Goose Hill

First, please let me apologize for my longer than usual absence from this space. It has been an extremely busy month and a half of work with the Literary House Press. But I'll tell you now some of the things I've been up to all this time:  1. Cherry Tree On August 15th, Cherry Tree: A National Literary Journal @ Washington College opened for general submissions. As managing editor, it has been my job to sift through the hundreds of electronic packets of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction: sending them to the screeners who will read them first and then moving them up the reading hierarchy. I'm also responsible for handling all of the correspondence with submitters and (when we're lucky) contributors. So all the (unfortunately) form rejections, the (better) encouraging rejections, and the (BEST) acceptance letters for the truly unmistakably fabulous pieces. I prepare and send out the publication contracts for those accepted pieces. I work with the writers to edit t...

Two weeks ago, I began a collaborative chapbook project with my super talented poet-printer friend, Emma Sovich . We're both letterpress printers — she's actually close to finishing her MFA in Book Arts at the University of Alabama — and as evidenced by our letterpress-centric Asheville vacation a year ago, we're pretty passionate about it. For such an industrial art, the letterpress printing renaissance that we're living right now is also largely populated by women . And all of these awesome women in the print shop has us feeling like the proper granddaughters of Rosie the Riveter — at home amid the smells of lead type and rubber-based ink, working to the hum of the motorized proof or platen press.  Image by Emma Sovich Our collaborative chapbook — tentatively titled Women's Work — will attempt to use the cast-iron imagery of the print shop to create a contrast with the traditional notion of softer, domestic tasks as "women's work." As relativ...

Because my friend Michele has requested so especially, I've put together a list of some of my favorites of the small press poetry books I've recently acquired and read. 1. Blood Makes Me Faint But I Go For It , by Natalie Lyalin (Ugly Duckling Presse)   I've loved the decidedly strange, but wondrous poetry of Natalie Lyalin since reading her chapbook from UDP, Try a Little Time Travel back in 2010. There's a distinct voice that leaps from poem to poem, that I trust in its confidence even though it's telling me things I've never heard before. Her new collection delivers on a lot of the same qualities that drew me in with her chapbook. Read more about it in her interview here . She's part of UDP's Eastern European Poets Series .  2. Her Book , by É ireann Lorsung (Milkweed Editions) I picked up É ireann Lorsung's Her Book last summer at Malaprop's Bookstore when I was on vacation. I read through it in only two nights while still in...

Poetry reviewer Kenna O'Rourke wrote up a really great review of my chapbook Imago  for Cleaver Magazine ! So exciting!  Here are some of my favorite bits:  "Even if one were to dismiss the conceit of Imago  (or interpret it more literally), the chapbook would resonate courtesy of the very elegance of the lines within. Refreshingly sparse and thoughtfully arranged, Lusby's language is what transmutes absurdity into emotion here…" "Sense is abandoned for the sensory; logic abandoned for mystery. In other words, by Lusby's strange machinations, a reader can't help but look at vegetables a bit differently for a spell." Thank you so much for your generous words, Kenna! Read the full review here . P.S. The Cleaver Magazine Twitter account referred to it as "eggplant-fantasia." And I think I like it. Hah!

**This typically  has not  been a space in which I air my political views. I try to stay on the topic of poetry, printing, and books. But there are some things I need to say that are central to who I am  on the subject of feminism that have steadily bothered me more and more and more. Today, I've reached a breaking point. These are things that seep into every part of my life including the obsessions listed above. Bear with me for this one post, please.** FIRST OF ALL: I am a proud feminist.  HOWEVER, from the beginning there has been this ugly underbelly that at some point was given a name: White Feminism . KEEP READING. This is not a name for feminists who are also white. This is a dangerously clueless movement polluting the greater, beautiful cause. That only understands feminism through the lens of the middle-class white woman. This lens has no capability for peripheral vision and, so, the White Feminist cannot understand why women of color still  hav...

Laura E. Davis — poet, editor of Weave Magazine , and founder of Submission Bombers — has posted an interview with me as part of her series "Writers on the Writing Process" over on her blog Dear Outerspace . My "process" feels so jumbled most of the time that talking about it with her (er — writing about it to her, really) made me feel like there actually may be more of a method to it than I'm able to notice much of the time. I am certainly the kind of creature who finds comfort in habit and routine. Read the full interview here . And some other little things this week: A copy of my chapbook is hanging in some fine company in Sundress Publications' library at SAFTA, The Wardrobe . That little chapbook of mine also has a listing at Goodreads and LibraryThing , now that I finally took care of some social media housekeeping. And a glowing review ( written by Mary Florio) of Fairy Tale Review 's Emerald Issue was published on NewPages!

Today, two new poems of mine were published on The Feminist Wire . "Girl with no Hands" and "Interlude" appeared alongside this very fitting photograph of a tree that looks remarkably like a dancing girl. These two poems are the seeds of a new manuscript project I've been working on for the last year, called Catechesis . And it is growing slowly, but steadily. I hope you enjoy reading them!