FOCM’s Poet Laureate

Friends of Chamber Music is happy to announce the re-appointment of Margaret Chula as its Poet Laureate for the 2012-13 season. Ms. Chula is charged with creating original poems following each of the concerts in the Classic Series, as well as poems after select Not So Classic and Vocal Arts Series concerts. The poems are posted on the Friends of Chamber Music website and Facebook page, and appear in print in program books throughout the season.

Ms. Chula’s poems capture the essence of the concert in some way, but each poem has a different focus. We think you’ll find that the rhythm of words is not unlike the rhythm of music and we hope to enhance the listener’s experience in a novel and interesting way by combining these two wonderful art forms.

Read Ms. Chula’s poems inspired by concerts in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons.

More about Margaret Chula.

FOR FANNY

Inspired by the Parker Quartet’s performance of
Mendelssohn’s Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80 on March 12, 2012

Rose petals open slowly
tentative bloom of the timid

soft-petaled skin
releasing fragrance

air hesitating,
then accepting,

then dissipating
like notes blown inside

a whirlwind that ends
in a dark tunnel.

Your fragrance
reached no one but me—

wrapped in a cocoon,
an adagio of adieu.

Your secret garden, now
overcome with brambles

and weeds without a name,
and you beneath the soil

still nourishing.