Tag Archives: Poetry

Poetry Fest at Village Books in Bellingham, WA

Please join me for An Evening with Local Poets on Tuesday, April 16th, 6-7 p.m. at Village Books in Fairhaven. I’ll be reading and talking poetry alongside Linda Conroy, Ryler Dustin, and Jeremy Voigt.

Below are details about the whole slate of readings and workshops Village Books is hosting during National Poetry Month. (I’ve copied in this webpage below, but the links aren’t live, so please click this link to access the live version where you can register for the events.)

The bookstore charges $5 per ticket, which becomes a voucher toward any purchase on the day of the event. Here’s the link to pre-register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-poets-tickets-851119951687. I hope to see you there!

Poetry Fest

April is National Poetry Month, and we’re celebrating with a plethora of poets!

Poetry Fest is a month of readings, events, workshops, and general celebration of poetry and local poets.

 

Events

These events will be in the Readings Gallery of our Fairhaven store. Pre-registration required.

An Afternoon with Local Poets
Sunday, April 14, 4pm-5pm
Readings and discussion with local poets Jeffrey Morgan, Jessica Gigot, and Kevin Murphy.

 

Click here to register for this event!

An Evening with Local Poets
Tuesday, April 16, 6pm-7pm
Readings and discussion with local poets Jennifer Bullis, Jeremy Voigt, Linda Conroy, and Ryler Dustin.

Click here to register for this event!

See our Events Calendar for visiting poets, including Kwame Alexander, Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Mary Lou Kayser, and Anastacia-Reneé!

 

Poetry Workshops

All workshops will be in the Readings Gallery of our Fairhaven store unless otherwise noted. Pre-registration required

Writing Into the Unknown
with Kevin Murphy

Saturday April 6, 3pm-4:30pm
Write what you don’t know! In this workshop, we’ll explore the ways poetry can provide access to the unconscious, the dream world, the irrational and the taboo. We’ll experiment with forms and exercises to spark the imagination and open the door to mystery and surprise.

Click here to register for this workshop!

Finishing the Unfinishable Poem
with Jeffrey Morgan

Monday April 8, 6pm-7:30pm
From large considerations such as theme and form to small ones like word choice and punctuation, in this workshop we’ll explore staple techniques and tricks of the revision process. Come prepared to write, revise, and share your work!

Click here to register for this workshop!

Writing in Forms and Free Verse
with Linda Conroy

Saturday April 13, 2pm-3:30pm
Have you wondered if you should write free or formal verse poetry, and been unsure of what makes each style effective? In this workshop you will learn the appeal and satisfaction, as well as the challenges, of each and try your hand at writing and enjoying the best elements of both.

Click here to register for this workshop!

How to Write a Poem About a Rock (and Everything Else)
with Luther Allen

Thursday April 17, 6pm-7:30pm
How to Write a Poem About a Rock (and Everything Else). A generative workshop for ages 10 to 110, for people who have never written a poem before or people with an MFA. We will explore your sharpened conscious and subconscious (!) minds to find a poem that wants to be written. Bring 3 or 4 sheets of lined paper, a pen or pencil, a pair of scissors, and a clipboard (and maybe some scotch tape) – and you will leave with a startling fresh and incisive poem.

Click here to register for this workshop!

Writing Erasure Poems
with Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Friday April 19, 10:30am-12pm
The erasure poem starts with a printed document from which the poet removes words to reveal a new, more concise or even more true message hidden within the original text. This form has been used to great effect by many poets, notably Nicole Sealey in Ferguson, an erasure of the Department of Justice’s Ferguson Report on police racism in Ferguson, MO. Poet torrin a. greathouse, a transgender cripple-punk poet has manipulated the traditional Japanese haibun using redaction, the process of blacking out language in a text to reveal a new message. Visual poets such as JI Kleinberg, Koss La and others make art from torn out, or painted or drawn-over language from texts. In this workshop, we’ll explore some of these samples and get you started creating your own erasure poem(s). Bring a couple of printed documents you’d like to explore through erasure or redaction. Newspaper, magazine, or book pages work great. If you’d like to work digitally, bring a laptop or tablet with some documents bookmarked.

Click here to register for this workshop!

Mothering as Transformation: a Poetic Journey
with Jessica Gigot

Sunday April 21, 4pm-5:30pm
Writing poetry about mothers and the experience of motherhood is not easy because the act of mothering/being mothered is both beautiful and complicated. As more writers explore the lessons unique to this deeply personal passage and bond, the audience for motherhood poetry expands. In this generative workshop, we will explore motherhood/mothering as transformation, read from a diverse selection of mother-poets, and discuss how and why motherhood matters are relevant to all readers. Half of the workshop fee will be donated to Every Mother Counts.

Click here to register for this workshop!

SpeakEasy 27.5 — You’re Invited!

Please join Susan Alexander, Luther Allen, Bruce Beasley, Dayna Patterson, and me on Sunday, February 25th, 4:00 p.m. at Faith Lutheran Church in Bellingham, WA for the launch reading of A Spiritual Thread.

A Spiritual Thread is a project Luther Allen initiated in 2019. Inspired by the success of the String Theory series he conducted a few years before, he invited us to compose poems in a round-robin series, each poem picking up a “thread” from the previous one. The five of us wrote for five rounds, totaling 25 poems. Though few of the poems are overtly religious, each delves into some aspect of spirituality.

The series was fascinating to write and took us in many unexpected directions. During late 2020 and early 2021, unable to present the poems in person, we did a series of Zoom readings (one for each round) to share the poems with the public — and were stunned by the the large attendance and enthusiastic response.

Finally, we’re able to share the poems in person. Luther Allen and Judy Kleinberg are publishing all 25 poems in an anthology via Other Mind Press, and through their SpeakEasy reading series, the poets are presenting each of our first and last poems next Sunday. We’re thankful to Faith Lutheran Church for hosting our reading as the inaugural event in its Strong Waters poetry series.

You can read more details about the event here: https://othermindpress.wordpress.com/2024/02/02/speakeasy-27-5/
and more about the history of A Spiritual Thread, with poet bios and links to the video series, here: https://othermindpress.wordpress.com/2024/02/02/speakeasy-27-5/

Year-End Writing Wrap-Up

I’m thankful to say that while 2023 has been a bit sparse for writing new poems as I’ve focused on honing and submitting an essay-collection manuscript, this has been a good year for my poems finding publication. In addition to the journals and anthology I mentioned back in April, five more literary magazines have provided excellent homes for my poems. Much gratitude to the editors and staff of these journals!

Whale Road Review published “Love at a Distance in a Time of Destruction,” about clear-cutting of the (formerly) largest woodland inside the city limits of Bellingham, Washington.

The Shore Poetry published my weird little poem “Space?”, which hybridizes philosophy and physics while making a Star Trek pun.

Psaltery & Lyre published two poems I wrote many years ago that finally found their ideal forms: “Self-Portrait as Sarah, Confessing to Abraham” and “Self-Portrait as the Prophet Isaiah, Yearning”.

EcoTheo Review published “First Sins,” linking theology and ecology, in their Spring print issue. I’m especially pleased that this poem, which contains a phrase serving as the title for one of my full-length manuscripts, has found a wonderful place here.

RHINO Poetry published “December Roses,” a poem from the Spiritual Thread project I wrote with Susan Alexander, Luther Allen, Bruce Beasley, and Dayna Patterson in 2020-21 (five poets, five rounds each, carrying forward a thread from the previous poem or poems).

Cumberland River Review published “Dear Locus,” my final poem from the Spiritual Thread.

And I’m delighted to announce that Luther Allen and J.I. Kleinberg will be publishing an anthology of all 25 Spiritual Thread poems, via Other Mind Press, to be released at the next SpeakEasy event they’ll host in February 2024. The five poets will each present our first and last poems from the Thread. Details to follow!

Recent Publications

I’m dimly rousing myself after the election to express my gratitude that three poems of mine have been published this fall. My thanks to Christopher Nelson, editor of Green Linden Press, for today’s launch of Issue 2 of Green Linden, which until last spring specialized in poetry reviews and interviews, and is now a full-service poetry biannual. The inclusion of my poem among those by several of my poetry idols gives me a much-appreciated jolt of joy.

And my belated thanks are due to editors Jennifer Givhan and Molly Sutton Kiefer of Tinderbox Poetry Journal, who selected my prose poem “Amanda Bubble Composes a Fifty-Word, Third-Person Contributor Bio for an Anthology on the Theme of Vulnerability” to include in Issue 3.5. And to Caron Andregg and Ruth Foley, editors of Cider Press Review, for including my poem “I Anticipate a Metamorphosis” in Issue 18-4.

I’m grateful for the work and support of all these editors and for the vibrant, lovely journals they produce. Each issue creates a community with the writers and readers–including, I hope, you!–who join in. That community, and the writing itself, are solace and motivation.

Reporting In, Summer 2016

Hi there! It’s been months since I’ve last posted, and I thought I’d give you an update about what I’ve been doing in my writing. I’ve revised (again) my book-length manuscript of persona poems: weaving in newer, stronger pieces and pulling out weaker ones, as well as re-organizing them into a different sequence. You know, the usual. And sending off sets of poems in the manuscript to journals—lots of journals!

Since November 2015, I’ve been making a concerted effort to send out far more journal submissions, and to do so more systematically, than I have before. To get organized for that effort, I created a big chart of about 30 journals in which I’d love to see my work published. Using data from Duotrope, The Review Review, and NewPages, I assembled information about acceptance rates, reading periods, response times, and editorial preferences. As time went on, I added over 30 more journals to my chart, as well as recorded dates on which I’ve submitted poems and received responses, plus the comments I’ve received from several editors. Inspired by poets who post their submissions stats on Jessica Piazza’s Poetry Has Value blog, here are my numbers, after 9 months of this project, as they currently stand:

  • Sets of (3-5) poems submitted: 60
  • Individual poems submitted: 50
  • Total poems submitted: 296
  • Individual poems accepted for publication: 5 (by 3 journals)
  • Sets of poems rejected: 58
  • Rejection notices with encouraging notes like “these poems came close” or “we encourage you to send us more to consider”: 16
  • Presses to which I submitted my chapbook and full-length and manuscripts: 19 (rejections: 8–but my manuscript was a semifinalist in one contest)
  • Journals to which I’ve submitted two different nonfiction lyric essays:  9 (rejections received: 5)
  • Total rejections received: 71

This project yields only a 1.6% acceptance rate for my poems, but I’m glad I’m making this effort. I’m encouraged by the number of “send us more” rejections; these motivate me to sustain this push, which has resulted in my sending out more work in the past ¾ of a year than I’ve sent out in the past 15 years combined.

I’m motivated also by an article I read recently in LitHub by Kim Liao, who explains “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year: Flipping Your Perspective on Rejections, and Failing Best.” By aiming for this many rejections, a writer is sure to score some acceptances along the way. Perhaps even more important, this approach helps take the sting out of receiving rejections, and reinforces the truth that rejections are just part of the business of being a writer, not a soul-crushing indictment of the quality of one’s writing. By Kim Liao’s method, I’m 71% of the way to reaching the goal of 100 for the year. (But my year began in mid-November 2015, so I’d better pick up my lackadaisical summer pace if I’m going to make it to 100 by mid-November 2016!)

Another benefit of sending out so many submissions is receiving encouragement from journal editors, even when that encouragement arrives in the context of a rejection notice. To hear from an editor that even though they don’t currently have space for my work, they really enjoyed it, or that my poem made it to their final round of consideration, and that they want to read more from me in the future, is terrifically affirming. To receive this kind of feedback from editors I deeply respect–including those at journals like Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, and Water~Stone Review–is validation to continue aiming high as I submit my work to literary magazines. Yes, I do plan to broaden my approach to include publications that aren’t quite so keenly competitive, so that I’ll increase my chances for actually getting my work into print. But this “at first, aim high” approach has been very useful as an exercise in level-finding. Now that I know where my work almost gets accepted, I can focus on those journals, and on journals in the next tier down, as I make subsequent rounds of submissions.

So where did those 3 acceptances come from, you may ask?

One is from Tinderbox Poetry Journal, one of the literary magazines to which I submitted a set of poems last December and whose editors replied that one of them came close. So this spring I submitted another set, and they chose my prose poem “Amanda Bubble Composes a Fifty-Word, Third-Person Contributor Bio for an Anthology on the Theme of Vulnerability” to appear in the October 2016 issue.

Another acceptance was from Bellingham Review, whose previous editors included one of my poems in last fall’s online issue and featured me in a blog interview. Subsequently, the new editors have accepted two more poems, “Amanda Bubble Has Moments of Sublimity and Moments of Abjection” and “In Which I Apologize to Amanda Bubble.” These are slated to appear in the spring 2017 print issue.

The third acceptance is from Cider Press Review–another wonderful repeat acceptance. After publishing one of my poems this past winter, the editors accepted two more for this year–and one of them went live the very next day! You can read “Organize Your Home Using This Weird Old Trick” here, in Issue 18.3, and “I Anticipate a Metamorphosis” will appear in a later issue. Thank you to editors Ruth Foley and Caron Andregg for giving these poems such an excellent home!

 

New Publications and a Reading

Happy New Year to you! I have some happy poetry news to share: a new poem published in the current issue of Cider Press Review, and a poem from my chapbook included in the anthology Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington. Published by Other Mind Press, and edited by Luther Allen and J. I. Kleinberg, Noisy Water contains poems by 101 poets connected to the damp, moss-covered county where I live.

On Tuesday, February 9, I’ll be participating in a reading with eight other Noisy Water poets–DeeDee Chapman, Paul Fisher, Susan Chase Foster, Dick Harris, J.I. Kleinberg, Rob Lewis, Dobbie Reese Norris, and Stan Tag–at the South Whatcom Library in Sudden Valley. Start time is 7:00!

New Poems Up at Bellingham Review and Pontoon

I’m honored to have two poems published this month! “Amanda Bubble Crafts a New Creation Story” appears in Issue 71 of Bellingham Review; my thanks to former Editor-in-Chief Brenda Miller, current Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Paola Antonetta, former Managing Editor Ellie A. Rogers, and current Managing Editor Louis McLaughlin for including my poem. When you visit, please check out the gorgeous essay “He Worked as an Electrician. He Enjoyed Television. (His Obituary Was Plain.)” by Spokane poet Maya Jewell Zeller!

In addition, my poem “What Was Good about Going to Church” has been selected for this year’s issue of Pontoon, the journal of poems by Washington-state poets who submitted chapbook manuscripts to Floating Bridge Press. My thanks to everyone on the editorial committee at FBP! For the first time, Pontoon is now online, allowing wider access to readers. Here’s my poem, and here’s the first page of the Table of Contents (be sure to click through all four pages to read the whole issue). I hope you enjoy!

Chris Jarmick–Two Readings in Bellingham, September 26 & 28

Christopher Jarmick and NOT ALOUD

Christopher Jarmick and NOT ALOUD

Seattle-area poet Christopher Jarmick, who has a new book out with MoonPath Press, will be in Bellingham this Saturday night to read at Village Books, and again on Monday night for PoetryNight.

I know Chris from his excellent work organizing poetry events around Western Washington. He’s a lively and engaging presenter of his own fine poems, which are now gathered into a collection published by the same press as my chapbook.

MoonPath Press Editor and Publisher Lana Hechtman Ayers writes,  “Not Aloud presents some 30 plus years of Christopher J. Jarmick’s marvelous poetry. Jarmick’s thematic territory is expansive– family, relationships, the art of writing, philosophy, his patented poem starters, and much, much more. His language is musical, approachable, and memorable. His refreshing turns of phrases stand clichés on their heads: “The clouds/are not metaphors at all./ They hide the sky,/they get fat,/sometimes they burst,/but not with tears,/Mr. Tambourine Man,/just with rain.” Full of humor, acute observation, and deep emotion, Not Aloud is a collection you’ll want to return to again and again.”

Here are the relevant particulars for these Bellingham readings:

Saturday, September 26, 7:00 p.m.
Village Books
1200 11th St. in Fairhaven
Bellingham, WA

and

PoetryNight
Monday, September 28, 8:00 p.m.
Bellingham Public Library
210 Central Avenue,
Bellingham, WA

Learn more about Chris and his poems at the MoonPath Press page and Facebook page for Not Aloud, as well as the book page on Chris’s blog. (While you’re there, check out the huge list of Western-Washington poetry events Chris publicizes on his home page. Lots of poetry throughout the region!)

I hope to see you at one or both of these readings!

Tahoma Literary Review Reading at Elliott Bay Books July 23, 7:00 p.m.

!cid_0_28876465680_542034058747999009Tahoma Literary Review, edited by Kelly Davio and Joe Ponepinto, will host a reading at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company on Thursday, July 23, at 7:00 p.m. to celebrate the journal’s one-year anniversary and launch issue #4. Featured readers will include some of my fave Pacific Northwest poets!

One of my poems appeared in Issue #2 of Tahoma. Favorite poems in the new issue, #4, include one by Ronda Broatch, whose new collection is out from MoonPath Press; and a stunning 20-part poem, “A Geneology of the Word,” by Nickole Brown.

Enjoy!

New Poem Up at Heron Tree Journal

I’m thrilled to have a poem of mine, “Amanda Bubble Recalls a Beautiful River Flowing Through Her Past (after William Stafford),” published this week at Heron Tree, an online journal collected in annual print volumes. My thanks to editors Chris Campolo, Sandy Longhorn, and Rebecca Resinski for choosing my poem, and for their work curating Heron Tree, which I’ve been enjoying as a subscriber for over a year now. Please have a look around the archives here, here, and here!