Big Poetry Giveaway 2018

April 9, 2018 By in Announcement, Contest, Shout Out Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Welcome to the Big Poetry Giveaway! To participate in the giveaway and to find other blogs that are doing giveaways, check out this post.

There are two ways to participate in the 2018 giveaway! 1. Just post a comment with your name and email address included. Please also let me know your first choice, if you win.  2. Host a giveaway on your own blog! See this link for how to host your own giveaway and have your site included, and also an excellent FAQ on the project.

Book One 

Fanny Says, poems by Nickole Brown. I am fortunate enough to have picked up two copies of this fantastic collection, and I want to share one! Of Fanny Says, poet Patricia Smith says “Nickole Brown’s unleashed love song to her grandmother is raucous and heart-rending, reflective and slap-yo-damn-knee hilarious, a heady meld of lyrical line and life lesson.”

 

Book Two

Red Sky, Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women, an anthology of work featuring poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Hoagland, Thylias Moss, Fady Joudah, Jaki Shelton Green, Hélène Cardona, Zeina Hashem Beck, and the work of 100+ poets in response to globally oppressive physical, psychological, emotional, and systemic violence against women. Red Sky  is a collection of work by established and widely published poets as well as new and emergent voices around the world and is a collection of what is dark, yes, within, but also what is light.

 

 

The giveaway ends on April 30th at midnight, at which point I will use a random number generator to select the winners. Find others who are giving away poetry listed here.

Good luck, and Happy National Poetry Month!

 

What Catches the Light | poem

February 10, 2018 By in Poetry

What Catches the Light

I press the handle of a knife into his hand
and he scrapes the shimmer of salmon,
the red flesh face down against his palm,
where the scales collect like sooted snow.

He speaks with a voice low like dusk,
wipes the blade clean with his fingers
tells a story of the Red Sea, thick with fish.
When he mentions his father, his heart

thickens in his throat, and when we get to his own blood
count how many years we’ll have together.
A sea of blood, his blood, antibodies
swimming in his veins.

I can’t remember the names of the fish,
only how he scrapes with a surgeon’s precision,
feeling for what he cannot see but knows is there

preparing this meal for us
while the sky silvers outside the window
and he talks about death
but I think he is talking about love.

[With gratitude to the editors at Red Paint Hill Journal, who originally published this poem.]

A Virtual Interview with the Editors of Red Sky, by Cindy Huyser

February 9, 2018 By in Interview Tags: , , , , ,

Much gratitude to Cindy Huyser for the following interview prior to the Red Sky: Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women reading that was featured on Thursday, February 8, 2018 from 7:15 – 9:00 p.m. at BookWoman at 5501 N. Lamar #A-105, Austin, TX.  Bookwoman is Austin’s premiere feminist bookstore, soon to be celebrating 40 years of serving the Austin feminist and queer communities.

Thank you, Cindy, for your generous interview questions for Gabrielle, Stacy and me. Read the interview here.

Special thanks and big love to Bookwoman and to everyone that was a part of the evening. I truly wish I could have been there. And I hope there are pictures! 

~M.

before the rain | Owl’s Roost Trail

November 15, 2017 By in Photography Tags: , , , , ,

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” — Aristotle

I set out to check out the Owl’s Roost Trail north of town at Bur-Mil Park. It was grey and chilly, perfect match to my mood and I had a new lens to try. Owl’s Roost is a hiking trail but also allows mountain bikes (I found someone’s fun bike-cam video here that follows the trail.). A couple of times I had to pause and wait for the bikes to pass in fairly large numbers. Pretty cool.

Mid-November and by now the trees have shed half of their leaves. The lake was the color of the sky, a shade of flint or gunmetal, still and sheet-like. (I already miss the lush, warm summer hikes and will until next season. “The green in my eyes.”)

After a little while, a mist began to fall through the thinning tree canopies, down onto the well-worn path. I’d stopped so often to look that I hadn’t gone as far as I thought. With what felt like imminent downpour, and me in just a sweater and jeans and without rain gear, I picked my way back to the car.

Sharing some of the photos here.

Found elsewhere, but related: the Buddha belly tree at Bur-Mil

 

#TBT Reading “At the End” at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities

September 7, 2017 By in Readings Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

I just happened across this video and hadn’t realized it was up. Back in April of 2014, I was invited to read “At the End,” which won an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition and was first published by ONE, by Jacar Press out at the beautiful Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities.

I was honored to be included with the other winners in 2014:

First Place: Alan Michael Parker, Davidson, NC
First Runner-Up: Maureen A. Sherbondy, Raleigh, NC
Honorable Mention: Melissa Hassard, Triad, NC
Honorable Mention: Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Vilas, NC

It was fun to think back on 2014. I have dear memories of time spent at Weymouth, and cherish those days.