On everything and all at once

It's been another busy couple of months since my last update. Here's a quick rundown: 


Book Progress

I received the first proofs of my book a few weeks ago, made my corrections, and returned them to the press last Friday. We are currently on schedule for the book to be released in June! 


I've solidified plans for my hometown book launch party & reading! Poets and friends Erin Dorney, Sally Rosen Kindred, and Emma Sovich will join me on Thursday, August 15, 2019 at 6:00 p.m. at the Rose O'Neill Literary House to officially welcome my book to world. We will each read a few poems, then there will be a book sale & signing, as well as refreshments. Mark your calendars! 


Last week I received word that the first review for Catechesis has been lined up with a fantastic literary magazine. The reviewer will take a peek at the current proofs and the review itself should appear some time in the fall in this magazine's next print issue. And speaking of magazines, Catechesis made a brief appearance in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers, thanks to a lovely ad from The University of Utah Press. (The preorders are already coming in!)


The 2019 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize is now open for submissions! If you are a poet currently looking for a publisher for a finished full-length manuscript, you should absolutely take your chances with this contest. The deadline for submissions is April 15.


Out Now

Last weekend, Mychael Zulauf interviewed me for a new episode of the so . . . poetry? podcast. We had a long conversation about almost-everything poetry: from writing books and individual poems to editing both poetry and prose in literary journals to our mutual love of the chapbook as a form. If you want to listen, you can find Season 4, Episode 4: "The Symphony of the Book" online here.



Coming Soon

Somehow the annual AWP Conference is only a week and a half away now! I'll be there in Portland, OR from March 27-30 with my Rose O'Neill Literary House team. We'll be in the Bookfair at Booth 6054 with our books, broadsides, and Issue 5 of Cherry Tree. Stop by to see us! Maybe subscribe to Cherry Tree while you're there?


And just today I received the good news that I have been selected to read as part of the Eastern Shore Voices Poetry Reading on April 4 at 7:00 p.m. in the Worcester Room at Salisbury University, alongside Michael Blane, Beth Dulin, Dolores Hoffman, Jane C. Miller, Nancy Mitchell, Adam Tavel, Stephen Scott Whitaker, and Salisbury's 2019 Poet-in-Residence, Jane Satterfield. If you're on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, please join us for this ensemble reading event to kick off this year's National Poetry Month!


New Work In-Progress

With my first book on the way, I've been hard at work on writing new poems. I have three poems about women in letterpress printing (and letterpress printing in women) making the rounds in the lit mag slush piles. Hopefully one or more of those will find publication homes in the next few months (fingers crossed!).

Two visual poems in progress, mid-assembly and pre-glue.

My newest writing projects are a clear continuation of the work I began in Catechesis: a postpastoral, but I do hope that these poems will move in new directions and make new discoveries. I've been experimenting with a series of visual poems that collage image and text erasures from Olcott's Field Book of the Skies (Putnam, 1954), The Occult: A History by Colin Wilson (Random House, 1971), and a book of wildflowers. Most recently, I've landed on a new mini-project: writing poems about the 1982 horror film Poltergeist, using lines of dialogue from the movie for poem titles. I've completed the first poem, "We were wondering if you had experienced any disturbances lately." And I'm beginning the drafting of the next one, "This house has many hearts."  

Here's to spring and all of the renewed-ness it brings. 

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