About Me
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios Bio
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Vrenios’poetry has appeared in many publications and anthologies such as Clementine,Amaerican Poetry Journal, Poetry Leaves, Kentucky Review, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Poeming Pigeon, Form Quarterly, The Edison Literary Review, Poeming Pidgeon, and Unsplendid. Nominated for three pushcart prizes, her prize winning chapbook, Special Delivery is published by Yellow Chair Press, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble by Word Tech Communications and her third, A Concerto for an Empty Frame by Kelsey Publishing due out in October 2023.
She co-wrote the book Party Line under the name Elizabeth Kirkpatrick. Elizabeth is a professor emerita from American University in Washington D.C., having chaired the vocal and music departments. Vrenios’ solo recitals throughout the United States, South America, Scandinavia, Japan, and Europe have been acclaimed. As the artistic director of the Redwoods Opera Workshop in Mendocino, California, and the Crittenden Opera Workshop in Washington D.C. and Boston, she has influenced and trained students across the country. She is a member of the international Who’s Who of Musicians, and is the past National President of the National Opera Association.
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios Bio
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Vrenios’poetry has appeared in Clementine,Amaerican Poetry Journal, Poetry Leaves, Kentucky Review, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Poeming Pigeon, Form Quarterly, The Edison Literary Review, Poeming Pidgeon, and Unsplendid. Nominated for three pushcart prizes, her prize winning chapbook, Special Delivery is published by Yellow Chair Press, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble by Word Tech Communications and her third, A Concerto for an Empty Frame by Kelsey Publishing due out in October 2023.
She co-wrote the book Party Line under the name Elizabeth Kirkpatrick. Elizabeth is a professor emerita from American University in Washington D.C., having chaired the vocal and music departments. Vrenios’ solo recitals throughout the United States, South America, Scandinavia, Japan, and Europe have been acclaimed. As the artistic director of the Redwoods Opera Workshop in Mendocino, California, and the Crittenden Opera Workshop in Washington D.C. and Boston, she has influenced and trained students across the country. She is a member of the international Who’s Who of Musicians, and is the past National President of the National Opera Association.
My writing roots
I have always been interested in the printed word, even from my earliest roots. My first poem, written at the age of six revealed my passion for music and word, for it was written as a song on the piano to a rhythmic I,IV,V,I exercise:
Singing songs by Candlelight
On the Darkest, darkest night.
It's so fun for me you see
because its by our Christmas Tree.
Music and poetry have always been two sides of the same coin for me. As an international singer performing recitals, I always preferred English andAmerican music as it revealed that part of me that felt deeply enmeshed in the written word of my native language. I always wrote poetry, but because of my chosen vocation as singer and professor of music, poetry was on the back burner. Once I retired, my interest in poetry deepened and I began to pursue this new and exciting journey. In 2016 I published a chapbook of poetry written about my son, Nicholas Andreas Vrenios who was on the Pan Am 103 Flight that exploded over Lockerbie. My journey into the dark and joyous light of the poetic word has continued ever since. I invite my friends and those who simply love poetry and passion of the word to share in my journey.
My style
I crack open my mind to allow my music into my words, to allow me to compose in sounds, form, a place of music of sound, of allowing consonants and vowels to speak on their own. I am awed by life's incongruities. Just as I am awed by strange harmony, 12 tone music, experimental music and sound.
Part of what I continually search for is how to transfer what I know about music into words: How can I write in a sonata allegro form? How can I take a motive apart and give it a voice in a development as Beethoven did. How can I make a phrase (sentence) and turn it on its head like Mozart? I have a longing that knocks against my psyche, that scrapes my skin, that boils my dreams and makes me wake as if drowning . Music has been my muse: language as sound and percussion like waves crashing against the cliffs, or seeing air thick with swirls of Puccini, Mozart, Barber or Massenet. However, I feel as if I am only the wind, unable to create the music of the spheres, only to rustle the leaves.
I feel as if I dwell in the thickness of the universe, my muse. My mind swims in a thick soup much like the pulls of magnets or the vortexes at Sedona. I feel the mind swirl with thickness, knowing it is the Universe or the muse. Dwelling in the midst of that swirl is a light, a stillness that rules me, that leads me where I should go. I sit quietly and listen to see what I need to say, knowing that at some point the universe will answer. It is like waiting for an echo or hoping a rock will skip eight times across the pond.
It isn't thoughts that propel me, but feelings. I do get distracted by thoughts, but it is the emotion that sets my words on fire. As a poet I long to come up with the essences I find in music. Being a musician trying to be a poet is very much like trying to learn a new language, as if I were the wind trying to talk to the deer in the forest - the language is stiller, more intimate and felt in the ears and skin rather than the tongue and breath. It is as if the wind carries my words much like the kites in the air dance on the wind.
Romance Ray Bethell You Tube
published poetry
Anthologies/ Journals
- Clementine. Alzheimers, Scarfskin
- Edison Literary Review. Harvest
- Kentucky Review. A Ledger Balanced
- Bethlehem Writers Roundtable. Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
- Silkworm. Childhood was not what she thought
- Poeming Pidgeon Ode to an Onion, On Fire,
- Unsplendid. Collage of a Pleated Cow
- Cumberland River Review. No Doubt About It
- Red Fez. ˆFather Teaching Me
- A Kind of Hurricane Press. Dressing for Christmas
- Broad Press. Gypsy Rose Lee Never Had a Mustache
- Feminine Collective. Frida, My Lover Does Not Deserve Black, Every Other Thursday
- Stories of Music. Piano at Five
- Evening Press. Departure
- The Binnacle. Darling Icarus, Diabolical Clock
- Form Quarterly Singing Villanelle to Icon #8
- Two Cities Review. Sorrows
- GFT Press. Kismet, Elegy for Mother
- Scissors and Spackle. Sealed Casket
- Page and Spine In Praise of November
- MockingHeart Review. When Death Splits the Air, Hi, Noon, Dandelions, Ravens as Gifts
- Noble Gas Quarterly. Dark Star
- The Hollins Critic. The Oldest Living Thing in Maryland
- Quatrain Fish. No Matter, Cold Hands
- Folliate Oak. While Eating an Apple
- NILVX. Song of the Suomalainen
- Indolent Books. Stoned Soup
- Fish Food. Do Not Open Before Christmas
- Haiku Journal Spring Haiku
- Gnarled Oak Practice Makes Perfect
- Passager Journal. I Hold My Childhood Picture
- Front Porch Review Alternate Truths, The Truth about Childhood
- Beltway Poetry Quarterly Sarah Vaughn, Where are You, Unbuttoned Blues (PRIZE WINNER)
- Oyster River. Practice Makes Perfect, Communion
- Pilgrimage Press. The First Year Without You
- Ocotillo Review. After the Crash, Praisley,Riding Home
- Great Weather for Media. Love is Ever and Never a Knot
- Poetry Leaves. Song of the Alley Cat
- American Journal of Poetry. High Noon is Here, After the Crash
- Really System. See Saw Marjorie Daw
- Minnie's Diary (Inaugural ed) Naming Mother Bi-Polar (Nominated for Pushcart, Drowning Double, That's How the Story Goes
- Red Queen Lit Magazine. Cairn Honoring Pan Am 103
- Whispers My Love Doesn't Deserve Black
- Unlikely Stories. See Saw Marjorie Daw, Gong Show
- Inquietludeslitjournal. Driving Through Healdsburg, Panhandling
- Outlook. The Muse Slips into a Vat of Wine
- Comstock Review. This is the Story as I tell it
- Duck Lake Books. A Small Eden, Stare into the Gene Pool, Cadence
- Poetry Barn./Poets Distillery Pilgrim, One Room School House, Still flying over Lockerbie, Whiteout
- West Coast Anthology. Red Skies at Night
- AMOYT (A Moment of Your Time) Apurksody
- The Ekphrastic Review. Apocalypse Now
- Existere Journal of Arts and Lit Morning Glories
- Songs of Eretz. Circle Faster, Circle Fainter, Oh Earth, Duet in Circles, Love the Sweet Sugar Satchmo, Epithalamion of Never
- Abyss and Apex. The Wound Beautiful
- Persimmon Tree. Insurrection
- Poets Choice Your Last Phone Call
- Oye Drum. DawnDusk
- Quartet Pain Like a Raven, Raven
- CWC Anthology. Dark Star
- The McNeece Review, Spectacles
- Quarencia. Raven, Mother's Silk Dress
- Blue Mountain Review. Ghazal
- Spirit Fire, Accolades, Conversation between Thief and Jewelry
- Valley Voices. Mother's Silk Dress
- Nixes Mate Review. novena
- House of Lobster Anthology Gypsy rose Lee Never Had a Mustache, inging Villanelle to Icon #8
- Inflectionist Review. As if the World we Made of Hunger, Lake George Reflection
- Noyo Review. Melancholy, The Queen's Executioner, Naamah
- Poetry Quarterly. Death Splits the Air
- WMC Anthology. Hoffbrau House, Crossing Borders
- Poetic Sun. Thin Crop
- Into the Void. I Moved Out
- The Black Lion Journal. Caesura
- The Wire's Dream. Diagnosis Alzheimers
- Fort Bragg Murals Sisu, Song of the Suomalainen
- Kitchen Table Quarterly The Cairn
- Redwood Writers Unexpected Spring, The House up Little Lake Road, Solstice, Prayers in the Shape of Wind
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