Lots to try and get to today. First a list of events and/or deadline type items.

• Open Mike/Poetry Coffee House at Mitchell Community College in Statesville at 6:30 on Thursday. I’m hoping to make this!
• Friday at 7pm there is a reading at Green Rice Art Gallery in Charlotte. Great line up of featured readers (believe there is an Open Mike)  including John Amen (editor of Pedestal) and Rhett Trull (editor of Cave Wall) I keep meaning to go to one of these but Friday nights are not usually a good night for me and getting out to events. Perhaps someone could bribe me by inviting me to dinner. Hahaha
• The South Carolina Festival of the Book is this weekend. If you are anywhere near Columbia, SC definitely stop by. I’d love to be able to make it. Could I convince my non-poetry spouse to go? (And not just non-poetry but pretty much doesn’t read a lot)
• I’m still taking writing for Referential Magazine through Sunday. I will start reading the submissions on Monday and hope to have my decision on the first piece to be published (and any associated pieces) by no later than the end of the month.
• Next Monday I’ll be speaking to a group of writing students at a community college. If you have any short poems or flash fiction pieces (or non-fiction) that you think I should share drop me an email or leave links in comments. So excited about hanging out with some new writing students!

Next a list of people who need mentioning:

• My good writing friend Melanie Faith is teaching an online poetry class. Melanie has worked with me on my own poetry, fiction and non-fiction and I can’t say enough about her generous teaching and editing skills. Please share the link to her class and consider signing up yourself. This is her second online class. The first went very well.
• Susan Meyers is a great South Carolina poet who is also a teacher. You can find out about her books and where she will be teaching on her blog.
• I’ve mentioned Poems Out Loud before but they have such a great website of poets reading their work and quite a few books coming out from the associated WW Norton.
• I’m helping out with the Poetry Council of North Carolina’s Contests this year so NC residents or who have an NC connection check it out!
• Emma Bolden is one of my favorite emerging poets. I have all three of her chapbooks, including the one from Toadlily which is actually three chapbooks from different authors  in one. Toadlily has started a blog and in this entry Emma talks about her book length witch poem project. For those of you looking to structure a book, or wondering if you have a manuscript, give this a read and listen.

Hope everyone is ready for a good week. Let me know if there is anything you’d like me to discuss this week. I think Video Tuesday will be Video Wednesday this week. I have been meaning to do a blog on how a poem begins, but I am also thinking of going back to some old class notes and pulling out some fun discussion material along with Thursday Poem Share and Friday Wrap-Up.

Have a great week everyone!