Sense of Place |

Three Poems by April Pameticky: April, who calls Wichita home after growing up in Oklahoma, spends her days teaching high school, and her evenings with her husband raising her daughters. As she writes of our beloved and sometimes overwhelming cicadas in “Summer Heat,” “The cicadas call from elm to oak,/ furious rattles of warning, my body/ aches to lie down in the light…” Read her poems here.

Two Poems by Victoria Sherry: Victoria, a Wichita-based poet, writer, and bookstore lover (she works at the fabled Eighth Day Books) writes of the expanse before and within. In “Driving Away,” she begins,

One by one, the markers

that guided you down

this road will vanish below

the arc of the horizon

Victoria Sherry Poems

A Selection of Poems by Janet Jenkins-Stotts: Janet Jenkins-Stotts is a late blooming author of both poetry and prose. A late blooming author of both poetry and prose, Janet writes of place, evolution, and weather with wit and keen awareness from the “thin piercing howl” of the rescued dog to the goslings that look like Tyrannosaurus Rex. The photo of the sunset is by the author, and it accompanies her poems. Read her poems here

“Trip Journaling” by Roy Beckemeyer: Poet, Konza editor, and world traveler Roy has taken his journal as well as his camera around the world to connect with places through the images he catches and conveys. He writes that it’s well and good to take photos, but bring along the sketch pad too, telling us, “You may find that your drawings capture unique aspects of the personality of the place you are visiting that go unnoticed in photos.” Read his essay here.

“Turtles on the Road,” and “The World is “Our Oyster?” by Hank Guarisco: Hank is a man of many talents. The leading Kansas scholar on spiders, he also knows snakes, and thus the photo of him helping to relocate, to more hospitable (and less human-occupied ground) one of three rattlesnakes found at Ken Lassman and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg’s home. In “Turtles on the Road,” he suggests, “During rainy spells, we can help nature by performing a good deed similar to the iconic boy scout good deed of helping little old ladies across the road. When traffic permits, we can stop and help turtles across the road.” In “The World is ‘Our Oyster’?” he writes about the need for wild spaces. Read each of these lively essays by clicking on their titles.

Three Poems and “Bonnie-O” by Olive Sullivan: Olive, in addition to writing, performs in the band Amanita, fly-fishes with her husband, the scholar and writer Stephen Harmon, and loves traveling anywhere that requires a passport. In “Bless This House,” she writes, “Run out into the yard and gather arms full of honeysuckle and lilac./ Fill the whole house with their essence./ Welcome the spirits in.” An apprentice bookbinder, she contributes Three Poems and the story, “Bonnie-O”

“Rise” by Annette Hope Billings: Annette, an award-winning Topeka poet, honors the sunrise in this poem, in which she writes:

As night falls away

and sunrise ascends,

there lives a moment

when they intersect

and hang in combined air

to become entirely each other’s.

Read the whole poem here.

Drawings by Mike Watowa: This pen and ink drawing was 22 X 17 on pastel blue 80 lb stock. This work started out (in 1994 I believe) to be a typical Kansas landscape under starlight….based on my memories of going out to catch saddle horses in the dark. The challenge here became presenting the widest possible variety of textures and contours with a black ink pen, to present depth perception and detail in the triangle of composition. This piece is shown still on the board, and never did get matted or framed…as I neared it’s finish I heard from friends of an upcoming Art Show I might be interested in… I rushed the work into shipment and never heard from it again….like so many of the pieces I’ve done.

See three more of Mike’s drawings here:

Old Barn by Mike Watowa

Stone Bridge by Mike Watowa

Prairie Field by Mike Watowa

Roy and Pat Beckemeyer taking the requisite “selfie” at the Summer Palace outside St. Petersberg, Russia, 2007.

Photographic Essays of Place by Roy Beckemeyer: I used the following words to introduce my series of photo essays: “Konza Journal typically focuses on our prairie bioregion, our piece of the Planet Earth, where we live out our lives every day. True appreciation of our special place, our bioregion, can be enhanced by stepping back, expanding our field of view, seeing the prairie in terms of its setting in the larger world.” In these essays, I present photos taken from around the world; they are arranged in a series of loosely structured essays that combine words and images. As you can see from the ten-year-old “selfie” (did the term “selfies” even exist back then?) my wife took when we visited the Summer Palace in St. Petersberg, I often festoon myself with cameras when I am out and about. Please enjoy these photographs; I hope they fill you with a sense of wonder about our collective place in this wide world we share.