Tag Archives: lynnell edwards

“Good Enough” by Lynnell Edwards

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What BreaksThe food analogies come fast
enough: hot glass like taffy

pulled by hook and hand; the crucible’s
soup of cooked glass clinging like honey

at the end of a wand; crushed color
like sugar in piles. Glass blown

like gum or spun into cool confections,
sweet illusion of peppermint swirls,

frosted drops, molten core
like a butterscotch disk,

come closer and see what treat.
But mind your tongue

friend, this is nothing
you want between your teeth.

-Lynnell Edwards,
Kings of the Rock and Roll
Hot Shop (or, What Breaks)
Accents Publishing 2014

photo by John Nation

Lynnell Edwards is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or, What Breaks)(Accents Publishing). Her short fiction and book reviews have also appeared widely in such literary journals as Pleiades, American Book Review, New Madrid, and The Connecticut Review. She is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University, and prior to that, a faculty member at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. Lynnell is a graduate of Centre College, the center of the glass-blowing universe in Kentucky.

“Poetry with Heat”: Arts-Louisville reviews Lynell Edwards

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Lynnell EdwardsJoanna Lin Want in Arts-Louisville.com reviewed Lynnell Edwards’ The Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or What Breaks). 

“The craft of glassmaking takes center stage in these poems, but only because Edwards’ own poetic craft is so flawless as not to draw attention to itself.”

See the full review here.

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More from Lynnell Edwards & Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop:

Lynnell Edwards in the Courier Journal

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Heart-of-Glass-Lynnell-Edwards-Joshua-KrugerThe Courier Journal interviewed Lynnell Edwards at Flame Run Glass Studio in Louisville, KY about Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or, What Breaks).

In the accompanying video, Edwards says the title comes from “the fact that the whole time I’m there, they’re blasting the music and it’s great. The whole day is high energy and choreographed, and the title for the book came to me very early.”

 

Check out the article here, and be sure to check out Flame Run’s new website here.

“a miraculous process… fraught with the potential for hazard”:
Lynnell Edwards on Poetry, Glass Blowing, and Production

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Lynnell EdwardsLynnell Edwards recently talked with Accents intern James Pfeiffer about her new book, Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or, What Breaks?), as well as the relationship between "production arts" (like glass blowing) and writing.

How did you first become interested in glassblowing?

I was first exposed to glass blowing when Steve Powell started the program there at Centre in the mid-80s, but I didn't study it at the time. Many years later, I met Brook White, the founder of Flame Run when I did a series of creative writing workshops at galleries in Louisville. We did a session at Flame Run and Brook talked to us a little about the process. Brook is an incredibly informed and passionate guy when it comes to glass blowing and his energy and his vision for glass blowing as a way of thinking about life totally inspired me as to the potential for exploring glass blowing and life in the hot shop as a subject for poems. During that workshop I wrote a couple of very short poems that unlocked, for me, what I thought might be some of the potential for the subject. Shortly after that workshop I approached Brook about whether he'd be open to my sitting in, observing, and writing some poems; I shared the short work I had done at that point and he trusted me enough to invite me into his world.

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Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or, What Breaks) by Lynnell Edwards

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What Breaks

Well, I’m a lucky man
With fire in my hands

—The Verve, “Lucky Man”

This epigraph starts off Lynnell Edwards’s newest chapbook with poems inspired by glassblowing in the “hot shop”.

“Through empathy and penetrating observation, Edwards goes deep inside the art of glassmaking. What she brings back in the form of poems is fascinating—she has absorbed and passes on to us the jargon of the guild, as well as the cautions and the glories the ‘kings of the hot shop’ encounter on the way to finished creations. It is a small, self enclosed universe, and Edwards its sympathetic cosmologist.”

– Jeffrey Skinner

Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop (or, What Breaks) will be released on June 15th. If you think you’ll be too busy with the Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge, we’ll go ahead and let you pre-order! Then, halfway through a stressful month of daily poem writing, you get a cool gift delivered straight to your door!

Or, if you’re more of an “in-person” kind of person, Lynnell Edwards is having a release party at Flame Run Hot Shop in Louisville, Kentucky on June 19th.

photo by John Nation

photo by John Nation

Lynnell Edwards is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Covet (Red Hen Press, 2011). Her short fiction and book reviews have also appeared widely in such literary journals as Pleiades, American Book Review, New Madrid, and The Connecticut Review. She is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University, and prior to that, a faculty member at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. Lynnell is a graduate of Centre College, the center of the glass-blowing universe in Kentucky.