Tag Archives: Poetry

Make Friday Write

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We’ve made it back around to Friday, and I hope everyone else has a had a good start to National Poetry Month. I haven’t written anything that I’m overjoyed with thus far, but I’m trucking along. I am posting what I started working on on 4-2-12. This was from my idea sheet so it had been a while since I came up with the idea. I’ve worked on it for a few days, but still not sure exactly what direction it is headed in.

–and I will go to try and salvage my poem :)  

I haven’t had any poems to submit this week, but I’m only waiting on one last item from 2011 that was submitted before I can go back and see how I did with my submissions to acceptance ratio for 2011. For someone who was never particularly great at math I sure like playing with percentages.

I have to cut back on my online reading lately, but I did manage to read through a few items recently including this great article in The Rumpus about whether or not a doctor should keep their politics out of the exam room. I’m wary of bringing my personal views on things like politics and religion into my classroom so I appreciate reading that other professionals think about those same issues.

I also enjoyed the Sarcastic Guide to Book Publishing as well as the most recent issue of Diverse Voices Quarterly where my friend, Jenny Beaver, has a poem!

In other news I found out I was nominated for a storySouth award! Wow! Wish I could come up with a new essay topic. I need to write some more prose. Maybe I should write some more about the Histories Mysteries special I saw on the Wright Brothers. What if, as I spent my whole childhood believing, they weren’t the first in flight? Can you guys think of things you just KNEW to be true that you found out later weren’t?

As always feel free to comment on my work in progress and/or to post your own. I will take down my work and anything you dear readers post one week from today. Have a great weekend!

2012 RCCC Literary and Fine Arts Festival

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This last week, well really the whole semester, has been tied up with my school’s literary festival. This is the third year for the festival, but the first year where the art department was also included. This is my second year helping. Even a course release this semester didn’t help me when the actual week of the festival came up. I had a voicemail to monitor, a presentation to prepare, bios to put together for those I was introducing and etc etc etc

I wasn’t able to attend the first event which was a performance of the play “Look Back the Maytime Days” which is based on the work of Fred Chappell about his mountain roots. I had to monitor a voicemail to confirm orders for the weeks before. I kept thinking back to my customer service days as I put on my phone rep voice :) Why didn’t I make the performance? Well, I was reading at the wonderful Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill. They took several copies of “Paper House” and “Fat Girl” to sell so they are on the shelves there!

Monday, however, I did have to be in Salisbury for Fred’s keynote address. He was fantastic, as always, and we had over 100 people in attendance. Some people felt he may have talked above the students a bit, but why talk down? Also on Monday I introduced and attended a creative writing faculty lead workshop from which I found my last Friday poem draft. I also attended a film session before taking a break before the 2pm session for some lunch and attempts at catching up since I may have had to give an online assignment for my classes, but they still had items to turn in so the grading must continue!

That evening I was back to help set up a reading/poetry meet-up of sorts at the Literary Bookpost in Salisbury. It was nice to see several folks from Jacar Press.

Tuesday had me back in Salisbury for Day 2 where I attended the two morning lectures before needing to head back to Concord to help on the final night of early college interviews. Can’t wait to see who got into the program for next year! Did I help suggest some good ones?

Wednesday was our one day on the South Campus in Concord which is where I generally teach. I took a picture of the audience for the presentation I gave with Dr. Sherry Ginn. There were about 60 or so people there. Dr. Ginn opened by talking about how she came to write about pop-culture/sci-fi via academic writing and how we met at the NCWN where she was also starting to write poetry. It was great to talk about those connections and then I read some poems and talked about how you can find inspiration to write about anything. I gave examples of poems about zombies, Buffy the Vampire Slayer etc. We also gave them a writing exercise and gave them a chance to share and ask questions. It was a lot of fun.

I was on campus all afternoon as my classes had a chance to attend different events such as a book discussion, a WELL attended open mic (although did that have something to do with the pizza) and an encore presentation about art and poetry with Jonathan K Rice. I worked in a short bit of time to check in on virtual classes before an open mike at Dilworth Coffee that evening.

The final day of events was an encore performance of “Look Back the Maytime Days” on campus for students followed by an open mike and the Creative Writing Awards ceremony. I didn’t stay for the open mike, but one of my students won a Creative Writing Award so it was great to hear her read before I headed back to Concord to work, work, work before the Poetry Slam. I wasn’t in charge of the slam so I ended up heading home early because it was late to start.

It was a great event and some of the planning has already started for next year, but I’m not sure how involved I will be the next time around. Already this year more was taken over by the administration at the school which helped immensely.

What will be in store for 2013?

Poetry Book Giveaway 2012!

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This will be my 3rd time participating in the 3rd Annual Big Poetry Book Giveaway which was started by Kelli Agodon.

I love this project! The first year I gave away copies of “Paper House” and A Van Jordan’s “Macnolia.” Last year I gave away copies of “The Wait of Atom” and the chapbook “Love Poem to Androgyny”

I was having trouble deciding what books to give away this year because I do still have two remaining copies of the special edition of “The Wait of Atom” but I also have a new chapbook. Well, I’ve decided to give away at least three books.

Hey Hey that is my chapbook! (e-version cover)

First up I will be giving away one of the last special edition copies of Atom. So if you already have this book then you should indicate so when you enter to win below. More details on that in just a few.

Second, I will give away a copy of “Fat Girl” and, as maybe a twist, I’ll give away either a print or digital copy so you should indicate which you would prefer in case you win.

And, finally, a non-me book that I want to give away – so many good ones! – yet I have decided on my favorite recent must read Imago by Joseph O. Legaspi.

To enter you must indicate which books (and versions) you are most interested in and make sure that you list your email when you register to leave your comment. Your email will not show, but I’ll have them saved in wordpress so I will know how to contact you if you should win.

I will take entries until midnight (EST) on April 30th and then I will announce winners within a few days after that. Spread the word and look for other ones to enter! Let’s share some poetry :)

Make Friday Write

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The RCCC Literary & Fine Arts Festival is now complete, and I’m hoping to do a post about it soon. I, however, need to first find my way back something called TIME.

  • Here is the most interesting post I have read yet about the current Ghost Writing debate. It reminds me of that old question about authorship and editorship. Where does the line go?
  • I recently (how recent is recent at this point!) watched a documentary titled Vietnam’s Unseen War where an American photographer visited Vietnamese photographers from war time (on both sides of the war). Fascinating to see that view. A while back I reviewed the Vietnam War memoir Two of the Missing and the photographer they follow in the documentary is one of the photographer’s also mentioned in that memoir. That’s always the fascinating thing to me about research and/or study of one subject: when things start to connect.
  • Tomorrow in Charlotte there is a NCWN meet-up at Julia’s Coffee from 3-5. The idea is to bring a book and/or an idea you want to swap with other writers. If I get caught up on grading I just might have to stop by there because, speaking of connections, my spouse has to work tomorrow because of the Vietnam War Remembered parade tomorrow
  • And, of course, it is almost NaPoWriMo. Is anyone diving in to do 30 poems in 30 days? I’m undecided at this point.

Now do I have a poem this week? Hmmm. I actually scribbled this down during a directed free write at one of the LitFest sessions. I will note the poem (as always, without a form yet) that I typed up from my notes but that hasn’t been revised in anyway. I’ll tell you more about the free-write exercise itself if you’d like later. Below it are some notes to myself about where I could go with this.

–going to take my notes, and your notes and see what I can do with this :)  

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As always feel free to post your work in progress in comments and I will take your work and my work down one week from today.

Looking forward to chatting with you and I have several great blog topics that I want to post when I get a free moment :)

Review: Imago

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Imago
Imago by Joseph O. Legaspi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m not even sure if this book needs a review from me, but I have to say I fell in love with it. I won’t belabor the point but this was a collection where I found myself stopping to go back and read poems before I even wanted to go on; this is a collection I didn’t want to end. Legaspi has a gifte for taking topics (like growing up – as most of these poems reflect back on) and somehow avoiding the potential cliches that come with those topics.

I love many of the poems, but one of my favorites is “The Red Sweater” where Legaspi writes, “hours are merely links / in the chain of days startlingly similiar, that being in the blue morning with my mother / putting on her polyester uniform, which, / even when it’s newly-washed, smells / of mashed beans and cooked ground beef.” I know I have a poem that thinks back on my own mother and her clothes that smelled like BBQ and ice cream. I can relate even though the smells were different; that is a wonderful gift to bring to a poem – empathy.

I can’t recommend this one enough, but if you want me to quibble on one thing it might be the final poem. I may be hung up on final poems lately, but I felt this piece – perhaps – tried to sum up too much in a somewhat surreal place. I missed the more concrete poems that came earlier and I would have been thrilled if he had ended with one of the other two poems that came just before the final one.

But, who am I to say?

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Review: The Wonder of It All

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The Wonder of It All
The Wonder of It All by Elizabeth P. Glixman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars (or it really should be a 3.5 but I don’t get that option!)

I have read a decent amount of Elizabeth Glixman’s poetry over the last few years and I was intrigued by her pop culture commentary poems (my term for them) that I saw in Frigg where she also comments, “These poems are about present-time experiences and the memory of past experiences (childhood, family gatherings, regular trash-collection pickup—kinder, gentler times (nostalgia perhaps?) and the effect the craziness of today’s world can have on our psyches. ” Granted that statement not be true about all of the poems in “The Wonder of it All” but I think that is a way to read them.

This virtually hand sized chapbook contains poems with titles such as “The Man from TSA–Unrequieted Love Did Not Stop Glenn Close” and “The Neti Pot and the U-turn” cover a wide variety of modern day topics with a wry sense of humor as well as a touch of surrealism.

My favorite may be “Avalanche Worry” which ends with a disjointed – yet oddly appropriate list for the avalanche worrier, “Always Carry Tums / A cell phone / year supply of groceries / a can opener / a snorkel.”

Normally I rate poetry books as either a 5 – blew me away or a 4 – really loved it but not quite a 5, but I decided to use a rare 3 here (which should really be a 3.5 if I could do that) because I really enjoyed a lot of the poems and how the book overall was put together (consistent tone etc). But. There were moments when I found msyelf wondering why a poem didn’t end sooner or when I found myself pondering why there would be several lines with no punctuation but then it would start? From an execution point of view I just wasn’t quite sure.

All that being said, this is a fascinating little read; a little book you could pretty much fit in your pocket to pull out instead of your ever present cell phone.

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