Writing Matters

Including a Report on a Performance at Barking Legs Theater

One of the mannequin legs at Braking Legs Theater, photographed by Ray Zimmerman. The theater began as a venue for dance performances and recitals, but its schedule also includes jazz, performance art, open mics, and other events.

As much as I like live theatre, I don’t make it to many shows, so I was pleased to learn of a presentation at Chattanooga’s Barking Legs Theatre on Sunday, August18. Members of the Rhyme N Chatt Interactive Poetry Organization teamed up with Chattanooga playwright Peggy Douglas to give a series of Dramatic Readings of poetic monologues.

Rhyme N Chatt’s video of the performance. Watch on YouTube.

I made plans to attend as soon as I heard of this event. Presentations by Rhyme N Chatt are always excellent, and I have recently become a member. The playwright is a friend and was the 2022 Tennessee Arts Commission Playwright Fellow. She has written and produced a dozen plays and Walnut Street Publishing just released We Speak: Voices from Chattanooga’s Disregarded, a collection of monologues drawn from several of her plays. https://walnutstreetpublishing.com/product/we-speak/.

Douglas spent years listening to stories of disregarded people and groups of people to produce her plays. Several monologues from her plays appear in the book, beginning with powerful stories by the incarcerated and ending with stories by Chattanooga Elders, many of whom are part of marginalized communities. Along the way, the reader will encounter numerous other groups.

My Upcoming Performances

Walnut Street Publishing will also release my new book of poems with a November 1 Friday evening launch at Clear Story Arts. The book is now in the design stage. Information will appear on the publisher’s website as the launch date approaches.

Thanks to Reve Coffee and Books for becoming a vendor of my current books Healing and Conflict and We Are Water. They will have a table at the Chattanooga Public Library’s Local Authors Fair on September 7. I will be reading my poetry and distributing my free poetry posters. Walnut Street Books will have a sales table for their current titles. I have heard that 60 authors will participate through readings, sales tables, and workshops.

My self-published books are still available at The Chattanooga Audubon Society’s gift shop at Audubon Acres and the Winder Binder Mercantile in Chattanooga. I am putting the finishing touches on a book of prose and poetry titled Spirit Birds, my name for cranes. I expect to release it sometime next year. Another prose book is on the back burner for now.

In August I gave a poetry workshop for the Chattanooga Public Library’s Write and Chatt group. I hope to provide another in-person poetry workshop in Chattanooga and a similar online event sometime in the next two months. 

For those of you who write, please keep writing.