Watermark Books and Cafe

* Monday, January 21, 7:00 p.m. - "To the Stars Through Difficulties" poetry reading.

Several poets from throughout Kansas are coming to Watermark to read from "To the Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices," edited by Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg. This moving tribute to the arts and culture of Kansas focuses on our state motto ("To the stars through difficulties") through the use of the renga, a 700-year-old Japanese form of poetry in which each writer adds new lines to the poem.

Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg developed the project as part of her website,

www.150KansasPoems.wordpress.com, to help lift up and share the literary arts in Kansas. Throughout 2012, new sections to the renga appeared at www.150KansasPoems.wordpress.com every two to three days, giving subscribers and visitors to the site the poetry equivalent of regular sequels. Mirriam-Goldberg says, "The renga draws together descendants of pioneers, lovers of dogs or cats or both, attorneys and people who've spent time in jail, old hippies and young activists, social workers and psychologists, mothers and grandfathers, mathematicians and dancers, college professors emeritus and current students, authors and editors, ministers and mediators."

Confirmed to read thus far are Kansas poet laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, and renga contributors Roy Beckemeyer, Pat Beckemeyer, Lydia Lowe, William Sheldon, Victoria Sherry, Olive Sullivan, and Diane Wahto.