SEELEY LAKE - Alpine Artisans Open Book Club presents poet Mark Gibbons who will be reading and discussing his poetry Saturday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., at the Grizzly Claw Trading Company. There is no charge to attend and all are welcome.
Gibbons’ poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He was the winner of the Montana Arts Council Innovation Award in 2013. He lives in Missoula, where he raised his family, and works as a delivery driver and teaches poetry.
As an introduction to the subject of poetry at this Open Book Club, Seeley-Swan High School student and Junior Journal author Kyle Peltier will read his poem “Bathtub Still Life Featuring Swedish Fish.”
Born and raised in Montana, Gibbons has degrees in English and psychology as well as a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Montana. To survive his commitment to living in Montana, he has worked most of the “blue-collar descendents” jobs: dishwasher, janitor, carpenter, wood cutter, gandy dancer, surveyor, firefighter, furniture mover, laborer, truck driver and teacher. These experiences come out in his poetry.
To quote Tami Haaland (Montana State Laureate 2013-2015), “Mark Gibbons is a social critic who is angry at the world’s injustices in all its complicated forms and who speaks from experience. In Shadowboxing, his poems address the boom and bust dysfunction in the west, the hypocrisy, consumerism and the gun culture that damage so many lives in the US. In counterpoint, he celebrates momentary pleasures arguing “that we best honor being alive by living.”
Gibbons’ poems are intense, often personal and occasionally profane. He reflects on real events such as in his collection “War, Madness and Love.”
“By 1972, most of us knew there was a better way to serve our country at 18 than to let the bullheaded old men turn us into killing machines.”
And also, “practicing peace is so much easier than talking about it”.
On the subject of poetry, Gibbons wrote, “nobody buys it, nobody reads it but everybody agrees it’s really important”. Saturday night we will have the opportunity to do dispel this statement.
Please join us at the Open Book Club.
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