Poetry Connection: Connecting with the Poetry Buffet in New Orleans

 

Poetry Connection: Connecting with the Poetry Buffet in New Orleans

Melinda Palacio, City of Santa Barbara 10^th Poet Laureate

Gina Ferrara at the Poetry Buffet

While the search for Santa Barbara’s next Poet Laureate is in full swing, I’ve taken a little time off to catch the last weekend of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and read at the Latter Library’s longstanding series, the Poetry Buffet. Fat Tuesday fell on March 4 and I happened to connect with four Santa Barbara friends who were also in town for Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras is not the best time to visit New Orleans because the roads are closed for parade lineups and parade routes. During the last weekend of Mardi Gras, there are day and evening parades and it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation at a popular restaurant or find a cab or uber driver willing to brave the traffic, road blocks, and general mardi gras mayhem. Both sets of friends were staying in the French Quarter and getting to the uptown parade routes could cost over seventy-five dollars for a cab or uber fare that would normally be eight to ten dollars, thank you price surging.

The Poetry Buffet usually falls on the first Saturday of each month. However, due to Mardi Gras parades, hostess Gina Ferrara moved the date to March 9, which happened to be International Women’s Day. The reading at the Latter Library in New Orleans featured a smorgasborg of women poets, including: Anne Babson, Dionne Cherie Baker, Stacey Balkun, Katheryn Krotzer Labord, Christine Kwon, Kay Murphy, Biljana Obradovic, Beverly Rainbolt, Mona Lisa Saloy and me. It’s always a pleasure to read at the poetry buffet with its elegant chairs and chandelier, the space feels regal, like stepping in a french castle. We even had our very own queen that day, thanks to poet Dionne Cherie Baker, who regularly dresses in royal regalia for events such as the Renaissance Faire and her show last week at Quest for the King at Contra Flow in Biloxi (she drove over an hour to take a break from the festival and read some poems in New Orleans).

Dionne Cherie Baker

The Poetry Buffet is a feast of poetry and joy that has been running since 2007. Like everything else, the series moved to zoom readings during the pandemic. For now, in person readings have resumed. I asked Gina Ferrara how the Poetry Buffet started and she said the series began when the city was still in recovery after hurricane Katrina. Before the hurricane, Gina had a reading series at the library a called the Women’s Poetry Conspiracy. Afterwards, librarian Missy Abbott wanted to get the poetry reading started but suggested a more inclusive group, along with the name Poetry Buffet. I have had the pleasure of being previously featured at buffet, always a fun time and a generous audience.

Mardi Gras Float Bacchus Parade

This week’s poetry connection features two poems by Gina Ferrara.

Variations in Fencing

Gina Ferrara

Always before the afternoon rains, 

when the sky was a chosen color and empty

or held clouds harmlessly white, 

scalloped, voluminous, 

chain links obliterated, we sought the vine covered, 

lithe, armed with imagination:

the objective to walk the fence,

entrenched in tangles, twists,

segueing to intricacies and gnarled complications,

small trumpet blossoms, hidden droplets of nectar, 

appearing as a river, the verdant

too dark, too jade to offer reflections,

resistant to confinement and control, 

nothing landscaped, the patch of thorn prone pyracantha, 

loquats gold, dollop sized orbs, pink bristled mimosas,

we took turns, some navigating,

others shook with grinning intent, 

to simulate the feeling 

on either side of a fault line,

seconds before the fissure.  

6-8-23

Previously published in The Delta Review

My Sapphire Shoes (March, 2020)

Gina Ferrara

Without leaving home,

I bought shoes the color of sapphires during the pandemic,

perusing sales, scrolling in descent,

as the bees in the backyard

swarmed, built their sprawling flag shaped hive.

Workers, hardly seen, though heard laboring

the lantana, the roses, the orange cosmos,

the apple tree blossoms, those

providing a superlative nectar coup

to bring back to the queen.

The weft and weave becoming waxier, more amber,

holding weighted viscosity, honied evidence

as people were intubated rolled on their sides, even

my friend Melanie, hospitalized, who wouldn’t come home.

She would have liked my sapphire shoes,

recognized they were like birthstones,

a bit deeper than the sapphires of Ceylon

that shared the color of a true March sky,

the one above the oblivious bees.

I had no place to wear my sapphire shoes,

except outside where they looked strange

and inappropriate in their gemstone blueness

when the buzzing, the din, took on sounds of a dirge.

Previously Published in Sheila Na Gig

Gina Ferrar bio:

Gina Ferrara has five poetry collections:  Ethereal Avalanche (Trembling Pillow Press, 2009), Amber Porch Light (Word Tech 2013), Fitting the Sixth Finger: Poems Inspired by the Paintings of Marc Chagall (Kelsay Books 2017), Weight of the Ripened (Dos Madres Press, 2020), an Eyelands Poetry Prize Finalist, and Amiss, also published by Dos Madres Press in 2023. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, The Poetry Ireland Review, Tar River and The Southern Review and was selected for publication in the Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2019 by Black Mountain Press.  In 2024, her poetry was nominated for a Best of the Net and a Pushcart.  Since 2007, she has curated The Poetry Buffet, a monthly reading series in New Orleans.  She is an Associate Professor of English at Delgado Community College, and she is editor of the New Orleans Poetry Journal Press.