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By Chelsea Biondolillo

The first weekend in April saw the Rio Grande campus erupt into a vibrant and diverse celebration of the Arts and Humanities. Carnival ah! ran from April 2nd – 4th and featured a film tent, four stages, three designated classrooms and more than 60 separate exhibits and events. Organizers conservatively estimated that the carnival included over 300 participants and 1,000 visitors across the three days of activities.

The carnival featured films, art exhibits, literary readings, as well as theatre, dance, and musical performances. Also on hand were several community arts providers at featured booths and performances such as Badgerdog Literary Publishing, Visions International literary journal, Armstrong Community Music School, Steamroller Prints, and The Mexican American and Asian American Cultural Centers, to name a few.

Event project manager and assistant professor in ACC’s drama department, Arthur Adair, felt that one of the major successes of the carnival was in bringing faculty, students, and the community together. Student solo performances were “great feats of excellence and achievement” while faculty had opportunities to work together with the greater arts community in a new environment, “building important personal relationships” across disciplines and organizations.

Gail Folkins, interim chair of the creative writing department, praised the Carnival ah! project for creating a platform for ACC to share “what the arts and humanities has to offer to a broad audience, from students, faculty, and staff to members of the community.” The Creative Writing Department played an active role in the carnival, advising Raul Cantu on the ESOL Journal, sponsoring Jill Patterson’s workshop on student-run literary magazines, and organizing a faculty and staff reading on Friday. Gail was also impressed with the willingness of staff to jump in and make things happen, whether finding doughnuts and special cakes for the crowds or giving visiting writers a ride to the airport.

Some standout day-time events included the ACC Films festival, which was both technically successful and popular with the crowds; the student art sale; and The Rio Review: Tenth Anniversary celebration. In the evenings, audiences gathered to hear readings by former ACC professor Maxine Beach and disability advocate Stephen Kuusisto, and to watch the film The Flea Circus, based on Billy Lee Brammer’s novel The Gay Place. The Creative Writing and Drama Department’s co-production In 2 the West played to sold out crowds on Friday and Saturday.

This year’s Carnival ah! gave students and faculty the opportunity to reach out to the Austin arts community and the greater community of arts appreciators in a big way. While this was the inaugural year for the carnival, the ACC Arts and Humanities Division hopes to make it an annual event.

Chelsea Biondolillo is a Student of Creative Writing at Austin Community College

By Chelsea Biondolillo

The Gallery Theater was staged for a play rehearsal with black and white cubes scattered across an otherwise minimalist stage, as Usha Akella took the microphone to read from her recent book of poetry, A Face That Does Not Bear the Footprints of the World. Her lilting and melodic voice started out the evening of poetry with a piece called “The Children of Iraq.” She shared with the audience her tradition of including a poem honoring women and children at every reading, as a reminder of and protest against the torture and injustice they are suffering around the world.

Akella was opening a joint reading with John Poch on March 5th at the ACC Rio Grande campus. The readings are sponsored by the Arts and Humanities division and are free and open to the public.

Her next piece included accompaniment on violin and keyboards and was a moving lament in honor of an abused girl who had been married off to an abusive husband at age eight. The girl was rescued from her situation only after she had been nearly burnt to death. Akella’s delicate rhyming and repetitive refrain along with the accomplished musicians created a hypnotic atmosphere.

To round out her reading, Akella read several devotional pieces. She explained the Sufi concept of the “beloved” to the audience as encompassing the notion of the love of self, the love of another, and the love of god. Her most recent book includes cantos on the discovery, waning, and loss of love of the beloved, and she read poems from each. Her work is lyrical, evocative, and moving—as she finished the audience of 30 or so was enthusiastic in its applause.

John Poch took the stage and changed the mood of the room almost instantly with a charming sense of humor and excellent delivery of several works from his two books, Poems and Two Men Fighting with a Knife. He began with a piece called “The Island,” written about his wedding, which he dedicated to a student who was soon to be married.

He engaged the audience with his piece “Why I Dropped the Nature Bouquet,” as we shared the mix of fascination and awkwardness he felt when coming upon an amorous couple in the woods. His work combines free verse and the more classic sonnet form; in both styles his humor and word play had the audience laughing easily at several points. He read a crown of sonnets that was dedicated to his neurosurgeon, the rhythms and rhymes combining to tell a story of love and rapture that he felt when several treatments helped to alleviate some chronic pain.

Poch wound down his reading by sharing several new couplets for a book of love poems that he has in progress as well as poem called the “The Tongue” which artfully combined references to the X-files and the painter Paul Klee.

The audience had few questions after the reading, but both poets stayed for awhile to sign books and speak one on one with aspiring writers and poetry fans alike.

Chelsea Biondolillo is a Student of Creative Writing at Austin Community College

Student Literary Gatherings
The ACC Creative Writing Department sponsors monthly Student Literary Gatherings where ACC students are welcome to share their poetry and creative writing in a relaxed atmosphere. The gatherings are held at Austin Java on 12th and Lamar and are open to all students and the public. Future literary gatherings will take place on:

September 14
October 12
November 16
December 7
February 8
March 8
April 9
May 10

Featured readers will be announced closer to the dates. We hope to see you there!

Scholarship Announcements:

Fall Creative Writing Scholarship ($500 for Spring 2009 tuition and books)
Fall Scholarship Application deadline: November 15^th, 2009

Spring Creative Writing Scholarship ($500 for Fall 2010 tuition and books)
Spring Scholarship Application deadline: April 15^th, 2010

Criteria:

Overall 3.0 GPA
15 hours of completed ACC coursework
Successfully completed English Comp. I (ENGL 1301)
Completed at least one ACC creative writing class

To apply:

Complete the Creative Writing Scholarship application (available online here – fill in the information and print out).
Attach a cover letter – this is your opportunity to expand on your ambitions as a creative writer and describe what you hope to achieve at ACC and beyond.
Include a creative writing sample (one prose piece, five to ten pages of screenplay or play, or three poems) .

Telephone: (512) 223-3355
Postal address: 1212 Rio Grande, Austin, TX 78701

Contact Personnel: Interim Chair: Gail Folkins; Administrative Assistant: Mary Rincon; General Information: John Herndon; Webmaster: John Silvey

Department Contact Information