My contributor note about my current poetry project is featured today on Rock & Sling’s website! Thanks, Thom Caraway and company!
“This project began because I was tired of people taking language from the Bible out of context and using it as a weapon against other people, so I decided to take language from the Bible out of context and create art…”
I’ve been dreaming of starting an online literary journal for several years, and today I published the first issue of Whale Road Review!
I’m so thrilled by the quality of the work in our inaugural issue. Enjoy!
My paper on Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” was just accepted for publication in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics.
I’ve been working on this off and on since 2010, and I’m so thrilled that it’s found a good home! I’ll certainly post a link here when the paper is published.
The Poetry Circus in Griffith Park on September 19 was incredible. Nicelle Davis gathered somewhere around 30 poets together for the program and made everything magical. I wish we could have a poetry circus every weekend! I loved hearing so many amazing poets perform their work.
I broke out my Jesus costume for the occasion, and I had a great time posing for photos and trading/selling copies of The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman. I read a poem from that collection and a poem from a new collection-in-progress. I got a collective “Amen” from the audience, and it was good. 🙂
One person told me, “I’m sorry. I don’t believe in you.” I said, “That’s okay. I’m still here.”
I can’t wait to be part of The Second Poetry Circus next Saturday, September 19th, 5:30 to 9:30 at The Merry-Go-Round in Griffith Park. It’s free and open to the public! Join us!
I’m realizing my dream of starting a new literary journal. Welcome, Whale Road Review!
Whale Road Review is a journal of poetry and short prose. It will contain short creative work (everything under 500 words) that lingers long after it’s read. It will also include short pedagogy papers and a range of reviews. It will be simply designed and mobile friendly. The first issue will be published in December 2015.
Please like WRR on Facebook and Twitter, and send some work!
The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman is now available in a Kindle edition!
I didn’t know the publisher was doing a Kindle edition, so this was a fun surprise. Thanks, Wipf & Stock!
You can still purchase a signed paperback version online or directly from me for yourself or someone else. Email me at KatMann @ gmail.com.
It’s become clear to me that a poetry book is just a larger poem. The poems in it are lines, and sometimes I have to cut good ones because they don’t fit, and I have to create a sense of flow and keep people reading. Every poem I’ve ever loved doesn’t need to be in a book, or at least not right now in this book. This feels so obvious to me now, but it definitely wasn’t before.
For some reason, I had always thought about poetry books as a storage container for all of the poems that I like the best and want to keep together (or, even worse, that I wrote within the same time period). Maybe I’ve read too many Collected Poems. I’ve been working through a manuscript and going wild with cutting and adding and rearranging and revising. Creating a book was easier with my chapbook The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman because it has a clear narrative arc. It’s much harder with the collection I’m working on now that has a wide variety of poems swirling around a central theme.
And now back to work.
This sleepy mother writer made it to the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu this morning for the APU writers’ retreat (with a little help from Starbucks and Mika… I was sleepier than I’d like for that 3-hour drive after waking up with the baby at 4 a.m.).
I’ve been writing away since lunch: two new poems drafted and a few more ideas jotted down. I don’t have an ocean view like last year, but I do have a jacaranda tree right outside my window, and I get a lovely breeze. I’m ready for a few days of writing here.
Two poems from my game sequence are up at Luna Luna Magazine today! Thanks, Ruben Quesada!
One of these poems uses Yahtzee to mourn the loss of my Granny. The other laments my not using “crotchless panties” in a game of Scattergories. Poetry and games can take us anywhere…