"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

Posts tagged ‘creativity’

Daily Prompt <3 On Mothers and Making Home

7 June 2016

My sweet daughter Lia, a brand new mother to an amazing baby boy Max–I call him Little Star–is beautifully maneuvering her way with Love and tenderness through the new dance of parenting, and marriage as a parent, and her own professional work.

Another sweet young mother I know, one of the daughters of my heart, is in the process of making a new home for her two little ones, having made the courageous decision to leave a marriage that wasn’t working or healthy, for her or her babies.

So I watch them in awe, as my own son used to say, “like we were just us, a crew on our own little pirate ship!”when his brother and sister and he and I were in the same place, me a mom making a home for us 🙂

How these young women astound and inspire me 🙂 how I admire them ❤ 

Make art about mothers, or about the daily rituals that go into making a home. 

loveeverafter-2

Art by Katie m. Berggren

 

 

 

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 On What's Dear ;-)

6 June 2016

I have a special affection for deer, for many reasons. I sit out on my little stoop and they slip like shadows from the woods, all velvet eyes and dancer feet, and they let me enjoy their company, their beauty, as they browse and graze through the section of the yard I leave wild just for them, what my kids call ‘Deer Diner.’ I planted them a persimmon tree there in that corner a couple of years ago, and I leave them three cups of corn daily 🙂 paying my rent for sharing this little wooded four acres that their kind occupied long before my house was built. I love them more than I can articulate. Their presence brings me into a place of peace like no other animal. I think they understand this 🙂 

Make art about deer. Or about what in nature brings you peace. 

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Category:

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

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Monday Must Read! Michelle Reale: Birds of Sicily

michelle reale photoThis week meet Michelle Messina Reale, author of four collections of poetry including Birds of Sicily, and The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies. She won the Twin Antlers Prize for poetry, along with poets Meg Tuite and Heather Fowler. The winning manuscript, “Bare Bulbs Swinging” was published by Artistically Declined Press in the 2014. She is also one of the authors in the collaborative anthology Shut Up/Look Pretty. Her work has been published in Verbsap, 3711 Atlantic, Underground Voices, Moondance, Lily, Philadelphia Poets, Yellow Mama, Unfettered Verse, Grey Borders, La Fenetre, and others. Michelle is an Associate Professor at Arcadia University. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She conducts ethnography among African refugees in Sicily. Her Italian-American way of life is a prominent source of her research, as well.

She blogs about many of her experiences and topics of research at http://www.sempresicilia.wordpress.com

Buy Michelle’s Beautiful Books!

Birds of Sicily

Praise for Birds of Sicily

Birds of Sicily is an exploration into the geography of proximity. Dipping relentlessly and empathically into the “shadow of lack,” Reale unravels travel to reveal the “life of hard work and paradox” that links us all.—Cameron Conaway, Author of Malaria, Poems


Michelle Reale’s Birds Of Sicily is an outstandingly powerful poetry collection which has personal resonance for me due to our shared Sicilian background. In these wonderfully written poems, Michelle explores themes of migration and finding one’s place in a new, unfamiliar world and culture. Not much literature is written on the Italian-American experience and Reale’s work is a most welcome contribution to that end. This is a work you will come back to again and again.—Julian Gallo, Author of Breathe

Michelle Reale fashions lines that bite and burn. The delicate yet fanged poetry in Birds of Sicily draws from the depths of history and blends voluptuous landscapes with raw depictions of human fragility. Weaving and blending together various poetic forms and structures, the language of each piece sings. This collection, both universal and deeply personal, remains with the reader long after they’ve turned the final page.—Janie Cannarella, Editor-in-Chief, HOOT Review

 

The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies

Bare Bulbs Swinging

Shut Up/Look Pretty

 

Read More from Michelle Online

https://mockingheartreview.com/current-issue/michelle-reale

http://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/november-2012-michelle-reale.html

http://wickedalicezine.tumblr.com/post/86509383189/two-poems-by-michelle-reale

http://boneorchardpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/04/michelle-reale.html

http://www.wordriot.org/tags/michelle-reale

http://www.connotationpress.com/fiction/1268-michelle-reale-fiction

http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVRealeMichelle.htm

 

Inteviews

https://anewlookonbooks.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/february-writers-feature/

https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/interview-michelle-reales-interiors/

http://www.smokelong.com/smoking-with-michelle-reale/

http://thebirdsisters.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing-paul-elwork-and-michelle.html

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Special Sunday Call for Submissions: HeartWood

HeartWood reading now for our October issue! 

Seeking poetry, fiction, and nonfiction! Also seeking profile & interview proposals for our Appalachian Arts section! 

Submission Guidelines Here! 

HeartWood

Category:

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 <3 Out in the Field

5 June 2016

“In a field /I am the absence/of field.”~Mark Strand

Make art about absence, about being out in the field, about who you are in the field. 

hay20field

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, 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 <3 What I Wish For You

4 June 2016

It’s a John Denver morning. 

“If I had a wish that I could wish for you, I’d make a wish for sunshine all the while.” 

Make art about what you wish for someone else. 

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Music, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Friday Call for Submissions Love!

Crab Fat is Now a Monthly Journal!

Deadline: Rolling

 

“Crab Fat Magazine is reading for our September & October issues! We’re currently accepting literary fiction, poetry, flash, creative nonfiction, transcribed interviews, screen/stage plays, book reviews, & visual art. Crab Fat is interested in eclectic queer, feminist, punk, hybrid, experimental, awkward, & nonlinear work. Be sure to review our website & past issues to get a sense of what we’re publishing. Crab Fat is an online monthly with a “best of” print anthology featuring 25 pieces released each June.

Please visit www.crabfatmagazine.com for complete submission guidelines.”

Note: from Crab Fat’s Guidelines

“We do not accept email submissions. If you send us email submissions, we will delete them, unread. We use Submittable.”

 

 

Category:

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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A Dream, A Meditation, and A Prompt: Ecosystems

 

I dreamt my husband and mama, both gone now for years, having walked on to the next life, were helping me in the garden, setting up two new raised beds, working the dark rich soil with rakes and with our hands. I was planting turnips, the seeds so small, so many shades of purple, lavender, violet, plum, deep purply rose. “Plant cabbage with them,” Mama said, “Good companions.” John nodded, “Or spinach, or peas.” He grinned. “They like each other.”

I woke up thinking about companion planting, about ecosystems.

Ecology is all about interconnection and eternal change, creating patterns, connection, cause and effect, that shape every organism and phenomenon. Our own minds work this way, but, I wonder, Can we step back and recognize that? Can we extend that eco-understanding beyond our needs, thinking like an ecosystem”? Recognizing, developing, and honoring our “eco-mind”?

Wouldn’t an eco-mind also able to see that the survival of our own species, our own existence, our own desire to thrive, is connected to our consciously creating the context needed for that thriving, and that it is inextrcably tied to the well-being, the continuation, of other species and the health of our wider ecology.

Can we learn to see that we don’t exist above or beyond the ecosystem? That those turnip seeds, in their tiny purple majesty, are as essential as the bees that come to the comfrey, the deer who watch from the shaded wood, the cardinal that sings from the Guardian Oak, the groundhog who thinks I don’t see her in the tall grass at the edge of the yard, to the spider silent in the rain-silvered web at the side of the garage, are as essential to our own survival as they are to ours?

Make art about interconnections, about ecosystems

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Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Are you a fan of comic books and graphic novels?! Then you have to see Plume Snake!

Are you a fan of comic books and graphic novels?! Then you have to see how one of my beloved alums is changing the landscape of that industry, for creators and readers!

Visit Plume Snake, Inc!

What’s Plume Snake?

Plume Snake is a new service that allows members unlimited access to all of the creator-owned comic books and graphic novels in their growing library, A digital archive of creator-owned comics and graphic novels!

My brilliant talented alum Alex Odom, with his amazing team including Austin Jr., have been working to launch this new model of artistic community, and now IT’S LIVE!!!!

Just 5 buckaroos for full access! Check it out! Sign up! Get your read on!

And support these innovative amazing young Artist-Entrepreneurs! So honored and humbled to have worked with both Alex and Austin ❤

Please share, y’all!

plume-snake-full-color-green-3

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, Editing, Family, fiction, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, publishing, Writing

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Daily Prompt <3 Fame, and Ms. Dickinson

2 June 2016

Fame is a bee
by Emily Dickinson
 
Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.

Make art about bees, or fame.

DSCN3292

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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