. I'll probably read more than four poems, a little less banter. But yeah, it's mostly just kind of setting up an atmosphere that's fun for the audience and it differs audience to audience kind of depending how they react and all that. I think that'd be a lot of fun. It's definitely. You said you've got some interesting payments from some. Yes. I've promised I will do any school named after a poet. I will come out and do a presentation for a shirt or a sweatshirt. So so far I did this after doing Night Heart Elementary in Omaha and they gave me a sweatshirt. It's like, yes, I got a John G. Night Heart sweatshirt. I did another school for a box of tea just recently. I don't have to go through Humane's and Breska or the Arts Council necessarily. If you've got other things that are worth, you know, bringing some poetry out, I will come out for it. We'll work for tea. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want anybody to feel limited. It's like, oh, I could never bring the state poets or this or just bring somebody whatever distance. Don't figure out a way, whether it's through one of these funding opportunities or just some other way. You know, maybe I can get something nearby and stop by your town on the way back to home. Yeah. So I want to talk about maybe about your process of writing. And this might be something that Brad could speak to as well being a fellow poet about how you. Yeah, that's right. What do you, how do you, I mean, this might be something that people would ask you out there. Oh, definitely. How do you come up with ideas with your inspiration for some of the things you've done? Well, I make myself write a new poem every week. So I've got a deadline of Monday nights where I have to have a new poem written, which isn't a lot. You know, I think Ted Couser would get up at 4am and write every single morning. And that's why he's as successful as he is and as talented. But it's been a good kind of goal for me because, you know, if you set a deadline and you treat it seriously, you're looking for things to write about all week, whether you've got time in a given day to write a poem or not. You're looking for ideas and jotting down ideas. Because I think in any given day, there's probably five or six different moments where something catches your attention. That could be a poem. And most of the time though, you know, 10 minutes later, we've forgotten what that was. But if you're actively looking for things to write about, you know, you'll hopefully take a little bit more notes and write about it. So I write by hand. I don't write on the computer or my cell. I edit later, which is a whole other step in the process, which helps me finish up poems and change them up really well. Because one thing I've kind of found too is that as a writer, I mean, I'm okay. I've got some good ideas. I do some things. It's exciting. But as an editor, that's my real strength. That's the first things I put down. They're all right. But what really makes the poems that I've had published or that have won awards are the poems that have really been worked on and edited slowly over time usually. But what about you, Brad and Chuck, tell us about your processes. Yeah. Brad, go ahead. Well, I would echo what you say, Matt, about the importance of just sort of, I like to say I have a practice of noticing that we're trying to see what's around us that's worth writing down or holding on to. I like how you say that a deadline sort of forces you to actually do that and contain the things. Of late, I've been writing a lot of things down by hand, notebooks, carrying little notebooks in my pockets for those moments. I was just having an interesting conversation with a fellow artist slash designer this morning actually about the need for finding the right time. You know, a lot of us feel like we have to defer, you know, first thing in the morning maybe has to be our writing time. So I'm excited to hear that you talk about your deadline being actually Monday night instead of, you know, noon on Monday morning or something like that. Because that's something that I find that I think we have this expectation that if it's our first priority, then it should be the first thing that we do. But then sometimes our minds, we have different stages of the day in which we're more, more ready or more receptive to art. I often find that at the end of the day, when I finally got all the to do list down and all the emailing done is when my mind can kind of play and enjoy itself and do the writing at that time. Yeah. I used to write, I had a kind of a system set of writing at home and then with two kids that gets altered. So lately I think the majority of my poems have been written at things like fast food restaurants. I was at the zoo the other day and I wrote two poems there. It's kind of a little bit in tummels, so there is no, except for the Monday night deadline, there is no set anything right now at least. It changes year to year, I think. I think it's great that you can just do it when the inspiration strikes, as long as your kids let you. Well, they're writing poems too, right? Yeah, the oldest is. Really? Oh, yeah. I'm not a poet at all because every time I write poetry it turns into prose. I'm a fiction writer and I find that the best time to write is when I'm driving and my mind is going. But you're not writing it down. And then I pull into a gas station and I always have a little book too because I write better with pen and paper and all of a sudden I'm sitting at a gas station writing before I take off again. You were saying, Fran, something about that, about writing it? Oh, I was hoping that Erica wasn't writing while she was driving. No, no, no. It's like when you're driving along and suddenly this dialogue goes in your head and so I'm paying attention to the trucks and stuff. My students tell me that they do the same thing and I always say, okay, I hope you're driving safely, but they are recording things into their phone and audio a lot. I was wondering about that. If that's something for to have like a hands-free device that you can just say, you know, phone, start recording and then just start rattling off whatever the ideas are. Well, I think sometimes writing is, it's a pain in the butt in that you have something like that where there was a time when in the car is when all the ideas would come or before that in the shower. Right. By the time you get out, all the lines are gone. But in the car and so I got a... You get crayons for your shower. Yes. I used to do that, yes. But I'm getting all these ideas in a car, in the car for a while and then I got a voice recorder and I got a good one and then it stopped. As soon as I had the voice recorder. Yeah, that happens to me too because I used to use a recorder and yeah, it would stop. And so I just kind of rehearsed it in my head while I'm driving along so I'm not writing while I'm driving, Brad. I'm very safe. Well, that's interesting because it sounds like there's something to the creative process that needs a little bit of a limitation. Like, because I can't write it down right now, it must be precious. I really have to fight for it or something like that. Yeah. And sometimes, not for everybody I'm sure and not all the time, but sometimes just frustrating. Like, sometimes I remember walking, especially with my firstborn, you know, trying to get her to sleep, rocking her. And that's when the poems would come. And so there are a lot of poems I wrote on the top of a dresser on the back of a receipt with going like this. You cannot interact with your baby, no. I like that you have the poem, Matt. When the baby falls asleep, we celebrate and then I love, it's a bleeding title. When the baby falls asleep, we celebrate silently. And that poem, I think, might have been written on the back of her seat, actually. So speaking of that, would you like to read some for us with that one? Sure. Yeah, since Brad mentioned that, what leave people hanging. So when the baby falls asleep, we celebrate silently. My wife comes back into the light, arms high and I jump up, making sure not to creak the chair. And we exult. We take off our shoes and we dance. We are good people, shipwrecked on the shores of this strange island, fearing the drums far, far through the trees. We tiptoe quietly across the beach, TV quiet, as if all the world must whisper, must dare not wake her, must bow to this new pharaoh whose yolks we wear across our throats, this thunder infant with wrath grown into the fury and the pussiness that nursing at the breast can only sometimes abate. And if she then wakes, if the door creaks just so loud, if it's you who made the toilet seat crack like a gunshot, only moments after she went down and the woman who swore to love you forever looks you with all the flames of the underworld in her eyes. May God have mercy on you. My wife and I read nothing but horror movies now, huddled next to the TV, trying not to laugh out loud as these actors facing aliens and disembowelments. Things we might have feared in another life, but let's see Freddie or Jason or King Kong make you fear like when you only mean to ease the door open. Thinking how beautiful her little closed-eyed dream face is, and instead see her sit up, try not to scream. Her eyes rotate to snap on your mortal form. Oh ha, Godzilla, take a number, giant bug. This monster is so monstrous. We don't even try to run. So that really makes me wonder about the writing process that you guys have about writing things down and writing it. When you are composing a poem, is it actually part how someone will read it and part how you or someone will perform it? Because it's a little of both. Someone else reading that may read it to themselves in a whole different voice in different parts of it. Do you think about when you're writing Brad and Chuck, too, that how will this perform in addition to how it will be read? To an extent I do in that part of my editing process is really reading poems out loud and hearing is the voice in my head and the voice on the paper, the same voice that comes out into the air and then try to adjust it with the line breaks and with the stanza breaks and all that. So that hopefully another reader will get something close to that, but they're going to get something different. Do you want to try and lead them to what you are thinking of and have them be able to think of their own? Exactly. Whatever it might mean to them. Which is fun because I think occasionally in high school they do forensics competitions where they memorize poems as part of a program and recite them. A few students do poems of mine completely differently but in a really cool way. So it's neat to see. What about you, Brad and Chuck, what do you do with conversation all over the audience? The out loud portion is really important. In teaching poetry, I think you teach kids to read them out loud. I'm helping select some poems for a chapbook and one of our guidelines is read the poem silently and once out loud so that you get that. And it is sound after all. Yeah. Really, what I found in mind sometimes you write something and you think that's pretty good and you read it out loud and you think that's just right at all. But I did the same thing when I was teaching literature too is tell the kids take the Faulkner story into the corner where your neighbor won't think you're not seated out loud to yourself. Because it comes off really differently. I think that's important and the other thing is that just since I just mentioned it, good writing usually I think accompanies the work of people who are good readers. Not reading anything. It's unlikely you're going to write anything really good. And the tradition of poetry is an oral tradition. I mean, I think originally folks, even pre-literacy times where we would hear somebody reciting a poem and so it seems appropriate that we would always accompany our own writing with our own writing processes with writing, with reading out loud rather. So we talked about other poets in the Nebraska thing. Do you have any other particular poets who are influenced to you in your writing, either Nebraskans or outside? Yeah, there's a lot to have. You know, I mentioned Bill Klefkorn earlier is a big influence on me. Actually, the biggest influence though is Sarah McKinstry Brown. It was my wife, but she just had a second. Her second book came out the same basically week I was named state poet. So our house has been a poetry mess for months. Wonderful because she's been touring and all, but she's a fantastic writer and completely different than I am. So I love getting her take on my own work at a point. I used to show her earlier graphs, but no, it's hard because she's a much better writer than I am. But she's been fantastic. And then there's a lot of poets like Zadika Poindexter, KDFS, who kind of local that we did a lot. We've done a lot of readings with Stacey Waits here at Lincoln at UNL is just absolutely amazing. There are a lot of fantastic writers around the state and folks that I forget if he's from here, but Paul Zarzyski the cowboy poet who I saw weighing state college years ago, who was really fascinating that he had these wonderful, you know, traditional cowboy form, but also others that are completely different and just kind of the way he could meld those in a reading was a really good experience for me to see at that time. And then, of course, out there, JB Brummel's, Twyla Hansen, of course, and Ted Kuzer, you know. But yeah, I could sit here and name Nebraska poets probably for the rest of this show, because there are so many really fantastic and talented people in this state. Maybe some of those you can join you in some of your presentations as you're going around the next few years. Matt, can you also tell us a bit about your work with slam poetry? And that goes back to what early 2000s that you started getting involved with that. Yeah, actually 1999. So slam poetry for those who don't know is a competitive form of performance poetry or not really form. It's more of venue or an event style. I kind of resisting to people say there is slam poetry and there are poems that you'll see more often at slams. I've seen sonnets and haiku poetry slams. You can make anything into it. It's how you perform it, I suppose. It's kind of, yeah. It's the way it's set up, but I love what poetry slam does and that it makes the audience the judge. So if you're going to read poems, you have to appeal to this audience. Everybody gets to read one poem, which is wonderful. And then some will read a second and two or three will read a third if there are rounds of the slam. So it's a competition that's not all that serious because where is this poetry slam taking place? They're often in bars or coffee shops where 10 o'clock at night, how well are people chosen randomly for the audience going to judge poetry? It was totally ludicrous, but it's fun. So actually I had published a fair amount. I had a master's degree before I even saw my first poetry slam, but from seeing that first one, I was just hooked because I love poetry that's lively and stirs the audience up a certain amount where they can react. And I like that. I think poetry can be entertaining and should be entertaining in whether moving or just fun or who knows what else. And so I saw a poetry slam in 1999 in Wayne State College. They invited me out as a judge. I think it was their first poetry slam officially, and they've done one every semester since 1999. And it's a lot of fun. If you're ever up there for that in Wayne, it's worth going. It's held in a bar. There's usually 30 poets competing, which is just ridiculous, but so much fun. And so I ran a poetry slam in Omaha for about 12 years, and it's still running. Somebody else, Greg Harris, now runs it second Saturday of every month. And it's just a fun way of looking at poetry. And it was interesting, too, because nationally, when poetry slam came out of Chicago in the 80s, there was a lot of resistance from, I think, poetry critics, and Harold Bloom called it the death of art. A little drastic. A little drastic. But I think what he failed to notice was that poetry is not one monolithic thing. It is a whole multitude of genres and styles. And if we think poetry is just one thing, then we get a kid who doesn't like that one thing. They think they hate poetry. The thing is, they don't like that one thing. Well, maybe they'll like slam poetry, or maybe they'll like cowboy poetry, or maybe they'll like haiku. So slam poetry fits in the world of one of the multitude of genres for poetry. And maybe you'll love it. Maybe you'll hate it. But the thing is, nationally, there was a lot of grumbling about slam poetry in typically academic circles or whatever, but not in Nebraska. Here in Nebraska, I was running a poetry slam, and Marge Sizer, an established poet here, would have me into a reading. Or Bill Clefkorn would ask me a question about poetry, or Chuck Peake would have me talk to a class. Nebraska has always been just wonderfully welcoming in different styles of poetry. And I think that's part of the reason why Nebraska has so many fantastic poets, is that we want to see what's next. We want to see John Keats, and we want to see the latest sensation. Yeah, one new thing being created does not negate all the other styles. I mean, I don't know why you think, oh, it's ruined it all. And everything else can be its thing too, and it all works out, yeah. It does, it does. One thing it seems to me is really an advantage when you're in Omaha, Lincoln. You have other nearby writers, and you often work as a group. I know Marge Sizer that you mentioned, and Lucy Atkins and Amy Petner meet together. And I think somehow that working together dispels in your mind that there's just one thing that's good, because you're seeing other people do good work. That's not like the work you do. And that's harder to get out past anywhere west of Garland, where the population is a little thinner. And I'm hoping that, I know Twyla worked on this, and I know you will, Matt, that somehow the work of the State Port can help bring the writing community closer together and have more contact with each other. Yeah. I was thinking about that. With Brad, you're actually based at UNK and Carney. Right. You know, farther west than what Chuck was talking about. How is the community there? Well, of course we're smaller than we are in Omaha or Lincoln, but we're there, we're existing. A lot of connection to the university. Chuck's there. But we have the Reynolds Endowed Writing Series through the university, which we bring in writers from all over the country. We had two from Brooklyn this past semester, Nicole Seely and Paul Lisicki. We are able to bring in people. There's another, the Front Forge Reading Series, which brings in people from just around the state of Nebraska, which is how Steve Coughlin was just at our school, as we were talking about before. So there are these events that are happening, and then there's communities that form, I think, around those events and continue on. We have that connection to the university that served us well. In a larger city, the university can have its impact, but there's a different impact than a university can have in a smaller town, a different sort of visibility and presence. And so I think that we are good at taking advantage of that. And then there's an enthusiasm. I feel like this is my first year at UNK, but I feel this excitement for poetry and for literature. My students were just telling me, my students from my advanced poetry class, as well as my intro to creative writing, I had multiple students come up to me on their own and say, I want to keep writing over the summer. How can I start a writing group? And so they're starting this together. We're doing things electronically for those who are away, but there is an energy there, I think, which speaks to the importance of literature in our lives. I guess that people just really want to have it, aside from when it's homework, or even aside from when it's easy to create that community. Brad, you're doing some things over the summer around the state. You were telling me about it before. I'd love to hear more about those workshops or that series that you're doing. Yeah. In June, I'll be part of the Story Catcher Writers Festival, which is hosted by the Marie Sandosens Foundation, as well as Shadrin State. And it's at Fort Robinson. So it's a three-day thing. People are coming in to participate from across the nation. There will be three faculty members leading workshops. I'm one Frank X Walker is another as a poet. And then we also have a prose writer. And so people are coming in to go cram into Fort Robinson and sleep in bunk beds and celebrate poetry and write their own and have their workshops and create this little community, sort of pop-up community for that time. It's an annual event. I'm excited to be a part of it now. And I'll be curious how it continues in the future. I want to say maybe the eighth year that they've done it, but I'm not sure. That's cool. Just for fun. We were out buying a tree the other day. And the guy that sold us the tree happened to mention that she was, she was a short story writer and just had a story published. And so I immediately got hold of the people Adam McCook at the Buffalo Common Storytelling Festival and said, this gal's about to go off to Missoula to do her MFA. Maybe you'd like to have her come read before she leaves. She's scheduled for the Saturday Night Program for this year's Buffalo Common Storytelling Festival. So the more you bring those people together, the more fun it is. Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, and there are things like this around the state with Buffalo Commons with Storycatcher, other things down at the Cather Center and others around the state. I think, you know, a lot is happening in Omaha and Lincoln, obviously, but it's really fantastic to see what's happening literally. That's not a word. Around the state, we'll say. Oh, it says it's a word, then it's a word. I have two English trees. You have the power. Yes, great language now. Shakespeare did. I'm not that basic. If anybody else on the line has any questions in your audience, go ahead. Nobody's taking anything yet. We've been chatting away here. But feel free if you want to ask something or if you want to know more about any of the programs or things are going on across the state. Do you have another poem you might like to share? Sure. Something else? Talking about poems is entertainment. There's another form of entertainment which kind of gets the headlines more in Nebraska. So this poem is called After the 1996 Fiesta Bowl. Some things happened around Nebraska. Some local football team won a big game. One guy jumps out of a car and strips to red briefs, swinging his pants around his head and howling. The face painted guys jump off the pickup to trade high fives in traffic. A champagne bottle gets handed out of view with window, horns a-honking, red people running around cars and steaming on a January midnight. Cops on horseback wade through the red flags, above even the hooting wild heads riding on someone's shoulders like big-ass Jesus on St. Christopher's back brain, go big red with a few thousand of their closest buds. Cops guard the traffic signs so they won't become souvenirs. Some lean against squad cars, kind of smiling, some visibly tired and on overtime. We scream and float. Take pictures, hug, throw beer cans, climb light poles, slap hands, greet grunting. Though we are Nebraskans and still keep most of our clothes on, we do think wildly that if all of Omaha gets naked, what are they going to do? My fingers stiffen like garden hose, but we all keep slapping and celebrating throats raw because we darn well can and no one's going to be on time to work in the morning anyway. When I was a kid, I didn't dream about writing poems. I wanted to play iBack for the Huskers. Now I'm a lot older, more experienced, and I still have four years of eligibility left. I think a lot of people in the state have that same thought. I still have a chance. Never know. Just remember that Matt fills a spot that has a great heritage, not only in the wonderful Bill Clefkorn, but before that with John Nyhart. This was the first state to have by legislative action a state poet. We call it the poet laureate then. But the legislature brought that into being because of Nyhart's cycle of the West. If you fill Matt's shoes, you're filling the shoes of a long heritage of people who made a name in this room and really brought both enlightenment and entertainment to people through their poetry. Matt's just a perfect choice to follow up on that. Thank you, Chuck. We do have some questions, comments that came in from the audience here. First I want to know if you are a member of the Nebraska Writers Guild. I do some things with them occasionally. I'm not a member right now though, but they do really wonderful work, and I'm one of the most important writers. I refer people to them a lot who are looking for different writing opportunities. So well worth checking out. And then I just want to compliment Matt on LTAB Great Plains. It was my first experience of slam poetry. I didn't expect to like it so much. And then she also says full disclosure, my kid's team made it to the finals. I'm sure she enjoyed it anyway. That's a LTAB is Latter Than a Bomb. It's a high school slam poetry where schools compete against schools with their poems in performance. It's run by the Nebraska Writers Collective, and it's so much fun. It culminates in a festival in the spring, but I think the real heart of it is it's a school year round program where kids are writing from the start of the school year. And it's just amazing to see. Well, it's intimidating to see because pretty much all of them end up writing better poems than I did in high school. So it's really fun to watch. Yeah. And sometimes they look forward to attending one of your programs someday. We've got five years coming up. Well, there are things beyond this five years. What community are they in? Where are you from, Claudette? Sorry. Well, you know how to bring me out. We talked about it earlier in the program. If you can't do it personally, talk to your local library, talk to the school. She's in Nebraska City. Okay. Oh, that's not too far. There's a lot of places down there that hopefully will get me down there. Yeah. Oh, and one of our staff, and I'm not sure who, let's see, this is, I think might be Amy says, Thanks, Bronfo. Thanks for serving in Nebraska with poetry. You made me like poetry. One of our staff here, yes, is saying we've got our staff watching. Thank you. Good job. Very interesting. All right. All right. So we are a little after 11 o'clock here. Anybody have any last minute questions they want to ask before we do wrap things up or comments, type them in. Any final words from all of you, Jeff, Brad? Thanks, Matt, for being the staple. Yeah. Well, thanks, Brad. Thanks for really bringing a lot of energy out to the Reynolds Chair and Carney. I'm excited to see what you get done because it's a five-year term also, right? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And to Brad, if you need any money for public programs with poetry. I'm listening. Talk to me. Okay. Well, thank you. Well, and Krista, thanks to the Library Commission and Humanities Nebraska Arts Council. Or this wouldn't all be taking place and the recognition that you can have all the talent in the world if you don't have audiences. It doesn't do very much. So you guys make that possible. Absolutely. Thank you. We are here for you. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's another thing that I end up talking about. You know, people ask me, how do you become state poet? And I talk about, oh, the Nebraska Library Commission, the Arts Council, Humays, Nebraska. And it's just, we're very fortunate to have all the, these organizations and others who are working with, you know, literacy, the humanities, the arts, poetry in this state. And Rex Walton and Mo Java. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. A lot of smaller, they're not organizations, but they're organizers. There's a lot of them working around the state, putting on events and not getting a lot of attention. So, A-Rex, Yeah. Great Harry. Yeah. All the people running an open mic attended by five people once a month. Yeah. It helps. Every bit. Yeah. It's all important. Yeah. If you get the right person's ear and get them to continue with it or want to become a poet themselves or whatever. Absolutely. That's it. All right. Well, it doesn't look anybody has any desperate questions or comments right now. And that's fine. Reach out to Nebraska Humanities Arts Council, Matt. Give your email address again. Yeah. M-T Mason at gmail.com. Yeah. And if you Google Matt Mason poet, I should be one of the top. There's a lot of Matt Mason. There is. But it's not some Matt Mason poet. I made that mistake. I figured it all. Matt Mason. I'm here at Nebraska. Yeah. No. Yeah. Look for the poet. A lot of really successful writers as Matt Mason that I've run across, our musicians also. One of them is playing at the Maha Festival this year. He's got an E in Mason now, but. Ah, okay. Yeah. But yes, you definitely find him now, especially with all the state poets. Yeah. So look for him in your community, bring him to your communities, talk to your school, partner with your school, partner with your library, any other arts group in your area and help meet Matt's goal, visiting every single county. Yeah. Nine down to 84 to go. We're just getting started. Awesome. So I think they'll wrap up. Thank you so much. This is great. Thanks for having me. And Erica and Brad and Chuck online. Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Chuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I am going to where is my page here? There we go. Hop over here to our main page. Yeah. So we're going to be recording the show today. And it will be posted onto our website. If you so far in the world, if you use your search engine of choice, whatever you want to do and type in and compass live. We are the only thing called that on the internet so far. Yeah. Nobody else can do that call themselves that. But this is our main and compass live website. And our recording will be these are upcoming shows, but our archives are right here underneath. And the just most recent ones at the top. So today's will be right here at the top of the list. Should have it as long as we post it to the Nebraska Library Commissions YouTube channel. So everyone out there can watch it. As long as everything cooperates with me, should be ready by the end of the day today. All of you who attended and registered will get notified of when it's available. We also push it out to our social media. We do have a Facebook page for Encompass Live and Twitter, Facebook for the Library Commission. While we're here on the archive, they do want to show you, you'll see here we do have a search feature for it where you can search our entire archives of the show or just most recent 12 months. That is because Encompass Live premiered in January 2009. So we are in our 11th year. Is that what they said? Yeah. It's huge. Yeah, it's a lot. I don't know how many is on here. But we are librarians and we archive things. That's what you say things. So we do have all of our shows here. So if you go here and if you do scroll down far enough, you will see shows from previous years. But everything is dated. So if you are watching a show, do pay attention to whatever the day is. It is something from 2010, 11, 12. Things might not exist anymore. Resources might not be there. Links may be broken to outside services. But we will keep them all there for historical purposes. So do your searches in there and look at some of our previous shows if you want to. As mentioned, we do have a Facebook page which are big on Facebook using that. You can give us a like over there. There is a reminder to log into the show with Matt. We do post at. We do post reminders of here of when our shows are coming up, when our recordings are ready, when anything is available here. So if you do like to use Facebook, we don't want to log in right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have all of those on here. So give us a like over on Facebook if you want to. So I hope you join us for a next week's show when we talk about picture books. One of our libraries here in Nebraska, Keenamore Library in Fremont, they reorganize their picture book collection. And Laura England Biggs is librarian from there. She's going to be with us to talk about how they redid everything in their kids picture books. So definitely sign up for that show in at any of our others. We have on our calendar. See I've got May filled in I'm filling in dates for the summer. As you can see I've got started with some of those so keep an eye on our schedule to see what else comes up over the next few months. So thank you everyone for being here and hopefully we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye bye. Bye.