Now for something more sinister.

This Friday evening, at around 7 p.m., we’re having our first Revenge Poetry Fancy-Dress Tea Party. It will be held in Philadelphia, and for the address you should email me (Sarah) at sskochko@camden.rutgers.edu.

We will be dressing fancy just for the hell of it; that means ball gowns and tuxes, or at least a top hat and monocle like Mr. Peanut. (If you don’t have fancy clothes, that’s fine! Come in a t-shirt and jeans and we’ll provide you with a top hat and monocle when you arrive.)

We will be drinking tea. If you have a favorite tea, bring it. If you want to bring food, we will eat it. (Warning: Jessica already has the tiny cucumber sandwiches covered.)

Most importantly, we will be reading revenge poetry. Your revenge poetry should have three characteristics:
1. It should be funny.
2. It should be vengeful.
3. It should be funny.

Note that it does not have to be good. And if you don’t have any revenge poetry, that’s fine! You can listen to ours, or write some when you get here and receive your monocle.

R.S.V.P. to sskochko@camden.rutgers.edu.

• An in-school poetry reading for Valentine’s Day, to be held on Monday the 15th during the free period, hopefully in the campus center. It will be open-mic and Leona will enforce the time limit/”no depressing poetry” policy. Three or four people volunteered to bake cookies and cakes!
• Our first out-of-school reading, the Revenge Poetry Fancy-Dress Tea Party, to be held on the evening of Friday, Feb. 19th. Details to come.
• Possible trips: NYC, a theatre, the Renn Faire, Medieval Times, Washington DC with the Honors College. Any ideas?
• The department website, which might be kind of lame. Can we help with this?
• Getting the ESO its own page on the department website, with a link to the blog.
• Creating a Facebook page for the club.
• Starting the National English Honor Society chapter (for real this time) and having everyone in the club join so we can honor ourselves. We will also publicize it through the department so other people can join, too.
• Our colloquium series: we should invite some professors to talk to us outside of class about their interesting work. To be held every few Wednesdays at 4:30 in the faculty lounge. We didn’t decide on who the first speaker should be.

I also added Professor Habib’s website and blog to the list of links on the right. Go check them out!

Big thanks to all the new members who came out – both students and professors.
- Sarah

POETRY READINGS
The Revenge-Poetry Fancy-Dress Tea Party will be held on the evening of Friday, Feb. 19, at 7:00 p.m. at an undisclosed location. Email sskochko@camden.rutgers.edu for details and directions. Tea and fancy clothes optional; revenge mandatory.

MEETINGS
Second meeting: In a couple weeks?

TRIPS
Trip to NYC: in the works
Theatre trip: a possibility
Renn Faire: TBD

GRADUATION RECEPTION
Immediately following graduation on Monday, May 24, 2010; to be held somewhere on campus.

We are going to do this again next week, and the week after that, and so on. Same time, same place: Thursdays at 8 p.m. in the faculty lounge on the third floor of Armitage. Bring food, poems, or friends, or all of the above, or none of the above. Stop by for five minutes or two hours. Stop by once, or a few times a month, or every week. The only rule is that we don’t condone intelligent literary criticism, and anyone caught acting academic will be shoved out the window.

See you on Thursday.

-Sarah

• We want to have our next poetry reading soon. You can bring poetry to read or you can just sit there, eat delicious food, drink (alcoholic) beverages, and listen to people read. No analysis allowed. Dr. Habib says his friend would be willing to host it — we’re hoping for early October. I will post a date as soon as we have one.
• Last year the English department hosted a number of student/faculty colloquiums, beginning with a talk by Dr. Marchitello on the “two cultures” (the divide between science and literature), and following up with Dr. Fitter, Dr. Ledoux, and others. They’re a lot of fun, and there’s free food (and way too much of it), so you should definitely come. Sarah mentioned Dr. FitzGerald and two other professors as candidates for talks this semester. October, November, and December sound reasonable, since we’d like to have three colloquiums and those are our three remaining months. The first one is tentative at the moment.
• You can blame me for the lack of pizza. I overslept the day I was supposed to be at the Nuts and Bolts meeting, which means the ESO isn’t allowed to apply for even a dollar. Sorry.
• We’ve rescheduled our Renaissance Faire trip to Saturday, October 24.
• We are looking for new officers! Our president (Sarah), vice president (me), and treasurer (Caitlin) are graduating and won’t be here next semester. I will still be editing Writers’ Bloc, though.

Kevin

I know Writers’ Bloc is a foreign entity to most of you when you’re not in school, so I’ll post a quick update. We’ve only been open to submissions now for a week and a half, but they’ve been pouring in — 80 so far. Crystal and I have been reading until our eyes water.

We are now listed on a site called Duotrope.com, which is for writers seeking publication. There are over 2,500 markets on there — and only 15 are faster than Writers’ Bloc. (Here’s the link to the list of swift markets.) I plan to keep it that way.

Anyway, since this thing is getting so big, I want to stretch it out a little, maybe do a print publication after all. There’s a wonderful option for us out there, and it costs absolutely nothing, and that’s releasing a yearly print issue (with an ISSN and everything) as a PDF. I think we’ll do it this year. Also, after December I think we’re ready to take this thing into a quarterly schedule (not just winter and spring). We’re getting enough attention to make it worthwhile.

We might need a few additional hands on deck this time around, so make sure you’re at the first ESO meeting of the new semester (9/18?)

Enjoy what’s left of summer. Peace.

Kevin

P.S. I changed the layout of the blog. The old one reminded me of the depressing conference rooms we have meetings in.

• The Irish Poetry Reading at Brian’s house was a blast. We recited more crazy stories than poetry – the best story was probably the one involving the accidentally emailed dick photo – and we stuffed our faces with Stephanie’s fantastic food.
• Our screening of The Linguists had the best turnout of the semester, and everyone pitched in with food and setup help. It was so cool to have linguist K. David Harrison come speak to us.
• The last MFA reading at Grooveground was not actually one of our events, but it was still a good time.
• The second edition of Writer’s Bloc is still getting loads of compliments.

• Two bake sales this month have yielded $78 for our upcoming graduation reception, thanks to bakers Caitlin and Jessica. Also, thanks to everyone who stopped by to hang out!

There still have a few things left to do this semester. We’ll be sending out invitations to the graduating seniors for the graduation reception, although everyone is welcome to come. We’re also already making plans for poetry readings next semester- Professor Meredith has agreed to be one of the first speakers. Caitlin wants to organize a trip to the Renaissance Faire over the summer and a handful of people are already on board.

- Sarah

The screening is this Wednesday, April 15th, at 4:30 PM in the faculty lounge on the third floor of Armitage Hall.

On Tuesday, April 7th, we had a cool meeting. We decided that:

• Our Wednesday April 15th screening of “The Linguists” is a go, and a handful of people are bringing food (see the post about it here), but we need a few more to help set up the room.
• Our Irish Poetry Reading will be on Sunday, April 19th at Brian’s house, and we’ll all be intoxicated. See related post for details.
• Brian is also interested in hosting some literature-related, alcoholic movie nights. We are all for this idea.
• Our bake sale will either be this Friday the 10th, or Monday the 13th; we had planned on Friday, but someone pointed out later that it’s Good Friday and there might not be many people to sell to. If you are planning on baking for either date, email me. If you’re not baking, come stop by and hang out with us anyway.
• We can’t forget to write down awesome quotes from our professors. Keep writing them down! We’ll be showing them in a presentation at our…
• Graduation Reception! We’re having it as soon as graduation ends, probably in the Armitage lounge (right when you walk in the front doors). Graduation is Thursday, May 21st at 6:00 PM. We’ll probably wind up having the reception around 8:00 or 8:30. Even if you’re not graduating, invite your friends and parents!
• Our last meeting of the semester will be Monday, April 20th at 12:30 in the Executive Conference Room. We’ll be having pizza and accomplishing very little.

To keep you all updated on our finances, we submitted a budget to the SGA (the people with all the money), the SGA said we didn’t, and then they found our budget in their spam inbox. We are currently waiting to see if there is any money left for them to give us, and, if so, if they will give us any of it.

If not, we’re still in pretty good shape; we’re having a bake sale this week or next, and we’re always pretty successful with those. We only have to pay K. David Harrison to speak when we show “The Linguists”, and we have to pay our web hosting fee for Writers’ Bloc. Our expenses are few.

By the by, the second edition of Writers’ Bloc is up! All the contributors did a great job, and I can’t say enough good things about Kevin’s publishing skills.

- Sarah