Crimes Of Poetry

Goddess Festival welcomes Oklahoma poet

Some people see a "little machine shed" and see nothing.

A poet sees a little machine shed and envisions a vast universe.

FAQ

‘Poem Life’

With Shaun Perkins

WHEN — 6:30 p.m. today

WHERE — Omni Center in Fayetteville

COST — $5

INFO — ROMPoetry.com or goddessfestival.com

That's how Shaun Perkins came to create the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry on her family's property two miles west of Locust Grove.

"Cornily enough, I had a dream where I had a poetry museum," Perkins admits. "I woke up, and the dream was very vivid and real, gave me some direction even."

So three years ago, Perkins set out to create a place "to bring poetry and people together, to encourage wordplay and literacy and ... where everyone can have an experience of poetry.

"If you're actually here, it's fairly small, but there's a lot in it, and there's a lot to read," she describes. "You could spend hours in it if you want to read and write and really interact by writing poetic lines, writing poems, reading poems, playing poker poetry with other people, listening to poetry records, recording poetry -- that's all inside. Outside, there is a poem treasure hunt, a treehouse that has children's activities in it and, across the pasture, the poetry retreat, workshop room and gift shop."

But sometimes, the poet must go on the road, and that's what Perkins has done to appear tonight at the Goddess Festival in Fayetteville. She'll present a brand-new one-woman show, "Poem Life," which she says "involves the audience in seven crimes of poetry, while telling the story of living a life through writing and exploring poems."

"When I started thinking about it, the title came first," says Perkins, who has a master's degree in liberal studies and has been a teacher for more than 25 years. "Then I saw an image of the late Tupac Shakur's 'thug life,' and I realized there were so many parallels between poetry and crime -- and people may not have thought about how writing poetry and being a poet is like being a criminal!

"So I found seven specific crimes that I could translate into some kind of poetic theme," she says. "Half of the show, the audience is going to participate in some poems, and half is me performing some poems and telling a story and just kind of creating an experience of poetry that all has to do with this metaphor of crime."

-- Becca Martin-Brown

bmartin@nwadg.com

NAN What's Up on 03/27/2015

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