Hempsonian Institute of Higher Yearning

LISTEN TO CHRISTINE’S READING AT PRAIRIE LIGHTS:

“Live from Prairie Lights” is an internationally known readings series, which features some of the best up-and-coming and well-established authors & poets from all over the globe. Presented before a live audience and streamed over the world wide web, this long running series brings the spoken word from the bookstore to the masses.

Most readings begin @ 7:00 p.m. Arrive early to assure yourself a seat.

June 22, 2011 – 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

CHRISTINE HEMP

Christine Hemp will read from her first collection of poetry, That Fall. In Christine Hemp’s powerful debut collection, we find poem after poem pulled in two directions: upward with mercurial and transformative grace, and downward toward the earth, the relational root, “the buried seam that joins all things.” — Bruce Bond

Christine Hemp earned her B.A. in Humanities from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon; she holds a Masters degree in English from Middlebury College in Vermont with study at Lincoln College, Oxford, England.

THURSDAY, JULY 14^TH 7:30 P.M. UPSTAGE, Port Townsend

TO THE UNDERWORLD AND BACK:
An Evening of Poetry, Harmony, and Cacophony
with
CHRISTINE HEMP
joined by Bill Kiely, drums, and Michael Phillips, bass

Book signing and dancing after performance
Tickets: $8.00
Reservations Recommended
(360) 385-2216

HORN OF PLENTY
for Joel Levy

Just before the refrain, you pulled the stops. Crooning
Out “Stormy Monday” while everybody swooned—not from the words
Exactly, but the surge, the deep, true timbre only you could summon.
Laying it down, doing it bad. You told us how it is. Was. And will be.

Pitch and phrasing danced together on the brass where
Lyric and heart converge. What you gave away went beyond
Arrangement or crescendo. In fact, you sang the things
You could not say—on the post office steps or waving from your van.
So sue us: We thought it was one of your protracted jokes

That Stormy Monday when news of you began to swell: We heard you’d gone,
Hadn’t packed your horn. Tuesday was just as bad (and Wednesday worse). Oh, for
A punch line where you’d wave your hand as if swatting a fly, then
Turn your head, shake it slightly and say, “Pshaw!”

Hometown boy: More than spice, your life was Feast, a Combo platter:
Oregano chicken. Beef Burgenoign. Dim Sum, and Peking Duck. “It’s about
Really living,” you said, laying your hand on the place near the
Navel where voice finds power, where breath and sustenance begin. You

Orchestrated bliss, then passed it on. And so today we follow your lead
From where you left off, riffing on that clarion joy.

Picture it now—–sweat flying from your face—the chords entangled. Your
Legs and belly rife with the food of love. Notes burning through your torso.
Every cell a mouth, a bell, an open valve. We’re playing through the changes, Joel.
Now it’s Sunday and we’ve got down on our knees, the tempo a steady
Thrum. We hear you, Joel, but we’ve reached the bridge. What next?
You’re taking it all back home.

Christine Hemp
Memorial Day Weekend
May, 2011

Today I received a box from Finishing Line Press that contained author copies of my new book of poems, “That Fall.” They spilled out on the dining room table and I pondered the wild journey these poems have taken from the the quiet of my studio to the press and now into the world. Here is a poem from this collection:

SURRENDER

Just like that truck on the exit ramp, I see
the S-curve too late and my load inside begins
to shift: A slumber party of fresh pears falling
over themselves in the dark, their ambrosial scent
the first hint of ruin. It’s not the pedal
but momentum that pitches me up and over
the guardrail. The bay below rises like a Baptism.
All those pears in concert roll forward and the whole
rig aches between the fruit’s amber blushing
and the whitecaps chanting. Who’s to say
what timeless words are spoken in that instant
between “Yes!” and “Oh no”? Perched in such
a silent space an ocean opens up.  I plunge
into the drink, pear juice dripping into salt.

Christine Hemp

Order “That Fall”

LORRAINE TROUTMAN’S ROSES
for Dr. Aimee Kohn

One season, between jobs and men, I potted
pansies, weeded beds for cash.  The air
was cold, spring barely evident but for the odd
crocus and a stirring among the chickadees.  Alone
at Adelma Beach with my shears and instructions
to prune all of Lorraine Troutman’s roses, I scanned
the garden heavy with alder leaves, soggy
clumps of grass, and sticks blown from winter gales
funneled down the Straits. Not a wrinkle on the bay.

The leggy roses sagged from months of wind.
I snipped the canes, finding pith among deadwood
stems, making cuts at least an inch below
unhealthy branches, sometimes even slicing off
a full and shapely bud, knowing that disease
could kill the bush if I didn’t sacrifice
parts of those pale pink ramblers, yellow climbers.

The sun peeked through the clouds and I stopped,
stepped back, took in the shape of what I’d done.
When I turned I caught the light glancing off
the surface of the bay and through the calm rose
a creature from the deep, blowing from its spout.
It blasted straight up until the whole of it, shining
in the sun, held the moment in that pose, all its heft
defying air and sea. It breathed. Then heaved itself—
with joy?— sideways on the water, its tail smacking
afterwards, an affirmation of its feat.

I saw no one to wave to, to point and say, “Did you
see that?!” But all morning as I worked my way
through thorns and vines, I kept the secret close,
sometimes looking back at the spot on the water
where the whale had shown me what power lies
beneath a quiet tide; what spouting streams
exhale like healing fonts right behind us
while we pare what needs to go, taking care of what is
good and whole in Lorraine Troutman’s roses.

–Christine Hemp     from The Examined Life Journal