Healdsburg Tribune, Poetry overlooked at Celebrate Sonoma

Poetry overlooked at Celebrate Sonoma

Editor; (This is an open letter to Cindy Paulos and the Celebrate Sonoma Staff): Sonoma County is home to one of the highest per capita of artists in California and the 1989 Celebrate Sonoma/Sonoma County Art Awards ceremony is a brilliant way to honor us. Thank you. I want to commend you on all your hard work on putting together this showcase but I was appalled at the blaring omission of a major fine arts category by your committee. Listed in the program were six musical, five visual artists, nine thcatrc/dancc, three literary arts -- even a restaurant, chef, and cartoon category -- but no poetry! As an active poet, past president of the Russian River Writers’ Guild, the oldest continuous reading series in northern California, and Sonoma/Napa coordinator for California Poet in the Schools with the fourth largest program in the slate, I find this oversight unacceptable. My personal credits include the 1986 San Francisco Arts Commission Bay Area Poetry Award, the 1987 San Francisco Bay Guardian Poetry Awards, the 1989 San Francisco National Poetry Week awards and seven California Arts Council Artist in Residency grants, I find it somewhat ironic my students' artwork graces the cover of the latest LBC Events magazine -- but no poetry. The National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council both support and recognize poetry as a fine arts form along with visual arts, music and performance. There arc literally hundreds of other equally and exceptionally lauded poets in Sonoma County who would have brought honor to your awards ceremony. (A long list of poets followed, edited for space) Telling us to show up at an open mike when you fail to publicly recognize our art form is both an insult and a discriminatory act. Would you expect the Santa Rosa Symphony to do likewise if it were excluded from the list? I strongly urge you to amend this glaring omis sion to one of the largest and prolific communities in northern California by including poetry as an arts category in your 1990 Sonoma Arts Awards. Only in America something base as this could happen. In most countries of the world, Chile and Russia included, poetry is the heart and the breath of culture -- people line up for blocks and for hours to hear their poets read. Without poetry there arc no lyrics, no songs, no theatre, no art! We are our country's poets and deserve to be heard and appreciated. Should you need more information, we would be glad to assist you.

Maureen Hurley, Lynn Watson, Pamela Raphael, Forestville