A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).
This week, a somewhat shorter edition than usual (perhaps the weather was too nice to blog?) with corpses and coffins, stillness and transformation, conglomerates and cigarettes, and a famous poet snacking on small purple carrots. Enjoy.
The chief mourner so small,
Karen Macfarlane, The Costume of the Chief Mourner
shrunk under his flat cap.
His overcoat,
heavy as a king’s mantle,
pinning him to the earth […]
Several years ago (how long can some poems take to arrive in their proper form?) I was staring from a window (in a classroom – perhaps I was invigilating a test) and down in the car park below I saw a car valet parking up his van next to a much fancier car. I seem to have watched him pretty carefully if the poem is to be believed (which I’d usually say not to). Gradually, the poem acquired its erotic undertones (the lovers back to back in bed, the intimacy of the hand-washing, the moisture, the smells, the final turning away) which surprised me as I thought the poem was mostly a comment on work, labour (I love poems about processes) and ultimately about class differences (for money, one man cleans another man’s car).
Martyn Crucefix, Two New Poems – at ‘The High Window’
I’m honored to bits that two of my poems were published in Villain Era this past Friday!
There’s something so special about being included in a brand new publication, and I could not be more delighted about this revenge-themed magazine edited by Charlie Jensen. The concept and the editor are brilliant!
Katie Manning, Villain Era
Over the past month of mourning, I’ve found comfort in knowing that my mother led a long and full life, getting to do most everything she wanted even into her 90s. And she had the kind of death we all wish for: at home in bed, with loved ones near, in no pain, at peace. I’m also grateful for the ability to grieve, laugh and reminisce with my sisters.
Since then my mother has visited me several times in my sleep, a loving and comforting presence. Even in scenarios that involved corpses and coffins, the dream character of my mom conveyed that these were merely the outward trappings of death, while her spirit lives beyond. Other dreams have echoed our close bond: in one I asked her if she needed anything, and she replied simply, “hug.” In another I was washing her dear face with a washcloth, very tenderly, just as I did while caregiving for her in recent years.
My mother not only gave me unconditional love, she modeled how to live an authentic life. As one of my sympathy cards reads, “those we have loved are always with us.” I am truly blessed to be my mother’s daughter and to carry her in my heart.
the shape of a life
Annette Makino, In memory of my mother
one sparkling wave
returns to the sea
When I was at my mom and dad’s, my mom showed me various books that she had used as devotional texts for Lent. One book, Forty Days with Madeleine L’Engle, had all sorts of scraps of paper in it, including some of my poems.
We couldn’t remember whether or not we were using the book together, but across a distance, or whether she was using it to lead a local church group. I was happy to see that I still liked the poem. It was first published in Chiron Review, back in 2009. I’m almost certain that I wrote it earlier.
I’ve now written a variety of these kinds of poems, the ones I think of as Jesus in the modern world poems. They are an attempt to answer that old Sunday School question of how the world would react if Jesus returned again and what would Jesus do and how would we recognize him?
I think of my Sunday School teachers of long ago, asking those questions, and I imagine that they would be scandalized by my poetic answers. Of course, they may have been secretly radical themselves, as they taught us about the Jesus that the Church wanted us to know. They may have planted these seeds that have bloomed into poems, decades later.
Kristin Berkey-Abbott, That Year When Jesus Came to Your High School
Well, I was expecting a book about motherhood, from the title and the cover. The first poem is called “Lambing Season” so I was expecting – well, kind of cute and fluffy lambs. Maybe cute and fluffy poems? I, and any reader is quickly disabused of this notion with this opening poem. This is lambing season, but the lambs we are talking about are no longer living. Their hearts are being fed to the dogs. Cuts of meat are hanging in the window. Somehow this ordinary image of a butcher’s window is made extraordinary – visceral and full of death, as opposed to the usual feelings we might have about new life starting in lambing season.
Kim Moore, Putting Together a Collection – Looking at Swell by Maria Ferguson
In February, I took another stack of material to the Georgia State University Archive. It was amazing to see the care with which they’ve cataloged and stored my papers and ephemera from my career as a poet and writer. This stack included the working manuscript and proof of Wonder & Wreckage, my first attempt at a chapbook from 1995, and a school assignment from 1987 that has some of my first poems. In the middle of that stack (pictured above) are five notebooks from 1990 to 1999 that contain the handwritten early drafts of poems that would later make it into my collections and a lot of cringe-worthy heartbreak and experiments that were all part of the process. Thank you again to Morna Gerrard for being a world-class curator.
I’m now three issues into my editorship of Georgia Voice – the LGBTQ+ newspaper of record for the southeast. The news for the community continues to be dire as the current administration works to try and erase us, especially trans folks. The anti-trans legislation at the state and local level is absurd and cruel and mainly a distraction from all the other ways lawmakers are trying to strip people of their civil and human rights. You can read the March issue of Georgia Voice here.
Collin Kelley, Anthology update and other news
Jimin Seo is a trained pianist, and the musical term ossia is an alternative phrase or piece played instead of the original. Within the collection, poems alternate (generally, not every time) between English and Korean. It is not necessary to understand the Korean as a recurring theme is how to express how one feels and the limits/barriers of language. It follows the Objectivist school, “Writing occurs which is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody” (Louis Zukofsky). The poems are not expressions of a truth, but a search towards a truth. Using two languages underlines this isn’t about understanding, but the difficulty of communication, how to find the right language, the right words, to express an idea or emotion. How, in a conversation, most communication is not the words, but the tone, the rhythm, the non-verbal signals towards connection and sharing.
Emma Lee, “Ossia 오시아” Seo Jimin (The 87 Press) – book review
A poem about love and loneliness and the crippling anticipation of loss. First published in BOAAT, which sadly ceased to exist, as if to reenforce the anguish of the poem. Good thing there’s memory to keep us warm and fuzzy. Or cold and hungry, depending on our vantage point. I imagine that from the beyond, looking back, we’ll be as needy of human connection as we had always been. Or perhaps not. Perhaps we’ll be stoic and unmoved by the fading of everything we have ever loved. I prefer the former scenario, albeit it’s the infinitely painful one. I worry (very much) that we’re condemned to the second.
Romana Iorga, Pied Piper, the Wind
“For a whole year I lived with Dante, with him alone, drawing the eight circles of his inferno,” Rodin told Le Matin. “At the end of this year, I realized that while my drawing rendered my vision of Dante, they had become too remote from reality. So I started all over again, working from nature, with my models.”
The artist’s dream is officially realized with the stamp of a State commission in 1879, when the Under-Secretary for Fine Arts offered Auguste Rodin the opportunity to create a work for the public. Obsessed with his readings of Dante, Rodin asked for permission to create a doorway for the planned Museum of Decorative Arts, a threshold between interior and exterior based on the first section of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, from the Inferno.
For the next two decades, The Gate of Hell would consume Rodin’s thoughts and work. He missed the 1885 deadline for the commission. Even at his death, Rodin’s gate remained unfinished, its fragments scattered, quoted, reshaped into various sculptures and pieces that rest across the museums of the world. […]
Rodin’s famous statue, The Thinker, was sourced from The Gate of Hell, where Rodin located him above the door panels, calling him “The Poet”, a god-like figure stationed at a central point, perched atop a rock looking down on the endless anguish of creation.
Alina Stefanescu, Rodin’s Dante.
Writing a poem is straightforward. Most of the time. Explaining the poem is hard. Embarrassing, even.
But what is almost impossible is describing what being a poet means: how the frame shrinks or expands suddenly, how objects and colours are interchangeable, how things connect to other things like strangers on a train, how every word, every sky, every shadow, every explanation, even this one, creeps into a poem, creeps into the poet, the process of stillness and transformation simultaneous, incessant and inevitable.
How long before eyes glaze over? How long before the conversation slides into a shallow awkwardness? How long before that pause segues into inanity? How long before dusk descends upon yet another impotent day?
Rajani Radhakrishnan, Deliberation
One of [the] trails I frequent in the winter holds its history, it seems: the ravages of old big water coursing, of the sharp edges of glaciers arriving, receding, of rock heaved up, stones hurled down, transformed now into a narrow valley and a lively stream opening out into punctuations of marshes ringed by hills. Rocks tell complicated stories of the comings and goings. I like moving through this long story with my brief one. I have a few old scars that tell stories, falling off a bike here, a bit of surgery there. It pleases me that history writes itself this way on the material world, my skin included. I wonder sometimes about memory and whether it’s something only biological entities experience, or whether a stone recalls its rolling, a tree what caused its slash. Does a feather recall flying? And if it does, is it with nostalgia, that ache for what can no longer be? Is every step we take in the world awash in time past and recollected not just by me but everything around me? It makes my fears of the future seem silly, somehow, with so much of the past still held and writ large and small. The future just more writing to add to the dripping rockwall. Victoria Chang’s intriguing book The Trees Witness Everything felt in keeping with some of my own thoughts these past weeks.
Marilyn McCabe, The field remembers
Over the years, I’ve been told many times that we should move Red Hen to a city that loves and supports the arts: San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, Boston. My husband would prefer to live in any of these cities to living in Los Angeles.
Minneapolis has three presses. San Francisco has Heyday and McSweeney. Portland has Tin House. Seattle is near Copper Canyon. New York is the mothership of literary culture and media.
At nineteen, I watched a woman shake out her curls and approach her boyfriend at a truck stop. He was missing teeth. He had wicked tattoos. He was bald. He put his arms out to her, and he howled. She dove into him, her home in the world.
We uplift stories that will help readers find their own home in the world, to see themselves and know who they are. The stories of the West need to be published in the West. In my wild, thrumming life, I’m ready to find the next story. Life is big and messy and complicated, but we get to make art, to work with writers.
Kate Gale, Our Home in the World
I know there have been many eager to see what Toronto writer and editor Terese Mason Pierre could do through a collection beyond a chapbook, so it is good to see the release of her full-length debut, Myth (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2025), a collection of physical and precise poems on and around stories, storytelling and how stories take hold. These are poems as foundational as the earth or the ocean, offering sharp and astute first-person observational, declarative and descriptive lyrics. “My grandfather says we can eat what we kill.” she begins, immediately setting the tone with the opening line of the opening poem, “Fishing,” “We wade into the water and find a shark.” Terese Mason Pierre’s poems tells stories, including those that hint of their implications, meanings and true purposes. She wants you to listen to what these stories are saying. As this particular piece continues: “In the bleeding night, we carry it home, across / the mountain. The way your feet land before // mine, I memorize. I copy your plan for leading / me out of this spectacular cycle—fold it in and over // ourselves until our parents finally call for / the doctor. Our love has never allowed // itself to be gutted.”
Set in five section-clusters of shorter lyrics—“Expanse (the sea),” “Interlude (the deep),” “Brink (the earth),” “Interlude (the cosmos)” and “Swell (the stars)”—she interplays the elements with the cosmos with a call-and-response, the “interlude” of the Greek chorus, providing asides to the main narrative as part of this main narrative. “I’ve done it because it was what I wanted. / My neighbour’s garden grows mangoes beyond / a rotted fence,” she writes, to open the poem “Rich,” “and I stole one as it they’d require / a descendant if caught. But this trope is old. / This means nothing.”
In the end, myths are the stories we tell ourselves and each other, the stories that warn, catch and inform, stories that can propel us forward, hold us back, distract our attention or inform our world-view, including times when all of the above occur simultaneously. “My mother tried to tell me I was broken,” begins “Dead Living Things,” “and I shut her away. Who died and made her oracle? / Where my mouth falters, my skin reserves.” Oh my, this is good. Myth is a striking and deeply complex debut.
rob mclennan, Terese Mason Pierre, Myth
butterfly bush
Jim Young [no title]
high on the prison wall
thoughts take flight
The poem with which the collection begins, Views Along the English Coast, is typical of Lund’s complex, challenging verse that draws on an impressive range of intertextual and cultural references to make its point. It begins with the matter-of-fact statement that ‘The chalk cliffs are falling again’. The simplicity of the description is deceptive: as the rest of the poem reveals this is more than a simple depiction of coastal erosion. Lund is summoning the iconic resonances of the white cliffs on the South Coast: he is calling upon their significance in music, art and literature as symbols of the national character, of the bulldog spirit, and of England as homeland. The fact that these cliffs are ‘falling’ suggests that notions of England and Englishness are unstable, liable to change. One factor precipitating that change is migration: when homes are lost new homes must be found. Lund draws a parallel between the English family rendered homeless, and needing to be taken in, with ‘the people, who, of course, got out of somewhere else’, in other words those migrants and refugees risking their lives in small craft crossing the Channel to seek refuge in England. Offering them a new home will have inevitable consequences for the nature of the culture of their adopted country. […]
[A]s nationalism is making itself felt in countries across the world, Jacob Lund’s Acoustic Mirrors could not be timelier. This is not an easy read; the themes are discomforting, and the pamphlet features layered, complex poems, rich in imagery and symbolism, drawing on a wide range of references. Behind them is a powerful intellect with something of real importance to say and the poetic skills to be able to do so.
Nigel Kent, Review of ‘Acoustic Mirrors’ by Jacob Lund
I’m delighted to be able to showcase today a poem from Martin Ferguson’s latest pamphlet, Stone Age Howl (Dreich Press, 2024).
Matthew Stewart, A poem from Martin Ferguson’s Stone Age Howl
The poem I’ve chosen is titled ‘Fugitives’. It’s especially interesting because of its delicate layers, starting with the title, which seems to refer to the protagonists but also hints at the passing of time itself, a theme’s that’s pivotal to the poem as a whole. A mention of grandparents nods at the passing of a generational baton, as encapsulated by the children’s use of rusted, ageing skates. And then there’s the filter of memory: this poem takes place in the past and the narrator’s perspective is of an adult who’s no longer a child. It’s an implicit invitation for us to reflect on our own lives, the specific rendered universal. I hope you enjoy it…
Fugitives
Small window in the winter
of English winters, when we knew
that conditions chance aligned,
to hold the weight of our escapes. […]
Recently on the weekly program Poetry Moment on WPSU — a radio station in Central Pennsylvania — poet Marjorie Maddox featured work by another Pennsylvania poet and Emeritus Professor at Penn State University, Emily Grosholz.
Grosholz’ featured poem, “Holding Patterns,” is a villanelle: Here are its opening lines:
We can’t remember half of what we know.
They hug each other and then turn away.
One thinks in silence, never let me go.The sky above the airport glints with snow
That melts beneath the laws it must obey.
We can’t remember half of what we know.His arms are strong and warm, his breath is slow;
She holds him close, not knowing what to say.
One thinks in silence, never let me go.Time silts the rivers, ravaging the flow
Of wave on wavelet, and suspends the day.
We can’t remember half of what we know.Grosholz’ complete poem is available at this link.
JoAnne Growney, Poetry Moment with a Bit of Math
What is worth noting, on the assumption you hadn’t yet, is the sound of the poem. There’s a masterclass to be had in the way the poem sounds within itself. I’m sure I’ve missed some, but the sounds of
Shale + fragrant
Conglomerates + cigarettes (the worst Oasis demo, etc)
Sex, Breakfast + eggs
Smoke + two stroke
Jolt + faulty
Gear + Golden
Feet + beach
Strata + marbles
Kissed + exquisite + thisAnd, “golden sand // sugaring your feet” is an excellent image that more than repays the entrance fee on its own…
Mat Riches, Chalk Lines
There’s something especially fascinating about outdated anthologies. This particular one is an unpretentious but carefully curated collection, aimed at school use — there’s no preface or introduction, but there are brief biographical notes on the poets at the back and suggested questions for each of them. The twelve poets are Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden, Louis Macneice, John Betjeman, Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas, Laurie Lee, Charles Causley and Ted Hughes. They are pretty equally represented, all with between nine and 16 poems: enough to get a real feel for what they are doing and how they are doing it, and the suggested questions repeatedly invite you to compare one poet to another.
This selection is in some ways quite conventional — any survey of British poetry in the 20th century ending-in-the-70s should surely have Auden, Macneice and Larkin, and it is a bit of a commonplace of university courses and introductory books to begin such surveys with Hardy. I think it’s an excellent anthology in lots of ways, and I very much enjoyed reading it, though it prompted several thoughts about how our sense of what “English poetry” is has changed over the last fifty years.
For a start, you wouldn’t even consider publishing such a collection now without including at least one woman. But which woman poet from England (or Wales) who was publishing between 1900 and 1970 would you actually include in your top 10 or 12? I don’t think it’s obvious. Edna St Vincent Millay (b. 1892), Stevie Smith (b. 1902), E. J. Scovell (b. 1907), Elizabeth Jennings (b. 1926) and Anne Stevenson (b. 1933) would all qualify chronologically, and if I were editing such a collection, I would include at least one of them, but in terms of influence — and, if I’m honest, also in terms of achievement — I wouldn’t rank any of them on the level of Hardy, Lawrence, Larkin or Thomas, and probably not with Owen or Macneice either. This is not, I think, some kind of internalised misogyny — it’s perfectly obvious why women were until very recently much less likely to have the opportunity to become, or to be recognised as, a major poet. But I think it’s hard to argue honestly that there was any English woman poet of this era who had anything like the status of the best known men. If there was a Rossetti or Dickinson of this period it was surely Plath (a much better poet than Hughes, but unambiguously an American). Do comment, though, with any suggestions.
On the other hand, it’s pretty striking that there’s also no Eliot at all. In fact, there’s something rather refreshing about reading a survey of English poetry ‘from Hardy to Hughes’ without him in it. This isn’t, as I first thought it might be, a tacit rejection of modernism tout court, or of free verse in general — much of Lawrence is much freer verse than most of Eliot, and plenty of Hughes is in free verse as well, so there’s plenty of it in the book. We might not feel comfortable calling Hughes a modernist poet as such, but Lawrence certainly is, and insofar as Hughes is a modernist he is for sure a Lawrentian modernist, not an Eliotic one. I think there are two possible reasons for omitting Eliot: one is that he was American, not English (very reasonable, in my view; he seems to me thoroughly American). The other, more prosaic, possibility is that at the time he was simply considered to be an ‘A level’ (rather than ‘O level’) poet.
The book contains no explanation of its selection, so I can’t confirm why Eliot’s out. I was interested, though, not to miss him.
Victoria Moul, Hardy to Hughes: English poetry 1900-1970 without T. S. Eliot (or any women)
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ conference this year will take place over the last weekend of March, 2025. The conference is held in a different city each year. This year it will be in Los Angeles.
There was some deliberation over whether it was a good time to have the conference in L.A., given the recent fires. In the end the organizers decided to continue as planned.
Listening to the LA community, we believe that AWP’s presence in LA and your attendance in March will help sustain and support the local community during this critical time of recovery. Discover Los Angeles confirms that our conference in LA will boost the local economy; keep affected hospitality, tourism, and transportation workers in their jobs; and hopefully aid the city in its recovery.
I think this is the right thing to do. […]
My advice insofar as book fair conversations go (and really all conversations), is just try to be present. Talk to the person you’re talking to. Everyone has something interesting to offer. Don’t panic and feel like you should be talking to so-and-so (unless you’re actually late to meet so-and-so.) Don’t obsess over status. Listen to people, the way you want others to listen to you. […]
I’ve always enjoyed my time at the conference. In the years that I attended I got to speak to people I’d only ever known online. I got to have long conversations with editors I admired, about subjects beyond writing and editing. There were endless wisecracks. An editor nursed her baby. A famous poet sat behind me, snacking on small purple carrots. I met the OG founders of Submittable. I met the founders of NewPages. I caught up with writer-friends who lived far away.
I learned about small presses producing astonishingly beautiful books. I discovered new literary magazines I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of. Like just about everyone else, I left the conference with several pounds of gorgeous books from tiny independent presses and stacks of literary journals.
Becky Tuch, Q: Are you going to AWP in L.A.? What’s AWP all about?
Being in Mexico City was both wonderful and clarifying. In that vast metropolis of 22 million people, a small percentage are wealthy but the majority are definitely not. In the streets and subways you are confronted with human suffering and afflictions one would rarely encounter on the streets of an American or Canadian city. Water flowed freely in our hotel and rented apartments, but up on the sides of the volcanic mountains ringing the city, many Mexicans have none, and are forced to walk long distances to carry water back to their homes, or rely on spotty water deliveries by truck. The level of security on homes in more affluent neighborhoods — heavy locked gates, wrought iron pickets, mortared broken glass on tops of walls, and even coils of razor wire — as well as guards armed with shotguns or even machine guns outside some businesses, showed that theft and violence are feared and even expected.
Yet, it was clear that no matter what, daily life goes on. In that society, where the family is strong and central, people take care of each other; give pesos to beggars; support their local economies by buying from street vendors, many of whom are indigenous; participate in churches and other organizations that help those in need. Are they happy or unhappy? Some are definitely suffering. But I saw much more joy, laughter, awareness of others, kindness and genuine helpfulness than I usually do in public places at home. I observed this in simple interactions over food or travel; I felt it particularly when I talked to people in more detail or found myself in groups where we were all sharing or enjoying something together — music, dance, gardens, walking in a park, buying juice from a street vender. People are simply more human with each other. When someone gets up to give you their seat on the subway, they smile at you and speak, and make sure to make eye contact again when one of you leaves the car. Standing around a group of musicians playing on the street, the crowd interacts, dancing and catching each other’s eyes to share in the pleasure — and these are mixed groups of strangers, from the well-dressed to the tattered, all bonded by this moment of discovery and sharing of something joyful that is being given for free.
It made me think a lot about the time I spend sitting at my computer, versus the time I am with others. The time I spend in my head thinking, anticipating, and worrying — as opposed to really being in the present moment, doing things with my hands, actually learning something, having conversations, playing my instruments, observing the real world. The time I spend agonizing about politics and governmental failures, when so much of the power to make others feel better, and to make life happier, lies with each of us — and will continue to do so, no matter what happens in the larger world.
Beth Adams, A Letter from the Neighbors
Oats rise and belch as they cook,
Ren Powell, Early Spring
and the whole world goes soft,
obligating you to stand here, waiting
in your wool socks,
your flannel robe.
Stephanie and I have been engaged in trying to reclaim some of our lives from the major corporate oligarchs of our age. It hasn’t been easy but it has been rewarding. I’ve made a number of changes, including: […]
I have a Kindle. Last week I canceled my Amazon account. My Kindle still works, largely because for years I’ve been getting my ebooks from other sources and putting them on my Kindle using a piece of software called Calibre. It’s also possible to transfer them directly without any software because your computer will see your Kindle as a hard drive. There are many places to get books online, both for money and for free. In this day and age, all we’re ever paying for is a license for ebooks anyway, not actual ownership. Those books (and that music) can be edited, or removed from your devices entirely, at any time without your consent or even knowledge. The other day I came across the line: “If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.” Do with that what you will.
Jason Crane, Taking back control
The politics of the country do not seem to have improved in the last week, but the shift to Daylight Savings Time better matches my sleep patterns, and longer days seem to help my mood. I am trying to find the joy in small things that I can. I visited a cat cafe in Kirkland, walked along the water (despite cold wind,) visited the dermatologist (no skin cancer, yay, but the doctor was puzzled by apparent allergic reactions to almost nothings that were pretty severe) after my father had melanoma surgery this week (he is recovering just fine.) Self-care during this time feels off. I keep dreaming about packing and repacking suitcases – on the titanic, on a doomed flight, before earthquakes – signaling my body is feeling the stress. So, this week I have some major dental work I’m nervous about – two front crowns, no novocaine, as usual. I hope my body can handle it without major MS flareups. In the meantime, I am waiting for flowers. I hope AWP will be good, despite my usual trepidation about flying (made worse by recent airplane mishaps) and finding a way to navigate LA as a disabled person. […]
I’ve been hacking around at my latest book manuscript to get it ready to send out to publishers. I’m trying to integrate the frustrations with politics and disability and being a woman in a non-woman-friendly universe into it without making it unfun to read. I’m trying to come up with working metaphors for the barriers in my life that could be universal, if that makes sense. I’m trying to re-think the way I write a poem, what a poem might look or sound like, for me. Something beyond growing into your own voice, but creating your own vehicles, vessels, forms. I haven’t had much mental space for this, but I feel it is important even in the midst of chaos and uncertainty to continue trying to create. The process of trying to explain my disability over the last few weeks to people over and over triggered a poem about monsterism and disability, the way that the world will make you feel monstrous for not fitting into norms.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, Signs of Spring, Accessibility and Travel, and Reimagining Your Creative Process
stone saint
Grant Hackett [no title]
an engine
idles
the sky
longs to be known
I say in my Substack tagline that I am “Writer, reader, observer, New Orleanian.” I think observer is the most important of all. When you closely observe people, cultures, situations outside yourself, it makes you a better, more skilled, more empathetic writer and human.
I trust myself. I trust what I see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, believe with my whole heart. There were times in my life I was told I was dumb, I was lazy, I was bad. But I didn’t believe it because I knew myself and my heart. I don’t say this to imply I’m better or smarter than others, only to encourage others to believe and trust in themselves, too. You must believe in yourself without reservation. That’s my advice as a writer and a human being in a tough world. No one else can give you that, you have to give it to yourself.
Charlotte Hamrick, Tell me what you see
The famous poet who used to be
a banker wrote, Teach us to careand not to care Teach us to sit
still. Here too, an old man
drivels beyond repair.Lies and spite among
the roses. Cruelties
in the very sand.How many times did we hear
the words gold and golden
on the radio?So we spread the butter
on the pancakes, spear
the little fingersof meat. The dust is upon us,
Luisa A. Igloria, Ash Wednesday
but we will lick the sweetness
until our tongues grow numb.
I had a much more serious post planned for this week, about how wrong it feels to be writing when there is so much that is terrible in the world. Honestly I can’t add any more to the excellent articles that are out there, so I thought I’d take the rare step of writing something cheerful.
I’ll begin by saying my writer’s weeks may look very different to many other writer’s weeks. I live with chronic illness, which means my useful hours are pretty low – writing demands a lot of brain and body power and my brain and body can be somewhat capricious.
In my last post I said how full of joy I am that my days are made of writing. I can pretty much write about anything and feel happy (although I did once have a job writing for a sugar daddy dating website; that did not make me happy at all). I love the craft, love the tap of my fingers on the keyboard, the swirl of ink or pencil on the page. Writing is the core of who I am and the thing that I try hardest at, fail hardest at and, crucially, keep working to improve.
Kathryn Anna Marshall, My writing week has been so good I want to tell you about it
This morning the cat from across the road sings me three hellos while the air brings us gentle elements of spring.
Alt Text says this week’s photo is a shadow of a person on a road. I say this is me out on the country lane walking with my shadow. I liked the length of my shadow on this particular day and wanted to capture the spring sunshine. Whilst walking I had been pondering the way people sometimes look as though they are taking their shadow for a walk and sometimes look as though they are walking with their shadow. I was also thinking how I picture the metaphorical road I walk differently on different days. Can you begin to imagine the number of tangents this took my thoughts off into! […]
It was an absolute delight to find out that two of my poems had been shared at a World Book Day event. I felt a wonderful glow of pride when I was told. I always wondered whether something like this would happen and now I know it actually has. I tip my metaphorical hat to the sharers of words and to the fact that His Gun was performed from memory. I don’t have the skill to do that with my work, and can only recite very, very short poems that rhyme!
Sue Finch, WALKING WITH MY SHADOW
in some early legends of the moon
Robin Gow, loose moon
people believed it grew like a fruit,
ripening just to be eaten over & over
bite by bite. i have a nail gun. i have a mirror.
i know i can get the moon to stay full
of salmon & wings. a rainstorm is rolling in.
there are not enough hours to sleep.