News
Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud Program
I’ve been part of Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud program as a teaching artist, Finals emcee, and more for 12 years now. It’s a way to get high school students to teach poems to their classmates by memorizing and reciting them. There are prizes, including one student gets to represent the state at the National Poetry Out Loud Finals! It’s brought to us by the wonderful Nebraska Arts Council and here’s a video they made with a snazzy narrator (who you might recognize) telling more about it:
A Writing Prompt on Guilty Pleasures And 80s Rock
Spending a lot of time at home, I’m grateful for all those being careful out there, not just because I’m a Type 1 Diabetic but for all of us. I ran a writing prompt on guilty pleasures and 80s rock today for the Nebraska Writers Collective which is now available on their YouTube channel, so get to writing!
A Lesson on Writing Odes
I have a lesson on writing odes available at Nebraska’s Teacher TV. It’s aimed at middle school students but good for all ages and only 27 minutes long:
Closing Out National Poetry Month
We’re closing out National Poetry Month 2020 with a good amount of virtual events! The latest is this week’s Humanities at Home conversation put on by Humanities Nebraska:
Working with Western Nebraska Community College
A number of readings have, of course, been canceled this spring as we all help prevent the spread of Covid-19. So instead of reading at Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff, we did it virtually with a few poems, some Q&A, and a writing prompt:
Nebraska Arts Council’s New Studio Clips
I’m honored to be the first entry in the Nebraska Arts Council’s new Studio Clips: Meet Nebraska Artists series. Catch video of me reading some of the poems I’ve been writing from quarantine as well as a writing prompt, plus some Q&A and links on the NAC page:
A Poem About Nebraska’s Highest Point
The Kimball County Visitor Center asked me to write this poem about Nebraska’s highest point. See the video they made here:
Reflections on My First Year as State Poet
I’m honored to be the cover story in the February issue of the Lincoln Journal Star’s L Magazine. Read all the goodness here:
I’m on NET Radio’s All About Books
I have an interview up on NET Radio’s All About Books which you can listen to here:
https://hubhopper.com/episode/all-about-books-an-interview-with-ne-state-poet-matt-mason-1580487173
Santa Clara Magazine
My years at Santa Clara mean a great deal to me and to my writing, so I’m honored to have this article about me published in Santa Clara Magazine.
I took a class from a visiting Georgetown professor, Ed Ingebretsen, whose love of poetry was infectious. He showed me how to read poetry and love it.
And I had a poetry writing class with Ed Kleinschmidt where he told me, who’d written maybe a few dozen poems at that point, we would turn in 10 poems over the next 10 weeks. I didn’t think it was possible for me to write that much. I wrote probably 15 poems as I found myself searching for poems instead of waiting for them to find me. I’ve kept that weekly deadline ever since. For the past 29 years, good or bad, I’ve had to write a new poem by Monday night.
https://magazine.scu.edu/magazines/winter-2019/a-way-with-words/