CRANFORD/HALL--Adams County, Wisconsin Poets


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         Archives by:    Erika Hall
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                         November 3, 1998
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CRANFORD/HALL--ADAMS COUNTY POETS.....

"Adams County Poets Publish Verse Chain"
Adams County Times Janury 21, 1998

Adams County poets Barb Cranford and Erika Hall have published their 
long poem, "As We Consider," which is written in an ancient Japanese 
form of collaborative verse. With Cranford's cousin, Lois McNevin of 
Mount Horeb, they took turns writing two and three-line verses to 
make a "Haikai no renga" or playful verse chain.

"The calendar and the rigid rules of this form hold the poem 
together," Cranford said. "Because each verse has to relate only to 
the one just before it, and even that can be by a simple play on 
words, the subject wanders all over the place," she explained.

"There is just no conclusion, you just stop when you get tired of the
game," Cranford said. "Natural images and weather are the main topics. 
We communicated by postcard and stopped after a year with 66 verses," 
she added.

"As We Consider" is the fourth renga chapbook Cranford has done, and 
she is working on two others that are as tey untitled. Although she is 
known best for her clay sculpture of the human form, she has also done 
four other chapbooks of short lyric verses in the past two years.

Hall is a former Adams County Times reporter, and graduated in May from
the University of Wisconsin--Stevens Point. She received several top
honors from the university and its English department, including the
prestigious Chancellor's Medallion. She was one of just 14 students so
honored out of a class of 1,500.

Hall is proudest of having founded the Lincoln Hills Project, a writing
workshop conducted monthly by UW-Stevens Point English department 
students for the inmates of the Lincoln Hills school near Wausau. She 
is now looking at graduate school.

The first 39 verses of "As We Consider" are also included in The 
Poetry of Cold, an anthology of central Wisconsin writers on the 
subject of cold weather which was published by Home Brew Press of 
Wisconsin Rapids. Cranford has two other poems in this 132 page 
collection.

Several contributors to The Poetry of Cold will be reading from the 
book at McMillan Library in Wisconsin Rapids at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan 19. 
For more information on either book, contact Cranford at 564-7701.