25 May 2017
Been reading and thinking a lot lately about vintage sewing, about work done by hands in the countless generations before me.
Make art about feeling connected to something from another era, another time. Reveal this connection through a specific daily process or specific object.
24 May 2017
“When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.” ― Basil of Caesarea
Make art about thieves, thievery, about thefts of the spirit.
22 May 2017
Thanks and Love to that fabulous poet-sister Amy Tudor for posting the article that inspires today’s prompt.
“Adults in America don’t sing communally. Children routinely sing together in their schools and activities, and even infants have sing-alongs galore to attend. But past the age of majority, at grown-up commemorations, celebrations, and gatherings, this most essential human yawp of feeling—of marking, with a grace note, that we are together in this place at this time—usually goes missing.”
How Communal Singing Disappeared From American Life: And Why We Should Bring It Back
Make art about singing with others, about that joining of voices.
20 May 2017
Sewing without a pattern, a night gown I’ve wanted to attempt for months, but kept scaring myself out of trying.
Make art about attempting something you’ve been scared to try.
21 May 2017
Make art about making moments of peace among the tumult.
17 May 2017
I hate grocery shopping. But today while grudging my way through it, I ran into a retired colleague whom I adore and haven’t seen in a while. He made me laugh, like always. And I laughed through the rest of the shopping.
Make art about something good arising from something you usually dread.
18 May 2017
Dreamt I was lighting candles, thousands and thousands of candles, as far as I could see.
Make art about the power small lights.
Ann Tweedy‘s first full length book, The Body’s Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016, and it is currently a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Clackamas Literary Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Wisconsin Review, and many other places. She is also the author of two chapbooks—White Out (Green Fuse Press 2013) and Beleaguered Oases (tcCreative Press 2010)—and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. In addition to writing poetry, she has served as a law professor, most recently at the former Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, and is a leading scholar on both tribal civil jurisdiction and bisexuality and the law. She currently serves as in-house counsel for the Muckleshoot Tribe in Washington State. Ann grew up in Southeastern Massachusetts and graduated from Bryn Mawr College and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She is an M.F.A. candidate at Hamline University.
Buy Ann’s lovely book!
Praise for The Body’s Alphabet
“This collection of poems adheres to the bodies of mothers and daughters, lovers and partners, childhood and children. It reminds us how close and distant we can be, at all times, to each other, to nature, to living, and to death.”
–Trish Hopkinson, Literary Mama
“Ann Tweedy’s collection The Body’s Alphabet is a book of in-betweens – in-between homes, in-between loves, in-between sexualities. It is a book about motherhood and memory, and the space we keep for our childhood long after we have grown up around it. Though Tweedy begins The Body’s Alphabet with the lines ‘I tread through / the world mindful that upsets / follow unguarded movement’ (1), over the course of the collection she finds strength in those quiet and delicate moments, and in doing so steps out from her own carefully crafted betweenness to affirm her presence in the work.”
–Rebecca Valley, Drizzle Review
“Home is the structure you build when nowhere else will have you,” writes Ann Tweedy in this gutsy, no-nonsense collection of poems built on a precarious and often tender journey through homes no longer available to return to. The result is neither sadness nor nostalgia; it is hard, clean narrative of self-preservation and survival, fitted with unexpected joy. I feel such kinship with these poems, their testament to the strength and determination of women and men who struggle to build life anew, and to find home and happiness in a world of travail. What a blessed space this book is: a home for the wayward soul.
—D. A. Powell, American Poet
Ann Tweedy’s first book is a brave and honest examination of liminality. In delicate lyrics she confesses to trespass, asking readers to question the boundaries between acts and identity, sexuality and family. The Body’s Alphabet documents the poet’s courage, living openly as a bisexual feminist. Although childhood logic taught her that “home is the structure / you build when nowhere else will have you,” these beautiful poems knit and nest safe haven for a life spent gathering freedom.
—Carol Guess, author of Doll Studies: Forensics
More From Ann Online!
http://queenmobs.com/2016/02/interview-ann-tweedy-by-mary-kasimor/
http://untitledcountry.blogspot.com/2011/02/issue-4-featured-poet-ann-tweedy.html
http://www.lavrev.net/2010/06/ann-tweedy.html
http://www.rattle.com/nature-essay-ann-tweedy/
http://www.literarymama.com/reviews/archives/2016/12/a-review-of-the-bodys-alphabet.html
Hear Ann Read!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6Woib8eSc
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
Jon Tribble‘s first collection of poems, Natural State, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2016. His second collection of poems, And There Is Many a Good Thing, will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2017. His poems have appeared in print journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, Poetry, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, and The Jazz Poetry Anthology, and online at The Account, Prime Number, and storySouth. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where, aside from being an excellent person and amazing literary citizen, he is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and the series editor of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry published by SIU Press.
Praise for Natural State
One of the poems in Jon Tribble’s Natural State observes that “the finest / moment of our lives may not matter at all.” That’s a devastating truth, but Tribble’s poems about growing up in Arkansas make every moment he renders matter, and matter deeply. Natural State may be Tribble’s first collection, but it’s as polished, mature, and wise as most poets’ fourth or fifth, and it not only matters, its publication is one of contemporary poetry’s finest moments. – David Jauss, author of You Are Not Here and Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories
More from Jon Online
Video
Interview & Reading! Literary Power Couple: Jon Tribble & Allison Joseph
and, in gratitude for all of the years of service Jon has given to our community–
Happy reading!
xo
Mary
29 April 2017
“It’s a strange courage
you give me ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part”
― William Carlos Williams
Make art about a moment calling for strange courage.
Michael 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
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
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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