And with the traditional elderflower wine toast the 9th annual Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing gets joyfully underway tonight with a reading by Director Alexander Weinstein from his book Children of the New World. Skol!
I’ll be teaching Tuesday and Wednesday and giving a reading Thursday night!
My friend and poetry collaborator Dustin Nightingale’s chapbook Ghost Woodpecker has just been published by BatCat Press. It’s his first book and it’s one of those you’ll want to hold close to your skin, like under your shirt when it starts to rain. The poems are very, very short. They’ll break your heart, make you laugh, and provide you with the kind of dirty light we need to navigate our subterranean corridors. This letter-pressed volume, handset with vintage metal type, hand-printed and -bound, features a different found film slide embedded in the cover of each unique copy. So it’s also a work of art on that level.
What a thrill to receive my contributor issue of the Southern Indiana Review, which contains, “A Small Choir of Sour Voices” and “I Am a Speaker You Are Vibrating,” two collaborative prose poems I’ve written with Dustin Nightingale. The issue also contains three of Dustin’s own personal prose poems! It’s a massive joy to share this issue with the likes of Erika Meitner, Susannah Nevison, Ashley M. Jones, Kat Finch, and Liz A. Johnson and more! A thousand thousand thanks to Marcus Wicker, Ron Mitchell, and the rest of the good folks at SIR!
I’m thrilled to have received my contributor copy of the spring issue of North American Review, which contains my poems “On a Foreign Planet Surrounded by Sugar Maples” and “Bats and Applesauce.” I’m delighted to share these pages with the likes of Nicole Cooley, Todd Davis, Martín Espada, Stephen Gibson, Tobias Wray, and so many others. Thank you so much to Rachel Morgan and the rest of the NAR crew!
I’m delighted to share the news that I’ve been asked to be the guest poetry editor for the next issue of Stone Canoe. From now until July 8 we’ll be reading poetry for issue 13 to appear in 2019. I’m thrilled to join the team for the next issue and excited to read what you have to send us!
Stone Canoe, a journal of arts and ideas from Upstate New York, was founded at Syracuse University’s University College, and is now published by The YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center, at the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse.
In order to be eligible to submit, you must have a first-person connection to Upstate New York, but the poems submitted can be about anything at all. The work does not need to involve New York State. For simplicity’s sake, we current define “Upstate” as that portion of the state which is outside of New York City and Long Island. Examples of qualifying connections include but are not limited to: being born here, even if you moved away later; going to college at an upstate school such as SUNY Binghamton, Ithaca College, Syracuse University, etc.; working in the area currently or at some point in the past.
Purchase copies of the most recent issues HERE.
Submit your work HERE!
Wednesday evening I had the honor and delight to receive a 2018 Residence Hall Association Professor Recognition Award for being an outstanding educator at SUNY Oswego. Thank you to Richard Kolenda, Jacob Gardner, and most of all to my students!
It’s gratifying to learn that my poem, “It’s Something People in Love Do,” has been named a finalist for the 2018 Wolverine Farm Poetry Broadside Prize. Congratulations to the winner, Derek Mong, and to the other finalists!
This poem of mine appears in this year’s Pushcart Prize Anthology and you can read it here.
The new issue of DecomP is out and it’s so good. I’m not biased, being the Poetry Editor. But seriously. Robert James Russell, Kimberly Burwick, Robert Wrigley, Liz Clift, to name but a few! Plus it’s our 14th anniversary issue. Happy birthday to us!
www.decompmagazine.com
It’s an honor and a joy to share the news that I’ve just received my contributor copy of the new Alaska Quarterly Review, which contains my three poems “In Small Significant Ways We Are Horses,” “To Keep At Least Partially In the Air,” and “We Are Many People Some Okay.” What a delight to share this issue with such amazing writers as Hananah Zaheer Bajwa, Sarah Barber, Matthew Minicucci, Mark Wagenaar, Bruce Cohen, G. C. Waldrep, Blas Falconer, Alyse Knorr, and so many others! Thank you so much to Ronald Spatz and the rest of the AQR crew!
My lyric essay “Root That Mountain” has been accepted for publication at The Florida Review. This essay is from a series I recently completed on the four classical elements. It’s the dirt essay. Yay dirt! Here’s the song that inspired the title: