Small towns and rural communities such as we find in upstate New York are supposed to be places where everyone knows everyone else and the personal is out in the open, or at least secrets are known and understood.   This may be a lazy stereotype but a sensitive soul can often find in a village atmosphere a closeness and a sense that past days are still unfolding.

Poet Katharyn Howd Machan gives a reader the sense that she has peered into the past, delved into souls, found the ties that bind or entangle people and spun them around her fingers.  Her newest book Redwing: Voices from 1888 is a series of 92 monologues that tell of personal strivings, traumas, opinions and experiences that carry the whiff of an antique and the value of an heirloom.  The poems may range from a few lines or several stanzas on a page to several pages, the form from free verse to formal sonnet.  Characters appear in alphabetical order.

                                                      --from the Author’s Note to “Redwing”

Katharyn Howd Machan lives in Ithaca, is an Associate Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Ithaca College and was the first Poet Laureate of Tompkins County.  Redwing is her twenty-fourth book of published poetry.  Wise Woman won the 2002 Anabiosis Press Chapbook Contest and Sleeping With the Dead was winner of the Finishing Line Press Prize in Poetry.  She is also an actress and performance artist and directs the national Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops.

She is also known as Zajal, a teacher and performer of belly dance, which emphasizes feminist spirituality.

Katharyn Howd Machan joins WSKG’s Bill Jaker to read from Redwing and other works and tell about writing and belly dancing.  To join in the broadcast, call during the 1:00 hour to 888/359-9754 or post a message here or e-mail to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.