The Heron Clan Congregates on Zoom

One of my longer poems “Cocks” was accepted this spring for an anthology called Heron Clan VII. The Heron Clan is a group headed by Doug Stuber of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Each anthology (this is the seventh) is about 300 pages. The expectation is that the printed book will appear in the fall of 2020 and will contain poems by 127 poets, including Valerie Nieman, Shelby Stephenson,  Andrena Zawinski, etc. What is impressive about the list of poets is that it is very diverse, including poets in Dublin, Ireland.

In May, Stuber set up a series of Zoom sessions to introduce with short readings those who will be in Heron Clan VII. On May 17, I presented three poems including the first section of “Cocks” which presents the story of a Jamaican youth and what happened to him when his father ran into trouble with the local police. I wanted to encourage curiosity and give the sale of the anthology a boost. Several of my friends attended the program.

Since the covid19 pandemic hit more readings of poetry have been popping up. One of the challenges of online readings, particularly on the Zoom platform, is making sure that the audience learn how to mute themselves or that the moderator does this for them. The listener is usually unaware of how low level noise is magnified on these platforms. I requested that everyone mute themselves before I started reading and when that didn’t happen I asked the moderator to do it and had to walk him through where to find the controls. As a consequence, I had a very successful reading.

The last session begins at 7pm EDT.

May 28^th.  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82610750045  

Zoom Meeting Identification: 826 1075 0045

More information about Heron Clan VII at https://dougstuber.wordpress.com/.