The Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship
Louhelen Bahá’í School strives to keep alive the inspiring and powerful legacy of Robert Hayden through the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship established in 1984 at Louhelen by Mrs. Erma Hayden in memory of her late husband. Poet Robert Hayden was winner of the First World Festival of Negro Arts and the 1975 Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. He served two terms as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress and was a member of the American Academy of the Institute of Arts and Letters. Until his death in 1980, he was a professor of English at the University of Michigan and poetry editor for World Order magazine.
The prestigious Fellowship honors Hayden’s commitment to nurturing aspiring young writers. The Fellowship provides promising Bahá’í poets who demonstrate a serious commitment to poetry with the means to concentrate on their writing at Louhelen Bahá’í School. Selected poets work in residence at Louhelen, encouraging the establishment of the school as a center for cultural development, a vision cherished by Shoghi Effendi for this Bahá’í institution.
2006 Fellowship Recipients (left to right) Helena Carnes, Stephanie Vaccaro, and Michael Greenlee, and mentor Fellow Patrick Patillo.
Louhelen recently welcomed three recipients of the 2006 Robert Hayden Fellowship in Poetry to its campus. The 2006 Hayden Fellows—Helena Carnes from Chicago, Illinois; Stephanie Vaccaro from New York, New York; and Michael Greenlee from Wilmette, Illinois—spent a week immersed in the activities of the Robert Hayden Poetry Colloquium. The Colloquium provided a range of activities designed to encourage the poets in the development of their poetry, afford them time to interact with other poets, and share their work with the wider community.
The Colloquium benefited from the participation of Patrick Patillo, Instructor of English and Creative Writing at Washtenaw County Community College. Mr. Patillo, in addition to his professional work in developing and encouraging new writers, is also a poet and currently involved in producing works related to the Black Men’s Gathering. As well as offering skills in nurturing new poets, Mr. Patillo, the son-in-law of Robert Hayden, brought an exciting dimension of experience and insight regarding Mr. Hayden to the Colloquium for 2006.
Contact Louhelen for information about the next Hayden Fellowship opportunity.
Poetry by Past Fellows
DAWN
Dawn is the smile that begins the day,
The merging into motion of the joy
Of pure beginning; of morning's manic ploy
Of stirring green strivings from old clay.
Dawn is the mystic moment when one bare ray
Of brightening being pierces through the coy
Antelucan lyrics of the sky,
Unthreading colored light from night's decay.
Dawn is the smile of awakening,
The greeting of this blithe, beloved life,
This opal world unfurled beneath the sun.
Dawn is the chorus that the stray birds sing
To warn away the fading twilight's strife
Now that the sunlight has already won.
Michael Greenlee
MEDITATIONS
In the wake of rain, a thick heat descends,
cicadas cry out in August before sleep.
I want to write prayers in a language
I do know on my skin, let them sink
to the slick beneath and rest at the core.
Eyes dark in open air, face and hands
coated in sacred words revealed along a rapid
that cut hot sand. Sacred on skin, ink of light
searing flesh, unable to turn back, to live
without those words, forever in their wake.
Stephanie Vaccaro, August 30, 2005
ATONEMENT
How can I atone for my mistakes?
These larger than life discrepancies
Between what is right
And what is safe.
If I were to hold onto you
Every wayward thought
What would become of me?
Would I vanish like ether in guilt or shame?
Drifting through dark corridors
With my eyes facing down?
Would I fold backwards and inwards
Into myself until I could never
Stand again?
Is God listening?
To the sound of my soul's bell
Ringing madly and wildly in the night,
A sign of warning that
The watchtower is burning.
Flames devouring each wooden beam
Until . . .
Like in the tarot card I fall
To the rocks below.
How do I atone for the sickness in me
That berates
And disintegrates
My self-esteem?
I long to stand like a mighty warrior
For peace
Like a fresh Spring breeze,
With pentacle in hand,
Raised high overhead,
With the deafening calm
Of meditation.
The whisper of Allah u' Abha
On a bead.
Oh feed the inner me
My need,
And liberate this child
Of the world. . .
Helena Marie Carnes, March 29, 2003
LINDEN, AS FAR AS THIS TRAIN GOES
All passengers must leave the train, because
this is the end of mindlessness. The door
is closing; locomotion only does
the easy part. Beyond this is the shore.
All perspectives shatter here, like rain
drowning in the lake. Here, at the past's
sudden end, a small suburban train
intersects the rim of this more vast
terminus. The storms of every place
beat against these bounds in dull defeat,
and from the silence of its vital space
unnoticed lines go out, diverge, and meet
the subtle stations where the morbid earth
is gathered up, and brought to its rebirth.
Michael Greenlee
FOUNTAIN
The brilliant water breathes in upward leaps
of sky-delight. Pragmatic drops that dream
the sea of heaven form a single stream
that reaches up from soil, stalls, and weeps.
The blue stone chatters in the constant beats
of upward water falling down, undone
exactly. Broken, breathless efforts run
derailed down ruddy fissures in hard streets.
Why continue flowing, if born to be
this sunward-soaring, soil-bound unflight?
Why pour with such sad joy into the night
the shrillest pillar of this fountain me?
Why live a strain? Why strive by perfect pain
to touch a vastness we can never reach?
all actions seem to fade like finished speech
and slither down a rust-encrusted drain.
But beauty comes from tumbling water, frail
breaths that rise and fall; inhale, exhale
the world's fire, the rough-hewn heart-height air,
and fuse the sting and bliss in endless prayer.
Michael Greenlee
