Poetry by the Sea, and other places

toes in the cold Sound
I spent this past week in Madison, Connecticut with my friend and colleague Jehanne Dubrow at the inaugural Poetry By the Sea Conference. It was a fun, relaxing poetry vacation along the Long Island Sound. I spent some time on the shell-covered beach with my toes in the cold salt water. I collected a fistful of tiny, intricate shells the way I loved to do as a kid. I spent time inside and outside just working on a poem. I even managed to finish my latest Silence of the Lambs poem on the train ride back.

a Sound sonnet, by Jo Yarrington
I took the workshop on hybrid forms and artistic collaboration with the lovely Terri Witek and her visual artist collaborator Cyriaco Lopes. I really enjoyed the playfulness of the workshop and the wonderful poets and visual artists I met there. One of my fellow students, Jo Yarrington, completed a beautiful project: a Sound sonnet, a sonnet without words. It is 14 lines of translucent shells that attempt to approximate iambic pentameter in their numbers. I was so moved and excited by this inspired project. Such a beautiful experiment.

 



P.S. 
On October 10 in Merrillville, Indiana, I will be participating in my first writing panel! I will be part of the "Historical [Re]tell: The Writing & Craft of Telling Retellings of the Historical" Panel Discussion at the 2015 Steel Pen Writers' Conference alongside moderator Laura Madeline Wiseman, and fellow panelists Cat Dixon, Britny Doane,  and P. Ivan Young. Conference registration opens tomorrow (June 1st). Join us!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Imago" on Hannibal season finale

Image
While watching the eagerly-awaited season 2 finale of Hannibal (one of my absolute favorite TV shows of the moment), I was happily surprised when a vocabulary lesson emerged mid-conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. — "Do you know what an imago is, Will?" — "It's a flying insect." — "It's the last stage of a transformation." — "When you become who you will be?" — "It's also a term from the dead religion of psychoanalysis. An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives." — "An ideal." — "The concept of an ideal." Of course this term, in both of its definitions, has some great significance for me. It is a word I didn't even know until I stumbled across it in my dictionary browsing and knew immediately that this is the title of my chapbook . It was perfect. So when it snuck up on me again in my favorite TV show, in
Read more

There are birds here

Image
We are now in the full porch-swing of summer, which means Summer Poetry Salons at my beloved Lit House. In celebration of the second salon of the summer on June 24 (tomorrow!), I was given the unbelievably fun task of designing and printing a letterpress broadside for Jamaal May's poem "There Are Birds Here,"  a love song for Detroit. As much I loved this poem on my first reading (and second and third), it was a particularly difficult design challenge. Don't get me wrong — there are so many ways  to illustrate this poem because it is so packed with images. But to illustrate it in a way that actually adds to the text, that builds on the complex foundation set down by the poet — that is the challenge to be met. That is the challenge we always aim to meet at the Literary House Press .   So that means no birds and no buildings. For me, those are the two most obvious, but least important images in this poem. Those details are just the shell around the actual poem
Read more

On the end of a year & a decade: 2019

Image
In this last month of the year, I've had five poems accepted by three different literary journals and two new reviews of my book appear in The Cincinnati Review  and Harbor Review . I also completed the letterpress printing of the Rossetti Prize broadside for American Literary Review , designs for four more digital broadsides , and the initial edits & contributor proofs for Cherry Tree 's sixth issue. Whew! It's been an amazing and overwhelming and utterly fulfilling year ; and I'm riding into the new year on 2019's coattails.  Also featuring the gorgeous handmade scarf that Jehanne Dubrow wove for me this past year. One of my favorite December inventories will always be reflecting on a year's worth of personal accomplishments and progress. By the time the end of the year arrives, it's so easy to forget all that happened just a few short months ago. Making a list has a way of bringing it all into perspective. Here's my roundup for the yea
Read more