30 July 2017
Was asked by another young person to teach him about cooking and food preservation. Blows up my heart to pass the old wisdom on ❤
Make art about preserving and teaching old wisdom.
31 July 2017
Woke up hearing music this morning, a tenor singing down the hall, song woven through the fabric of my waking air
Make art about who you hear singing in the distance.
A former English teacher, Helen Losse was born in Joplin, MO and educated at Missouri Southern State University (BSE, 1969), where she majored in secondary education and English and Wake Forest University (MALS, 2000), where she studied African American history and religion and creative writing. Her master’s thesis, Making All things New: The Redemptive Value of Unmerited Suffering In the Life and Works of Martin Luther King Jr., is available in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. She wrote four entries in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.
She is the author of four books of poetry, Evey Tender Reed, Facing a Lonely West, Seriously Dangerous, and Better With Friends, as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have been anthologized in Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina, and Kakalak 2014, nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and three times for a Best of the Net award, one of which was a finalist. She was featured by Kathryn Stripling Byer, Poet Laureate of NC, on the North Carolina Arts Council web site along with two other Winston-Salem poets. Helen’s poem “Four Snapshots of the Sea-Going Boats,” won 1st place in the 2009 Davidson County Writers’ Guild Adult Writing Contest. The former Poetry Editor for The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, she is now an Associate Poetry Editor for Kentucky Review.
Helen lives with her husband Bill in Winston-Salem, NC, where she occasionally writes book reviews for various literary magazines. She is a rail fan, a NASCAR fan, a Tony Stewart fan, a Kyle Busch fan, a Ryan Newman fan, a Kurt Busch, a Carl Edwards fan, a fan of the flip, a Dallas Cowboys fan, a Wake Forest Demon Deacons fan, and a fan of the Carolina Tar Heels. Helen is a Roman Catholic who loves Christmas. She and her husband have two grown sons.
Buy Helen’s Beautiful Books!
“If books of poetry were considered fitting contributions, Helen Losse’s Every Tender Reed, would be among the most heartfelt gifts in a church offering plate. With a keen eye for craft, Losse takes readers on a personal pilgrimage—pondering everything from the beauty of God’s creations to what it might feel like to “be consumed” in pursuit of spiritual purity. Written with fierce tenderness and the courage it takes to write poems both honest and true, this fine collection is a must read. “—Terri Kirby Erickson, author of A Lake of Light and Clouds
“Helen Losse’s Every Tender Reed resonates with a tone of loving memory and forgiveness—a promise for the good life, the verses raising blinds on the dark to brighten songs born to all the world’s beauty. Grace becomes a natural outgrowth of Imagination’s repose. Red clover soft-lights the people; all of us are the ever-present tender reeds.”—Shelby Stephenson, North Carolina Poet Laureate
“Losse’s Every Tender Reed is penance in poetry—honoring the reader as much as the Creator. This volume, for the most part, is a serene journey with the author as she walks the Path toward the enlightenment of self-knowledge.”—Patricia Gomes, Poet Laureate, City of New Bedford, MA
More From Helen Online
https://helenl.wordpress.com/interviews/
https://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/three-poems-by-helen-losse/
http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=1606
http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=381
http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-others-may-know-what-we-knew-by.html
Hear Helen Read and Talk About Her Work
https://helenl.wordpress.com/recorded-in-time/
Women’s Voices for Change
https://womensvoicesforchange.org/poetry-friday-helen-losse-video.htm
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
Better late than never 🙂 Since I missed yesterday….
Anomaly (formerly known as Drunken Boat) is accepting submissions in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, and translation from June 1 – September 1. Send your best, most challenging work through Submittable today! anmly.org/submit
SPECIAL CALL: Anomaly’s GLITTERBRAIN folio seeks work by queer and trans indigenous people and people of color who identify as mentally-ill, neurodivergent, or as having mental illness. Send up to 5 pieces, and a brief bio to sarahATanomalouspressDOTorg by August 15th.
28 July 2017
Make art about someone who speaks without thinking.
29 July 2017
Make art about chasing your own tail.
27 July 2017
Make art about those who sow discord, about resisting the chaos they create.
26 July 2017
The world is in so much pain right now, so much anger, so much fear. If I am not mindful, that collective despair will weigh down on my back, settle ’round my shoulders like a yoke, until it chokes me, and I am become part of the problem, rather than doing what I think I should–choosing light, choosing peace, choosing Love–doing all that I can to be a force for compassion and Love in this world. So I have to make sure that I care for myself, body and spirit. I personally seek solace in the natural world, in my garden.
It reminds me, daily, that we are made not from our successes, but from the narrative of learning embodied in failure, every lush, red tomato now the product of years on my knees, learning, lessons gifted by seeds that did not germinate, rain that did not fall, soil that wasn’t ready, woodlings that wandered in and ate the fruit, reminders of my rent being due, for sharing this space.
Reward, and humility, in equal share, mistakes and losses, the cost of carelessness, the reminder that I own no space alone in my time on this planet, reside always in the garden. But even more, for me, in that small space, dwells possibility. Even in the darkest winter months, I imagine what will come, with spring. I find solace in the garden’s persistent gift, the imagining of an unimaginable future.
Make art about where you find solace.
25 July 2017
Make art inspired by or incorporating a set of instructions.
23 July 2017
Make art using one of these titles:
From the Stone Came
Listening to Fire
Salty and Wind and
In Memory of Water
24 July 2017
Make art about boundaries, making them, breaking them, protecting them.
Al Maginnes is the author of seven full length collections and four chapbooks of poems, most recently The Next Place (Iris Press, 2017). He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and teaches at Wake Technical Community College. His poems and reviews have appeared widely. He is music editor for Connotations Press and a member of Liberty Circus, a music and spoken word collective dedicated to raising money for those who work with immigrants and other forms of social justice.
Buy Al’s Beautiful Books
More from Al Online
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/al-maginnes
http://www.ashevillepoetryreview.com/tag/al-maginnes
http://baltimorereview.org/index.php/winter_2012/contributor/al-maginnes
http://www.poemoftheweek.org/al_maginnes_id594.html
http://www.terrain.org/2013/poetry/two-poems-by-al-maginnes/
http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2009/04/al-maginnes.html
https://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/1319-al-maginnes-poetry
Hear Al Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMAFgZIr8YI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ogdXKsed8
Happy reading!
xo
Mary
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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