Category Archives: Blog

Writer’s Symposium by the Sea

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!

“I & You” at MOXIE Theatre

I loved watching MOXIE Theatre’s production of “I & You” tonight via Zoom and then being on the panel of guest poets after the show! This play engages with Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” social media, mortality, and more. I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. Do yourself a favor and get tickets to see this play virtually while you can!

 

 

Ruminate Happenings!

I had so much fun writing on Instagram live as part of the Ruminate Happenings on March 13. This was my third time doing this live-writing event, and I spent my hour writing poems for Beatriz Fernandez and Charnell Peters. If you’d like to eavesdrop on my writing process and watch me create those two poems, you can still watch the video on Ruminate’s IG account at this link. If you’d also like to join me in supporting this lovely magazine, then you can subscribe at their website. 🙂

End-of-January News!

The end of January brought an unusual amount of rain to San Diego and an unusual amount of good poetry news and events to me. I couldn’t keep up with posting them all, so here’s a catch-all post for the end of January.

News
I found out on the final day of January that my full-length manuscript, Hereverent, received an honorable mention for the Wishing Jewel Prize! Congrats to the winner, Dennis Hinrichsen, and thanks to Green Linden Press for affirming and encouraging my work.

Publications
In addition to my poem in Kahini Quarterly, which I did write a post about, I also had two more poems published in the past week:
– “How Can You Tell If a Mushroom Is Poisonous?” was published by the excessively cool Cotton Xenomorph, a journal whose editors and contributors I can’t wait to hang out with at AWP post-pandemic.
– “Baba Yaga’s Answer” was featured on the website for Next Door Villain, which is a fantastic podcast focused on villains from fairy tales to recent shows.

Readings
– On Friday, January 29, I got to be a featured reader for The Greatest Indoor Reading Series alongside Jane R. LaForge, Jack Bedell, and Keith Kopka, and that was such a warm and welcoming gathering! I will certainly be attending this reading series in the future. Thanks to Noley for inviting me, to Charlotte for hosting, and to Treena and Ridge for creating this space.
– On Sunday, January 31, I was a special guest with Marthe Aponte and Jacqueline Tchakalian for a brand new series from Nicelle Davis called Plants, Painting, and Poetry. What a gift to read and talk with powerhouse artists and poets!
– I’ve continued to participate regularly for Wednesday Night Poetry, the longest-running weekly poetry series in the U.S., hosted by Kai Coggin. This asynchronous reading series has been such a lifeline during the pandemic, and the inaugural reading was especially incredible.

Class Visits
I love teaching my own students, but there’s also a special thrill in getting to visit someone else’s class as a guest poet, most notably because I don’t have to assign any grades. 🙂
– On January 21, I visited Susan Rich’s literary magazine class at Highline College as part of a panel of journal editors for the student editors of Arcturus. The students asked brilliant questions, and I loved getting to hear from the other editors on the panel as well.
– On January 29, I visited Tom Allbaugh’s intro to creative writing class at Azusa Pacific University, and those students asked me such thoughtful questions about my new chapbook and about writing in general.

Writing
My university is starting our spring semester late, March 1, in an attempt to work around the winter COVID surges, but I’m still hosting a 3-hour silent writing time called Writers Gonna Write once a month on Zoom for students, alumni, and colleagues. I also gather once a week with a few dear writer friends to catch up and do a bit of writing. So much right now is so far out of my control, and parenting kids who are doing school at home is still a challenge, but these regularly scheduled meetings with kindred spirits have been keeping me writing.

Editing
The staff of Whale Road Review made it through our largest reading period ever (over 600 submissions in December), and by mid-January we’d chosen all of the pieces for our upcoming issues. I’m working on setting up the spring issue now, and it’s amazing. We had so much fun at our 5-year anniversary reading on January 9 that we’re now planning a staff celebration reading for February 6, and we’re planning to have virtual release readings for each issue going forward too. I love doing this work.

I won’t mind if February brings more good poetry news and events, but I do need things to slow down a little so I can focus on completing syllabi and course materials for my spring classes. I feel fortunate to get to do all of these things while we’re staying home. If you’re reading this, I hope you’re taking good care and finding ways to be creative and connect with others safely too.

Tasty Other: A Dramatic Song Cycle!

I’ve had trouble sharing this because I get too excited about it, but here goes: Victor Labenske has made a song cycle from poems in my book Tasty Other! 

In May, we met via Zoom so we could talk through poems and plans.

In June, we met again so Victor could show me his first complete draft, and he sang through the whole thing for me, which was amusing and wonderful!

This past Friday, Victor recorded the song cycle with two sopranos, Elda Peralta McGinty and Judi Labenske. I can’t wait to hear the final version! Having my poems turned into a song cycle is such a dream for this choir girl for life. 🙂

Thank you, Victor!

The Glen Workshop

I almost missed this year’s Glen Workshop, and even the day before I felt like I probably shouldn’t be doing it because I desperately needed more time to plan for virtual delivery of my fall classes, but I’m so glad I did. The community I find at this workshop is always so valuable, and even though we had to be online, we still spent the week laughing, talking all things poetry, sharing new poems in workshops, generating new poems… it was a glorious and rejuvenating time! Thanks to Lisa Cockrel, Sara Arrigoni, and the rest of the Image staff who make it happen!

Natasha Oladokun was a warm and welcoming workshop leader, and her emphasis on radical revision led us into some wonderful discussions (and led me to some exciting revisions!). I just adored each person in this workshop, and I’m so thankful that I got to spend a week in their company. I hope we’ll get to be together in person some time in the future.

Stations of the Cross

If you’re looking for some artistic/interactive Stations of the Cross online today, I helped build these for my church. They’ve got some thought-provoking visual art throughout, and Stations 11 and 13 will give you prompts for writing your own poems. Station 11 also includes one of my own poems, “The Flesh Made Word” from The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman.

Blessings on you this Holy Week!

Teaching Online (or Zoom Screenshots Are the New Selfies)

In this alternate reality of COVID-19 and sheltering in place, I’m thankful that I still get to do the work I love, and I’m thankful for the ways I’ve been able to connect with my students over poetry and writing online.

When we rebooted our classes online last week, I greeted my Creative Writing: Poetry students on Zoom in my Waldo costume from a past Halloween, and I loved seeing people laugh when they arrived and I told them, “You found me!” 😀

Then last Wednesday, my lit mag workshop students were supposed to hold this semester’s major event: the Driftwood awards party, which usually means lots of pizza and creative readings, performances, and displays in our school’s rec room. The editors quickly shifted plans, and we instead hosted a Driftwood celebration on Zoom, open mic style, and it turned out to be such a fun night. 

On Saturday, I had planned to host a new “event” that I call Writers Gonna Write (a silent 3-hour writing time for students, alumni, and colleagues) in our department lounge, so I held this on Zoom instead. We did indeed keep each other in our seats writing for 3 hours, and it was wonderful to get to do our work in each other’s company.

I hope anyone reading this is also finding ways to be present with others via technology, snail mail, sidewalk chalk, or however else you can while we need to be physically distant. Love to you.

AJN blog post about “Carrying”

With all of the chaos, I’m late with sharing that the American Journal of Nursing’s managing editor, Amy M. Collins, wrote a beautiful blog post about my poem “Carrying” earlier this month. I’m so grateful for her attention and connection to my poem.

Here’s the beginning: