Nestuary at AWP

This year I wasn't about to give birth (Finn, born just days after AWP Boston 2013), but I am learning that family will often disrupt my lofty plans:  instead of flying out to Seattle this year, we put money aside and started Maya in preschool the day before she turned three. 

Which means I've been a bit virtually on-the-edge-of-my-seat as Nestuary debuted at AWP this year, and apparently it has done well!

Thank you to my beloved Meryl for sending me the bottom three photographs.  ♡

And very soon, you can order your own copy in the Small Press Distribution catalog, and my book launch will be on March 12th at SubText Bookstore in St Paul.  I'll also have a reading in early April in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

first crushes (an announcement)

Do you remember when I talked about that (in)fertility m/essay, which eventually was christened Nestuary?  I spoke of a first crush and I didn't want to share the name of the press.  I've decided to share it now.

This is why:

 In keyword-searching The Poetry Foundation, came upon this.  Have been thinking about the title Nestuary, and was going to write a dictionary-poem with nest and sanctuary.  Wanting to read this one by Coleman a few times over, and Boruch, curl up inside it.

(in)fertility m/essay

Inspired by reading all sorts of good things and a recent call for a lyric-hybrid essay, I have begun writing something new.  I'm never sure when a first draft becomes a second or third.  I know it's young, but it's starting to feel awfully solid.  I'd been calling it my (in)fertility m/essay, but I'm thinking about calling it drawing down the moon.  I've got a few places in mind to send it, one in very-particular, but I'll keep that hush-hush so when it does find a home, that home won't get jealous of first crushes.  I've been itching to write something that doesn't slide into genre very neatly and I'd been auditioning projects like some kind of manic monkey (something spiritual and freeing in Alaska! something witchy involving burning in the Appalachians!) (and those projects are still in the works but very much so toe-in-the-water) for a while.  I feel a little heady about it.  Perhaps I did this now because I'm bucking against that month-of-30/30-poems for Tupelo (which was hugely successful and I'll write about that soon and I'm so pleased about it) / (which was exhausting).  I've already had one brilliant mind give it a read and I've since injected it with some goddesses and some celebration and about a thousand more words.  (I'm counting words!  That's not how poets do it!)  All I know is I keep getting drawn back to this humble laptop to adjust some more.  My poetry collective might knee me in the boobs if I don't stop emailing them revised versions.

Right now, I've finished:  The First Flag and am reading:  Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies.  My brain is rattling its cage.