"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for April, 2017

Monday Must Read! Michael Meyerhofer, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

 

michael meyerhoferMichael Meyerhofer is a contemporary poet and fantasy author who believes those two genres genuinely can get along. To illustrate this, his debut fantasy novel, Wytchfire (Book I in the Dragonkin Trilogy), was published by Red Adept Publishing, and went on to win the Whirling Prize and a Readers Choice nomination from Big Al’s Books and Pals. The sequels, Knightswrath and Kingsteel, are out now. He is also the author of the forthcoming Godsfall Trilogy.
Michael’s fourth poetry book, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive, was published by Split Lip Press. His third, Damnatio Memoriae (lit. “damned memory”), won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub Street Book Prize). 

He has also published five poetry chapbooks: Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper’s Husband (winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest). 

Michael has won the Marjorie J. Wilson Best Poem Contest, the Laureate Prize for Poetry, the James Wright Poetry Award, and the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Arts & Letters, River Styx, Quick Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals. 

He received his BA from the University of Iowa and his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. An avid weightlifter, medieval weapons collector, and unabashed history nerd, he currently lives, teaches, and inhabits various coffee shops around Fresno, CA.

Visit Michael’s Website: https://www.troublewithhammers.com/

Praise for What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

“With a compassionate eye, and his trademark sense of humor that hooks readers from the very first page, Meyerhofer sends us back to our earliest memories, and shows us a world of heartbreak and wonder.” -Mary Biddinger, author of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water

“…Meyerhofer sings in a pure American tenor, his voice haunted by late night diners, small town heartbreak, and somehow, out there in the desolate vastness of the heartland, a flash of humor and a sweet glimmer of hope.” -George Bilgere, author of Imperial

“While never flinching from confronting the irredeemable damage we do to one another, these urgent and necessary poems remind us ‘that if we focus on what hurts, / face it wholly, it dissolves / like a light from a burnt-out bulb, / a curtain gone up in flames.” -Jon Tribble, author of Natural State

Buy Michael’s Books!

What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

Blue Collar Eulogies

Damnatio Memoriae

Leaving Iowa

The Clay-Shaper’s Husband

More From Michael Online

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/michael-meyerhofer

http://www.splitlipmagazine.com/6-meyerhofer-interview

http://www.versedaily.org/2011/aboutmichaelmeyerhoferdm.shtml

http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/meyerhoferportrait.html

 

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, fiction, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Daily Prompt Love <3 According to Pooh :-)

23 April 2017

Rainy Sunday. Yep. Make art about the art of the nap. 

nap pooh

 

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2017 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops

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Daily Prompt Love <3 For the March for Science

22 April 2017

I can’t join the March for Science today, so to honor those who march–

Make art inspired by this. 

 

science carl sagan

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2017 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts, Writing Through the Chakras

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Friday Call for Submissions Love <3 HeartWood, General Submissions & Broadside Contest

HeartWood, a literary magazine in association with the low-res MFA at West Virginia Wesleyan College, is accepting submissions for the October issue. Seeking poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Guidelines for journal here: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/submit/

HeartWood also hosts an annual broadside competition, open for reading now. 

A writing practice requires us to slow down, reflect, attend. HeartWood Literary Magazine & West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program seek to honor this practice with an annual broadside series and contest. Partnering with West Virginia letterpress company Base Camp Printing, we print the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) on a limited-edition letterpress broadside featuring an original image inspired by the text. The annual broadside serves as artifact companion to the fall issue of the digital magazine. Both the handmade and the electronic HeartWood venues aim to showcase work that gets to the heart of the matter.

2017 Contest Judge: MAGGIE ANDERSON is the author of five books of poems most recently Dear All, (Four Way Books, 2017) and five edited or co-edited volumes of poetry. She was the founding director of the Wick Poetry Center and founder and editor of the Wick Poetry Series of the Kent State University Press. Anderson was also the Director of the Northeast Ohio MFA in creative writing from 2006-2009 and is the recipient of two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania Councils on the Arts. Maggie Anderson is Professor Emerita in English of Kent State University and currently lives in Asheville, NC.

  • $15 entry fee (includes a mailed copy of the winning broadside)
  • Contest opens April 1, 2017. The submission deadline for the prize is midnight June 1, 2017.
  • Submit one poem (of any form) or flash prose piece (fiction or nonfiction) per entry; regardless of genre, the entry must be 200 words or less. There is no limit on the number of entries per person.
  • $500 cash prize + 25 copies of limited-edition letterpress broadside will be awarded to the winner.
  • All entries will also be considered for publication in HeartWood

Broadside Guidelines here: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/contest/

HeartWood

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Call for Submissions, Creativity, Editing, fiction, Friday Call for Submissions, Gratitude, litmags, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, publishing, Writing

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Giving, and Balance

 

20 April 2017

“No one has ever become poor by giving.” -Anne Frank

Make art about the benefits of giving.

giving hands

 

21 April 2017

Lots of company above this morning for our walk.

Make art about maintaining balance, about regaining balance, about seeking balance.

birds on a wire

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2017 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Vessels, Relentlessness, and Talk in the Night

17 April 2017

Vessel (n.)
c. 1300, “container,” from Old French vessel “container, receptacle, barrel; ship” (12c., Modern French vaisseau) from Late Latin vascellum “small vase or urn,” also “a ship,” alteration of Latin vasculum, diminutive of vas “vessel.” Sense of “ship, boat” is found in English from early 14c. “The association between hollow utensils and boats appears in all languages” [Weekley]. Meaning “canal or duct of the body” (especially for carrying blood) is attested from late 14c.
Make art about a vessel.

urn

18 April 2017
Make art about something relentless, about relentless emotion.

Relentless

19 April 2017
Awake until four in the morning last night, me and the deer, and a lone owl in the oak outside the window.
Make art about a conversations in the night, about how the night talks to you.

owl

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2017 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Some People Just Need to Fight

16 April 2017

“He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.”
– Richard Adams

It’s hard to empathize with the combative life attitude until we look below the surface and see it’s a protective mechanism, meant to combat the anxiety produced from a world perceived as hostile. The need to fight is really just a signal of deep fear. 

Make art about the fear driving combative people, or about understanding and forgiving them. 

fear-is-a-prison-love-is-the-exit

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2017 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts, Writing Through the Chakras

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Happy National Poetry Month <3 What is Broken Is What God Blesses, Jimmy Santiago Baca

 

What is Broken Is What God Blesses

Jimmy Santiago Baca

   The lover’s footprint in the sand
   the ten-year-old kid’s bare feet
in the mud picking chili for rich growers,
not those seeking cultural or ethnic roots,
but those whose roots
have been exposed, hacked, dug up and burned
			and in those roots
			do animals burrow for warmth;
what is broken is blessed,
	not the knowledge and empty-shelled wisdom
	paraphrased from textbooks,
		not the mimicking nor plaques of distinction
		nor the ribbons and medals
but after the privileged carriage has passed
	the breeze blows traces of wheel ruts away
	and on the dust will again be the people’s broken
							footprints.
What is broken God blesses,
	not the perfectly brick-on-brick prison
	but the shattered wall
	that announces freedom to the world,
proclaims the irascible spirit of the human
rebelling against lies, against betrayal,
against taking what is not deserved;
	the human complaint is what God blesses,
	our impoverished dirt roads filled with cripples,
what is broken is baptized,
	the irreverent disbeliever,
	the addict’s arm seamed with needle marks
		is a thread line of a blanket
	frayed and bare from keeping the man warm.
We are all broken ornaments,
		glinting in our worn-out work gloves,
		foreclosed homes, ruined marriages,
from which shimmer our lives in their deepest truths,
blood from the wound,
				broken ornaments—
when we lost our perfection and honored our imperfect sentiments, we were
blessed.
Broken are the ghettos, barrios, trailer parks where gangs duel to death,
yet through the wretchedness a woman of sixty comes riding her rusty bicycle,
			we embrace
			we bury in our hearts,
broken ornaments, accused, hunted, finding solace and refuge
		we work, we worry, we love
		but always with compassion
		reflecting our blessings—
			in our brokenness
			thrives life, thrives light, thrives
				the essence of our strength,
					each of us a warm fragment,
					broken off from the greater
					ornament of the unseen,
					then rejoined as dust,
					to all this is.


JimmySantiagoBaca_NewBioImage

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Poetry Month Poems, Writing

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Happy National Poetry Month! What’s Broken, Dorianne Laux

What’s Broken

Dorianne Laux
The slate black sky. The middle step
of the back porch. And long ago
my mother’s necklace, the beads
rolling north and south. Broken
the rose stem, water into drops, glass
knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s
pot of parsley and mint, white roots
shooting like streamers through the cracks.
Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath,
the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken
little finger on my right hand at birth—
I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t
been rent, divided, split? Broken
the days into nights, the night sky
into stars, the stars into patterns
I make up as I trace them
with a broken-off blade
of grass. Possible, unthinkable,
the cricket’s tiny back as I lie
on the lawn in the dark, my heart
a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.
blue cup

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Poetry Month Poems, Writing

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Being Seen

15 April 2017

At some point every semester, I challenge my students to look everyone they meet in the eye, even the strangers they pass, to turn while standing in line and speak to the person behind them, in front of them, to make acknowledging other human beings around them a habit.

One of my current students asked me, sadness softening her young face, why other people won’t, don’t, look at each other, much less look each other in the eyes as they pass. We’re afraid, I told her, of revealing ourselves, of being seen. 

Make art about seeing each other, about taking the risk of being seen. 

risk-being-seen

Category:

2017 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts, Writing Through the Chakras

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