Rick Lupert On Poetry Super HWY 101
April 7, 2015
It’s National Poetry Month!
Which means it’s time to get YOUR POETRY ON! And no better time than this Thurs. April 9, 2015 at 7:30pm, when Los Angeleno poet and long time Cobalt Cafe host Rick Lupert features at the EP Foster Library in the Topping Room located at 651 E. Main Street, Ventura, CA 93001 (across from Winchesters; free parking behind the library.) Regular host Phil Taggart has stepped away from the podium leaving it in the capable hands of poet Dane Baylis. Open mic follows the featured reading; get there at 7:15pm to sign-up.
Rick Lupert is a performance spoken word poet who is often hilarious; other times he’s just plain funny. I’ve invited him to read in Ventura and and he’s invited me to read at the Cobalt so I’ve heard him a few times. The author of many (16!?!) poetry collections, he’s also active with posting video poems on his youtube channel. Rick’s five free e-books are To Hell With Rick Lupert (Ain’t Got No Press, May, 2006), The Rick Lupert Fun Club (Ain’t Got No Press, May, 2007), On My Eventual Death (Ain’t Got No Press, May 2009) , Today We Bombed the Moon (Ain’t Got No Press, May 2010) and Rules for Poetry (Ain’t Got No Press, May 2011. (Click on the titles to download them for free.) Rick created and maintains the Poetry Super Highway, an online resource and publication for poets. Read on for more examples of Rick’s poetry.
RULES FOR POETRY by Rick Lupert
Never use adjectives
unless you’re trying to describe something
and you don’t want to do it the hard way.
Never use the word “forever.”
It reminds people they’re going to die
and the last thing you need is people distracted
by their mortality during your poem.
Write what you know
unless you’re a fool, in which case
look to the internet, and write about something there.
Avoid vowels
and their angry sister
the letter Y.
Avoid cliché.
On the other hand…
Learn the difference between
epigraphs,
epigrams and
episiotomies.
Use as few words as possible.
In fact, hand out blank sheets of paper
and tell people it’s your finest work.
If you ever use the phrase “darkness in my soul”
be prepared for me to come to your house
and kill you.
If you’re going to write in form, do it right.
For example, as I understand it, a haiku
is eight hundred words written while
sitting on a cheesecake.
Line breaks are important,
but use them carefully. Once you’ve broken a line
its parents will never forgive you.
Finally, go to poetry workshops.
Sometimes they serve food and
you can’t write poetry if you’re dead
because you forgot to eat.
Here’s another video by Rick for his poem “For Dracula” which brought Team Transylvania to a victory in the 2015 Fantasy Poetry Slam. View other entries in this year’s contest here.
Future EP Foster Thursday Night Featured Readers include:
April 16 Angel Garcia and Sara Borjas
April 23 Stan Brown’s birthday reading
May 6 Christine Kravetz
May 14 Lisa Sewell and Andrea Carter Brown
May 21 Amy Uyematsu
If my students attend the feature and the open mic, and write about it, they can receive extra credit or make up an absence.
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Reblogged this on whisper down the write alley and commented:
“Rules for Poetry” a poem by Rick Lupert who reads in Ventura Th. April 9, 2015 7:30pm.