"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
Light will be a journey of emotion through photography and poetry. It will feature the work of established and emerging photographers and poets. The theme for the inaugural issue is Human. It’s a bit of a challenge. We identify humanity with countless topics. There are many ways to make the “human-ness” of our situations personal, beautiful, and memorable. But how do we take what’s so familiar and make it fresh and surprising? We’re looking for photography and poetry that investigate the theme. Give us your boldest, slyest, most inquisitive visions of the human.
“I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.”~Violette Leduc
Make art about relentless heat.
19 August 2016
So I stood in my yard today and watched a truck hauling a trailer lose control just long enough to smash my mailbox to smithereens.19 August 2016
Make art about witnessing destruction.
20 August 2016
Visiting with family and looking through some newly discovered old family photographs, including some I’d never seen of that wild lil girl I was 🙂
Make art about yourself as a child.
21 August 2016
My sons helped me shuck, cut, and can six dozen ears of corn today. It’s a messy job, but now the house smells like caramel corn, and we have yummy summer in a jar for those cold winter months.
Make art about a task that’s hard, but worth it.
22 August 2016
I’m headed out later this week for a spiritual retreat and a couple of road trip visits with family. Excited, but fretting over getting all my stuff ready.
Many nations with atrocities in their past—Germany, Rwanda, South Africa—prominently recognize their painful history with memorials, museums, and monuments. This kind of trutful recognition, acknowledgement, helps with healing.
We have yet to do that in the United States. As Jessica Leber writes in the linked article below, “Even today, the nation is largely silent about one of its historical periods of shame: the thousands of lynchings that terrorized southern blacks right up until the Civil Rights era.”
We can do this, y’all. We can be brave enough to face our own nightmares. We have to, if we are, as a nation, going to heal and come together.
“The Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama organization led by civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, has, for the last few years, been working to place historical markers at lynching sites all around the country. At TED’s conference this week, the group showed a sneak preview of plans for a new national memorial to the victims of lynching that they hope to break ground on some time this year in Montgomery, Alabama.
“In America, we’re not free. We are burdened by a history of racial inequality and injustice. It compromises us. It constrains us,” says Stevenson. “We have to create a new relationship with this history.”
Make art about facing, acknowledging, being accountable for, hard truths about the past.
Headed off to wild and wonderful West Virginia for a reading. Driving through these amazing Appalachian mountains always fills me with such awe.
Make art about the mysteries felt in mountains.
14 August 2016
Road Angel named Bay, a very large beautiful young man working as a cashier in a roadside stop, his smile like a bright bright beacon, caught me doing a lil dance in the aisle to the BeeGees piping in overhead. He grinned and immediately started dancing too 😀So we finished out Stayin Alive while I paid 🙂
Make art about dancing with strangers. 🙂
15 August 2016
Feeling this this morning, the music.
“Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song/in my own breath”~Philip Levine
Make art about the music you hear, in anything, in everything.
Seeking Submissions for Winter 2017 Theme Issue, “Imagining Peace”
Deadline: October 15, 2016
“We are dedicating the Winter 2017 issue of New Madrid to the theme of “Imagining Peace.” As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.” We are looking for work in all literary genres that speaks to this arduousness and that defines peace not just as the absence of war, but as something dynamic in its own right. Possible categories of interest include: writing by peace activists and refugees, testimonies about immigration or international crises, travel writing, translations, and much more. An in-depth explanation can be found on our website. We will be accepting submissions from August 15 through October 15, 2016.”
Time with my daughter, son-in-law, and that miraculous GrandPerson. Looking into my grandson’s eyes, I can see eternity ❤
Make art about what you see in a child’s eyes.
7 August 2016
Love coming home to find tomatoes ripening to red, okra reaching fingers to the sky, even those last cucumbers still making their climb up the trellis 🙂
Deep within each one of us lies a garden.~Julie Moir Messervy
Make art about the garden that lies within you.
8 August 2016
Had the chance today to spend time with my sister and a beautiful cousin I haven’t seen in years. So good for my heart!
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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