Call for Submissions: HeartWood
Poets, please submit.
Also seeking fiction and creative nonfiction.
Reading now for the October issue.
Posts tagged ‘literary journals’
The Birds of Grief
This week I keep going back to a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, about grief, about sheer physicality of grief and loss. About feeling helpless. About how loss, no matter what, belongs to all of us.
________________________________________
I Want to Bring the Birds
inside, hold them in my hands, tuck them inside my shirt, claws and all, feel the sharp tic of each frightened beak, surround them with my fingers, cradle them against the cage of my ribs, whisper shh shh shh—until they each find and linger in their place: the titmice tatting nests into my hair, crested sparrows and juncos perched and singing from my feet, the jays who see me as so much meat, supplier of suet and otherwise foolish and useless, each take a shoulder, their alarm squawk sudden and hard as a couple of crows stand sentry on my back. The chickadees, those flying golf balls with their punk rock eyes and ebony mohawks, bossy and brazen, take my ears, letting me know just how they see this whole thing going, while the shy nuthatch hides, its cinnamon shadow disappearing under my shirt as it hops up my ribs and nuzzles in like a newborn near my heart. A pair of doves, and then another, their wings ash gray and spotted with apricot, nestle in on the soft give of my belly; I touch them with just the tips of my fingers, hoping, praying, they’ll teach me the tender songs only possible in the dark. One by one, they all settle in, on my limbs, my skin, feathering, resting, and maybe, so will I, settle for real, for the first time in years, as I hear and feel their heartbeats steady, slow, ease finally, into a companion rhythm with my own. Or mine to theirs? In my dreams, it doesn’t matter. In my dreams,we are the same.
___________________________________________________________
This poem is included in my collection The Night I Heard Everything from FutureCycle Press.
Monday Must Read: Dawn Lundy Martin: Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
This week, recommending Dawn Lundy Martin‘s Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life, from Nightboat Books. Dawn earned a BA from the University of Connecticut, an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University, and a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Martin’s first full-length collection, A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering(University of Georgia Press, 2007), was selected by Carl Phillips for the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her second collection,Discipline, won the 2009 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize, chosen by Fanny Howe(Nightboat Books, 2011). Her most recent collection is Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life(Nightboat Books, 2014).
In 2004, she co-edited, alongside Vivien Labaton, The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Anchor Books, 2004), a collection of essays on modern theories of activism in America. She also wrote the Afterword, titled “What, Then, is Freedom,” to Harriet Ann Jacobs’ 19th century slave narrative, Incidents of a Slave Girl (Signet Classics, 2010).
Martin is co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation in New York, a national grant making organization led by young women and transgender youth, which focuses on social justice activism. She is also a member of the Black Took Collective, a group of experimental black poets embracing critical theory about gender, race, and sexuality.
Martin has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, The New School, and Bard College. In June 2013, she was a was a featured writer for Harriet.
Buy Dawn’s Beautiful Books
Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
http://www.nightboat.org/title/life-box-pretty-life
Praise for Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
from Fanzine
“Shades of a Bruise: A Review of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life” by Paul Cunningham
“I think of the contorted poems of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life as themselves boxes. Imprisoned voices. Entering one of these boxes might feel more like something akin to giving one’s self over to crisis. Or chaos. How exactly should one feel about their participation in these boxes? I think it depends on the reader. The reader could possibly feel like they’re looking into a mirror; another might feel like they’re gazing down a corridor of Hell. Again, the reflection/refraction depends on the reader. Perhaps a reader will feel like they’re stepping into familiar territory, or they might feel explicitly uninvited once immersed within these boxes. Or even suddenly, violently deformed by these boxes. Defamiliarized and/or re-shaped by these boxes. Strengthened and/or bolstered by these boxes. One might also not know how to feel. These boxes might induce sweat, nausea, discomfort…”
Read the full review here: http://thefanzine.com/a-review-of-dawn-lundy-martins-life-in-a-box-is-a-pretty-life/
Discipline
http://www.nightboat.org/title/discipline
A Gathering of Matter / a Matter of Gathering
(Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize)
Read More from Dawn Lundy Martin Online
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/dawn-lundy-martin#about
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dawn-lundy-martin
https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_american_poets/dawn_lundy_martin/
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/04/29/five-feminist-poems-for-national-poetry-month-5-modern-frame/
http://www.readab.com/dmartin.html
Interviews
http://lithub.com/on-the-black-avant-garde-trigger-warnings-and-life-in-east-hampton/
https://bostonreview.net/poetry/NPM-2016-karen-lepri-interviews-dawn-lundy-martin
https://pen.org/interview/three-questions-dawn-lundy-martin
https://www.loc.gov/poetry/interviews/dawnlundymartin.html
http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/split-this-rock-interview-with-dawn.html
Hear Dawn Lundy Martin Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5UX66tOxPM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nIpt-B-lA
And So Important Today: Dawn Lundy Martin, Claudia Rankine, and Messiah in Conversation: Readings and Discussion of Justice Poetry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuFE5ybTFhM
Beautiful reading, y’all ❤
xo
Mary
Hundreds of Prompts! Right Here! :-)
Finally got around to getting this website updated 🙂
Including all those Daily Prompts! Right here!
Check em out and get your creativity flowing!
Mary Carroll-Hackett Daily Prompts!
Monday Must Read! Michelle Reale: Birds of Sicily
This 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!
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
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
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!
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
Recent Comments