Terry and Jenifer on the Road to...

Upcoming Events for Jenifer and Terry. Burning Word to to be added soon.

Saturday, January 13, 2007, 8 p.m. Richard Hugo House, Jenifer and Terry. New Voices from Blue Begonia Press. Co-sponsored by the Richard Hugo House. 1634 11th Ave, Seattle, WA (206) 322-7030. http://www.hugohouse.org/events/ email programs2@hugohouse.org

Sunday, January 28, 2007, 7:30ish, Sirens Pub & Restaurant 832 Water Street, Port Townsend, WA. Jenifer will be joining her favorite group of Fort Worden diehard writers for a weekend retreat, culminating in an open mic pub invasion. Stop by Sunday evening for a beer and a poem if you’re in town.

Thursday, February 8, 2007, 7 p.m. Northwind Arts Center. Jenifer and Terry. Northwinds Art Center, 2409 Jefferson St, Port Townsend, WA (360) 379-1086. http://www.northwindarts.org/poetry.html

Thursday, February 15, 2007, 7 p.m. SoulFood Poetry Night, Jenifer reading with Dan Peters. SoulFood Books, 15748 Redmond Way, Redmond, WA 98052 (425) 881-5309 Redmond, WA http://soulfood.booksense.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp email info@soulfoodbooks.com

Tuesday, March 6, 2007, Noon, Foothills Writers Series, Jenifer and Terry. Reading held in the Little Theater, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd
Port Angeles, WA 98362 (360) 452-9277 http://www.pc.ctc.edu/news/foothills.asp email tinah@pcadmin.ctc.edu

Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 4:00 p.m. Newberry Books, 561 NE Ravenna Blvd., Seattle. PoetsWest features Chris Jarmick, David Keysor, Jenifer Browne Lawrence. Open mike. MC Robinson Bolkum. Contact J. Glenn Evans 206.682.1268 or info@poetswest.com.

Saturday, June 2, 2007, 7 p.m., Jenifer at the Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse, 19003 Front St, Poulsbo, WA (360) 779-9199 http://homepages.donobi.net/pbch/ email carriegilstrap-nettle@bbwc.biz

The Secret Language of Women, First Review

from the Midwest Review


The Secret Language of Women
Terry Martin
Blue Begonia Press
224 South 15th Avenue, Yakima, WA 98902-3821
0911287574 $15.00
www.bluebegoniapress.com

English teacher and published poet Terry Martin presents The Secret Language of Women, an anthology of free-verse poetry that reexamines domestic life from the feminine perspective, reflects upon the sad fragility of all things, and explores innermost hopes and dreams. A gentle, reflective, and insightful whisper into the true meanings behind the building blocks of language. "Until They Told You What it Did to Rachel": and you never even thought about it, / never once considered / how your offhand comparison / to those who had slaughtered / her aunts and uncles / in Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka // discounted unfathomable loss, / trivializing her heartbreak / with your careless use / of that one small word. / Tonight, dark trains clatter / the tracks of your dreams.

One Hundred Steps' First Review

"Within the ever-growing population of poetry, Jenifer Browne Lawrence is a voice to follow, for in the following one will be amazed for all the brightness achieved amidst shadow."

Natasha Kochicheril Moni

Here's the full review from Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century:

review by: Natasha Kochicheril Moni

ONE HUNDRED STEPS FROM SHORE
by Jenifer Browne Lawrence

Blue Begonia Press, 225 S. 15 th Avenue, Yakima, WA 98902; ISBN-13: 978-0-911287-56-1 (pbk.: alk.paper), ISBN-10: 0-911287-56-6 (pbk.: alk.paper), 79pp., $15.00 www.bluebegoniapress.com


In photography, the technique of burning an image is employed to darken what may otherwise appear too light or under-exposed. To dodge stands for the reverse, as in lightening an overexposed item thereby rendering more crisp. Jenifer Browne Lawrence's first collection One Hundred Steps From Shore, demonstrates the poetic equivalent of dodging and burning. Through the vehicle of explored memory, Lawrence provides a lucid picture of what keeps/distorts in the presence of grief.

Dark, his eyes
spark memories that crack
like the chocolate coating
on soft-dipped cones we mouthed
on our trips to town--how the hard shell
flaked off, where vanilla pushed out
dripping, how it had to be licked at once,
before any of it touched our skin.
(from "Replacing the Deck")

Lyrically masterful yet spare, Lawrence invites her readers to witness as in these lines from the title piece "One Hundred Steps from Shore":

The policeman asks what I saw, what I heard.
He wants to know if I heard a screech.
I tell him no, just a thud and I ran to see
and I saw her. He asks me what I saw,
what I heard. I tell him I smelled pennies.

The characters in Lawrence's poems continue their attempts to rescue--mallards, garter snakes, a porcupine "in my shirt mews and mews / how did I come to be / the ferryman burying over / and over the same stick in the water" (from "Porcupine Child") as they cope with the loss of the young Carolyn. And with this impulse "The lesson has been passed through / generations like a relay baton: We do not save each other." (from "Making Out") But there is more than the relationship of family-to-family, "Learning To Paint" (section 3) is thick with growing up in Valdez, Alaska while "Tales From the 20 th Century" (section 4) revises the story of love.

One Hundred Steps From Shore, as with skilled creative nonfiction, achieves the delicate, critical balance between personal/universal with grace and precision. Lawrence creates a world within each quarter slice of her collection, drawing light where necessary:

Once, she thought she was going to do it,
hold her breath exactly forever,
but she awoke with a leaf on her chest,
dizzy and missing her mom.
(from “A Cottonwood Leaf Can Be Taken Apart”)

A sensory experience, One Hundred Steps From Shore speaks to an audience in the language of layered tongues. Within the ever-growing population of poetry, Jenifer Browne Lawrence is a voice to follow, for in the following one will be amazed for all the brightness achieved amidst shadow.

One Hundred Steps in the News

Jenifer Lawrence's first book, One Hundred Steps from Shore, is a Best Seller!

One Hundred Steps was recently listed in the top five paperbacks sold by Eagle Harbor Books.

Also, the poem "It was Snowing and it was going to Snow" is going to be in an anthology called "Poem, Revised-- A behind-the-scenes look at writing poetry". Marion Street Press will publish the book in 2008. Several versions of the poem together with a kind of running commentary on how the changes came about will be printed in their entirety.

Check back soon for more information on Jenifer's upcoming readings and a video of her first reading from the book at the Poulsbohemian.