The judges will be the five former and current Lake County Poets Laureate, and the application deadline is Jan. 15, 2010.

After the judges make their choice in March, the Lake County Board of Supervisors will appoint that person to represent the county.

Many people wonder what a poet laureate does. According to the proclamation written by the Board of Supervisors, the job is to “encourage poetry and writing among Lake County residents by stimulating literacy and creativity in spoken and written form.” Over the years, each poet laureate has found his or her own way of doing this.

In Lake County, the poet laureate is a volunteer position. However, some poets have applied for and received grants to perform certain functions, such as conducting workshops.

Any Lake County resident can apply for the position or nominate someone they think would do a good job.

Here is how to apply:

• collect up to eight of your original poems (10 pages maximum);

• ask another poet to write a letter of recommendation for you;

• write a statement describing how you have served Lake County’s literary community in the past, and how you’d like to serve the community as Poet Laureate;

• if any of your poems have been published, list their titles, and the names of the publications and dates they were published.

Send five copies of each of these items in one package to Mary McMillan, P.O. Box 1236, Kelseyville 95451. Send your application before Jan. 15, 2010.

If you don’t want to apply for the position yourself, you may nominate someone. Just send a letter or email with the following information about the person you are nominating: the person’s contact information (name, address, phone number) and a short statement about why you are nominating them. Send this information in an email to Mary McMillan This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or in a letter to the P.O. box above.

For more information, write an email or letter to Mary McMillan at one of the addresses above.

Can you imagine a teacher saying this to aspiring writers, and meaning it?

That’s exactly what Clive Matson will do Saturday, Oct. 10, and Sunday, Oct. 11, at the Lakeport Arts Council's Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St., Lakeport.

Can he be serious? We should “Write badly”?

“I‘m serious as a heart attack,” says Matson. “Write badly, and write a lot!”

He has eight books of poetry, a tutorial, “Let the Crazy Child Write!,” and numerous stories and essays among his publications.

“There’s no better way to short-circuit the critical and editorial voices in our minds,” Matson says.

He waves a portfolio of exercises aimed at stifling those voices. He’s used them all in his more than 35 years of teaching here in Lake County, at University Extension in Berkeley, at private workshops in the Bay Area, and at venues abroad.

Those analytical voices have a way of stopping our unique, blessed creativity before it gets going. They do at times need serious remedies to quiet them. They’ve been well trained by our school system, by our parents who told us to get real jobs, by the teachers who said our talents for sure lay elsewhere.

But 99 percent of the brain’s activity is unconscious. And in this realm lies more inspiration and creativity than you can shake a stick at. In anyone. In everyone.

There’s so much creativity there we don’t have a chance of bottoming out. Even if you write twice as much as Shakespeare!

You might think the unconscious is full of dark, chaotic, troubling material, but once it starts coming out, you may be in for a surprise. Lightness, playfulness, awe, passion, jumping images and stories, full of an intelligence all their own. Be prepared to learn from the power of what comes pouring out of you. It’s often a great surprise.

The goal is to get in touch with that unconscious energy. These inspirational workshops teach you to write from the “itch in your body.” And write whatever it suggests. The editorial voices, which we all need, rightfully come after the first draft is down on paper, after it’s gone through all its rough glory.

Clive Matson has used these techniques for 35 years, and been the midwife to many novels, poems, stories and essays. He continues to be the guide to inspiration for a number of writers and writers’ groups in and around Lake County.

You can read Matson’s work at www.matsonpoet.com and peruse the first chapter of “Let the Crazy Child Write!” (New World Library, 1998). Or pick up a copy at the book store next to the gallery and begin the creative explosion when you “Write badly!”

The class begins on Saturday, Oct. 10, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and writing and feedback sessions continue from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, with a break for potluck lunch.

To sign up for the class or to get more information, contact the Lake County Arts Council, 325 N. Main St., Lakeport, telephone 707-263-6658, or call Clive Matson at 510-654-6495 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

This event is supported by Poets & Writers Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

MIDDLETOWN – D’s Coffee & Tea Shop in Middletown will host its monthly Open Mic Night on Friday, Sept. 25, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

This is a free event.

All musicians, singers, storytellers, comedians and others are welcome.

This is fast becoming a big event so early sign up is encouraged.

Food and beverages will be available for purchase.

For more information or to sign up to perform please call 707-987-3647.

Many of us have been in a cast with her, or sung with her. We have seen her acting on every stage in Lake and in Ukiah, seen displays of her photography at the Lake County Fair and in the Main Street Gallery.

We have been in the audiences when she served so effectively as master of ceremonies. We have sat and discoursed with her at the gallery as she sat Tuesday mornings, for many years, behind the front desk.

There’s a lot to miss; she entered our worlds in many ways, and always memorably.

We’ve not seen any of her news stories from the old days. While she performed on stage so many times, she wasn’t in any movies. There are some photos of her acting, some on the Lake County Arts Council's Web site, but that is not the same as seeing a performance.

Perhaps somewhere there are CDs of the lake chorus that she sang with; I don’t know of any. Stage work is like that; when the performance is over, it is gone with the wind, leaving an impression, a memory that fades and gets put in the rarely accessed mental folders.

About the only really tangible evidence that we have of her creativity are her photographs. She took a great many in her travels, and she traveled frequently, to all the corners of the world. Once home, she would sort through the negatives and choose some to be blown up. Then she would sort through those prints for the best and frame them behind glass, submitting them to the Fair, and once a year or so having a show at the Gallery. It was an unusual Fair where she didn’t win a prize.

She had a good eye for the picturesque and the interesting. She found out-of-the way locales and familiar sights, and made each of them her own. Her photographic skills were good, and the images are clear and sharp and balanced. They look good on the wall. They sold in the gallery, and in Art in Public Places, but there are some left, and they are fine.

On Sept. 20 at 2 p.m. the Arts Council will have the last showing of the photography of Joan Holman.

The Arts Council will auction the complete collection of her framed large-format photography. It’s behind glass, matted and ready to hang. Her heirs have donated it to the Arts Council, in accordance with her wishes. The idea is to get the work into the hands of her friends; if the Arts Council can make a little out of it, that’s all to the good. The Arts Council does well on just a little.

Bert Hutt will be the auctioneer because he is really good at it, and we will serve drinks and snacks because we are really good at that.

We hope to see you there. After all, it is the last chance. Don’t miss it!

Book lovers should be gloating “Let it rain!” because this looks like our year.

Here are just a few of the early fall fiction temptations.

Dan Brown is back with Robert Langdon in “The Lost Symbol,” releasing Tuesday, this time probing the connections of Freemasonry and Washington, D. C. Washington pols and critics reportedly are waiting breathlessly.

Book club favorite Anita Diamant, who captivated so many with "The Red Tent," gives us “Day After Night,” young women escaping to Israel from Nazi Germany.

Anita Shreve, who specializes in couples under great stress, “A Change in Altitude,” puts her protagonists in a Kenyan tragedy.

Lorrie Moore sets her post-9/11 novel, “A Gate at the Stairs” in the Midwest with a 20-year-old punster as her protagonist.

Margaret Atwood imagines another dystopia in “The Year of the Flood,” with much of the human race wiped out. (Guess: She'll somehow find the humor in that.)

Audrey Niffenegger, whose "The Time Traveler's Wife" was recently released for the big screen, follows it up with “Her Fearful Symmetry,” set in a London cemetery.

E.L. Doctorow's “Homer & Langley” examines the famous Collyer brothers, whose hoarding of old newspapers and other debris was world class. (Could have you putting down your book for a bit of tossing out.)

Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the lovely and melancholic "Remains of the Day," with another evocative title in “Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall,” stories connected by music.

Popular Spokane native author Sherman Alexie ("Smoke Signals") lightens it up with “War Dances,” a collection of stories.

Anne Rice, dominatrix of vampire novels for years, left the field for Christian themes about the time lots of competition moved in. She returns Oct. 27 (just in time for you-know-what!) with a hybrid of popular themes in “Angel Time: Songs of the Seraphim.” A killer meets an angel who gives him a chance at time travel to right some wrongs.

Sophie Annan Jensen is a book lover and retired journalist. She lives in Lucerne.