Lucky Jefferson is the coolest journal! Every poem in this issue riffs on the same opening and closing line. There are blank pages to respond or compose your own poem between sets, and there’s a Spotify playlist from contributor recommendations at the end. I’m so thrilled to be part of this!
I’m grateful to the editors both for the prompt that led me to create “Sometimes I Shake Too” and for the gift of this stunning issue! You can buy a copy here.
Join us online tonight at 5 p.m. Pacific for the release of How to Write a Form Poem by Tania Runyan! I’m looking forward to celebrating and reading alongside so many wonderful poets.
You can register at this link.
Update: If you didn’t make it to the reading, you can now catch the video here! It was such a wonderful event..
I’m not sure that I have words to describe how near-impossible it’s been to teach this past year during a pandemic, but I love my students, and I’m grateful for the encouragement of receiving an Excellence in Teaching Award.
The Curator published my poem “The Domino Effect” earlier this month, and I’m honored to be included in this beautiful digital magazine.
I’m also excited to join with more contributors on April 29 at 5:30 Pacific for a virtual reading in celebration of National Poetry Month! You can register for the reading here.
I’m so thrilled to be a featured reader this Friday evening at The Writers Place in KC (via Zoom) alongside Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller. You can register here and join us at 7 p.m. Central (5 p.m. Pacific).
I am somewhere past thrilled to have two poems, a ghazal and a found poem, included in How to Write a Form Poem (T.S. Poetry Press, 2021) by Tania Runyan. This fantastic book is now available to buy, to adopt for classes, to give as gifts… it’s going to come in handy all over the place.
Tania also interviewed me about “The Book of Class,” my found poem that’s included in the book, and you can read that interview here. I don’t think I’ve ever teared up at an introduction to an interview before, but now I can say confidently that I have.
I’m honored to be part of The Lumiere Review’s interview series, The Light Bulb. Thanks to Jessica Kim for inviting me to participate and for her thoughtful questions about my new chapbook, my writing life, and the publishing process.
To kick off National Poetry Month, I have three poems in the April issue of Verse-Virtual. This was my first submission to this journal, and I love the focus on community building and the note at the bottom of each page that encourages readers to contact the author if they love a piece.
My three poems in this issue are harder to share than most. They deal with the car accident that took the lives of my spouse’s parents. If you’re up for reading about my wishes to rewind and rewrite the past, the details of the car accident that kept me from sleeping well for months because I kept imagining it, and the bronchoscopy I witnessed, then these poems are for you. If you need to skip these poems, I will certainly understand.
I highly encourage you to read more of this issue, especially Barbara Crooker’s poem, which uses the Spanish glosa form. Thanks to editor Jim Lewis for curating this space and including my poems!
In 2014, I wrote a guest blog for Editing Addict called “How to Submit Poems for Publication.” The fantastic Trish Hopkinson has now published an updated version of this guest blog: “5 Steps to Poetry Publication.”
I found the process of submitting for publication bewildering when I first wanted to begin, so I hope I can help others feel more confident about getting their poems out there.
Last Wednesday, I had the absolute joy of co-leading Writing the Unspeakable: A Generative Poetry Workshop (which you can now view at that link) with my colleague Margarita Pintado Burgos at the 26th annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea. I loved getting to share this creative space with Margarita and about 70 others, and I was amazed by how intimate this workshop felt given the number of people and the virtual format.
That evening, this interview was also released to the public. A few weeks before, Margarita and I met virtually with Dean Nelson, the founder of the Writer’s Symposium by the Sea and an incredible journalist and interviewer. After watching Dean interview some of my favorite writers over the years, I was thrilled to experience his preparation and thoughtful questions from the writer’s seat.
You can find all of this year’s events at this link, where you can also find more info about next year’s symposium, which will include Cornel West and Nadia Bolz-Weber!