January 2024

FaceBook Groups for Writers

Social media can be overwhelming and consume valuable work time and writer resources. You have to be discriminating in your choices. Nevertheless, FaceBook Groups for Writers provide a valuable online gathering place and some terrific writer resources.

FB Writer Groups help build and grow the literary communty. The writer resources are free, online, not time sensitiove, always available, can be accessed on demand, when the time is right for you.

Below is a select list of FaceBook groups for writers. Each site is an example of a group that supports the best interests of writers. The list is by no means definitive. It demonstrates the kinds of FaceBook Writer Groups that are availble to writers who seek good online writer resources.

Please note that some FB writer groups are public while others are private. A private groups may require paid membership in the organzation. Some Pivate FB groups require free by enrollment in the group. Other FB Privates require application and acceptance to participate.

Caution: this is my personal list of FB Writer Groups. I developed it over a ten year period, it reflects my personal experience and writer needs as a poet. I invite you to check out the groups on my list, evaluate each FB group based on your own writer requirements. Take what you need, discard what doesn't call you.

Feel free to use my personal FaceBook writer list as a starting point. It's up to you to evaluate and take only what works for you.

Some Good FaceBook Writer Groups:

Literary Magazines and Writing Contests

Private group 3.3 K members

Anthologies Seeking Submissions

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2068041726554759

Private Group 8 K members

Literary Magazines

Public 19 K members

Writers' Markets

Public 4.8 K members

Geneva Writers' Group

Public 1.6 K members

Poetry Postcard Fest

Private 1.5 K members

Poetry Super Highway

Public 6 K members

Terrific resource for new poets learning their craft and great resources for experienced poets

Poetry Sandbox

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Poetry Sandbox

Private 1.5 K members

Contemporary Poets, Their Works, Current Poetry Projects, News, Links

Public 24.8 K members

ModPo: Modern American Poetry

courserhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/104420166376784

Private 10.3 K members

IWWG: International Women's Writing Guild

https://www.facebook.com/IWWGwriters

Private 240 members

Best wishes for a wondrous new year in 2024. May the muse inspire your writing this January!

December 2023

Where to Publish Nature Writing

Nature writing experienced volatile ups and downs in popularity. Consequently, the literary marketplace for naure writng changed. A check of online nature writng journals shows that many online nature magazines have gone defunct.

There's been a serious regression in the nature writing market Much has changed in ten years. This is due in a small part to the aging out or death of editor-in-chiefs of Nature Writing Journals. For example, the green-&-red-earth journal, Plum Tree Tavern, lost its beloved editor/Innkeeper, their editor and founder Russell Streur, who died this past Spring. I for one sadly miss the enlightened presence of Russell Streur.

A wider acceptance of climate change is one major reason that attitudes toward nature writing have changed. Climate change is less debated now as theory but viewed as fact due to the great increase of species extinctions, rising temperatures, rising sea levels, droughts, fires and super-storms.

Concurrently, a philosophical shift seems to be underway toward spiritual ecology. An on-going re-evaluation of an indigenous view of nature dovetails with and compliments spiritual ecology. A new vocal group of scientistists and citizens are attempting to redefine man's relationship and responsibilities to the planet and nature. Unlike a commodity driven market or a profit motivated marketplace, adherents of spiritual ecology are looking toward Indigenous people for answers. Why? Because Native Americans have a long tradition of viewing humans as only one part of the sacred web of nature and intimately connected to nature's fate.

Another reason for the changes in nature writing is decine in popularity of a pure entertainment appeal of nature-for-nature's-sake. Pop Culture fads are ever changing. Just think about how Covid redefined communication and the rules of contact between people in the global world during and after the epidemic.

But there's good news in these trends for nature writers. Changes spurred increased popularity of EcoLit. It's more environmental, place centered and science themed nature writing. EcoLit not only celebrates the beauty of nature, but tempers nature writing with doses of science and values nature for its redemptive and transformative effects on people. John Junker, list curator of EcoLit, is a passionate advocate of ecolit books. For more info about EcoLit, check out: https://ecolitbooks.com/about-us/

I highly recommend John Junker's EcoLit list of 100+ literary journals that publish nature writing:

https://ecolitbooks.com/resources/literary-outlets-for-environmental-writing/?utm_source=Ashland+Creek+Press&utm_campaign=ceb6a343a4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_02_19_06_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-d8685668a1-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&goal=0_bb588efb5d-ceb6a343a4-1420241139&mc_cid=ceb6a343a4&mc_eid=4d6d0659f0

Best wishes for successful nature writing! And to all writers, may your writing life thive in December.

November 2023

October 2023

Writing with Spontaneity & Paul E Nelson

Paul E Nelson, poet, teacher, interviewer and essay writer, is a scholar of open form (spontaneous writing). He favors a poetics that mirror a personal cosmology that incorporates a deep connection to place and to the history of that place. If you were to ask Nelson about the masters of spontaneous composition, he'd begin with Charles Olson's Projective Verse. It's a writing method with roots to writers going back centuries.

The Cascadia Poetics Lab was founded by Paul E Nelson in 1993. It is a fine resource for information about of many literary greats inspired by spontaneous methods: Allen Ginsberg, Wanda Coleman, George Bowering, Brenda Hillman, Eileen Myles, Robin Blaser, Nate Mackey, Bernadette Mayer.

As a 26 year professional radio broadcaster, Nelson conducted interviews with many notable poets, authors and activists over a period of thirty years. A collection of transcribed interviews, American Prophets, contains oral history and spoken word art. It's a cultural and literary treasure trove.

Paul E Nelson founded Cascadia Poetry Festival in 2012, now in its seventh year. The festival showcases living Cascadia Region writers. He also administers the Cascadia Poetry Postcard Fest, initiated in 2007, by Nelson and Lana Ayers.

Nelson follows Charles Olson methods deeply and contends that Olson's form of spontaneous writing was in turn inspired by the imagist writings of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Whitman's celebration of the multitudes. Whitman, Pound and Williams were Olson's literary antecedents. Nelson investigates the impact of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov on Olson's theory of Organic Poetry.

Paul E Nelson writes about modern Cascadia writers inspired by Olson's projective verse theories. He starts with the Black Mountain school poets, and the Beats in the 1950s who opened the English writing world to eastern haiku tradition, Buddhist and Zen philosophies. Nelson continues to study and recommend writers of the Cascadia tradition. Some older Cascadia poets and friends of Cascadia he spotlights are: Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger, Diane DiPrima, Wanda Coleman, Sam Hamill, Michael McClure, George Stanley and Daphne Marlatt. With the exception of Snyder, Stanley and Marlatt, these fine poets have since died.

Olson's spontaneous writing initiated the post-modern writing period. Nelson talks about the importance of the Black Mountain School poetics. Based on research of Olson & related poets, Paul E Nelson carries Olson's philosophy of spontaneous composition forward and uses it as a basis to explore present day writing of the Cascadia bioregion in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. George Stanley, Brenda Hillman, Nate Mackey and Sharon Thesen are examples of post-modern serial poem writers.

See Nelson's Blog for newsletters, festival announcement, poetry happenings and his books: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/category/blog-cascadia-poetics-lab/

For Paul E Nelson's classes: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/workshops/fall-2023-workshops/

For Cascadia Poetry Postcard Fest: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/poetrypostcards/

For Cascadia Festival 2023: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/events-page/

Dear Reader, I highly recommend Paul E Nelson to your attention. As a writer who has attended his classes for three years, I’ve benefitted greatly.

May you be inspired to write spontaneous poetry in October!

SEPTEMBER 2023

Creative Non-Fiction

Creative Non-Fiction is writing that conjoins fact and fiction in memoir, nature, travel, interview and essay. Creative non-fiction adds subjective content through personal observation. Not only do you report objective facts but you view the subject with both heart and mind. This addition of fiction is a storytelling technique that engages the reader and introduces another level of meaning.

Creative non-fiction can be long. Or short. Different magazines favor the long essay; others like short, flash or micro versions. Word count varies widely. A word count of 1,000 to 3,500 words is common. But the maximum can be up to 20,000 words. In strong contrast, other magazines prefer condensed non-fiction of under 1,000 words. Or under 500 words (flash non-fiction). Or up to 100 words (micro). Be sure to check the journal's submission guidelines for word count before you submit.

For long creative non-fiction, check out:

• River Teeth: A Journal of Non-Fiction Narrative. Essay. Dept. of English of Ball State University in Muncie, IN. Submittable with Reading Fee. https://riverteeth.submittable.com/submit

• Split Lip Magazine. Creative non-fiction of 1,000-2-000 words. Pays $75 for pieces accepted. Submittable. https://splitlipthemag.com/submit

• The Master's Review: New Voices. Free Submittable for new voices with no published book. Work up to 7,000 words. Paying venue. https://mastersreview.com/calendar/

• The Kenyon Review: Short Non-Fiction Contest. General submissions from September 1 until September 30, 2023. Essay. Three themes: Extinction, Writing from Rural Spaces, and Literary Curiosities. https://kenyonreview.org/submit/

• Lunch Ticket. Creative Non-Fiction. From 750 up to 3500 words. Read blind. https://lunchticket.submittable.com/submit/11939/creative-nonfiction

• Qwerty. University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Previously unpublished creative non-fiction up to 5,000 words. https://www.qwertyunb.com/submit

• Shooter Literary Magazine. Bi-Annual. Non-fiction of 2,000-6,000 words on the theme The Unknown. Current submission deadline of September 24th, 2023. https://shooterlitmag.com/submissions/

• Hippocampus Magazine. Personal Essays & Memoir Excerpts, maximum of 4,000 words. Submit here. https://hippocampusmagazine.com/submissions/

• Fourth Genre: Bi-Annual by the Michigan State University Press. Non-Fiction of up to 6,000 words. Open: September 1 - November 30. Reading fee is $4. Read blind. Authors paid with two (2) complimentary copies of the journal and $50 honorarium. https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/fourth-genre-YNas3

For short creative non-fiction:

• River Teeth: Beautufl Things. Micro-Fiction of up to 250 words. Subject: beautiful things (large or small). Submittable with Reading Fee. https://www.riverteethjournal.com/blog/2023/08/28/the-aquarium

• Lunch Ticket: Flash Prose. Read Blind. Up to 750 words.https://lunchticket.submittable.com/submit/11939/creative-nonfiction

• Hippocampus Magazine. Flash Creative Nonfiction, max 800 words. Submit here. https://hippocampusmagazine.com/submissions/

• Brevity: Blog & Craft Essay. Well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or fewer) essay form. Pitch required for Craft Essay of up to 1,200 words. https://brevitymag.com/submissions/

• The Citron Review: Creative Non-Fiction, Micro & Flash. Submittable. Creative Non-Fiction & Flash of 101-1000 words. Micro of up to 100 words. https://thecitronreview.submittable.com/submit

• The Cincinatti Review: miCRo. Weekly online flash feature, curated by our graduate-student editors. Up to three pieces in a single file for nonfiction, and hybrid works, up to 500 words. https://www.cincinnatireview.com/submission-guidelines-2021/

If you want to read more about literary magazines that publish creative non-fiction, Author's Publish has a fine article on the subject: 30 Literary Magazines Accepting Creative Non-Fiction, by S. Kalekar, August 21, 2023. It's current and has a great list of magazines for the non-fiction writer to consider. https://authorspublish.com/free-book-the-2022-guide-to-manuscript-publishers/

May the season change of September inspire your writing.

Diving for Pearls

FEBRUARY 2019

Remembering Mary Oliver

The world lost nature poet Mary Oliver on January 15, 2019. She died from lymphoma at 83. Memorials, sketches, photos, copies of her poems, original poems in her memory filled my computer inbox. Teary eyed, I savored each post about Oliver. This wonderful poet who lived fiercely and died unafraid was cherished by many.

Here’a a sketch of Mary Oliver by artist and poet Sandra Matucci, one (like so many) who grieved the poet’s passing. This portrait appeared on Matucci’s Blog, One Single Drop, two days after the poet’s death. She titled the work, She Changed the World in Word.

http://onesingledrop.com/she-changed-the-world-in-word/

Mary Oliver wrote poems based on personal nature observation. She took detailed notes about what she saw, felt and heard during solitary morning walks. She walked near where she lived on Cape Cod and in Florida and then returned home to write. She wrote plain and simple English about the joy she found in the company of plants and animals. Why? Because the ordinary inspired her to live fully. Oliver’s poetry takes fierce delight in nature’s disclosures. Her words revel in the grandeur and wildness of nature, both the dark and light. The lessons she learned gave her courage, they made her unafraid, even curious about dying, knowing death stands on the other side of living. Her poems translate detailed nature observations into words with the power to shake the reader alive to the wild and wonderful in this mortal world. My favorite Oliver poem is a fine example:

When Death Comes: https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/102.html

For a brief literary and biographical overview of Oliver’s work and writer’s life, Poetry Foundation is a good source. The site includes text links to several of her poems. Check out:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver

Hearing a poet read her own work is a way to approach another layer of meaning in a poem. While Oliver guarded her privacy, she enjoyed reading her poems to audiences. YouTube contains numerous links to spoken word performances of Mary Oliver’s poems, they are by her and others. These links take you to two famous Oliver poems in her own voice:

Wild Geese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv_4xmh_WtE

The Summer Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16CL6bKVbJQ&list=PL668E92F8EA6CF22E&index=3

Oliver’s obituary appeared in major and regional newspapers, social media sites applauded her. Articles were written by the press, by poets and citizens, by theologians and counselors, by inspirational speakers. Here are two Mary Oliver obituaries, one from each side of the pond:

Mary Oliver, 83, Prize-Winning Poet to the Natural World, Is Dead, - New York Times, 1/17/19,

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/obituaries/mary-oliver-dead.html\

JANUARY 2019

I was a life-long closet writer. I stopped writing in isolation when I retired. ModPo is where I got my start. This course helped me find a poetry community and introduced me to many of the writers and readers that support me as a poet today.

I’ve been taking ModPo since the class started six years ago. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Modern American Poetry. The teaching technique used is close-reading, a method favored by the program’s director, Al Filreis, a professor of English at University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Director of Kelly Writers House which hosts ModPo. The ten-week-class surveys Modern American poetry from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman up to the present. The core course covers representative poems by featured poets and begins each September.

For those who complete ModPo (like me), we poetry lovers don’t graduate out of the course. There’s ModPoPlus to keep us engaged. We study additional poems written by authors featured in the

curricula. And once we’ve finished ModPoPlus, there are special interest threads. This past fall, I joined The Global Study Group and Haiku Corner (I write haiku and thrived in this Discussion Group. An added plus, we wrote Renga together. The haiku party that started in September is still going strong. It's so much fun, we don't want to end it.)This free online MOOC is where I met many of the poets who belong to my online writing groups. Early on, when ModPo ended in the fall, our poetry friendships didn’t. We continued sharing our writing and supporting each other by forming closed online writers groups. Two of the ModPo-inspired writer groups I belong to are online, global and still flourishing four years later. I have writer friends from ten nations.

ModPo continues year round in a Slo-Po mode. That’s where the class is now, much slower paced, less intensive. Every year I learn about more great poems by modern American poets. As I expand my knowledge of the poets and their work, invariably I learn more tools of the craft for writing poetry.

ModPo keeps evolving. It’s a class that develops global poetry community and keeps expanding. ModPo is my-place-to-go, it’s where I learn about modern American poetry. Or it’s for anyone with an interest in learning more about English language poetry.

Students from all over the world bond over poetry and keep coming back. That's part of the course dynamic. I’m in contact with the ModPo-ers I met at the start, plus new ones who’ve joined each year. The class is open, diverse and free. To me, ModPo's success is a stellar example of democracy in action.

ModPo enrollment remains open. Once enrolled, you can sample the writing resources and poetry treasures. Or begin a self-paced study through the course. Students have free access to class materials, videos and emailed ModPo updates.

Here’s the link to enroll in ModPo.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo?utm_medium=email&utm_source=marketing&utm_campaign=4BZoUBXwEemScaPKX0THWA

Pearl Diving Editor Suggestion:

Trish Hopkinson publishes a great writer’s Blog that I subscribe to and it’s free. Hopkinson sends many fine suggestions for literary journals that consider unsolicited poetry submissions.

This week I learned about NaHaiWriMo, a project by Michael Dylan Welch that has been going strong for nine years. There’s a prompt a day to write a haiku that invites participants to post a haiku each day for the month of February. Haiku are so short, if you start now, you can catch up!

The short form of haiku is a personal favorite. If you haven’t written haiku before, I can say from experience that writing haiku is how you learn. Welch’s form of haiku is NOT syllable specific (5-7-5), rather he uses a not-to-exceed 17 syllables guideline. The haiku contains two contrasting images that are juxtaposed. If you become addicted to the Way of Haiku (as I am!), prompts continue year round.

Caution: If you participate in NaHaiWriMo with the intent to publish later, don’t submit what you write on the site because it is public. Many literary journals consider published what’s been posted on a Blog.

Here’s the link to Trish Hopkinson’s Blog :

https://trishhopkinson.com/2019/02/04/nahaiwrimo-write-one-haiku-a-day-for-the-month-of-february/

Pearl Diving Editor Suggestion:

One of my online poetry groups writes haiku together. As a writer group, we wrote a tribute poem series in memory of the soul, gospel, jazz and blues singer Aretha Franklin, who recently died of cancer. The group’s tribute has been posted on a jazz blog called The Song Is… This music and literature site is administered by Marianne Szlyk, a US English professor and jazz devotee If you miss Aretha Franklin or are a lover of jazz, I invite you to check out and submit to:

https://thesongis.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-modpo-poets-pay-tribute-to-aretha.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR2UjZ6W-j7n9cP99DxzTQ5Wx3ti5mxIzmKCs4ERIqB6lSvyjv3y7LbusiQ

MARCH 2019

A worthy group of independent writers run Sabotage Reviews, originator of Saboteur Awards. They are my kind of people, the real ones I want to get to know. If old fashioned Mom 'n Pops are your style too, this group might interest you. Check them out at: https://sabotagereviews.com/about/

This UK based writers' group runs a literary contest called Saboteur Awards. They cover small writer goings-on around the globe. I like supporting my favorite literary endeavors by casting a vote for them in the Saboteur Awards.

In case Saboteur Awards 2019 sounds like fun to you, I'm passing on information to participate. But keep in mind, I like small presses, poetry chapbooks and independent book stores. All things micro-bright are beautiful to me.

Do you have a special literary magazine or journal (online or hard cover) that captivates you? I voted for Between These Shores Literary & Arts Annual for BEST MAGAZINE. Do you know someone you’d like to champion who published a short chapbook this year (after March 30, 2018)? You could nominate that book in the category of BEST POETRY PAMPHLET (less than 40 pages). Or that BEST ANTHOLOGY you read or that published you? Or how about that fine literary festival you attended - nominate it under BEST LITERARY FESTIVAL. Do you attend a SPOKEN WORD REGULAR NIGHT - nominate it. If you have a special spoken word artist you enjoy, nominate that person for BEST SPOKEN WORD ARTIST. And there are more categories....

I voted for my favorite literary endeavors, you can too. I wanted my vote to count and made sure to vote in at least three categories. The rules state: “A minimum of three nominations (i.e 1 nomination in at least 3 categories) are required for your entry to count. Only one entry per person (which often translates to per computer since this form is anonymous!)”

https://sabotagereviews.com/2019/03/08/saboteur-awards-2019-nominations/

P.S. Hint! Hint! I cast my vote for FAVORITE MAGAZINE for Between These Shores Literary & Arts Annual

April Is Poetry Month

April brings many opportunities to write a poem-a-day in the company of other like-minded poets. Groups meet online, the cost is free, participation is available to anyone who writes in English anywhere in the world! Having a writing goal, writing everyday by responding to a daily prompt delivered to your computer is one way to improve your writing. It’s how I stopped writing in isolation and connected me to a global network of writers. If you want to launch your writing into the world, participating in one of these projects may be good for you. Positive feedback and encouragement from other writers helps you flourish as a writer. I highly recommend learning and writing in community as a way to grow your craft. Writing is like everything in life - the more you do it, the better you get. As Christopher Merrill, Director of the Iowa Writers Group in the US often says, “Write On!”

The following list includes some online journals and writer groups offering 30-poems-in-30 days during April 2019:

Grilled Cheese- Subscribe at no cost to this online literary journal to participate. Daily writing prompts are posted at the start of each month. New prompts are offered each day of every month of the year. The journal has a flourishing literary community. Here’s a link to the April 2019 Calendar for daily writing prompts: http://www.toasted-cheese.com/a-pen-in-each-hand/march-2019-daily-writing-prompts/ Daily writing prompts are archived in a handy feature titled A Pen in Each Hand.

NaHaiWriMo - Editor Michael Dylan Welch selects a guest haiku writer each month to contribute a daily haiku prompt and the project continues throughout the year. Once you subscribe to the FaceBook Page, daily haiku prompts keep coming. Website page: http://www.nahaiwrimo.com/home/daily-prompts FaceBook page for April 2019, daily prompts provided by Devin Harrison: https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo

NaPoWriMo- Write 30-poems-in-30-days during April. Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Maine, started this poem-a-day writing project for the month of April in 2003. You can join the global version, called GloPoWriMo, it’s a kindred site. Both versions, Na/GloPoWriMo, share the same website. Daily prompts include links to good poems to read and a video-a-day. Here’s a hot link to Na/GloPoWriMo prompts and discussion: http://www.napowrimo.net

NaNoWriMo Camp- The same group that sponsors writing 1,000-words-a-day-for-a-month on your novel during November now offers a poetry, non-fiction or fiction “camp” version of their word-count-goals for daily writing in the months of April. Link to sign up: https://campnanowrimo.org/dashboard

PADS Challenge- Join a month long poetry party facilitated by Robert Brewer at Writer’s Digest Magazine, Brewer is the magazine’s poetry editor of this worthy magazine for writers of all genres. Look for the Pads Challenge on the magazine’s website under the tab, Editors Blogs, then select, Poetic Asides: https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides

If you have recommendations for a 30/30 for the month of April, please pass along to:Ingrid Bruck, Network and Resource Editor BTSresource@yahoo.com Between These Shores reader suggestions received will be posted under “Diving for Pearls”!

JUNE 2019

The Wonder Code:

three baskets of fresh produce....haiku fit in-between

I spent a day canning on my kitchen. In down-time between tasks, I read Scott Mason’s book, The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku. The book provides a new path to understanding haiku. It was deceptively simple to read, best taken in short bits because I often wanted time to stop and ponder before I read more.

The book consists of five essays on the essential ingredients of haiku: 1- Think Small, 2- Come To Your Senses, 3-Feel the Moment, 4- Prepare For Surprise and 5- Only Connect. Each essential haiku ingredient is exemplified by a selection of haiku that demonstrate the principal (EX: small/senses/now-ness/ surprise/connection). Representative modern haiku follow each essay. The book includes a "gallery" of haiku taken from Heron's Nest archives. There is also a collection of Mason's haiku, they demonstrate how he walks the talk. Modern haiku references at the end of the book are excellent.

According to Mason, wonder derives from nature and fine haiku expresses this wonder. He is a follower of the wonder code, one who lives The Way of Haiku. Mason writes of British scholar R. H. Blyth who coined the term, The Way of Haiku: “<writing daily haiku> is also a way of living.” Mason says this describes his personal haiku practice, it’s one that I share. He contrasts haiku from eastern and western traditions, says he prefers haiku with an eastern world view, as does The Heron’s Nest. "Thinking Small" in the eastern sense is celebrated in this book. He says a good haiku combines "fragment" and “phrase” to culminate in a “Eureka" moment. Mason describes these haiku dynamics as follows: "<fragment & phrase> act as kindling, while the gap between them serves as oxygen; this mix, will combust as sensed experience in the predisposed reader's mind." His explanation helped clarify why I am drawn to reverence when I read haiku.

Haijin Scott Mason works on The Heron's Nest editorial team. I found his bookilluminating. After reading the book, I felt like I’d spent the day with my new-best friend!

Links to find out more about The Wonder Code and Scott Mason:

The WonderCode: https://www.theheronsnest.com/order.html

Haiku: Poetry of Focus with Scott Mason: https://vimeo.com/165512364

Here are some links to my favorite haiku and senryu journals:

Contemporary Haibun Online: https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/pages_all/aboutthisjournal.html

Failed Haiku:

https://failedhaiku.com

Haibun Today:

http://haibuntoday.com/pages/about.html

Kokako Haiku Journal:

https://breathhaiku.wordpress.com/tag/kokako-haiku-journal/

Modern Haiku:

http://www.modernhaiku.org

NaHaiWriMo:

http://www.nahaiwrimo.com& https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo

Prune Juice:

https://www.facebook.com/PruneJuiceJournal/

The Heron’s Nest:

http://www.theheronsnest.com

Under the Basho:

https://www.underthebasho.com

July 2019

Where Do I Submit What I Write, for Publication?

That’s a matchmaker question. Until you find a match with your writing style, you will get a lot of discouraging rejections. And if you pay entry fees, you will be even more disheartened.

When beginning to submit, I recommend you select journals that don’t charge a fee. Be aware that the majority of your submissions won’t be accepted for publication. That’s true for even established writers. Besides the financial cost, rejections can knock down your

confidence in yourself as a writer. The percentage of acceptances varies per magazine. The higher the bar, the greater the number of rejections. You want to submit “smart” to have the greatest chance of success. Persistence pays off. One day you’ll get published and it will be be thrilling.

Whatever literary journal you submit to, it’s a good practice to read what they publish. It will make you savvy about the magazine’s style and

preferences. Reading poems is a win-win—it’s as good for you as writing is and it’s the only way to gage if your work bears similarities to what a venue publishes. If the journal is post-modern with a preference for hybrid, this will notbe the best place to send a nature poem, haiku or sonnet for consideration.

Adele Geraghty, Editor of Between These Shores Books, passed on this friendly hint. Editors like the courtesy of a cover letter. It can be as simple as: “I submit for your consideration… & thank you for reading.” Remember to do it, good manners can open the door.

The list below contains some high-quality online literary journals that are new-writer-friendly. They are open for submissions and do not charge a submission fee. Good luck in finding a home for what you write. Do your homework and keep writing and submitting!

A Summer Writing Conference: OR How to Keep Magic in Your Writing

August 2019

I attended a week-long writing summer conference hosted by International Women’s Writing Guild, for women writers of all ages. IWWG Summer Conference was held in Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania. This year we met from July 12-19, 2019.

I highly recommend attending a week long writing conference like this one. It’s terrific for learning the writer’s craft, networking and developing a writing community.

People travel from all over the world to attend IWWG. This conference may (or not) be for you. A different writer conference might suit you better: 1- if you’re a male writer, 2- if you prefer a different class format, 3- if you don’t share IWWG’s values, or 4- if you’re not from the Northeast USA and want a writing conference closer to home.

For those interested in hearing what made IWWG conference so special, continue reading.

The IWWG has been holding summer conferences for 42 years. I've been going for fifteen and keep coming back for the writing magic. This is my tribe, my primary face-to-face writer support community. I found my first writing teachers there. Guild summer conferences never disappoint. I always bring home new writing skills, always leave inspired.

The summer conference may be the biggest annual event but the holds regional conferences in the US year round. Membership includes an active global village for online writer connection and support anywhere in the world. The organization offers in-depth writer webinars for distance learning. I’ve taken three-- post modern narrative, pitching your memoir; beyond the writing margins-- and plan to take more.

One unique aspect of IWWG classes is that teachers come as teachers AND learners. Teachers attend each other's classes with students; teachers write and read what they write along with students. Students come at all levels of writing skill mastery. No writing portfolio required— the only criteria is a love for writing and a desire to learn. The guild’s philosophy is that if you write, call yourself a writer.

At IWWG, I like the rub of novice and professional, of nuts and bolts on woo-woo, the dynamics of cross pollination when you mix writers of all different levels, abilities and backgrounds. The writing guild gives every writer positive feedback. It’s all about positive reinforcement, the truism that the more you write, the better you get. Students write in class. Some students read what they write. When you read, others listen for a writer’s best words and repeat back only her words. No comment. No critique. Guild teacher, Dorothy Randall Gray, calls this giving ’word seeds' to the writer. Feedback and support comes to the writer in her own words. This kind of positivity gives a writer a draft to build on, edit and polish. It works for me. Each summer, I bring home ‘poem seeds’ to harvest.

From Saturday through Thursday, five daily class sessions start at 8:30am and end at 5:30pm. Opening and closing ceremonies convene and end the conference. Evenings include open mike readings; social time follows until 11pm. Most participants stay in dorm rooms on campus and eat in the college cafeteria. A Quiet Room is available for those who opt to write instead of taking a class session. Evenings include open mike readings of what we wrote in classes. Writers with books sell them at two book fairs. Optional Salons are offered on Monday evening. On Wednesday evening before open mike, new play scripts are staged and performed by Play Lab students. Day ends at Red Door Lounge with the opportunity to visit and network over wine and cheese.

I could have skipped from teacher to teacher as I often do but this year I didn’t. I kept one class session open, selected four teachers and went to the same ones each day. I took six-days of class with Susan Tiberghian (memoir), June Gould (poetry), Myra Shapiro (poetry) and Eunice Scarfe (post-modern best practices).

That’s my IWWG writing conference report in a nutshell. I’m holding open the week after 4th of July in 2020, just in case anyone decides to join me next summer.

September 2019

How can you meet other writers? How can you become a member of a writer community that supports you? You must meet other writers to form writing connections. Not everyone has a Kitchen Table Writers Group, library writer group or poetry open mike available. If you don’t have these kinds of local writer resources, others can be found online.

The writers I met in ModPo classes have developed into my primary online writer community. ModPo is the group that helped me find my own writer community. My community of writers supports me and my writing. I’m a short form poet and enjoy writing haiku. At ModPo, I met other poets inspired by nature who enjoy writing haiku. We formed a closed writer group of people from six nations, write collaborative rengay (a haiku variant) and became online friends. I‘m a member two closed online groups that originated at ModPo. Both are five years old and thriving. ModPo also gave me a writing buddy. We exchange pieces of writing weekly using GoogleDoc. This helps to keep both of us on-track, helps with the process of revision and motivates us to keep on writing.

I highly recommend ModPo as starting place. It’s public, free and open. Students are part of a global writer community that’s huge. With over 30,000 students, everyone talking at once, the course can be overwhelming at first. I found that joining a smaller discussion group on the ModPo site can be a good way to form personal connections with others, ModPo goes year round. The highlight of ModPo starts September 7, 2019, a ten-week course on Modern & Contemporary American Poetry. Now would be a great time to join ModPo.

I encourage investigating a variety of writer communities. Look for a good match to your style, theme and technique of writing. You may wish join an established online writer community that is small. Or start with a big group like ModPo and join a small discussion group with similar interests.

Attached is a list of the groups that form my online poetry community. I’m a member of all of them. It’s selective, offered as a guideline and a place to begin searching for your own writer community. Add or subtract from this list as you wish.

October 2019

Where Can I Submit My Nature Writing?

Do you write nature poems, stories or essays? You may be experiencing difficulty finding publishers of nature writing. I know I did. Rest assured, you are not alone. Renowned poet, Mary Oliver, wrote fine nature poetry yet publishers and even many critics treated her work as less-important than writing by post-modern authors.

Writers write best about what they cherish. You know this. You’re a nature lover, one who appreciates the wonders of the natural world. This understanding transforms you into a nature witness and defender. You acknowledge forest bathing as a Muse without apology. You depend on nature as a source of strength, draw on its energy and wouldn’t have it any other way.

A prejudice still exists about the dubious merit of nature inspired writing. But you write about nature because it offers a well-spring of creativity and close observation of the planet leads to the discovery of details that enrich and enliven your writing. You appreciate the value nature provides and refuse to give it up just because it’s not the current fashion.

Changing trends favor nature writing. Rest assured there’s a growing market for it. A sub-set of journals seeks nature writing of witness and a celebration of place and all that inhabit it, animal, vegetable and mineral. They publish nature poetry, fiction, non-fiction and art. Some calls for for eco-literature include: climate change, animals, endangered species, clean water, animal rights, healthy food. If you write about subjects like these, check out online literary journals that share a passion for nature and preservation of the environment.

I recommend an essay on this subject titled, “Not Your Grandfather’s Nature Writing: The New "Nature" Journals” by Andrea Nolan. https://fictionwritersreview.com/essay/not-your-grandfathers-nature-writing-the-new-nature-journals/

For a list of eco-literary journals, see: “ Literary Outlets for Environmental Writing.” Included is a list of 64 publishers of eco-lit writing. Literary Outlets for Environmental Writing

As a writer of haiku and short nature poems, I know how difficult it can be to find nature-friendly publishers. Below is a short list of online literary journals that favor nature writing:

BER: Blue Earth Review: MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY, MANKATO’S LITERARY MAGAZINE. Poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, art. http://blueearthreview.mnsu.edu/submissions/

ecotone: reimagining place. Magazine publishes writing and art that reimagine place, explores the ecotones between landscapes, literary genres, scientific and artistic disciplines, modes of thought. https://ecotonemagazine.org/submissions/

The Fourth River: A Journal Of Nature And Place-Based Writing Published By The Chatham University MFA Program Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and visual art, that explore the relationship between humans and their environments, both natural and built, urban, rural or wild. https://4thriver.submittable.com/submit

The Future Fire: Social Political & Speculative Cyber-Fiction. Short stories, poems, art. http://futurefire.net/guidelines/index.html

Terrain.org Online Environmental Magazine of Literature. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction. https://www.terrain.org/submit/

NOVEMBER 2019

"Hidden Meanings: Creative Fiction, Non-fiction, and Facts".

November 15, 2019 - December 31, 2019

A free online course from The University of Iowa.

Enrollment is open for "Hidden Meanings: Creative Fiction, Non-fiction, and Facts.” If you have never taken a MOOC from The International Writing Program (the IWP) at the University of Iowa, here is your opportunity. This online class is free and available over the internet to anyone anywhere in the world who writes English. The only prerequisite is English; course reading and writing is conducted in English. You will meet students from other countries working on their English language skills. You will encounter beginner to experienced writers, and life-learners, like me. Students are all ages. You engage and learn from people around the globe.

I’ve taken several terrific IWP courses from the University of Iowa and highly recommend them. Classes are instructor led; teachers are excellent. Respect is the class culture. These classes have broadened my knowledge of literature. I’ve learned writing tools that I continue to use and have improved my writing. I value the global connections I’ve made and the understanding I’ve gained by interacting with writers from different cultures and backgrounds.

"Hidden Meanings", a MOOC (massive online learning course), begins on November 15, 2019. A teacher-team leads classes. The course runs from November 15, 2019 - December 31, 2019.” The curriculum remains open for self-paced learning until March 15, 2020. "Hidden Meanings” is presented by The International Writing Program (the IWP) at the University of Iowa, with generous support from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the US Department of State. Why that funder? An informed electorate is essential to the success of Jeffersonian democracy. The community building component of this class supports that objective. University of Iowa classes writing classes are truly an example of democracy in action. Democracy depends on the strength of enlightened people who take facts and make up their own minds.

Do you think writing is political? I do. We live in the post modern era. Information inundates us. Can you feel the overload? I do. Can you tell good information from bad? I struggle with that. The internet can be a friend that breaks down borders, opens communication and creates connections between people all over the world. But it can also be an enemy when it serves up fake news, misinformation and disinformation as facts. I struggle through the plethora of misinformation and disinformation. If you are like me, you resent anyone trying to recruit you based on self-serving lies. If you are like me, you want all the information you gather to be the ‘real stuff’, so you can make up your own mind. I look forward to learning techniques to uncover the truth, evaluate the reliability of sources and determine which information is factual.

December 2019

Who Publishes Inspirational Writing?

Does your writing style express positive values? Are you a truth seeker? Do you write with the goal to heal? Are you informed by formal religion, Eastern or Western? Are you inspired by the wonders of nature? The supernatural? By beauty. Or meditation? The mystical?

If your writing is inspirational, you may feel outnumbered and obsolete. You don’t fit into the post-modern mainstream. A post-modern worldview — one that’s existential— predominates current art, music and literature. Post-mod is the elephant in the room.

I am comforted by the thought that the ‘elephant’ has a positive counterpart in “hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” offered up by Emily Dickinson. It’s good news for inspirational writers that Emily’s abstract bird has living brothers and sisters. Some publishers value the positive and support inspirational writers who build on the positive and act as change agents with words in the world.

Yes, despite the popularity of post-modern writing, interest in spiritual writing and inspiration continues. Some literary publications and presses seek inspirational writing. They may be small in number compared to the post-mod crowd but they produce high quality literature and art.

Positive value publishers are difficult to locate because they are scattered, small candles on corner shelfs and under bushel baskets. This is because they tend to come “slant” toward the positive (per E. Dickinson). They are outsiders and don’t gather in a group.

If you are a positive value writer, you have to negotiate between two inspirational camps to find publishers in your venue. The camps come in two divisions: formal and general. The formal religion division covers spirituality that emanates from a traditional religion. The generalist division sets claim to all other spiritual alternatives outside organized religion: nature, healing, beauty, supernatural and mystical-spirituality…

Writers who adhere to a formal religion maintain their roots in their organized religion. A writer from inside the fold tend to stick with their own and search for publishers within their religious tradition. For writing within a spiritual tradition, the search for publication is two-pronged: 1- search the specific religion (EX: Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism…), 2- extend the search beyond dogma to “inspirational writing”.

I’m in the second camp which contains a cross-disciplinary group of inspirational generalists. I (and spiritual writer peeps like me) flock to literary journals that are prophets of positivity. Our writing champions positivity in all races, creeds and colors. Disclosure: the resource list below of “Inspirational Writing (Secular)” is highly subjective— I list my current personal favorites; it reflective of my alignment with the Generalist Division.

In my experience, formal religions tend to address insiders and exclude outsiders. Why? Because organized religion inclines to circle the wagons and address their chosen. For this reason, ‘formal religion’ publishers may not make a suitable writing match for an inspirational writer with a renaissance appetite for diversity (like me). But also consider that there is much overlapping. Some journals and presses belong to both camps.

I already confessed that formal religion is not my camp. My bias alines with the generalist camp. I think that an inspirational writer may (or not) believe in God, that spirituality is what matters most to an inspirational writer. I champion spiritual writing that is positive, inspirational and life-changing. These are the reasons I prefer a broad reading audience of more than one religious group and multiple cultural orientations.

The point of this column was to crack open the door to possibilities for publication of inspirational writing. Unfortunately, the more you broaden a search for inspirational literary publishers, the narrower the field becomes. Each individual writer has to decide what works best. Below are some links to good online journals and presses to check out. Good luck!

INSPIRATIONAL WRITING (SECULAR)

Auroras & Blossoms Poetry Journal - family friendly, a magazine promoting inspirational and uplifting poetry no matter the topic. https://abpoetryjournal.com/submissions/

Ginosko Literary Journal: Grace Spirit Vision - between literary vision and spiritual reality, the recognition of truth from experience. http://www.ginoskoliteraryjournal.com/guidelines.htm

Halcyon Days: Promoting the peaceful things in life- online/print magazine. Editor Monique Berry (Canada) seeks poetry and fiction that is peaceful. http://halcyondaysmagazine.blogspot.com

Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk- inspirational literature and art that nurtures the spirit http://www.notyourmothersbreastmilk.com/about-us

Parabola: The Magazine of Myth And Tradition - explore quest for meaning. https://parabola.org

Peacock Journal - online & print. Devoted to all things beautiful. Poem/fic/non-fiction. http://peacockjournal.com/guidelines/

Poppy Road Review - poems and flash fiction between the cracks that linger and haunt https://poppyroadreview.blogspot.com/p/about-editor.html

Ruminate: A Contemplative Magazine Chewing the Mysteries of Life. A contemplative magazine for spiritual travelers. https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/pages/about-ruminate

Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing - accepts new and previously published work on the theme of healing (emotional, physical, spiritual, community. https://www.snapdragonjournal.com/submit.html

Soul-Lit: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry - the Soul-Lit team created this online journal to counter the scarcity of venues for spiritual poetry. http://www.soul-lit.com/spiritualPoetry.html

Tikkum: The Prophetic Jewish, Interfaith & Secular Voice - to heal, repair and transform the world. interfaith art and literature for social change guided by spiritual and ethical values. https://www.tikkun.org/about-tikkun

Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature - non-sectarian, non-dogmaticpoetry, prose, and art. Bi-annual. Fostering Peace Through Literature & Art. http://tiferetjournal.com/submit-your-writings/

INSPIRATIONAL WRITING (RELIGIOUS)

Image Journal: Art, Faith, Mystery - quarterly journal. Grapples with religious faith in Western tradition (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) https://imagejournal.org/journal/submit/

Labyrinthine Passages - prose and poetry. faith inspired work. raw emotion that cries out to God. https://labyrinthinepassages.weebly.com/submissions.html

Letters Journal - creative writing that connects belief, faith and spirituality with art. http://www.lettersjournal.com/submit/

My Macberet - Weekly Blog by Erika Dreifus - contains Jewish literary news and commentary. Free to subscribe. https://www.erikadreifus.com/blogs/my-machberet/

The Other Journal - faith and spirituality in the Christian tradition https://theotherjournal.com/submissions/

The review review: View on Publishing Flesh Made Word: Five Lit Magazines Defined by Christian Faith~ by Chris Wiewiora. http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/flesh-made-word-five-lit-mags-defined-christ

The Uncertainty Club: A Magazine of Zen & the Arts - Zen koans embrace our vital unsteadiness in the boundary space between Zen and creative process https://uncertainty.club/about/

INSPIRATIONAL PRESSES

Chicken Soup for the Soul - open for submission of inspirational, true stories about ordinary people having extraordinary experiences that open the heart and rekindle the spirit. https://www.chickensoup.com/story-submissions/submit-your-story

Inspiritus Press - Canadian. Inspiritus, means “breathe” and contains the word for “spirit”—to be filled with the Muses, to be filled with the gods or God. The logo represents a breath of air, a gust of wind, the winds of change, and a spirit, a force, that carves its way forward. https://www.facebook.com/inspirituspress/

Orison Books - spiritually engaged poetry, fiction and non-fiction. They seek to publish work that has a transcendent aesthetic effect on the reader, and reading it can itself be a spiritual experience. https://orisonbooks.com/submission-guidelines/

The Christian Science Monitor - nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. Daily newspaper was established in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Inspirational writers may wish to check out The Home Forum and People Making a Difference paper sections which consider unsolicited submissions. https://www.csmonitor.com/About/Contributor-guidelines

January 2020

poets.org published a list of major poets who died in 2019: In Memoriam 2019

https://poets.org/text/memoriam-2019 The following list includes links to work by:

In thinking about these silenced voices, I realize how sad I am for the loss of poets who inhabited my personal writing and reading world in 2019. Until they died, we inhabited the same literary world. They won’t produce new work in 2020. What they wrote made the literary world richer. These notables—ones who inspire my art—write no more. Suddenly, we no longer occupy the same present. I stay in the present but they are thrust in the past. We, the living writers, have been left behind and feel bereft. We confront a future without our mentors’ voices singing in harmony with our work and lives. We are consigned to stand on their shoulders, as we do on those of the ancestors.

Mourning the loss of poets happens on both a global and local level. This year I grieve two special poetry friends from England who were part of my personal writing universe: Reuben Woolley and Rachel Sutcliffe.

Reuben Woolley, born in England, lived in Spain, died Dec. 1, 2019. Reuben was an activist editor and modernist poet of witness. One of my poetry friends, S.E. Ingraham, wrote this about Reuben: “He was only 67 (too young by far, in my view). In any case - I know there are others that have written for his site, I Am Not A Silent Poet, so I am posting the news in a few places. I for one am deeply saddened at Reuben's loss - not only a remarkable poet and fair editor but a fine human being and advocate for social justice. He will be missed.”

For more information about this poet, his life and writing philosophy, see the Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Reuben Woolley, of 9/8/18: https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/09/08/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-reuben-woolley/

Here are two hot links to online memorials for Reuben Woolley:

Tributes paid to innovative poet and protest verse editor Reuben Woolley

by Greg Freeman https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=97630

A Sad Day: Rest in Peace Reuben Woolley, your voice will never be silenced…~ by Jamie Dedes https://jamiededes.com/2019/12/04/i-am-not-a-silent-poet-this-wednesday-writing-prompt-in-honor-of-reuben-woolley/

Rachel Sutcliffe was a great loss to the UK and English speaking haiku community. This gifted haijin lost her battle to illness. Below is one of Rachel’s fine haiku from a recent Tweet by MyHaikuPond:

February 2020

Why All the Buzz about Ekphrastic Poetry?

There’s an upsurge of popularity in ekphrastic poetry. Lately I’ve noticed more published poems inspired by art and photos. I’ve noticed frequent, new ekphrastic poems appearing in many online literary journals. This device was not only used by classic poets—many modern poets embrace the form.

What is ekphrasis? A good place to find a concise definition is from Poetry Foundation. Here’s what they say:

Ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion. (From The Poetry Foundation: Glossary of Poetic Terms Ekphrasis | Poetry Foundation )

To learn more about ekphrastic poetry, I took an online webinar last fall that was instructive and fun. The art and poetry class was titled, “Accurately Uncertain Things: Writing Through Georgia O’Keeffe’s Art”, taught by Colorado (US) poet and teacher, Marj Hahne. Marj offers hands-on classes where students practice what they learn by writing. I’ve taken many of Marj’s great classes in the last fifteen years, though she’s been doing this with success for twenty. To check our Marj, here’s a link: http://marjhahne.com/webinars/

Rattle Poetry is a high-profile, high-quality journal that publishes online poetry in digital and hard copy. You can subscribe to Rattle at https://www.rattle.com for a daily free poem in your inbox. Rattle pays attention to popular trends and that includes ekphrasis. They hold a monthly contest called Ekphrastic Challenge. Two monthly winners receive a prize of $100. Here’s the link to Rattle’s Challenge: Ekphrastic Challenge

To learn how ekphrastic art and poetry works, select a piece of artwork that speaks to you. For example, I’ll select Albert Altdorfer’s painting of a green spruce tree so grand and lofty, the canvas can’t hold the whole tree - the draped evergreen branches dwarf a mountain range and sky in the distance, a speck of a man sits underneath the tree. First I brainstorm words, colors, feelings, inside and outside of the frame. Next, research the painting and take more notes. Then I do a short free-write, timed for twenty minutes. Don’t let pen leave paper to make cross-outs or corrections. Presto: you have a first draft, a starting place for an ekphrastic poem…

Combining art and poetry makes good cultural entertainment. Many art associations and art museums hold annual ekphrastic shows and exhibitions that combine art and poetry in tandem. Here’s a global sampling of some places holding annual ekphrastic shows: Wickford Art Association (Rhode Island US), Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center (Pennsylvania US) Randolph College’s Maier Museum of Art (Virginia US), Marshall Arts Center (Minnesota US), Cultural Center of Cape Cod (Massachusetts US), Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (UK), Artlyst in association with The Poetry Society (London UK), The Hamblin Centre (UK), Boghossian Foundation (Brussels, Belgium), Kunstmuseum (The Hague, Netherlands). Check the What’s Happening calendar in your area—you’ll discover new local art treasures and inspiration for ekphrasis.

On Post Modern Writing

March 2020

Politics and the human costs of abuse tend to grate heavily on poets and writers. We become word seekers of peace, human rights and social justice. These convictions cross over into our writing. These kinds of attitudes invigorate post modern writing and create poetry of witness.

You can tell when post modern trends have happened to you when your writing takes on some (few or many) of these post modern writing characteristics:

Intertextuality.
Pastiche.
Metafiction.
Minimalism.
Maximalism.
Magical Realism.
Faction.
Reader Involvement.

According to the Prezi.com model above, post modern writing happens with “The mixing of actual historical events with fictional events without clearly defining what is factual and what is fictional.” For more information, see: https://prezi.com/3gqkbsq6-nhd/techniques-used-in-postmodern-literature/

At some point, “art for arts sake” can stop driving what creates and characterizes your writing style. You slip into post modern writing, as did The Dark Room Collective and Cave Canem. This kind of writing phenomenon exemplifies post modern literature in action. DRC, a Black Lit movement developed in the US in 1987, changed the style of many Black authors to post modern. “Elbow Room,”a great article about Black DRC writers, appears in Harvard Magazine. https://harvardmagazine.com/2016/03/elbow-room

What distinguishes poetry of witness from art-for-art’s-sake writing is the writer’s use of post modern writer techniques. Ann Kesner, past editor of Poetry Breakfast (closed), did this recently when she openedPoetsAndArtistsForPete.com, a new literary journal venue that opposes the “division and hate… flooding into our world when Trump came onto the political scene.” Ann’s new US literary journal includes “a grassroots community of poets, artists, musicians and crafters who support Pete Buttigieg <for President> through their art.” Her journal opposes Trump and supports a more democratic way. Ann Kesner believes that poetry builds community, she wants a kinder world to live in so she’s helping to build it with her new poetry journal.

For those who want to learn more about post modern writing techniques, I suggest you read Ramen Sharma and Dr. Preety Chaudhary’s article, “Common Themes and Techniques of Postmodern Literature of Shakespeare.” Link: https://www.ripublication.com/ijepa/ijepav1n2_11.pdf. Or the Wikipedia article on Postmodern Literature. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature

If you are a writer with a post modern hue and the intent to make the world a better place through

literature, who will publish what you write? Where can you submit that poetry of witness, current events or politics? Check out this Blogpost by Trisch Hopkinson: “21 lit mags/journals to send your current event poems.”https://trishhopkinson.com/2018/03/30/22-lit-mags-journals-to-send-your-current-event-poems/ Note: literary market changed a lot since then. Even though the post is a year old and outdated, it’s a good one. On Hopkinson’s list, I highly recommend: New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Social Justice Poetry and Writers Resist.

Rattle Poetry also publishes a current events weekly feature called “Poets Respond”, with subject limited to news of the week. https://www.rattle.com/respond/

Here’s wishing you luck getting your post modern writing published!

April 2020

The Way of Haiku

Haiku is a simple, enjoyable short form to write. Anyone who can write three short lines can produce a haiku. Think: two juxtaposed images, up to seventeen syllables and you have written an English Language haiku. Some people with an appreciation for Zen and Buddhism find that haiku is meant for them. Others like me with an affinity for nature, find a writing door in haiku.

Writing a haiku-a-day as a writing practice was coined as “The Way of Haiku” by haiku writer and scholar, William Higginson. Some reasons to consider the Way of Haiku as a writng and spiritual practice include: 1-The Way of Haiku takes place in “now”. Focus on now removes yesterday’s regrets and tomorrow’s fears. 2-The practice is writing haiku is positive. When you do something often, you experience a multiplier effect. Positivity engenders more positivity, this is the principal of the dynamics of gratitude as a way of living. 3- Haiku broadens connections between people and people, between people and nature. Connections alleviate isolation. Sharing haiku about good things that happen can be a good attitude adjuster that brings people together and makes them happier. For more on haiku as a spiritual practice, here’s a link to an article, “The Haiku Path,” by Mercy Center Burlingame: http://www.mercy-center.org/PDFs/EW/HaikuPath.pdf

The haiku form developed in the East and traveled West. Classic writers like Issa, Basho and Buson led the way. Haiku focuses on the present moment and the minimal. “Now” is critical element that a good haiku captures. This celebration of now takes the writer out of preoccupation with self-involvement, worries and regrets (past dissatisfactions or future uncertainties). Because you write what you observe in present time, you stay alert all day for flashes of beauty. Dissatisfaction and fear of uncertainty decreases. When you mix in a tad of inspiration, what you write emerges as haiku. Or senryu, a modern haiku about human emotion. And when you set yourself the goal to write haiku each day, what happens is that haiku moves from an attitude of gratitude to a state of personal happiness.

The Way of Haiku has grown in current popularity. Many who adopt the practice have published personal recommendations. Below are links to work by Way of Haiku practitioners that explain how writing daily haiku becomes a way of living and changes you:

1- TED Talk of June 24, 2019 by Daryl Chen: “I wrote haiku every day for a week—here’s what I learned”. Chen reports that daily haiku fired his creativity, sweetened his days and brought him closer to others. He claims it made him happier, more productive and a more effective leader. https://ideas.ted.com/i-wrote-a-haiku-every-day-for-a-week-heres-what-i-learned/

2- Tyler Knott Gregson, poet and Buddhist, has been writing haiku daily for six years. He explains how the process changed him in, “Writing a haiku a day changed my life,” an article in Huffington Post, December 6, 2017. Chris makes this point, “…doing this, every single day, has made me see love absolutely everywhere. When you spend this much time looking for something, you start finding it. Once you start finding it, you start finding it everywhere…”. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/viral-poetry-woo_b_8535874?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAACSbHOyxMsqXQYm3sBAIWljXl5eb1clvvRK3IGlWME9ON7QbxYLWQLqo_Gr1I9ea8KQBYozCStG7QuydH5SY0UYlS_o9s6zG9tiq9zuxfR8LMchSz5pjSwhE7evUATrNk7XjleOFn6N0-qtuh-C9_KCUr458uqXBpzL-jzJLMaO

3- Chris Billebeau’s Blog contains, “Writing a 3-line poem every day for a year: Yvonne Whitelaw’s Quest,” written by a former medical resident who wrote a haiku every day for a year. https://chrisguillebeau.com/daily-haiku-yvonne-whitelaw/

4- In “Imaginary Birdfeeders, Real Birds: Notes on Haiku” by David Graham, this college professor explains about how he found haiku, much ignored by academia, and why he writes it: David Graham's POETIC LICENSE 2020 January - Verse-Virtual

David Graham's POETIC LICENSE 2020 January - Verse-Virtual

The poetry of Haiku has many admirable qualities that have attracted modern writers. Famous ones - like Ezra Pound, Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Cid Corman, Jane Reichhold, Marlene Mountain. Or homespun - like me. And maybe you.

I’ll end with a select list of some good haiku journals. The best way to learn how to write haiku is by reading the best haiku out published there. May you find lots of great haiku in these journals. And may reading fine haiku may inspire you to write some your own.

Haiku Journals:

Acorn

a journal of contemporary haiku

Better Than Starbucks Haiku Poetry Magazine

This issue's selection of haiku with Kevin McLaughlin featuring Jason Ringler, Robert Beveridge, Devin Harrison,...

Contemporary Haibun Online: An Edited Journal of Haibun (Prose with Haik...

An online journal of contemporary haibun featuring the best of modern English language haibun

failed haiku

Failed Haiku a journal of English Senryu, is dedicated to promoting the senryu form, and all related genres. We ...

Frogpond. http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/

Kokako. https://breathhaiku.wordpress.com/tag/kokako-haiku-journal/

Modern Haiku. http://www.modernhaiku.org

Prune Juice. https://prunejuice.wordpress.com/submissions/

Quatrain.Fish. Quatrain.fish

Quatrain.fish

PUBLISHING DAILY

The Heron’s Nest. The Heron's Nest - Volume XXII, Number 1: March 2020

The Heron's Nest - Volume XXII, Number 1: March 2020

tinywords

haiku & other small poems

Haiku Journal

May 2020

Words Words Words: Online Writing Resources

When you write, you orchestrate in words. Many online resources are available to help you.

After your first draft is finished, it’s time to edit. You review every word and image in the poem. Trim off the fat. Make each word earn its place. You ask yourself, Are the verbs muscular? The words, latinate? Can you hear music? Does light dance in the words? Can you taste, smell and touch them? Do the words convey magic? Or trip your tongue and make you stumble? Have you found the perfect words? Until you do, the writing is not finished.

There’s a lot of online resources to help with better word choices. These tools are sources for nous, adjectives and verbs with spark and heft. Use these online tools to pare down your words, find the core of your work, showcase the dance, the fight, the flash of ah-hah and Oh!

Online word writing tools:

Use an online dictionary to check out a word’s meaning. Merriam Webster and Cambridge English Dictionary are two good ones. Example: What’s the meaning of the word “rain”?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rain. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/rain

Use a synonym or antonym finder to avoid word repetition and keep your word selections fresh. A synonym is a word with a similar meaning; antonym means the opposite, a great resource when you are seeking juxtaposition. I often use Merriam Webster Thesaurus and thesaurus.com. Some writers I know favor PowerThesaurus. Example: Search for synonyms of the word “rain.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rain. https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/rain. https://www.powerthesaurus.org/rain/synonyms

Visual dictionaries are great for obtaining specific vocabulary associated with a word. Say you are writing an extended metaphor about a concrete object, go to Visuwords Online Graphical Dictionary. Example: rain https://visuwords.com/rain Or search VisualDictionaryOnline. http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/ Note: this program requires AdobeFlash to play.

OneLook is a tool to help you find associated words, phrases and near-rhymes by typing the word in the search box, adding an asterisk (before/after). Word associations can deepen your writing. Example !: rain* Yields: https://onelook.com/?w=rain*&ls=a. Example 22: *rain Results: https://onelook.com/?w=rain*&ls=a

Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings. These words help add layers of meaning to what you are writing and broaden the scope of your writing. Check out : Homonyms: 150 words with more than one meaning. http://home.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/homonym_main.htm

Wordnik. Use Wordnik to shake up your word choices. This resource contains noun/verb forms, meaning, synonyms, etymologies, literary examples. Example: rain. https://www.wordnik.com/words/rain

For pure etymology, a review of linguistic history and usage examples, a go-to source for many is Online Etymology Dictionary. Finding suitable word associations can add depth and multiple meanings to your words. Example: rain. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=rain

Rhyming words or near-rhymes are necessary for many types of form poems. RhymeZone is a great source for rhymes, near rhymes, phrases and homophones. Example: rain. https://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=rain&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l&org3=y

The search for rain includes ten different lists by word length (1-10 syllables).

Working with a form like a sestina, you need good words that will play off each other. To generate some words for a start, pull out one of your failed poems and enter the text into a Word Cloud Generator. WordItOut is a good one. The program generates a picture map of the most used words. To see how this works, place the text in the search box. Example: Take the text of Mary Oliver’s Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me and generate a word cloud. https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create

Want to add the surreal or magical realism to your words? Try incorporating seven or more words produced by RandomWordGenerator. https://randomwordgenerator.com/.

Does something you wrote appear tired or pedestrian? Want a mod-feel and post modern snap? Take a failed draft and spice up the nouns with the N+7 Procedure of Oulipo, a program that substitutes each noun with the seventh word below it in the dictionary to create a startling word effect. You may wish to work some of the generated words into your finished draft. See: http://presurfer.blogspot.com/2013/01/poetry-generator-n7-procedure.html

Do you want more word tools? Trisch Hopkinson wrote, 10 of the coolest online word tools for writers/poets. https://trishhopkinson.com/2019/11/09/10-of-the-coolest-online-word-tools-for-writers-poets/

June 2020

Online Museum Collections and Virtual Tours

At a time when traveling has been curtailed by the corona virus, there are ways for writers to get inspired without leaving home. Museums and galleries worldwide often provide an online art presence. Virtual visitors can tap into a virtual gallery and tour exhibitions produced by cultural institutions. The museum websites provide a rich source for ekphrasis and go-to places for visual graphics and sensory details to enrich your writing.

This is a select list and contains some of my favorite online visual resources for art, history and culture (classic and modern). When seeking an ekphrasis prompt or art, science and archeology images for your writing, check out these.

Online Museums & Tours (Worldwide)

Louvre Palace Collection (Paris, France). Egyptian Antiquities. Renaissance portraits in Petite Galerie. Louvre’s architectural history. https://www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne#tabs

Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France). Monet and van Gogh online exhibit. Museum architecture. https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/musee-dorsay-paris

National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City, Mexico). Archaeological artifacts of indigenous culture, Aztec civilization and ancient Mexican art. https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/museo-nacional-de-antropologia-mexico

The British Museum (London, England). Egyptian Mummies. Rosetta Stone. Parthenon sculptures. Two million years of antiquities. https://britishmuseum.withgoogle.com

The Dalí Theatre-Museum (Catalonia, Spain). Surrealism of Salvador Dali. Virtual tour of the complex. https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/museums/dali-theatre-museum-in-figueres/visita-virtual/

The Vatican Museums (Vatican City, Rome, Italy). Twelve virual tours of chapels and museums. http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/tour-virtuali-elenco.1.html

Online Museums & Tours (United States)

Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Alabama). Virtual Collection. Art Escape. https://www.artsbma.org https://www.artsbma.org/collection/. https://www.artsbma.org/bmafromhome/explore/

High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia). Virtual Collections & Exhibitions. https://high.org. https://high.org/stay-connected/

J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California). Virtual exhibits of Eighteenth-Century Pastel Portraits, photography collection. Interactive walk around the grounds via Xplorit. https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-j-paul-getty-museum. https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/michelangelo_drawings/explore.html

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, New York). Largest art museum in US. Virtual tours. Fashion. Baroque. Post-Impressionist. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/online-features

https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-metropolitan-museum-of-art

National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.). Online collections. Virtual Exhibits: Degas. Rafael. European landscape oils. https://www.nga.gov

Smithsonian Natural History Museum (Washington, D.C.). Dinosaurs. Insects, Rocks and minerals. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour

Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (Washington, D.C.). Aviation and space artifacts. Virtual tour. https://airandspace.si.edu/anywhere

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City, New York). Impressionist. Modern. Contemporary. Guggenheim architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright. https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/solomon-r-guggenheim-museum

FaceBook (Social Media & Pop Culture Art)

Berlin ArtParasites @berlinartparasites. FaceBook Page. Pop Culture images. https://www.facebook.com/berlinartparasites/

Hi-Fructose Mag Facebook FaceBook Page for Pop Culture Images. Produces an online and print art magazine. https://www.facebook.com/HiFructose/

I credit the following two sources for much of the above information about online and virtual resources for images: 1- The Best Virtual Tours of Major Museums, Trivia Trip, April 15, 2020. 2- Kenzie Allen, Apiary Lit, 30/30 Day 27: Ekphrasis, April 27, 2017. Their art and science resources were excellent.

Best wishes to any author who uses these online digital resources. May they enrich the thingy-ness of your writing.

July 2020

Read To Improve Your Writing

The best way to improve your writing is to read other good writers. Think about it. How did you learn to read? You learned by doing it. And the more you read, the better you got as a reader. It works the same way for writing.

Everyday I read what other writers write. I read work by notables and emerging poets. I read high quality work. The act of reading well written poetry lifts my own bar of personal expectations—it pushes me to aspire, to try to excel. Reading work by contemporary poets helps me to keep pace with the ever changing literary landscape, provides a dose of post-modern reality and is a way to gage the pulse of popular culture.

There are many online resources you can subscribe to for free. The publisher delivers a poem-a-day into your inbox. Or an article about writing. Or an example of best of the craft (such as non-fiction). Or a daily writing resource. All you have to do is register. Go to the website, scroll until you find the sign up box, enter your email address. You’re subscribed.

Below is my personal list list of “daily-poem” Emails. This selective list is weighted in favor of poetry and memoir, because that is what I write.

I learned this daily practice of reading a poem-a-day from poet and teacher Marj Hahne. It has helped me immensely as a writer. Thank you, Marj, you introduced me to most of these sites!

Some “Daily Poem” & Writer Emails:

Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor. Keillor covers literary tidbits, factoids and history about authors from all disciplines. He covers all literary ages, from classical to modern. http://www.garrisonkeillor.com/subscribe/

Poem-a-Day. The Academy of American Poets. poets.org offers a Poem-a-Day with new work by today’s notable poets. https://poets.org/poem-a-day

Rattle. Publishes a daily poem-a-day that mixes emerging poets with notables. Highly competitive. Open to all submitters. Only publishes 2% of submissions. https://www.rattle.com/

Poem of the Day. By Poetry Foundation. Not only does Poetry Foundation have a daily Poem of the Day for free but they provide a collection, “Teaching Online Poetry”, a fine resource for learning poetry remotely. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/poem-of-the-day

Slow Down Show. By Tracy K. Smith, Past US Poet Laureate. This site may have special appeal to audio-learners. Tracy prefaces each poem with a creative essay in the voice of a storyteller, she gathers you in before she reads the featured poem. https://www.slowdownshow.org/

Poetry Daily. A non-profit contemporary poetry organization. Offers diverse, multicultural poems, including translations. Daily poems are culled from current literary journals published in print and online. Sign up for a free daily poem: https://poems.com/about/

SWIMM Every Day. Collaborative poetry salon by Women Writers of Miami, The Betsy Hotel and others. A virtual poem-a-day project spotlights modern women’s voices. SWIMM is also dedicated to building a real-time literary community. https://www.swwim.org/

Brevity’s Non-Fiction Blog. Somewhat daily posts from the Literary Non-Fiction World. Featured Guests share articles about writer practices to make a difference. Great source of ideas and inspiration for Creative and Flash Non-Fiction. The writer’s counterpart to Brevity Magazine, publisher of stellar flash non-fiction works by emerging and notable writers. https://brevity.wordpress.com

Read on. And write on. And may the muse find your inbox this month!

Poetry of Witness for a Missing Amish Girl

August 2020

Life and art often converge to form poetry of witness, a term popularized by Carolyn Forché.

Forché writes poetry that does not cross into runaway ego or devolve into political rant. Her writing remains true art of protest. The author’s philosophy of poetry of witness leads to the creation of fine art and demands a conscious mindfulness from the reader.

I’ll use a real life example of poetry of witness in action, based on a tragic event that is happening now, real-time, where I live: Amish Country, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, US. On June 21, 2020, on a nearby road, a kidnapper abducted an Amish girl and the search for her continues. Her name is Linda Stoltzfoos, of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, US.

A writer’s first job for poetry of witness would be to research the event and assess the status of the investigation. For more information on the Missing Amish Girl, two online resources include:

1- Missing Amish Girl, Linda Stoltzfoos FaceBook Page. The site was setup by Linda’s uncle, a man who left the Amish faith. The kidnapping has brought together Amish and English communities in a search for Linda. https://www.facebook.com/111726970587041/photos/a.111758243917247/118278029931935

2- Amish America: News Reports on Missing Amish Girl: Were you on any of these 5 roads on June 21? Please contact police (Linda Stoltzfoos search) The Amish America website includes encyclopedic information about Amish culture, history, religion and way of life.

A haiku writer, Meik Blöttenberger, developed a plan for poetry of witness for writing haiku about Linda Stoltzfoos. His project will create a Linda-Book of haiku to honor the young life of the kidnap victim and mail a copy to the Stoltzfoos family. If you wish to submit a Linda-haiku for consideration, here’s the information Meik mailed to his haiku writers and friends:

You may have heard in the news about Linda Stoltzfoos, an eighteen year old Amish girl walking home from church, when she was kidnapped. I live in the Amish Country of Pennsylvania and so does Ingrid Bruck, and we are writing haiku that express our concern for Linda and her family, and they will be compiled in a publisher booklet and sent to the family of Linda Stoltzfoos. We invite you to send haiku on this subject to this email: bluesawdust@hotmail.com by August 15th, and below are two examples of haiku written for Linda:

your sweet smile

the smell of mowed hay

without you

—Ingrid Bruck

Pequea, Pennsylvania

springhouse

the cold flow inside me

always missing you

—Meik Blöttenberger

Hanover, Pennsylvania

Thank you for your time and let's show how haiku can be used an instrument of healing.

September 2020

Where to Publish Essays

Personal essay writing is one of many creative non-fiction forms. Flash form has 250-800 words. Long form, 2,000-15,000 words. It’s narrative non-fiction, fact based, personal experience informed. The writing reflects on the larger issues of the human experience from the view-point of your own life narrative. Creative Non-Fiction in essay form comes in many styles and topics. (EX: relationship/memoir/travel/food). Hybrids abound. A non-fiction essay often crosses and breaks down genre borders.

On the topic of personal essay, I refer you to a current online article on the subject of essays: 22 Websites and Magazines That Want to Publish Your Personal Essay by FARRAH DANIEL and LISA ROWAN, published in The Write Life, June 26, 2020. https://thewritelife.com/personal-essay/.

Daniel & Rowan’s article is a good place to begin when you want to learn about personal essay. The authors’ provide this inclusive definition of personal essay: “<Essayist> Ashley C. Ford …emphasized the importance of creating a clear connection between your personal experience and universal topics. ‘It’s about telling interesting and worthy stories about the human condition using examples from your life.’”

Caution: many of the venues on Daniel and Rowan’s list require making pitches to get an invitation to submit. Experienced essay writers will more likely to bookmark the article and use it to identify places to submit personal essays. Why? Experienced essayists possess the know-how to make pitches. Emerging writers are more apt to use this article as a reading guide.

Reading good essays is good way to learn the craft. Reading fine essays shows the writer what types of essays are getting published. It’s also a good way to learn tricks and tools of the trade from the best essay writers. Daniel & Rowan include a link to one outstanding essay to read for each of the 22 venues that publish personal essays on their list. In my opinion, reading these exemplary personal essays is one of the best writer tools available to succeed in getting your essay published. Why? You learn what a particular publisher is seeking. Given that information, you can judge whether the website or magazine publishes provides a good match to your writing style.

Some Good Places for Publishing Essays (without a Pitch)

Some Good Places Publishing Essays (Without Requiring a Pitch):

Brevity Magazine. Flash Non-Fiction, max. 750 words. https://brevitymag.com/submissions/

4thgenre: Explorations in Nonfiction. General submission, max. 8,000 words. Contemporary & Creative Non-Fiction. Open: August 30-November 30, 2020. Submittable. https://msupress.org/journals/fourth-genre/

Under the Gum Tree. Creative Non-fiction. Categories: relationship, food. travel. https://www.underthegumtree.com/submit

Hippocampus Magazine. Essay, max 4,000 words. Memoir, max. 4,000 words. Flash Non-Fiction, max. 800 words. $3/Submittable. https://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/tag/submissions/

Narrative. Essays. 2,000-15,000 words. https://www.narrativemagazine.com/submission

River Teeth: A Journal of Non-Fiction Narrative. Essays. Open: September 1 to December 1, 2020. https://www.riverteethjournal.com/journal/submissions

Good luck writing a personal essay and getting it published!

October 2020

Literary Venues for Humor

Humor makes a good hook to capture a reader’s attention. Writer and reader laugh together at themselves and each other. The humor writer expresses his/her vulnerability and trusts the reader to be kind. A writer who dares to laugh at him/herself is likable. Because the reader cares about you, they will cheer for you and want to read more. There’s nothing better than a good belly laugh.

Another plus for writing humor: good humor possesses healing properties. Even a stoic like me has a crevasse of healing humor buried inside. It can emerge as satire. Or parody. Or irony. Or surrealism. When I excavate humor, it livens and lightens my writing. These are reasons why I sometimes write humorous pieces. Individuals employ humor in their work for different reasons and personal needs.

I recommend reading Anita Gill’s article: This is No Joke: Humor Journals Worthy of Your Submissions Her article was published by WWS: Women Who Submit, November 19, 2015. It contains good information about why people write humor and places that accept it. Anita lists many good resources that are not on my list. Check them out.

In “This is no joke”, Anita refers to another fine article about writing humor: “Plight of the Funny Female: Why people tend to appreciate men’s humor so much more than women’s”, by Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, November 19, 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/plight-of-the-funny-female/416559/. Khazan’s piece is another good read on the subject of writing humor, especially for women authors.

What venues publish humor writing? My writer group discussed favorite places to send humor pieces. The list below contains journals recommended by my writer friends because they published their work.

Some Journals with a Panache for Humor:

1. The Asses of Parnassus

2. The Daily Drunk

3. detritus

4. The Five-Two (crime poem focus, but they publish humorous and satirical

5. Rat's Ass Review (RAR accepts some humor)

6. Rejection Letters

7. Better Than Starbuck's (dedicated section of the magazine for light hearted formal poems)

8. The Satirist

9. LIGHTEN UP ONLINE

10. The Drabble. (The Drabble accepts some humor)

11. Ariel Chart (Ariel Chart accepts some humor)

Please note that each publisher has style and content preferences. Be sure to seek a good match for your unique style of humor.

I thank Karlo Silverio Sevilla for compiling this list.

November 2020

Where To Publish Writing About Current Events

Many journals categorize any literary response to what’s in the news as political writing and will not consider it. Others open a doorway, a resistance option beyond Editorial Letters in the newspaper.

The literary journals I selected to highlight are ones that accept writing of witness. They generally prefer work that does not rant or hammer the causes of political persuasion.

Some of them categorize writing about current events as creative non-fiction. Others refer to this kind of writing as essay. Or state they accept a hybrid mix of non-fiction and poetry. Some are open to writing in any form that protests abuse.

If you are a writer (like me) who hears the siren call of poetry of witness, these literary journals may be of interest to you.

Literary Journals Open to Current Events: This select list contains literary journals that accept writing of protest and politics. What they have in common is that these venues value artists and writers creative response to current events.

New Verse News. http://www.newversenews.com. Timely. Poetry only.

Poets Respond® | Rattle: Poetry. https://www.rattle.com/respond/ Features a weekly poem abut current events of the week.

Writers Resist. https://www.writersresist.com/submission-guide/ Feminist journal. Dedicated civil non-violent resistance.

Poets Reading The News For “current events from around the world”.

Line Rider Press. This journal "encourage(s) politically-minded poetry"

Collective Unrest. Art and multi-genre writing. Requires a “message of political resistance, social justice, and unrest.”

Canary - A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis Currently taking submissions on the theme of winter.

The Satirist. The Satirist - Submissions | The Satirist. Publishes some satirical, news related poetry and prose.

Consequence Magazine. https://www.consequencemagazine.org/submit/ Non-Profit. Annual publication. Fiction & Non-Fiction. About the culture of war.

Rats Ass Review. http://ratsassreview.net/?page_id=81. Open to poetry of resistance but not politics.

The Poets’ Republic | Poets React. https://poetsrepublic.org/poets-react/ Poets React section of this journal, for current week “news or current affairs <that> go astray.” English & Scots, Gaelic.

Please note, some journals feature a single genre, others are open to non-fiction, fiction, poetry, art. Before you submit, determine whether a particular journal offers a good match for your work. You’ll waste your time (or theirs) sending writing of witness to a journal averse to current event writing.

Good luck getting your news of the day pieces published!

December 2020

Writing Prompts

Many writers use prompts as a good way to tap into creativity and produce good work. Some authors use writing prompts as a part of a daily writing practice. Others use prompts to get a jump start. Or to counter writer’s block. The reasons for using writing prompts are many, all of them valid.

Where can you find good writing prompts?

1. You can fish the internet ocean for writing prompts.

2. You can take a writing class that includes writing time from prompts.

3. You can buy a book of prompts. Many books of writing prompts are available for sale. Books is a good way to locate prompts that work for you.

4. Or you can simply begin with a Google Search of writing prompts for adults. These hits alone will provide you enough prompts to write every day for ten years.

Instagram hosts a fine array of writing prompts: @writing.prompt.s

And Twitter is no slouch for delivering writing prompts: https://twitter.com/writingprompts?lang=en

To get an overview of genres and examples of themes, you may wish to read an article on the topic. The following three articles contain writing prompts and are published by a reliable source.

1- Cassandra Lipp’s “81 Creative Prompts for Writers”, Writer’s Digest Magazine, November 6, 2020. https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/creative-writing-prompts-for-writers

2- Chelle Stein’s “365 Creative Writing Prompts”, Think Written, August 7, 2020. https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

3- Kelsey Worsham’s “500 Writing Prompts to Help Beat Writer’s Block”, Written Word, September 21, 2020. This prompt list is arranged by genre. https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/author/kelsey/

The challenge will be to locate good writing prompts that work for you. Below are sites that work for me. My personal faves include:

Language is a virus - http://www.languageisavirus.com/index.php# Not only do they post a daily writing prompt, but this massive website assembles a rich collection of post-modern writing prompts. They provide direct links to an impressive selection of iconic writing exercises in the post-modern, spontaneous writing tradition. This site takes you to:

82 Writing Experiments by Bernadette Mayer

66 Experiments by Charles Bernstein

The Cut-Up Method by Brion Gysin

Essay Writing Experiments by Daniel Nester

Allen Ginsberg’s Mind Writing Slogans

Rimbaud’s Systemic Derangement of the Senses

Jack Kerouac’s Essentials for Spontaneous Prose

William S Burroughs Cut-Up Technique

Anais Nin’s Collage Technique

Marcel Duchamp’s The Creative Act

Poets & Writers: 50 & Forward, offers weekly writing prompts. Check out “The Time Is Now” feature for a weekly prompt in three genres: Tuesdays for poetry, Wednesdays for fiction, Thursdays for Creative Non-Fiction. https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhI_Nnsim7QIVDYeGCh0eeABWEAMYASAAEgIXHPD_BwE

Toasted Cheese is an online literary journal with a lively writing community of authors. Anyone can sign up to receive a daily writing prompt in their inbox. The magazine archives past monthly prompts. https://www.toasted-cheese.com/tag/daily-writing-prompts/

Good luck writing! May the muse find you in prompts. Or otherwise.

Best Books of 2020

Writers enjoy reading or we wouldn’t write books. Reading plants seeds in our imagination. If you read like I do, reading uncoils your mind, stretches boundaries and comfort zones, opens up new ways of seeing the world. The question only you can answer is, “What good book do I want to read next?”

The end of each year brings multiple lists of good books to read, announcements of reading prize winners. Some survey the winner lists to discover what they missed and fill in the personal reading gaps. Others use the Best Books of the Year for holiday shopping suggestions to guide their gift giving. Or simply treat themselves to good books to read on cold dark winter nights.

2020 offers seemingly countless new book choices. You have to pick and choose. Many people look forward to the publication of Best Books of the Year in December. The challenge for you as a writer and reader will be to identify a good list of best new books that makes a good match with your writing style and reading taste.

The internet hosts a plethora of notable book lists at the end of each year. Some are produced by presses. Others from libraries. From the literary marketplace. From genre interest groups. From reading clubs. From avid readers.

Maybe it’s my librarian training, but I enjoy looking at Best Book Lists taken from the year’s published book reviews. These lists cumulate and rank the books in the a pool of published book reviews appearing during the year.

Below are four sample notable book lists for 2020:

Literary Hub is my favorite source of book overviews. Check out their multi-genre library list of the 65 best books of 2020. https://lithub.com/our-65-favorite-books-of-the-year/

Goodreads publishes a Top 200 books published for 2021 based on reader popularity. Their criteria for popularity is judged by a book’s number of individual published reader reviews.. https://www.goodreads.com/book/popular_by_date/2021

NY Times produces reviews of notable books by critics and editors. The December list, 100 Notable Books of 2020, includes the year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Many libraries use NYT book recommendations to guide new book purchasing decisions. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/books/notable-books.html

Washington Post produces highly respected book reviews in all genres. Here’s a select list for the top ten books in 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/2020-best-books/?itid=sf_entertainment-books

When I check out year-end notable books lists, I notice a lack consensus on titles. Notable titles vary, depending which list you survey. Many titles repeat, others tend to be popular within a particular geographical or demographic region.

I start by going local, it’s the same way I buy food. I was a library director and value the opinions of other librarians. Many librarians are avid readers and great at reader’s advisory. Filling a public library with good books is a librarian’s job, it’s one they tend to do well. I led many library reading book clubs. For years, I read voraciously, though less so now that I’m writing more. Very often, I find delight in the book recommendations received from fellow librarians.

Each holiday season, I look forward to receiving librarian Joe DaRold’s year end list of best new books. Joe was a library colleague in New Jersey, he served as the director of Plainfield Public Library for many years before retiring. Joe read 110 books last year, which far surpasses me. He continues to serve as president of a library book group featuring new books. Every year, Joe culls a select list of the best new books. With Joe’s permission, I pass to you his December 2020 notable books list.

2020-2021 - BEST OF THE YEAR

selected by Joe DaRold

FICTION:

O’Nan, Stewart. Henry, Himself – lovely story; I did not care for Emily, Alone, I found this prequel to be enchanting.

Wright, Lawrence The End of October. Eerie similarities to our pandemic. Exciting and well written.

Mosley, Walter Trouble is What I Do. Always a pleasure to read.

Picoult, Jodi The Book of Two Ways. Terrific for book clubs. She is one of my favorites, but this is unlike any of her other books.

Richardson, Michelle The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Heartwarming,

lovely story.

SUSPENSE:

Bolton, Sharon The Craftsmen. One of my favorite writers. I read

this twice.

Gardner, Lisa When You See Me. Ditto.

Lansdale, Joe R. Bad Chili. My book club read a short story of his last year and I was hooked. I’ve now read 13 of his “Hap and Leonard” books set in red-neck territory of East Texas. These are among the best, but all are terrific.

Lansdale, Joe R. The Elephant of Surprise - Ditto

Lansdale, Joe R. Rusty Puppy - Ditto

Spann, Susan Ghost on the Bamboo Road – Delightful light mystery series in 16th c. Japan

Best wishes for great reading pleasure in 2021.

January 2021

February 2021

The Literary World Aftershocks: Black Voices Speak Out

George Floyd was murdered by a policeman on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The white officer arresting Floyd restrained him with a knee to the throat, and he didn’t stop until Floyd suffocated, despite the victim’s repeated pleas of “I can’t breathe.” Protests against this act of racial brutality spun into the streets, around the globe, into the art world.

I refer you to an article, “The Ten Biggest Literary Stories of the Year” by Emily Temple that appeared in Lit Hub, December 22, 2020. https://lithub.com/the-ten-biggest-literary-stories-of-the-year/. Floyd’s murder is #3 on her list of literary stories. She writes, “…protests against systemic racism and police violence sparked by the murder of George Floyd sprang up around the country…” And “ 3. Everyone read Antiracist Books—or at least bought them. And I mean everyone.”

Floyd’s killing in the US brought to the forefront an unresolved history of racial conflict based on skin color. This protest spilled into the world of literature. Writers of color and many who are white protested alongside marchers of color. Writers amid the protestors claimed personal responsibility in their art, this protest for George Floyd spilled into social, political and literary action.

All spring after Floyd died, a procession of online and print journals and literary groups adopted the mantra of “Floyd’s Life Mattered” and “Black Lives Matter.” The literary world self-assessed, the establishment found itself wanting. They acknowledged the sad fact that a small number of Black authors have been published in relation to the much larger demographics of color. Publishers pledged to change this inequity. The lit-world declared support for Floyd and Black voices, journals and organizations released public policy statements opposing racial violence, future plans to publicize Black writers and artists were announced. Journals and lit-groups issued targeted Calls for Blacks to submit for publication. The literary community took a stand against racial violence. They expressed their desire to be part of the answer, not the problem.

The theme of Black Voices and online writer resources is well-suited to address in the Pearl Diving Column for February. Why? February is Black History Month in the US and America just celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, assassinated civil rights leader in the US, a federal holiday, held on the third Monday of January. The entire month of February, Black History Month, continues a celebration of Black Voices. Because February is Black History Month, many writer resources highlighting Black Lit are now being released in the US.

In the February column of Pearl Diving, I leave you with a select list of Black Lit websites and rich offerings by Literary groups in honor of Black Voices. Some of these sites and events were planned for Black History Month in the US. Others mark a continued dedication by literary journals and groups to highlight the wealth of work produced by Black voices which accelerated following the murder of George Floyd.

Select List of Black Lit Resources

“12 Poems to Read for Black History Month.” A poets.org spotlight on 11 renowned modern Black authors who cite a work by a classic Black literature writer that influenced them in their development. https://poets.org/search?combine=12%20poems%20to%20read%20for%20Black%20History%20Month. poets.orgspotlights more Black Lit Resources for Black History Month: Jazz Poetry, Black Reading List, National Poetry Month, Langston Hughes, Harlem Renaissance, Contemporary Black Poetry.

Black Lives Matter, HomePage: https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
BLM, FaceBook Page: https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter/

“The 10 Best Political Books of 2020 by Black Women,” IDEAS, recommended by Ibram X. Kendi , January 10, 2021 in The Atlantic. Last year, Black women called upon themselves, made themselves heard, and shared their political talents and minds.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/10-best-political-books-black-women/617630/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlantic+%28The+Atlantic+-+Master+Feed%29

IWWG: International Women’s Writing Guild, offers this fee-based class for Black Women Writers: “Black Like Us: Women Writing & Weaving Wisdoms - by Dorothy Randall Gray Feb 18, Feb 25 and March 4, 2021 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM ET A 3-week series with Dorothy Randall Gray. The power, the pathos, the poetry, lives laid bare daring to be heard - Black Like Us is an insightful exploration of fiction, nonfiction and poetry as seen through the lens of evolutionary, lesser-known, and contemporary Black women writers. Stimulating exercises, handouts, in-class writing and music inspire you to excavate the intersection of our lives, and deepen your writing arenas. This workshop invites you to share the choreography of creative consciousness with Warshan Shire, Mahogany Brown, Nikky Finney, Jacqueline Woodson, Jasmine Mans, Octavia Butler, Yaa Gyasi, Tracy K. Smith, Taiye Selasi, Stacey Ann Chin, Roxanne Gay, Tananarive Due and Aja Monet.” https://iwwg.wildapricot.org/event-4133338. IWWG Member Registration - $59 Non-Member Registration - $89

IWWG also offers one free open mic event for Black History Month. “We're looking forward to hosting author E. Dolores Johnson for our Feb. 7, 2021 IWWG OPEN MIC in honor of #blackhistorymonth. She'll be reading from her Memoir, "Say I'm Dead. Here's an excerpt from & link to a review from WBUR: "Johnson’s book, her first, covers decades of racist run-ins from the plantation rape of a relative to cops pulling her parents over and calling their children mongrels to a cross burning in her yard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The author expertly flashes forward and back to show us how certain experiences shape her morphing identity which gets “tangled up in the fraught definitions of America’s racism.” Growing up she speaks the King’s English at home, Ebonics in the streets and later code-switches at her corporate job to the point of exhaustion." https://www.wbur.org/artery/2020/07/06/say-im-dead-review Please register free - all welcome - here http://www.iwwg.wildapricot.org/openmic.

“10 Black Poets of Past and Present Who Deserve Unending Recognition for Their Work” by Kara Jillian Brown in Well + Good Magazine, July 17, 2020. https://www.wellandgood.com/black-poets/. A good list of names of contemporary Black poets to read.

“21 Black female poets to add to your bookshelf: It's time to diversify your literary canon.” by Claire Cheek , The Temptest, August 5, 2020. https://thetempest.co/2020/08/05/entertainment/21-black-female-poets-to-add-to-your-bookshelf/

“7 Resources on Translating Blackness, Race, and Racism," by Corine Tachtiris, from WWB Daily reading lists, in Words Without Borders, Jan. 28, 2021. https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/7-resources-for-translating-blackness-race-and-racism-corine-tachtiris

“100 Best-Websites-for-Writers in 2021.” Go to The Write Life’s list of best websites. The list has 10 subdivisions, go to ‘Black Voices’ for writer resources for Black freelancers. https://thewritelife.com/best-websites-for-writers-2021/

Cave Canem Foundation: A Home for Black Poetry. A gathering place in the US for modern Black poets. https://cavecanempoets.org'

“African American Poetry: 100 Must Read Books of 2020.” TIME, November 11, 2020. https://time.com/collection/must-read-books-2020/ Best Black Lit of 2020 includes: fiction, non-fiction & poetry.

March 2021

Poetry Community Builders: Free Events in March 2021

Poets, writers and artists working together are what builds creative community. To nurture and read what we get published. Here are some examples from the movers and shakers providing free programs you can participate in during the month of March.

100 Day Project—by Suzi Banks Baum at Laundry Line Divine. March 25 is Day 50, the halfway mark of a daily journaling & art project created to establish a daily creative spiritual practice. Participants create art to inspire their writing life.

Writers are invited to join Suzi for a free event of 100 Day Project and applaud the progress participants are making at the half-way mark.

Susie Banks Baum offers two links to 100 Day Project:

Here is the website of the 100DayProject.

Here is where you can look at and purchase my 100 Day Primer.

In her own words on Suzie’s Blog, on February 27, 2021, here’s an update on 100 Day Project:

“I belong to the church of the Moon.”

“And she will be Full this evening, Saturday. I hope you make time to linger in her light.”

“Enhaloed, ripe, the Moon calls me toward radiance.”

“We near March this week. On March 21, we will gather for a free event on Zoom to celebrate the halfway mark of the 100 Day Project. If you would like to take part in this March 21 event, please register for it here. We will share tales of how we are each getting along and offer support and encouragement for the second 50 days of the world-wide, free art project.”

To subscribe to Suzi’s LaundryLineDivine Blog,

Suzi Banks Baum

39 Hollenbeck Ave

Great Barrington, MA 01230

Add us to your address book

Poemenate: Spread the Good Word & Poemulate: Your Monthly Upgrade— by Marj Hahne. Two classes in March. Cost: Free. Registration required. ZOOM class series started in Fall 2020. On-going sessions, each one a stand-alone.

POEMANATE: Spread the Good Word

When: 2nd Mondays ( March 8, 2020)

12:00–12:30 PM EST / 9:00–9:30 AM PST

Cost: FREE

I attend Marj’s monthly Poemenate class and publicize the selected poem-of-the-month to my social media friends. Marj Hahne created Poemenate to help increase the number of people who love and read poetry. She selects one accessible poem a month, participants study and discuss the poem in class, and then take the month’s poem and release it to friends and acquaintances in our world to spread the good word about poetry.

Marj describes Poemante as follows, “Every 2nd Monday, for 30 minutes, we’ll study the good words of a published poem to determine how it delivers the good word to illuminate our humanity. Then we’ll emanate that humanity: we’ll, en masse, send this poem out—by email, postcard, letter, social media—into our worlds, to our friends, family, and colleagues; to business owners, media representatives, and government officials at the local, state, and federal levels; to whoever you suspect would be strengthened by some heart-opening, some soul-listening.”

POEMULATE: Your Monthly Upgrade

When: 3rd Wednesdays (March 17, 2021)

12:00–12:30 PM Eastern / 9:00–9:30 AM Pacific

Cost: FREE

I attend Marj’s monthly Poemulate classes for writing self-developmen. I find it stretches me outside my comfort zone to mirror other writer’s styles and improves my ability to write. I highly recommend this class.

Marj Hahne describes Poemulate, as follows, “We’ve all heard poet Oscar Wilde’s famous quote “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”—but that was only half of it: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Whoa! Okay, then let’s use imitation to uplevel our poetry game. Let’s emulate! Every third Wednesday, we’ll explore one published poem and deepen our understanding of how a poem works by mimicking, move by move, the poet’s language and structure.”

IWWG: International Women’s Writing Guild— offers high quality paid and free online classes for women writers. Register at IWWG to attend Zoom. Three free offerings in March include:

IWWG FREE WRITES:

When: Bi-Monthly

March 5 & March 19, 2021

1:00 PM EST

Cost: FREE

IWWG OPEN MIC:

When: Bi-Monthly

March 11, 2021 2:00PM EST

March 28, 2021 7:00PM EST

Cost: FREE

IWWG GLOBAL PEN PAL PROGRAM— “WISH YOU WERE HERE: Writing the Epistolary Poem—with Marj Hahne

When: Monthly

March 15 at 2PM EST

Cost: FREE

These IWWG events are in Eastern Standard Time, FREE, and open to the public

Here’s more detailed information about the IWWG Classes:

Free Write with Caridad Pineiro

When: March 5, 1:00 PM - 2:30PM EST

Cost: FREE

Free Write with Caridad Pineiro

Fiction/Nonfiction - Master Point of View

Class Description:

“Point of View is often one of the hardest concepts to master and use effectively in your writing. In this intensive and hands-on Free Write, NY Times and USA Today bestseller Caridad Pineiro will discuss the three primary types of point of view in fiction and non-fiction so that users may select the best point of view and/or repair any point of view issues they may have in their work.

Attendees should select a one-page scene in order to revise the scene from another point of view and possibly share it with other attendees.

In addition, attendees should also select several pages from their work and have ready three different color highlighters in order to review those pages to determine if there are Point of View issues.”

All Voices Open Mic with Fleda Brown
When: March 11, 2:00 PM EST

Cost: FREE

Our IWWG Bi-Monthly Open Mic is thrilled to feature poet Fleda Brown on March 11, 2021, 2 p.m., EST, LIVE ON ZOOM and free to all.

“Fleda Brown has won the Felix Pollak Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and she has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she taught for twenty-seven years. She was poet laureate of Delaware 2001–7. She now lives with her husband, Jerry Beasley, in Traverse City, Michigan.”

Free Write with Áine Greaney
When: March 19, 1:00 PM - 2:30PM EST

Cost: FREE

Free Write with Áine Greaney

Expressive Writing for Stress Relief and Wellness

Class Description:

“Since the mid-1980s, clinical researchers have published over 300 studies on the emotional and physical benefits of expressive writing. Slides will be available for three business days after the live seminar.

Projected Learning Outcomes. Participants will …

Be introduced to expressive writing – what it is and what it’s not
Why we do it – the documented self-care, emotional, physical, wellness and professional benefits
How to prepare to set up and sustain a regular journaling practice, even when you’re straight-out busy
When *not* to do it – as suggested by key researchers in this field
Resources to keep you on track or how to join a write-for-wellness community
Three short, optional group writing exercises”

All Voices Open Mic with Frannie Lindsay
When: March 28, 7:00 PM EST

Cost: FREE

Our IWWG Bi-Monthly Open Mic is thrilled to feature author Frannie Lindsay on March 28, 2021, 7 p.m., ET, LIVE ON ZOOM and free to all.

“Frannie Lindsay’s sixth volume, The Snow's Wife, was released this fall by Cavankerry Press this fall. Her previous titles are If Mercy, Our Vanishing, Mayweed, Lamb, and Where She Always Was. Her honors include the Benjamin Saltman Award, the Washington Prize, the May Swenson Award, and the Missouri Review Prize, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Lindsay is widely published in such journals as The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, Field, Plume, The Adroit Journal. It also appears in the 2014 Best American Poetry Anthology. She teaches workshops on the poetry of grief and trauma at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. She is a classical pianist.”

WISH YOU WERE HERE: Writing the Epistolary Poem/GLOBAL PEN PAL PROGRAM
Monthly beginning Feb 15, 2021 / 3rd Monday of each month
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

“WISH YOU WERE HERE: Writing the Epistolary Poem—IWWG GLOBAL PEN PAL PROGRAM—with Marj Hahne

When: March 15, 2021

Two Sessions:

3rd Mondays of each month
2:00 - 3:00 PM EST

3rd Thursday of each month
7:00 - 8:00 PM EST

Cost: FREE

60 minutes – ½ international, ½ domestic

In March, the class is scheduled:

March 15, 2021

IWWG describes this year-long letter writing program exchange with an international pen pal as follows, “A sustainable practice simply needs a fun structure! Let’s extend the exploration launched in our late-December webinar, WISH YOU WERE HERE: Writing the Epistolary Poem, by discussing one letter-poem per month and using it as a model to write our own letter-poem, to be shared with another participant seeking a poetic pen-pal.

April 2021

Free Online Writing Opportunities in April 2021

A good way to practice your writing is to look for free online opportunities. To be a writer, you write. Sometimes what you write is good. Sometimes it’s bad. That’s okay. The more you write, the better you get. If you want to improve as a writer, you write.

April is Poetry Month in the United States. It’s a great month for writer opportunities and challenges. Many writer challenges repeat year after year. Some launch daily prompts. Others involve setting personal writing goals and provide the means to track and achieve them.

The following four challenges have been repeated for years. Online. Free. And anytime and anywhere. I have done them all and highly recommend them.

1- CAMP NaNoWriMo. Writer Camp convenes every April and July. You set a creative goal, work on any writing project and write with other writers. You select your own measurable goal: editing a project, time-writing-per-day, pages completed. For example, if you write one-hour-per-day for 30 days, your goal would be to produce 18,000 words during April 2021. Or you might want to complete 120 pages in April—since one page contains approximately 250-words, your challenge would be to write 4-pages-per-day. It’s free to register, here’s the link: How to Join Camp NaNo

https://nanowrimo.org/what-is-camp-nanowrimo?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Camp%2021%20April%20Engagement%203&utm_content=Camp%2021%20April%20Engagement%203+CID_10e85540a32562b96b1757dfdf7e23fc&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Camp%20NaNoWriMo%202021%20Banner%20Your%20story%20starts%20here%20Background%20image%20of%20art%20gallery%20text%20done%20in%20the%20style%20of%20a%20subway%20station%20sign

2. NaPoWriMo - Write 30 poems in 30 days at NaPoWriMo: http://www.napowrimo.net This free writing challenge offers the writer (to use or not!) daily prompts for 30 days during April 2021. Each day provides another a link to a poetry reading to inspire your writing. Example: Early-Bird (March 31, 2021) includes a pre-recorded feature reading by the poet Mary Ruefle, giving a series of “28 Short Poetry Lectures” at Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. Every day brings its own featured reading.

3. PADS CHALLENGE – Write a poem-a-day in April 2021 with Robert Brewer, Editor at Writer’s Digest Magazine. It’s a great way to learn and experiment with new forms. https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides

4. NaHaiWriMo - Write 30 haiku in 30 days, a project by Michael Dylan Welch. Welch selected RANDALL HERMAN to provide NaHaiWriMo daily writing prompts for the month of April 2021, National Poetry Month. You post the daily haiku you write in the Community area (NOT on the FaceBook Page.) https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo

During the pandemic, people have been homebound, some forced into quarantine by contact with Covid but everyone everywhere was restricted in some way by the disease. Because of this, people started to take their writing practice online and our writing world has changed.

I will end this column by sharing information about two free writing camps on Zoom that started during Covid. I’ve enjoyed them both. They provide a way to commit to an hour of writing time for accountability and by writing in community, you know you’re not alone.

WRITING CLUB - offered by Hannah Dylan Pasternak, a journalist who personally thrives on writing in community. During Covid, she started to offer:

One hour of quiet writing time alone/together each week

Wednesday evening, 8pm EST

You write on your own for one hour committed to writing in community. You work independently and quietly, the audio off so everyone can concentrate but your camera on for company in the writing room. Hannah offers a weekly prompt but what you select to work on is your choice. I read about Hannah’s project in the New York Times and contacted Hannah by email. She generously responded that she maintains an open door to the public. Anyone interested in participating is asked to email a personal request to Hannah Pasternak <hannahdylanp@gmail.com>. Hannah emails you the Zoom Login information.

Write-In by GOTHAM WRITERS- This New York City school for writing workshops offers fee-based classes as well as free ones, but during Covid they started offering a free Write-In once a week, first-come, first-served, on Zoom. Classes fill up quickly. Gotham Writers faculty teach the The Gotham 75-minute Zoom Write-In.

Class: Write-In I (Zoom)

Date: Friday afternoon

Time: 2–3:15 pm EST

Location: Zoom VideoConference

You connect to the videoconference. Students are requested to keep their cameras on during all Zoom sessions. Link: https://www.writingclasses.com/classes/description/write-in gothamwriters.com.

These free online writing programs meet once a week and are on-going,

at least during Covid.

May your writing be inspired in April 2021.

May 2021

Word Play Apps

Playing with words is the work of writers and poets. By playing with words, the writer can discover word possibilities.

Good word choices enrich writing. They can add music and muscle to language. Word games can help a writer create new word juxtapositions, form a resource list of word-sisters and near-rhymes, or develop new word pairs for future writing.

Word manipulation with a generator APP can be fun and productive. Experimenting with words broadens your word experience. Playing with words can lead to new word associations. Using new word combinations can you can add elements of surprise, modernity and mystery to writing.

The best way to start word-play would be to select an example of your own unfinished writing. It could be a paragraph of failed prose with promise. Or the text of a poem that short-circuited. What you develop might launch a new piece of work. Or revitalize and revision some old writing - that alone makes it worth doing.

Plenty of online word play generators are available for free. I recommend the following seven online word generators:

Mesostic Poem Generator

A mesostic is a poem or prose that contains a vertical phrase and intersects lines of horizontal text. It is similar to an acrostic, but with the vertical phrase intersecting the middle of the line, as opposed to beginning each new line. http://mesostics.sas.upenn.edu/

Acrostic Poem Generator

An acrostic is a poem where each line is generated by each letter of a name (or word). You fill into the template related words to the selected name. The acrostic generator takes information about your topic and looks up related words to form sentences beginning with the letters in your chosen title. https://www.poem-generator.org.uk/acrostic/

Word Cloud

The word cloud APP presents a visual and colored representation of the text inserted. The size of text goes from large down to small, in relation to frequency of word use. A Word Cloud display provides a relational image of repeated word usage. Or a writer can pick and pluck words to create new word pairs from the visual display. A writer can use this APP as an editing tool for work in progress. Or to create new word pairs that add muscularity or greater lyricism for future work. https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create

The N+7 Machine

The N+7 procedure, invented by Jean Lescure of Oulipo, involves replacing each noun in a text with the seventh one following it in a dictionary. (In French, it is also referred to as the 'S+7' procedure.) Here you can enter an English text and 15 alternative texts will be generated, from N+1, which replaces each noun with the next one in the dictionary, to N+15, which takes the 15th noun following. You type in your own text into the generator. http://www.spoonbill.org/n+7/

Minison

Minison, an abbreviated form of the Classic Sonnet, is a derivative of the Classical Sonnet forms: Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian & Miltonic. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-are-the-different-types-of-sonnets-4-main-types-of-sonnets-with-examples#what-is-a-shakespearean-sonnet

A “minison” can be written in two forms: 1- A fourteen-word variant. Example: Seymour Mayne’s word-sonnets. 2- A poem with only fourteen letters total. Example: Michael O’Brien’s collection of minisons).

For more minimal sonnets in word and image form, checkout this online journal, The Minison Project: Shakespeare's sonnet reimagined. https://theminisonproject.wordpress.com/about/

Language is a virus

This site is my favorite for poetic word generation. It contains a rich variety of tools, gizmos, games, and online generators for words. Checkout Language is a virus for Text Manipulation, Poetry Generators and its Sonnet Generator. http://www.languageisavirus.com/reverse.php#.YIsjDi9h2X0

Poem Generator

To write an automatic poem with Poem Generator, you select a type of poem and input some keywords. The program creates a poem and an image. The site contains generators for several poetry forms. Examples: free verse, haiku, tanka, sonnet, quintain, villanelle, couplets, narrative, love poem, concrete poem, acrostic and limerick. I enjoyed playing with the concrete poem - insert your text and the generator arranges text in the shape of the image expressed in the poem (Example: tree, cat, house). Poem Generator

June 2021

Good Writing Prompts

Creatives have spent the last year in lockdown during Covid, along with the rest of the world. Writer conferences, literary festivals, open mics, slams, writer workshops, author new book launches —- they never stopped happening, though the format shifted to virtual. Zoom changed the literary landscape in the past year.

Writers and artistic creatives might not have appeared in person on stage, but they didn’t stop writing— they produced at home. What changed was how they marketed their goods.

One result of author-performers working at home alone has been an increase in the availability of new writing prompts online. Just one year ago, I couldn’t have imagined the current wealth of writer prompts.

The writer prompts I discovered cross literary genres. This month’s column of Pearl Diving features a few of the writer prompt riches that I uncovered on the web.

1- For breadth, depth and sheer volume of writing prompts, see Kelly Tsai’s 171 Writer Prompts for You to Use. This list appeared on Trisch Hopkinson’s Selfish Poet Blog that featured guest Blogger, Kelly Tsai. Tsai’s accompanying article explains how she developed 171 writer prompts and takes the reader back through the year of isolation we are just now escaping, thanks to the development of a Covid vaccine. Tsai’s prompts are stellar. See: CreativeQuarantine: Life Learned in Isolation (Plus 171 Prompts For You to Use) – guest post by Kelly Tsai on Trisch Hopkinson’s Selfish Poet Blog, April 12, 2021. https://trishhopkinson.com/2021/04/12/creativequarantine-life-learned-in-isolation-plus-171-prompts-for-you-to-use-guest-post-by-kelly-tsai/

2- If you write nonfiction, you’ll enjoy Brevity’s Prompts for Teaching The Flash Essay. This list of prompts appears on Dinty W. Moore’s Nonfiction Blog. I call your attention in particular to Expanded Classroom Resources: Prompts for Teaching The Flash Essay. In the area of flash nonfiction, the prompts were culled over twenty-two year from the best of Brevity authors. The flash essay prompts is part of Brevity’s larger suite of classroom resources. Be sure to check out the full menu of Classroom Resources.

Here are links to writing prompts for The Flash Essay:

Expanded Classroom Resources: Prompts for Teaching The Flash Essay by Dinty W. Moore at BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog, May 20, 2021. https://brevity.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/prompts-for-the-flash-essay/

Prompts for Teaching the Flash Essay.

I acknowledge Finds for Writers - Erika Dreifus May 21, 2021 at 7:45 am for directing me to Brevity’s nonfiction prompts.

3- For writers of romance, there’s 50 Romance Plot Ideas and Romance Writing Prompts, from Bryn Donovan’s Blog: tell your stories, love your life. Link: https://www.bryndonovan.com/2015/07/10/master-list-of-romantic-conflicts/

4- For poets, you’ll enjoy 11 Exercises and Activities for Creating Unexpected Imagery in Poetry. This list of prompts was delivered in an online lecture, The Art of Fresh Imagery in Poetry, presented By Meghan Sterling. The full lecture is available for free viewing from Authors Publish. To obtain the writing prompts, download the Exercise Packet attached to the video.

https://authorspublish.com/free-lecture-the-art-of-fresh-imagery-in-poetry/ Meghan Sterling

Best wishes for a happy summer season of reading and writing!

July 2021

podcasts and videos for writers

Podcasts and videos of art forms are becoming increasingly popular with the public. The best ones I found are the product of cross disciplinary collaboration, they are what happens when you cross pollinate art forms and create performance art.

In ancient times, stories of a culture were transmitted by the recitations of the storyteller. Or the shanachie. Later, it was the book. And newspaper. Now social media and technology makes many stories available online.

Collaborative art often pairs writing with one (or more) other art form. The writer can join ranks with an artist, thespian, musician, dancer… All art forms are candidates for shared author work: drawing, painting, music, dance, theater, photography, film, sculpture, ceramics, architecture, cooking and more.

Much collaborative art begins with the words in a book. Spoken word art takes the written word and expands its reach through recording, film, visual art and performance. The words get reinterpreted in the process of interpretation. The performance can be by a writer. By an actor. By a musician. By a dancer. By an artist. By a public speaker, that person of distinction or authority in the community.

Each collaboration between art partners changes the art, the result is a new hybrid that expands the meaning of the art. The conjoining of arts has in a multiplier effect. Joint art uses the strengths of each discipline, it’s a fusion that enriches and evolves each art. Written words spoken or recorded becomes spoken word art. And words mixed with artistic image transform.

There’s a large market for writing combining art forms in new and interesting ways. Performance art, concert and theater are popular forms of public entertainment that has an audience. Many enjoy spoken poetry, open mic, standup comedy, slam and improv theater.

And there’s lots of it being produced. In the last few decades, the cross-cultural marriage of art forms has gone mainstream.

Writers commonly use technology and social media to popularize their work. Below are some links to spoken art that may be of interest to writers:

Podcasts. Podcasts are a broadcast of the recoded voice. More sophisticated podcasts add video to voice. Voice recordings have been distributed in many ways: vinyl record, Books-on-tape, CD, and, more recently, download or live stream. Many podcasts of books and written art form (such as haiku variants) are available online. Podcasts provide an alternative to reading and are a source of entertainment.

Some good podcasts to inspire a writer’s imagination:

“7 Podcasts To Binge In A Day”, NYT, By Emma Dibdin. March 30, 202.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/arts/podcasts-binge.html. This NYT article contains a list and links to seven fiction podcasts: Wind of Change, Dirty John, The Mystery Show, Passenger List, Dolly Parton’s America, ‘Escaping Nxism’, Bag Man, “An Unsettling Secret”. Each award winning podcasts is starter story in an episode. Listening to these fiction podcasts might fuel your writer’s imagination.

Poetry Pea - great podcast for haiku lovers.

https://poetrypea.com/s4e12-haiku-of-seasons/

https://poetrypea.com/pea-tv-haiku-moment-feather/

https://poetrypea.com/pea-tv-haiku-moment-salt-breeze/

https://poetrypea.com/pea-tv-workshop-stanford-m-forrester-on-yugen/

“Recall this Book" podcast - From Erika Dreifus - Finds for Writers, June 25, 2021. Dreifus recommends this podcast for a “free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today’s world.”

Videos. Videos combine sound plus photo for online viewing. The stories and events come from books, open mics, virtual concerts and more. The reinterpreted work can become spoken art. Or a poetry concert. A live word performance on a video makes a piece of literature come alive in a new way.

Some videos of interest to writers:

The Academy of American Poets provides a free collection of poetry videos featuring modern American poetry. Includes short recordings in the voices of modern American poets reading their own poems & recordings of featured poets reading in The Laney Lecture Series. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMbWrLV3xwKly6vqhnl0IXg/videos

The Laney Series Lecture by Terrance Hayes, 2019; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMbWrLV3xwKly6vqhnl0IXg/videos

Failed Haiku Videos – Michael Rehling, a haiku innovator and online haiku journal editor, presents videos on haiga, senryu, critique. Check out their YouTube videos and a stellar haiga series that joins visual art and haiku:

https://failedhaiku.com/videos/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh8jwqXGyBnUBi0XhnT2v90uxE1FlKK6P

Spoken Word/ Dance & Music Concert/ International Writing Program / Department of Dance. Art and Justice Series. University of Iowa is an educational leader in cross curricular collaboration. Writers Group & University of Iowa Department of Dance. They go beyond the recorded word, with multi-level interpretations of literature cross curricular boundaries. You can find the spoken word joined with visual art, with dance, with choral and instrumental music.

This is how they founders describe this particular collaboration. “As we strive toward ideals of justice and equity, diversity, and radical inclusion, we find ourselves in a precarious moment, pulled simultaneously by hope and trepidation, seeking possibility while recognizing the threats that stand in our way. This duality is reflected in the prompt given to writers and dance-makers for their collaboration: when I close my eyes, I see the future / when I see the future, I close my eyes.

As a contribution to this Art and Social Justice series, the longstanding collaboration between the International Writing Program and the UI Department of Dance will result in a virtual concert of works. Brief moments of live commentary and audience talk-back will frame the virtual viewing of these premieres. The performance prompt was inspired by the title of an exhibition featuring the Egyptian artist Heba Y. Amin’s multimedia work.”

I highly recommend two poetry videos of virtual readings recorded during Covid by The Academy of American Poets:

shelter in poems: A Virtual Reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT9fBywXj08

gather in poems: A Virtual Reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT9fBywXj08

My favorite video this past year is a video of a joint concert performed by students and professors at the University of Iowa in the International Writing Program / Department of Dance:

Spoken Word/ Dance & Music Concert/ International Writing Program / Department of Dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTvjnYd3GyY

YouTube Videos are a great place to experience collaborative writing. It’s a good starting point for finding collaborative work. Enjoy browsing. May you find many writer treasures.

August 2021

ONLINE POETRY OPEN MICS

One good way to develop an audience for your writing is to read or perform what you write at an Open Mic.

Many local venues for live reader performance on stage exist, though you’ll have to scout out on your the in-person local open mic opportunities. Each community is unique, open mic events are something to discuss with your writer friends. Put your ear to the ground, listen to hearsay—just ask other writers if they know about any good open mics in your area.

The other kind of open mic is online, usually free, and requires registration to attend or to be an open mic reader. Attendees (reader/audience) fill out an online registration form. Registered participants receive an emailed Link to the online event. The program may be produced on Zoom or Eventbrite, etc. It’s a good idea to participate as a listener before you take the stage as a reader in front of a live mic. As soon as you feel comfortable as a member of the audience, the next step is to take the stage. For that you need to sign up as an open mic reader.

I will give you three examples of online open mics.

Please be aware that each open mic operates according to the mission of their organization. Because of this, guidelines for participation vary for each open mic.

Some are democratic, no portfolio required, and open mic signup by first-come first-served, with a large number of readers. IWWG: International Women’s Writing Guild uses this format. IWWG is an organization for women writers. This open mic is free and presented bi-monthly. Each program has one featured reader and an open mic of about twenty readers. Membership is not required to be a reader. There’s a strict 3-minute time limit per reader. The program is open for fiction and non-fiction genres, and the open mic is not vetted. Each reader selects what she reads. The quality of the multi-genre writing presented is excellent. I highly recommend the bi-monthly open mic at IWWG.

Other poetry communities have more formal guidelines. Poetry Super Highway, for poets only, requires submission. The PHS online network is massive. PSH selects two featured readers per week for their Poetry Mic Reading Programs. Attendees register to watch the performance.

Verse-Virtual, another online poetry community, requires the reader to have published work in Verse Virtual to be an open-mic reader, but then it leaves it to the writer to vet up to two poems and read for a maximum of 5 minutes. Each program has three featured readers and an open mic with eight reading spots. The open mic is filled by V-V members only on a first-come, first-served basis. The poetry community at Verse-Virtual is diverse, friendly and supportive. I encourage you to submit three poems to V-V, this online literary journal and community is open for submissions on the first ten days of each month. Their poetry community is awesome.

Below are links that connect to the three open mics discussed above:

August 26, 2021
2:00 - 3:30 PM EST

All Voices Open Mic with Anna-Mae Perillo

IWWG’s Open Mic - International Women’s Writing Guild presents bi-monthly free Open Mics, presented on Zoom. The target audience is women writers. What you read can be any genre. Sign up to read for a three-minute slot or just to attend for entertainment.

https://iwwg.wildapricot.org/openmic

PSH Live - on Poetry Super Highway

Our monthly live open poetry reading “PSH Live” happens via Zoom and is simulcast in our Facebook group. Participate in the open reading by joining with Zoom or just watch on our Facebook page.

The PSH’s weekly Open Mic reading of August 2-8 , 2021 features two poets: C.W. Bigelow from Mooresville, North Carolina, and and James Redfern from Atascadero, California.

https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/poetry-from-c-w-bigelow-and-james-redfern/?fbclid=IwAR1Gbu0FTWxNQtr4isS3jssQPLfPt0EbhgyhDIrI13zvTpd-p1Laggb3xlA

To participate in PSH Open Mic, you must apply to be a reader. Here are the guideline to request to read your poems at the PSH weekly Open mic: https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/poetry/submission-guidelines/

PSH Live: https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/psh-live/

Verse-Virtual

This online poetry journal and community hosts a Poetry Mic Reading Event. It includes three featured readers and eight open mic readers. The only caveat is that to read at the V-V open mic you must be a poet published by Verse-Virtual. V-V featured readers are by invitation only. On August 21, 2021 at 11:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, the three featured readers are Katie Manning, Scott Ferry and Ed Ruzicka. https://www.verse-virtual.org/register.asp

Upcoming Verse-Virtual Events in August 2021

August 21st. Verse-Virtual Reading featuring Katie Manning, Scott Ferry, and Ed Ruzicka

I hope you enjoy checking out online open mics in August 2021. A happy end of summer to you!

ModPo Begins Sept 4

September 2021

ModPo: Modern American Poetry begins on September 4, 2021. If you find that reading fine poetry helps you grow as a writer, check out this class.

ModPo helped me develop a personal writer support network and connected me to a global writer community. It’s the best free online class I have ever taken.

In 2012, I took ModPo for the first time. It was my first MOOC: massive online class. No cost: offered for free. Modern American Poetry: known as ModPo. This first experience in online learning provided me an entry point into a world-wide poetry community.

Year one at ModPo—I was hooked. For nine years, I’ve attended ModPo. It never grows stale. Every year, the ModPo beginner curriculum gets updated and more content added to the advancer learner portion (ModPoPlus). There’s always more poets and poems to discuss, more to be learned about the craft of writing. I found a writer home in the Public Discussion Forums and Interest Groups that continue year-round.

Modern American Poetry has evolved over the nine years I’ve participated. Over 50,000 online learners. From a formal class of six weeks length, ModPo now offers a fast-paced fall session of ten weeks, then continues in SlowPoMode year-round. Professor Al Filreis, the instructor, leads featured poem discussions with a round table of teaching assistants (TA). An active team of over a hundred mentors supports them. Mentors participate in online discussions and interact, encourage and learn with the students. Al & the TAs hold office hours, they are accessible and talk directly to the students. The course includes livestream webcasts on the week’s featured poetry, with a call-in portion by students from around the world.

What stays the same? ModPo’s formal class begins in September. When: Now. Enroll: free.

Dear ModPo friends near & far:

ModPo 2021 opens on Saturday (September 4) for our annual "symposium mode" movement all together through the ten weeks of the course. Very possibly you are already currently registered/enrolled, and you can check that by going here. If you are not currently enrolled, you can of course easily join us by clicking "ENROLL" here.

Some receiving this note will have begun ModPo but weren't able to finish. We invite you back! Pick up where you left off!

Some folks will be familiar with all of the poems and videos in the main syllabus. If so, we invite you to come back for ModPo 2021 and move through the ModPoPLUS syllabus—which is structured so that each week you will see additional poems and videos associated with the topic or historical period of that week's main syllabus. We have been adding dozens and dozens of new poems and videos and other materials to ModPoPLUS so join us for that!

ModPo, as always, is free (no $ charge of any kind) and hosted by us at the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

If you have any questions about how to re-join us in ModPo, please write us at modpo@writing.upenn.edu.

Best wishes, as always,

Al Filreis

Kelly Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House
Dir., Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW)
Co-Director, PennSound
Publisher, Jacket2
Teacher/convener, ModPo
My new book, 1960: info & pre-order

October 2021

Good Reads for Writers

Reading is part of knowing your craft as a writer. It broadens you as a writer to know what’s being published, what the public is reading and who the other writers are. Reading teaches you new techniques you can try out yourself. What you read blows through your mind, gives you information, pollinates ideas, inspires you and sometime it even provokes you to reach beyond your comfort zone. Good writers read, reading broadly helps you to write better.

When it comes to books, there’s an ocean full of pearls out there on the internet, so many books and not enough time to read everything. What kind of tools are available to find the right books to read, those books that are a match to your interest, to your own area of expertise as a writer?

If you are writing on a theme, you’ll want to identify what’s out there already. Many good book reviews services are available. All kinds of writing: fiction, romance, sci-fi, young adult, audiobook. They publish editorial reviews, customer reviews, a ranking system. Two big players:

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/#_=_

Bookish - https://bookish.netgalley.com

If you want to assess writer competition for best books, a good way is to use literary prize reading lists. Pull up the names of nominated books and the award winners and you get a big picture view of the what’s hot in the world of literature. In literary big-league, they call you, the writer has no voice.

American Library Association provides a good links to prize book lists: https://www.ala.org

And here are some links to book lists of three big name book prizes:

Pulitzer Prize - https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year

National Book Award - https://www.nationalbook.org/2021-national-book-awards-longlist-for-fiction/

Man Booker Prize - https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2021

For popular culture and trends in the literary marketplace, I recommend subscribing to Literary Hub. The site is available free online. The publish new book reviews. It’s the to-go place for an overview of literary world happenings. https://lithub.com/

Another source for reviews of new releases is Narrative Magazine. It’s online and free. They publish brief book reviews of multi-type new releases: Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, Backstage. https://www.narrativemagazine.com/.

National newspapers publish their own book reviews and best books reading lists.

Some to check out are:

New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/section/books/review

The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/books/books+tone/reviews

The Nation - https://www.thenation.com/subject/books-and-ideas/

Book presses and independents also run book reviews and publish recommended book lists. Two good ones:

Tupelo Press - https://www.tupelopress.org/product-category/new-releases/

Scholastic Book - https://www.scholastic.com/home

Some large organizations also publish best book lists. If you share the interests of the organization, you might value their book recommendations. Some samples:

AARP - https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/books/?CMP=KNC-DSO-COR-Entertainment-13879-GOOG-BookSuggestions-Phrase-NonBrand-ENG&gclid=CjwKCAjw49qKBhAoEiwAHQVTo0m7GR-tvsXkojVxTB1jZyx2huSCvt0TrrFZZb37Iy3BDWaFLYR46xoCKFcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55129111

NPR.

TED Book List - https://ideas.ted.com/reading-list-books-to-inspire/

Oprah’s Book Club - https://www.julesbuono.com/oprahs-book-club-list/

Then there are reader services by commercial book sellers. The online seller emails buyers a list of similar titles that you might wish to buy. (Customers who bought this item also bought) These unsolicited suggestions reveal similar books to the one you purchased. While they are couched as purchase recommendations, you can use these suggestions for books to borrow from your library where lending is free. One of the biggest book sellers anywhere is Amazon. Here’s a link to Amazon UK books:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/books-used-books-textbooks/b?ie=UTF8&node=266239

Then there are the lending book centers themselves, otherwise know as libraries. Most big ones publish great lists that include regional writers. Some examples include:

AAA - https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist

NYPL - https://www.nypl.org/125/discover

London Public Library - https://www.londonpubliclibrary.ca/staff-picks/book-clubs/best

A service run by librarians in the USA produces great reading lists which might help a writer find what’s been written already in his area of interest. Monthly reading lists are produced, the books include fiction and non-fiction, old books and new releases. Here the link: LibraryReads - https://libraryreads.org

Just for reading fun, I’ll end with some reading in community projects that might want to join. These might inspire you as a writer and a reader.

1- Reddit’s one-book-a-week reading challenge. A good way motivate yourself to read more and provide accountability.

2- One-book project. Cities, schools, colleges, libraries and others read one book together. Programs such as author talks or book discussion groups may help. Two examples of One-Book:

One-Book project by Library of Congress - https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0601/cfb.html

NEA Big Read - https://www.arts.gov/initiatives/nea-big-read

3- Join a reading together interest group. Low pressure. Participants read and discuss 20 pages of Tolstoy each day. Example: #TolstoyTogether

Have fun reading and writing!

*****

November 2021

Places to Publish

A writer has written a piece of work and honed it to the point it’s ready to submit. For many writers, your immediate concern is: What publishers are open now?

In this month’s column of Pearl Diving, I recommend two resources — online & free—for identifying places to submit that are currently open: Entropy Magazine & Lumiere Review.

Entropy Magazine https://entropymag.org/where-to-submit-september-october-and-november-2021/

Entropy provides an excellent list of Places to Submit. It’s the most extensive I have found and with good reason—this magazine has provided this valuable writer service for years. They list publishers of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Search by Presses, Chapbooks, Journals & Anthologies, Fellowships. They now include “Chapbooks” as a separate list because chapbooks have gained in market share—the new list is a direct response to this market trend growth.

Lumiere Review https://lumierereview.com/sub-sep-oct-2021.

Lumiere, a newcomer to providing lists of open calls, started posting monthly lists in 2021, transitioned to bi-monthly in September-October. Search categories include: journals, presses, contests, and applications (for writer jobs, volunteer reader positions, internships). The ability to browse by “Contests” is a unique feature of the Lumiere List. Caution: go Lumiere’s Homepage and update for the new link to November-December 2021, which was not yet available when this column was written.

How does the journal benefit? Why do they expend journal energy publishing Other Places Lists. I’d ask writers to consider why Entropy and Lumiere do this. The lists are time-sensitive in a rapidly changing market, they take constant work and revision. Why have these two respected literary journals chosen to produce these lists? The lists require a serious commitment of journal resources to produce. They do it because it’s a way to forward the organization’s mission. They know that writers they’ve rejected use their lists, they see them published in other journals just as they intended. Hit Use figures back up the usefulness and popularity to writers.

Is this an example of the real Santa making a child happy by sending the parent to a different store, they way he did in Miracle on 34th Street? I think the answer is Yes. A real-Santa lets you know about Other Places to Submit. The Other Places serve as a guide for writers to find a different publisher, one that better matches an author’s content and style.

In my view, the Other Lists signify a dedication to charity, commitment, ethical choice for the welfare of the greater writer community. It’s a way to give back, to grow the pool of good writers. The finest journals receive the largest number of submissions, editors often reject quality work that doesn’t fit their current issue. By offering a list of Other Places, they encourage rejected writers. Also they help rejected writers with room to grow, a strange truth based on this truism: the more you write, the better you write.

I think that journals with Other Places to Publish lists demonstrate a conviction that what benefits the writer, grows the larger writer community. This Win-Win benefits all the players.

Many fine smaller journals and presses share this democratic belief that more knowledge grows greater freedom. A smaller journal has less organizational resources, yet they can do the same thing for the same reason as

Other Places to Submit:

Euonia Review https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/links/

Eunoia in Singapore does a similar thing in a smaller way. They produce a link to a comprehensive list of fine literary journals. Listed journals have different open periods for submissions but may (or not) be open at the present time. This is no time-sensitive list for submissions.

Like other A-quality literary journals, Eunoia rejects many more submissions than it selects. It’s highly competitive, hard to get into. Eunoia bypasses and rejects some great selections, as well as many others not so well written. Their literary journals list is my personal favorite. I think you’ll find time spent to explore and get to know journals on Eunoia’s list.

Whether or not you agree with my personal conclusions about why Entropy and Lumiere publish Other Places To Submit, every writer will agree that more knowledge about presses and journals active in the literary market only helps you make more intelligent (and productive!) decisions about where to submit.

May acceptances keep coming!

Don’t let rejections stop you from submitting!

December 2021

Sensory Words

Much fine literature uses words that invoke the senses. A good poem uses sense words to describe what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel.

Why do writers use sense words? Their power comes from the sense words showing the reader (not telling). The sensory words convey an understanding of what the experience feels like from the inside and anchor the reader in Now. Sensory words in a poem take the reader inside the world of the writer’s experience, make the reader recall his own perception through the senses. The sensory words provide a personal reference point, offer visceral clues to engage and reimagine the experience the author describes.

Writing that contains sense words tends to be more compelling, it develops lyrical quality and rhythm of word flow. The sensory words used often reproduce a sound they describe. Some sound word examples: buzz, chirp, tweep, achoo, rumble, rasp. The literary term for this kind of device is onomatopoeia.

Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Bells, is a classic example of onomatopoeia with the sense of sound reproduced in the sound of words:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells…

https://poestories.com/read/bells

For more on onomatopoeia and its relative literary technique, phanopoeia, the online reference tool, Literary Devices, offers definitions, word lists. You may even find that examples from published literature teach you more than the sensory word lists. SEE: onomatopoeia.

How does a writer find words that invoke the five senses? Luckily, lists of sense words are available online and for free.

For a jump-start, search a good synonym finder.

WordHippo is a powerful word search tool for sensory words, and it’s one of the best online synonym finders. It ferrets out direct synonyms, as well as indirect word associations. It’s a great resource to find a word in various contexts. SEE: https://synonym.wordhippo.com\

Sense word lists are collected on other websites.

Writers Write posts some fine lists of words for the senses. Amanda Patterson complies the sense word lists at Writers Write.

SmartBlogger also has good sensory word lists. A great resource is "583 Sensory Words to Take Your Writing" from Bland to Brilliant by Kevin J. Duncan, June 29, 2021. Sense words at SmartBlogger are embedded under the name of each sense: Sight (185 words), Sound (161 words), Touch (123 words), Taste (51 words), Smell (47 words) , Smell & Taste (16 words). https://smartblogger.com/sensory-words/

Educational Vocabulary Lists are another source for sensory word lists. One link of sensory words: https://www.waunakee.k12.wi.us/faculty/lcarothers/EffectiveWriting/Descriptive/Sensory%20Words.pdf

January 2022

Some Online Writer’s Resources for January 2022

The year’s end is a time to look back, assess and look forward.

When it comes to looking backward, authors and readers honor those the writing world has lost. This year Lawrence Ferlinghetti died—the last poet of the Beat Generation. And renowned Northwest poet, David Wagoner, whose poetry brings alive trees and birds of the Cascadia Region. And then there’s the educator, poet and translator, Robert Bly, whose work opens new poetry borders, he’s a poet whom I and others around the globe met through an online free MOOC by the University of Iowa Writer’s Group called “How Writers Write Poetry.”

For a list of writers lost, Poetry Foundation publishes an annual review. See the links below to obituaries of some major English language poets who died in 2021.

Friederike Mayröcker
Al Young
David Wagoner
Robert Bly
Thomas Kinsella
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
bell hooks
Etel Adnan
Adam Zagajewski
Janice Mirikitani

One of Poetry Foundation’s podcasts in the “Poets We Lost in 2021” series features the life, poetry, and activism of Janice Mirikitani, (Poetry Foundation, December 24, 2021):

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/157009/poets-we-lost-in-2021?utm_source=Poetry+Foundation&utm_campaign=8a27b6b3f2-POFO-DECEMBER_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ff7136981c-8a27b6b3f2-185561769&mc_cid=8a27b6b3f2&mc_eid=5b796b176f

Children’s author, Beverly Cleary, died at 104. She’s a literary great who died in 2021.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/books/beverly-cleary-dead.html

For more about Beverly Cleary and other losses, see: The Lives They Lived: Remembering some of the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the last year.

NYT Magazine, Dec. 2021. creativewritersopps.blogspot.com

The best books and award lists of the year are announced in December.

For recommendations to the overall literary marketplace in 2021, I recommend:

2021 NPR books: Books We Love. It’s an extensive subject list of great reads, every year, thoughtfully curated by NPR. 2,800 books published in 2021 on lists by subject (EX: Sci-Fi, Dark Side, History, Music, art, etc.) https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#view=covers&year=2021

For select lists by genre/subject, go to: Lit Hub’s THE BEST REVIEWED BOOKS OF 2021 https://bookmarks.reviews/category/best-of-2021/

As to looking forward, I heartily recommend ModPo (Modern American Poetry) for free online classes. SloPo 2022 has five ModPo mini-courses now open for enrollment for the ModPo off-season (the first months of 2022). As with all ModPo offerings, these are free (no charge whatsoever) and open to anyone. You only need to be already enrolled in ModPo. If you are not currently enrolled, click HERE to do so.

GROUP 1 — January 21-31, led by Al Filreis: “Selected works of Caroline Bergvall”

GROUP 2 — February 15-25, led by Jake Marmer: “Poetry of Border Crossings”

GROUP 3 — March 15-25, led by Jason Zuzga: “The Poetry of Jack Spicer”

GROUP 4 — April 15-May 2, led by Mandana Chaffa: “Contemporary 21st Century Poetry: A Consideration of Poets and Poems from the New Millenium”

GROUP 5 — May 15-25, led by Kate Colby: “The Poetry of George Oppen”

In parting, I pass on a year-end selection of educational videos about the craft of writing, produced by Bestselling Authors, Editors, and Agents of The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish: Free Gift: 13 Lectures for Writers.

https://authorspublish.thinkific.com/courses/lecture-series

Best wishes to you in 2022 as you further your education as a writer and reader.

Writer Resources Available in February 2022

Not everyone gets out and moves about freely in mid-winter. Reasons to stay inside are many: you’re snowbound, avoiding omicron or you live in the north and you’re just plain cold intolerant. If you are a writer and have a computer, this opens lots of possibilities—available for free and at home—to enrich your writing.

Here’s information about three global literary programs held in February 2022:

"Poetry Palooza" presented by International Women’s Writing Guild, continues in February. These workshops are for-pay. But IWWG also offers two free writes in February:

Free Write with Kirun Kapur. An Asian-American poet, she teaches creative writing at Amherst College, and serves as editor of Beloit Poetry Journal. Kim is the author of Women in the Waiting Room & Visiting Indira Gandhi's Palmist.

When: February 4, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 PM EST

Where: Digital Village on Zoom

Free Write with Alina Stefanescu
Writing the Poem's Secret: Exposing What is Sacred. Romanian born Alina Stefanescu lives in Alabama, USA. She is the author of Ribald, Dor & Every Mask I Tried On. In this free-writing session, we will explore how to defang a secret by telling it, by writing the visible and the invisible, riding the tension between what is sacred and profane.

When: February 18, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 PM EST

Where: Digital Village on Zoom

Poetry Open Mic! Plug Your Poetry Doings Too! Presented by Charlotte Digregorio, a poet and professor, in collaboration with Winnetka-Northfield (IL) Public Library District in the USA. Charlotte Digregorio will begin the program by reading a few poems from her new book, Ripples of Air: Poems of Healing. Next, she will ask the poets from foreign countries to read, as many are from later time zones and she doesn’t want them staying up all night just to get their chance to read.

Poets may read up to five of your best poems. Any form of poetry is acceptable. Those who are just reading haiku, may read up to eight poems.
Beginning poets are welcome to share their writing, too! Don't be bashful! It will be fun and inspiring. The audience is enthusiastic and respectful.
Here’s a chance to plug your books, website, or whatever in the way of your writing.

Poetry Open Mic!

When: Sunday, Feb. 6, from 2-4 p.m (Chicago–USA Time, CST).

Where: Zoom

For more information, and to register, click or paste:

https://winnetkalibrary.libcal.com/calendar/events/?cid=3782&t=d&d=2022-02-06&cal=3782&inc=0

***

Favorite Tales Special Event. Presented by Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild, USA. Recordings of featured storytellers are available for free access on the LVSG website. Amateur and professional tellers work together and share stories. It's free and on demand. All that you have to do is push the play button. Enjoy.

In February while everyone is snowbound, they are presenting two rounds of story programs:

Karen Maurer has a lovely program of stories called "Favorite Tales About Wishes.” (February 1- 19, 2022)

Later in the month, Rob Aptaker will tell "Favorite Tales from the Longhouse people.” (Starts February 20, 2022 and continues until Mid-March, 2022)

The program is here.

https://lvstorytelling.org/favorite-tales-for-a-winters-day/

***

Happy first new moon of the LunarYear. And so begins the Year of the Tiger, Imbolc & Candlemas. Stay safe & write well.

February 2022

Word Mastery Resources

Writing is a word based craft. Writers and good words slide together as tightly as interlocked fingers. Good words are part of what makes good writing memorable. The words in your brain are what form a solid foundation for your work.

Your word resources are what you draw on when you write. No one can have too many words, they are the essential tool for writing. And you need good words to write. No one wants his word house built of straw that a passing wolf can blow down. No, you need more than a statue with clay feet as King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon learned.

A write depends on a word dictionary with depth, scope and breath. When you write but that special word eludes you, only the best word, the perfect word will do. You need word mastery to find it.

Writing is a word based craft. You can improve your word bank as part of a daily practice by learning more words. Or refreshing a connection with an old word that has slipped away. It’s something you can do on your own, though word learning doesn’t have to be all work and no play. You can even have a good time with friends and achieve greater word knowledge by playing word games with friends.

Word-learning tools and games are readily available. Some are online and free, others are accessible at little cost.

For suggestions, below is a list of some word learning games and tools you may find useful.

Wordsmith Self-improvement Word Tools & Games:

Word Genius: www.wordgenius.com.

The site is an attractive, dependable source of good words by email. Each word-of-the-day is paired with an attractive visual image, instructions for sounding out the word, the part of speech, a definition and an example of word usage in a sentence. You can build vocabulary on a daily basis by using this word builder site. Warning! You have to wade through advertisements to get this “free” online internet product.

Word Genius has several word-sister sites that email good word learning and practice content. But like Word Genius, the sites are ad-heavy. Despite the ads, I enjoy the word enrichment the sites provide for “free”. The content is good enough to make it worth my while to put up with the advertising. If you find ads oppressive, UNSUBSCRIBING is always an option.

School of Word Play: words@sb1.schoolofwordplay.com

The site emails a daily quiz: Can You finish This Sentence Correctly? It’s a quick, easy and fun way to practice word comprehension and review good word usage in a sentence. Includes advertisements.

Interesting Facts: hello@interestingfacts.com

Trivia Genius: www.triviagenius.com

These two sites email offbeat information. Includes advertisements. The sites provide rich details for your writing.

Inspiring Quotes: hello@inspiringquotes.com

Read daily quotes that you receive by email. Save the quotes that appeal to you in a Good Quotes File. Includes advertisements.

Sunday Sentence: https://www.erikadreifus.com/blogs/practicing-writing/.

For inspiration, I highly recommend Erika Dreifus and the Practicing Writing blog that she publishes. Erika selects one weekly Sunday Sentence—the most compelling, creative sentence that she has encountered in one week of reading and writing.

Scrabble: https://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-B2850-Retro-Scrabble-1949/dp/B01C3IMJNC/ref=sr_1_7?crid=1H0MVPPIDJCHH&keywords=scrabble+board+game&qid=1646062938&sprefix=scrabble%2Caps%2C75&sr=8-7

Scrabble GO: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pieyel.scrabble&hl=en_US&gl=US

Scrabble is a traditional board game, Go Scrabble is an online version of the same game that requires a free App and is played online with friends. Both forms of Scrabble are played with letters in a crossword fashion on a board. The board game can be played with two to four players. The online version is played with one opponent. Whoever scores the highest wins the game. Playing Scrabble is a great way to practice words and learn new ones. You learn many words that don’t appear in everyday speech: the names of fruits, plants, animals, alphabet letters, currency in other countries. But even offbeat words have a tricky way of appearing in a poem you may someday write.

Words With Friends: https://wordswithfriends.com.

This is a popular Scrabble knockoff game that is played online. There’s a free version with ads, and a for-pay version without ads. You can play multiple games online word games with many friends at the same time. There’s even one quick-version of the game where you compete against a computer. Millions of people play Words With Friends with each other around the globe.

Wordle: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

Wordle is produced online and free by the New York Times. This new word game is popular, trendy and fun to play. The object is to guess a randomly generated five-letter-word of the day. Each player receives six guesses. When you hit enter, you get letter feedback in color. Yellow indicates that a letter appears in the word but in a different location, green confirms that the letter appears in the word in this position, gray indicates the letter does not appear in the word. You compete against yourself in Wordle. You can access the Wordle archive of words that have already appeared to practice your word guessing skills.

Quiddler: https://www.amazon.com/SET-Enterprises-5000-Quiddler-Card/dp/B00000IV95/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2MY8VJQRDYPII&keywords=quiddler+card+game+for+adults&qid=1646063028&sprefix=Quiddler+card+game%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-2

This is fun word-card game to play. Up to six players make words for points with letter cards. In each successive hand, you deal out a larger number of letter cards. At the end of the game, the player with the highest score wins.

Whether you bolster your word mastery by playing word games or simply practice and take quizzes to learn new words, each word challenge you complete improves word skills. You work with words, exercise your brain, improve word mastery. That can only make your writing better. Write on!

March 2022

April 2022
APRIL IS POETRY MONTH

The entire month of April offers a wealth of writing programs and resources for poets.

1- Academy of American Poets - Presents “Poetry & the Creative Mind”, a free program, as well as educational links to a sample of fine poems, poetry resources and projects available during the celebration of National Poetry Month in April. https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/

Check out 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month online and at home, including 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in the classroom, find online poetry events on Poetry Near You calendar, add your own, and more.

Don’t miss the signature National Poetry Month virtual reading, Poetry & the Creative Mind, with masters of ceremony Richard Blanco and Terrance Hayes, and featuring readings of favorite poems from Rosanne Cash, Willem Dafoe, Ann Dowd, 2022 Leadership Award recipient Joy Harjo, and more luminaries from across the arts and culture.

This signature annual gala celebrates poetry’s important place in our lives. Join us for the live broadcast April 28, at 7:30 p.m. EDT, free and open to the public. Learn more at Poets.org.

2. ReadWriteThink.org This site for primary and secondary school teachers offers sample lesson plans (K-Gr 12) to teach poetry. Examples: Theme Poems, Acrostic Poems, Diamante Poems, Poetry Types. https://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/calendar-activities/april-national-poetry-month

3. Favorite Poem Project. Includes an impressive list of poetry videos, a selection of favorite poems and an excellent guide how to organize a Favorite Poem Project in schools and libraries.

4. 30/30 Challenge in April - Many challenges to write a poem-a-day in April are held during National Poetry Month. Examples of 30/30 Challenges include:

April Poem-a-Day Challenge— 30/30 PAD Challenge, facilitated by Writer’s Digest Robert Lee Brewer, Poetry Editor. https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2022-april-pad-challenge-guidelines

NaPoWriMo - Write a poem every day from April 1 to April 30

Poetry Writing Prompt-a-Day for National Poetry Month - Presented by the online literary journal, Poetry Super Highway, by founder Rick Lupert. The journal solicits prompts from poets for every day in April, writing produced is shared online. The site includes an archive of prompts from past years. https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/poetry-writing-prompt-day-submit/

Tupelo 30/30 Project - Tupelo is an example of a high-quality independent press that holds an online 30/30 in the month of April. Tupelo continues this 30/30 poem-a-day project every month of the year. NOTE: Poets must apply and be accepted to participate in this poem-a-day project which is a fundraiser for the independent press.https://www.tupelopress.org/the-project-30-30/

May these Poetry Month resources enrich April and your writing.

Pushing Onward

Writing Residencies are one way to guarantee yourself uninterrupted time to work on a project. You place yourself into a setting conducive for inspiration, one with no interruptions, no obligations for upkeep and maintenance, where the only focus is on writing. This complete dedication to the purpose of writing gives you time and space away from daily routines. Writers compete to attend residencies because they provide an extremely productive environment for good writing.

A residency usually provides room and board. You retreat to a private space, released from all daily obligations other than writing. And when you take a break, the marvels of nature or the city where you are staying are only a step out the door.

Most residencies require an application process. To apply for a writing residency, you must fill out an application. It can be fee-free but most applications require a fee (EX: $25USD).

The application may (or not) request a CV, a portfolio, a writer’s statement of purpose, and the residency may (or not) include obligations to perform readings or teach.

The residency selection process is competitive. You must be selected to attend.

Writers selected to attend a residency receive varying amounts of support. The free residency can be fully subsidized. Or it can be partially funded. Or it can be self-pay for all expense. Some of the non-competitive self-pay residencies fill available slots on a first-come, first-served basis for eligible applicants. Some exclusive free residencies cover travel and may include a stipend in addition to paying for residency expenses.

Fee-based, self-pay residencies are great for emerging writers with financial resources but little or no record of publication. Most applications request a sample of your work and a statement of purpose for the writing residency.

Attending a writing residency has many advantages. Not only are you in a place which limits distractions and allows you to concentrate and write your best work, but by attending, you expand your writing network. Residency attendance connects you with other artists, usually ones at a similar level of artistic achievement. And since other writers and artists in attendance have competed to come for the same purpose—you tend to cross pollinate as a group. You tend to bring out the best in each other. You end up revitalized and while you are there, you write with vigor and excitement. What you write might even move in a new, unexpected direction. Writing that surprises you has a greater possibility to do that for your reader.

A writer residency is an excellent place to move a writing project to completion. Whether the deadline is defined by contract with a publisher or editor, or even though it’s internal and self imposed, there’s value because you achieve what you set out to do. This completed book may have many years and tears in the making. It deserves a final wrap up, tie on a ribbon, present it to the world where the work stands alone. Once work is finished, you set it aside and there’s the satisfaction of release. You give yourself permission to move on. After a writing residency, you have the space and time to devote to new work.

These writer residency musings are the result of reading Erika Dreyfus’s May Blog Post: Fee-Free Writing Residencies: Erika provides a list of residencies that 1) charge no application fees and 2) charge no fees for participation. https://www.erikadreifus.com/resources/grants-fellowships-and-awards/fee-free-writing-residencies/

I highly recommend Erika Dreyfus, she’s a self-proclaimed writer and resource maven who delivers good writer sustenance. She’s a fine published poet who shares weekly to monthly gleanings on the poetry market and places to publish. I encourage every writer to register for Erika Dreyfus free online resource: The Practicing Writer, a resource for fee-free (and paying) calls, competitions & writer resources for fiction, poetry & creative non-fiction: HOME » RESOURCES » GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS » FEE-FREE WRITING RESIDENCIES Please subscribe (or resubscribe) at Substack!

Here are two other links to writer residencies you may wish to check out:

1- International opportunities for Writers & Literary Professionals - by: Krakow: UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE. http://krakowcityofliterature.com/networks/international-opportunities/

2- Bomb Magazine has a great list if writing residencies in the US. Fellowships and Residencies Spring 2022 by - BOMB Magazine

Good luck if you apply for a residency!!

May 2022

June 2022

Writers of the Pacific Islands

Poetry Foundation is a powerful resource for self-education and classroom instruction. This month I chose to focus on writing by Pacific Islanders, in part because the Pacific is a part of the world that I know so little about and because each nation and/or cultural identity in the Pacific Region has produced some gifted published writers that I wish to read.

If you haven’t already signed up for Poetry Foundation’s Poem-a-Day, I highly recommend it. Subscribers receive a free daily poem by today’s poets in your inbox. https://poets.org/poem-a-day.

Once you’re registered for Poem-a-Day, for the purposes of identifying a representative list of poems by Pacific Island writers in the month of May 2022, scroll to the bottom of the Poem-a-Day page to: Previous Poems. This list is arranged in title order by date of publication.

To get an overview of the diversity of Pacific Islander writing, I recommend reading the poems from May 1-30 because May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. Each title contains an active link to the featured poem.

Here’s an example of one Pacific Islander Poem. Go to the posted poem on May 27, 2022: it was The Weavers Were the First to Know by Arielle Taitano Lowe. Lowe is a native poet and weaver of the US Territory, Guam. About this poem, Lowe states that “This piece braids together CHamoru culture, ecology, language, and aesthetics.”

May 2022 Poem-a-Day Guest Editor was Brandy Nālani McDougall. She You can learn more about her curatorial approach and her own creative work by reading the Monthly Guest Editor Interview at this link: https://poets.org/May-2022-poem-a-day-guest-editor-brandy-nalani-mcdougall. She’s from Kula, a town in Maui, what she calls her “ina hanau”. To quote the interview: , ʻĀina Hānau, Birth Lands….will be released in summer 2023, so a year or so from now. The title refers to the oeve, or native Hawaiian way of introducing oneself by the specific ina of one’s birth, which is to mean more than just where one is from, but the specific land and water to whom you belong, to whom you are connected genealogically, to whom you have kuliana, or a sense of responsibility, to serve those lands and waters because they raised you.”

Poetry Foundation provides rich teacher resources, these can be used equally well for self-education. On the Homepage, click on the hyperlink to Materials for Teachers: https://poets.org/materials-teachers

For Pacific Islander poetry, I highly recommend: Lesson Plans for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. Here’s the link: https://poets.org/collection/lesson-plans-asianpacific-american-heritage-month'

The more broadly I read, I find that my our own writing horizon becomes wider and deeper. The Poetry Foundation readings by a diverse group of Pacific Islanders in May showed me that indigenous writing is a good way to learn about the legacy of colonialism. I incorrectly assumed that America did not actively participate in colonial exploitation until I read poems written by native Hawaiians whose land, language and culture was taken, first by annexation when Hawaii made a US Territory, followed by years of martial law after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II, and more recently, with Hawaiian statehood.

Internet resources are readily available to anyone who wishes to study what popular culture has made invisible. For more information about Pacific Islander poets on the Poetry Foundation site, do a Search for “Pacific”, and follow the links to:

Featured Poems

Featured Audio Poems

Featured Essays

Featured Books

About a century ago, Ezra Pound began translating Japanese and Chinese poems into English.The Beats poets embraced these haiku short forms. Some examples of Beat writers who explored eastern literary tradition and philosophy are: Gary Snyder, Philip Whelan, Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac. They brought the ancient waka and haiku forms and made them popular in Western literature.

Upcoming columns of Pearl Diving will trace other forms of literary, geographical and mythological heritage and the internet resources available to study them. May these resources for writers stretch and grow your own writing.

JULY 2022

Open Calls

Where does the writer go to determine what presses are open for submission? And which ones do not charge a reading fee?

The literary market is as unique as each journal’s choice of materials they publish. There are thousands of online journals, each with its own frequency of publication. Some few make daily posts. Some weekly. Some monthly. Some quarterly. Some bi-annual. Others annual. Some are simply irregular. This frequency of publication helps determine the open calls for unsolicited writing.

There is much inconsistency in the literary marketplace, the times when a writer can submit work to a particular press vary widely. It’s up to the author who wishes to get published to research where and when to send a submission for consideration to publish.

Many journals charge the writer a fee for consideration to publish, others do not. I for one look for lists of presses that do not charge reading fees.

The submission process takes valuable time away from an author’s work day. That’s where internet resources can provide a helpful time-saving tool.

Are you a writer with an interest in presses that do not charge a reading fee AND that are currently open to receive submission? If so, I learned about two resources this month. The lists are free and available online. Thank you to June Gould and Karlo de Seville for this information.

Check out these internet resources for Open Calls:

No Fee Calls for Poems: see Derek Annis' Submissions Calendar! This FaceBook Page contains a calendar that shows the opening dates of reading periods for journals and prizes. Unless otherwise noted, each journal listed accepts simultaneous and electronic submissions. A list of journals with year-round reading periods can be found below the calendar. - Derek Annis. It also says on the list if a journal's a no fee submission.

https://authorspublish.com/90-poetry-manuscript-publishers-who-do-not-charge-reading-fees/. 90 Poetry Manuscript Publishers Who Do Not Charge Reading Fees. This fine list at Authors Publish is maintained by Emily Harstone, the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2020 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She recently updated the links and information on this list for currency and accuracy.

Good luck drafting your own monthly list of online journals that do not charge reading fees and are currently open for submission. Happy writing in July!

August 2022

Online Resources about Native Americans for Writers

Political sensitivities and definitions of what is socially appropriate change over time. The Pope’s recent visit to discuss residential schools in Canada is a prime example. For those interested, follow this link to the news story of Pope Francis’s current visit to Canada: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/29/pope-apology-canada-indigenous-people-00048642

The country of Canada has entered a period of reassessment of the devastating results on Native American from colonial conquest. When colonialists first invaded and defeated native tribes, the conquerers assumed political and legal control of the land and resources. Post-conquest, the original inhabitants were outright killed or at best displaced to the least valuable land and resources, all while the colonizer grew stronger. Modern Canada has reached that ‘safe’ point in political history—they have consolidated control. Native Americans in Canada pose no real threat to the power structure or dominance of the invader.

As in the United States, Native American children in Canada were taken from their parents, forced to live in residential schools, trained in European culture and European language. This news story about reparation for damages to Native Americans reveals a current political correctness shift and a new openness to discussion. A renewed sense of moral responsibility is also evident in the United States at present, as well as other colonizers.

Where does a writer with a social conscience go to re-learn the colonization story of Native Americans from the viewpoint of the oppressed (instead of the victor)? People who read turn to Native American literature to discover the facts from the source. The literary marketplace and libraries hold a reservoir of information, it’s a place to search for books and articles that preserve and retell the colonization story from the native person’s viewpoint.

Native American Literature - online literature resources

Search: poetry, oral stories and biography.

Poetry. Native American poetry envisions a good life that complements the natural world. Past-Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo exemplifies this poetic trend to seek consolation and wholeness through communion with nature. For an overview of Harjo’s poetry and work, go to poets.org https://poets.org/search?combine=joy%20harjo

Other Native American poet links at Poets.org:

Christy Passion (Native Hawaiian). https://poets.org/poet/christy-passion

Michael Wasson (Nez Perce). https://poets.org/poet/michael-wasson

Gwen Westerman Dakota). https://poets.org/poet/gwen-westerman

Oral Stories. Oral Tradition in Native America, Winged Messenger Nations: Birds in American Indian Oral Tradition, Native Educational Endeavors, Inc., South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks, Black Hills State University.https://nativeede.wixsite.com/wingedmessenger/oral-tradition-in-native-america

Native American Oral Literatures, by Timothy Powell, Oxford Bibliographies:https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0070.xml

Mythology & Oral Traditions - Native American & Indigenous Studies, Rebecca Crown Library, River Forest, IL 60305: https://research.dom.edu/c.php?g=1098125&p=8108193

Biography. See Wikipedia’s Native American Literature for a list of tribal authors. Example of Native America life stories: Sarah Winnemucca (Paiute) wrote about her tribe's first interactions with European Americans in Life Among the Paiutes. Or John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee) wrote, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, about the infamous California bandit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_literature

Native American artifacts and collections in Museums and Online Virtual Collections.

Search: Native American Art, Dance, and History

North & South American Native Americans - The Smithsonian Museum features North, Central and South Native American Indian History, Art and Dance at two museum locations: New York, New York & Washington, DC. This museum hosts twelve online exhibitions. Some examples: Poetry, Inka Road, Day of the Dead, Trail of Tears, Wampum. https://americanindian.si.edu/online-resources/exhibition-websites

National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, Mexico: The largest collection of ancient Mexican art. See a virtual exhibition of the archaeology and history of Mexico’s pre-Hispanic heritage. 23 exhibit rooms filled with ancient indigenous artifacts, including many from Pre-Columbian, Aztec and Mayan civilization.

NAIS: Native American & Indigenous Studies Association. NAIS is an international advocate for indigenous people and Native Americans. They publish a research journal with an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Native American & indigenous issues and communities. https://naisa.org

Best wishes to write well in August 2022!

September 2022

Ten Years of ModPo

September 2022 marks the ModPo celebration of ten years of global access in a massive, free online course. This ten week class provides an introduction to modern American poetry from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, through to postmodern newcomers and trail blazers. Participation is free, enrollment required.

The annual session of ModPo begins of September 3. A suite of resources for advanced students is available. Here is a link to enroll: ModPo.

A Tenth Birthday Special celebration of ModPo has been planned on September 21 at Kelly House Writers in Philadelphia US. This daylong event will be accessible online and in person at Kelly House by reservation.

RSVP HERE to indicate which of the events (or all) you'll attend.

The anniversary program includes will a book launch to mark the publication of fifty essays on American poetry written by ModPo participants. The book, titled, The Difference is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, is edited by ModPo’s creator and leader, Professor Al Filreis, with Anna Stafford, one of the ModPo Teaching Assistants. Other poetry programs that day include an online discussion of the development of post modern American poetry, as well as a discussion of representative work of five American poets: Amiri Baraka, William Carlos Williams, Erica Baum, Gertrude Stein and Rae Armantrout. Five of the book’s authors will lead deep reading programs: Herman Beavers: on Amiri Baraka, Julia Bloch on William Carlos Williams, Mónica de la Torre on Erica Baum, Tracie Morris on Jayne Cortez, Ron Silliman on Gertrude Stein, and Elizabeth Willis on Rae Armantrout.

In a period of ten years, ModPo has built a worldwide poetry community. Anyone who takes ModPo this year joins about 70,000 other students of American poetry. I find it a testament to ModPo’s success that in ten years, this self-learning free online program has engaged some 415,000 readers, listeners, teachers, and poets from all over the world. Founder, Professor Al Filreis, of the University of Pennsylvania and a dedicated ModPo team of teaching assistants and volunteer moderators make ModPo a year-round learning venture. ModPo is immense, interactive, an intensive class with substance. Students and seasoned participants work together to make ModPo happen. Participants bring goodwill. They are a diverse lot, possess willingness to share information, and a desire to grow in knowledge. The labor of teaching and learning is shared at ModPo. It attracts people with brilliant minds, fine writers and gifted teachers. Participation in ModPo has been life changing to me as a person, as a lifelong student, and as a writer.

I highly recommend ModPo. It’s a place to begin building a personal connection to a greater and global poetry community. I found ModPo in 2012, the first year it began, and return again each year. I always come back for more.

May your writing thrive in September.

October 2022

Online Writer Classes

Fall coincides with a return to school. Many writing classes for adult learners become available when school starts. Taking online writer classes is a great way to increase your knowledge of craft and improve your skills.

Some Good Online Writer Classes in October 2022:

Gotham Writers of NYC offers a broad array of writing classes. Most classes have a fee to participate. Some examples: Script-Writing, Memoir, Children, Middle Ages, Humor, Standup Comedy, Poetry, Video Game, Blog, Documentary.

https://www.writingclasses.com/classes/location-type/all

Gotham Writers offers a free online writing class: Write-In, Fridays (afternoon/evening):

https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/333786?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sb2dpbi55YWhvby5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAJwwTgiUhD2LT54ulD9oZtvv8Wkhcj_iblxzxd-U_xITzzmKuQC7nt5GKpS4MJ3og7R8s4Cf2XlePFl7hVUPCfXSby0NajAOXb44HlUzfLD8muvYGZfFJN5KmOy-6r0ZOvqURqmANUiCb7n99R0z97dSmpH0zsXQbkP9iP8zy71

Writer’s Digest is a writer’s magazine that markets a variety of online writing classes for a modest fee. Offerings are multi-genre, from novice to professional level. Classes are taught by experts and teachers. For a list of October live classes, go to the Class Calendar:

https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/pages/course-calendar

Writer’s Digest also features four live online writer sessions in October 2022. https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/pages/live-event-calendar.

Check out the online special scheduled on October 1: The Horror Visual Conference. Instructors include four award-winning, best-selling horror writers: Michael J. Seidlinger (horror psychology), Gwendolyn Kiste (gothic: Southern, Romance, Suburban), Richard Thomas (pairing terror & horror), and Jax Miller (true crime). Literary agents will attend. Includes a session on how to write a book proposal and query letter to an agent, with individual critique).

https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/courses/horror-writing-virtual-conference?utm_campaign=WDG%20-%20WDU%20Virtual%20Conferences&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=226423000&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8Ghp199fIpCi09qxS4uuViMYkACgy-a7F0gSboMoS7XfM0dzZ5M3oHkXRbrNxTHfyGDmQJ-wGChlwxUIZip2PhmmFeFg&utm_content=225450523&utm_source=hs_email

Writer’s Digest also presents self-paced online learning classes as well. Some subjects include: description & setting, viewpoint, plot and structure, poetry, non-fiction for children, how to write a novel proposal, how to write a non-fiction book proposal, how to write a religious book.

https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/catalog?labels=%5B%22Self-Paced%20Courses%22%5D&values=%5B%22Self-Paced%20Courses%22%5D

Coursera features both paid and free online classes for writer. They are quality classes taught by professors of higher education and professionals from companies in the writing business.

https://www.coursera.org/?irclickid=yd%3AwcEzLuxyNTnD1nLwv1wfYUkDTQpUxyzLY380&irgwc=1&utm_medium=partners&utm_source=impact&utm_campaign=10078&utm_content=b2c

Creative Writing Specialization by Wesleyan University is an example of a free online class available through Coursera. The creative writing curriculum includes four self-paced learning modules that can be taken in any order. Link:

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/creative-writing?irclickid=yd%3AwcEzLuxyNTnD1nLwv1wfYUkDTQHUZyzLY380&irgwc=1&utm_medium=partners&utm_source=impact&utm_campaign=10078&utm_content=b2c

ModPo (Modern American Poetry) from The University of Pennsylvania operates on the Coursera platform. This online class is free but enrollment is required to participate. The ten-week session runs from September until early November. During the full month of October, each week at ModPo features a different school of American Poetry. It’s too late to earn a certificate of completion for 2022, but each week’s session is a stand-alone offering. The class provides excellent learning tools for poetry. I highly recommend this vibrant online poetry community to writers of English from anywhere on the globe.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

May your writing flourish and grow in October 2022.

November 2022

Podcasts for Writers

Many fine podcasts are available for writers.

This selection of podcasts was suggested by emerging fiction writer, Amy Young. A business owner with young children, she juggles a busy workday, children, and writng. She likes listening to effective and useful podcasts for writers. Despite a busy life, Amy enjoys the time she spends listening to a variety of podcasts for writers. She explains, "I learn my craft while I do prep the work to make dinner. Or fold clothes. Or do any number of mindless household chores." I was really impressed by these podcast suggestions - they provide high-quality and high-content tools for every writer's toolbox. So thanks, Amy, for pointing me and other writers in a good direction.

The New Yorker: Fiction

A monthly reading and conversation with the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman.

https://www.wnyc.org/shows/new-yorker-fiction

write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers

Brooke Warner & Grant Foster, Podcasters

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional. This year we’re featuring a Book Trend at the end of each episode to keep listeners in the loop about what they need to know about the book industry. Brooke and Grant bring to this weekly podcast their shared spirit of community, collaboration, and a deeply held belief that everyone is a writer, and everyone’s story matters.

https://podcast.shewrites.com/

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

Produced by The New Yorker and WNYC. Podcast

WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News

WNYC is America's most listened-to public radio station and the producer of award-winning programs and podcasts ...

The Writer's Voice: New Fiction from The New Yorker | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News

The Writer's Voice: New Fiction from The New Yorker | WNYC | New York Pu...

New Yorker fiction writers read their stories.

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Mitzi Rapkin, Podcaster

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, non-fiction, essay, and poetry writers. First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing highlights the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. This weekly show hosted by Mitzi Rapkin is a celebration of creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Podcast/B08JJP27N1

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/LIT3049833542

Writers, Ink: Your backstage pass to the world's most prolific authors

J.D. Barker, J. Thorn, and Zach Bohannon, Business podcasters

Description: What does it take to succeed as a writer? Hosts J.D. Barker, J. Thorn, and Zach Bohannon pull back the curtain and gain rare insight from the household names found on bookshelves worldwide.

https://writersinkpodcast.com/

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

Kelton Reid, Books podcaster

Description: Kelton Reid studies the habits, habitats, and brains of a wide spectrum of renowned writers to learn their secrets of productivity and creativity.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-writer-files-writing-productivity-creativity/id984527862

The Writer's Routine

Dan Simpson, podcaster

239 episodes

In every episode we look inside the daily diary of a writer, to peak at the secrets of their success. How do they plan their day and maximise their creativity, in order to plot and publish a bestseller?Some are frantic night-owls, others roll out of bed into their desks, and a few lock themselves away for days in the woods - but none have a regular 9 to 5, and we'll find out how they've managed it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/writers-routine/id1273996998

Helping Writers Become Authors

K.M. Weiland, podcaster

608 episodes

Helping Writers Become Authors provides writers help in summoning inspiration, crafting solid characters, outlining and structuring novels, and polishing prose. Learn how to write a book and edit it into a story agents will buy and readers will love. (Music intro by Kevin MacLeod.)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/helping-writers-become-authors/id319307387

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Bianca Marais, Books podcaster

Description: This is a podcast for emerging writers who want to improve the quality of their work and learn more about the publishing industry. Your one host, Bianca Marais (the bestselling author of 'The Witches of Moonshyne Manor') interviews authors, agents, editors and just about anyone and everyone who's involved in bringing a book to market. She's joined by her cohosts, literary agents Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra from P.S. Literary Agency, who read and critique query letters as well as opening pages in their Books with Hooks segment. Expect good advice, honest insights, and a few laughs along the way.

‎The Shit No One Tells You About Writing on Apple Podcasts

‎Arts · 2022

Check these out these great writer podcasts & dive in!

Happy Samhain to you! As we enter the dark months of inner reflection this year, may your writing prosper.

Poem Renovation

delarochakelly@gmail.com

poemrenovation@gmail.com

Writers are wordsmiths. Word collectors. Word finders. Word weavers. The writer strings words in series and sequences. Organizes word sounds on paper. Carves white space with text. Words develop setting, place, tone, style. Word crafters create word meaning. You find word magic at Poem RENOVATION.

Poem RENOVATION is a free online website that provides a daily writing activity. Website: poemrenovation@gmail.com Three tabs appear at the bottom of a screen: Word Bank, Reveal, Share. Go to 'Word Bank'. A list of words appear in random order, the words taken from a daily quote by a featured author. The goal is to write a poem. Select words from the bank, arrange them on the computer screen. Move around words, arrange word pairs, phrases, sentences with line breaks. A found poem emerges. Stop when done, click 'Share'. To see the author's quote of the day, click 'Reveal'.

Kelly de la Rocha, journalist and poet, created Poem RENOVATION. The project started with making found poetry from words on scraps of paper. In three years, it morphed into this functional, simple and easy-to-navigate computer platform.

Poem RENOVATION has an online presence. In addition, it is being used as a teaching tool. Kelly takes the project into schools and teaches students how to write poetry. Kids like the hands-on aspect. Even reluctant writers engage, students produce amazing poems, teachers give rave reviews. This project advances literacy and helps grow a poetry community of young voices.

Why do writers like it? For easy online accessibility. For its social media presence--it's on FaceBook & Instagram. The site gathers writers, creates a poetry community. It works well for a daily craft practice, a warmup and a way over a writing hump. You write. Remodel, hone word choices made by a successful writer. Produce a recycled poem.

The featured writer quotes are part of the site's attraction. Many quotes come from famous books you've read with pleasure, others from modern published word crafters. There is no better way to practice and improve your craft as a writer than to read and learn from experts.

It's uncanny how one writer can intuit a similar meaning to what the original author created, just from a word bank. The featured author made word choices that convey specific details of place, meaning and style, the banked words possess a unique color, music, tone. What you 'reword' when you 'repurpose' and 'reimagine' the words in the bank can almost replicate the meaning conveyed by the famous or contemporary author. On other days, your own persona takes over the words you select, a found poem in your voice enters a different realm. The poem you write can contradict the meaning of the original author.

My daily poem RENOVATION comes after I tackle Wordle, produced by New York Times. Wordle is another daily word game enrichment- you enter possible consonant and vowel arrangements in a quest for a featured 5-letter word. https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

Check out poem RENOVATION. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

May your writing flourish in December!

BONUS!

BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:

Largehearted Boy Best Book List for 2022- 'Largehearted Boy' has produced this aggregate online list of the best books of the year for 15 years! https://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2022/10/online_best_of_84.html

Thank you, Erika Dreifus, for sending this list, it's such a time saver! The citation for best books of the year appears in November 2022 issue of The Practicing Writer 2.0: A Newsletter from Erika Dreifus. https://erikadreifus.substack.com/p/the-practicing-writer-20-november-c60

DECEMBER 2022

January 2023

Some Year in Review Offers for Writers

The end of the year comes with looking back. It's a traditional time to assess what worked and what didn't. In the writer's marketplace, this celebration of successes tends to be good for writers. A vendor of writer services may proffer some of their best products produced during that year and make them available free of charge. The supplier does it to thank the buyers, as well as to market themselves, all writers can benefit from this largesse.

The year-in-review process produces some fine writer sites, such as:

The Writer's Workshop @ Authors Publish - the full recordings from our 2022 lecture series, including all 12 lectures on writing and publishing, free for a limited time only. This publication advice series is produced by best-selling authors, editors, and world class experts. Get Full Access to All 12 Lectures Here

18 Free or Low-Cost Writing Residencies to Apply for in 2023: Focusing on your craft doesn't have to break the bank by MONICA MACANSANTOS, DEC 27, 2022, The Millay Colony, Electric Literature on Twitter.

This writing residency list includes:

I-Park Foundation in East Haddam, Connecticut

Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota

Art Omi in Columbia County, New York

Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain Lake, New York

Corsicana Artist & Writer Residency in Corsicana, Texas

Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska

MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire

Marble House Project in Dorset, Vermont

Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes Station, California

Millay Arts in Austerlitz, New York

Monson Arts in Monson, Maine

Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois

Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska

Ucross in Clearmont, Wyoming

Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York

https://twitter.com/ElectricLit

Writer's Digest Magazine produces craft advice for authors in a wide variety of genres, it's a noted source for good information and advice for authors. Not only does WD offer high-quality for-pay writer classes, the magagzine produces a series, Year in Review, of some of their best writer carft articles, available free of charge.

Here are two Writer's Digest Magazine "Year in Review" articles with good writing advice:

12 Dos and Don’ts of Revealing Critical Backstory in a Novel, by JENNA KERNAN, MAY 14, 2022 in Writer's Digest. Best selling author Jenna Kernan offers six dos and six don’ts of revealing critical backstory in a novel. https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/12-dos-and-donts-of-revealing-critical-backstory-in-a-novel?utm_campaign=WDG%20-%20NL%20-%20WIR&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=239496060&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9J0xq_P-fPTgZRXZs9--LrnATkckTmCPifQwd6VFWoQ58gd_zFX_V2J4xO4-wSG1Z8IYdRvo-srx-xl_4c-O_zYqmaYw&utm_content=237931369&utm_source=hs_email

15 Things Nobody Told Me About Book Publishing, by SALLY KOSLOW SEP 13, 2022 in Writer's Digest. Novelist Sally Koslow reflects on 15 things she wished she knew that nobody told her about book publishing. https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/15-things-nobody-told-me-about-book-publishing?utm_campaign=WDG%20-%20NL%20-%20WIR&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=238680938&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9MOH34Eo8vxUhUoOKCfN2DkK_srGUKdBR-7JEfndtsjEF4rYhMMO8DiuYtNE7GmGExFMq8jVB7vUJ-aPWEfe4RM51oQA&utm_content=237970795&utm_source=hs_email

Thanks for being a reader of this column in 2022. I hope the Diving for Pearls column,

courtesy of Between These Shores, helps you find useful online information for writers.

May your writing flourish in January 2023!

February 2023

Online Literary Mags for Older Writers

Once you are over fifty, getting published gets harder, simply because you are older. Western culture values youth, often to the exclusion of age. In fact, a senior writer confronts new invisibilty, an active negative bias based on aging and this results in more rejection letters.

To counter this kind of youth activism in our culture, some online magazines give preference to older writers. Some of these venues actively seek submissions from those over fifty (or older).

As an older writer, that gives you some hidden benefits. Because of the age restriction for the author, a senior gets pooled with other senior creatives who have lived through the same time in history and have similar life experiences. This compatible grouping not only bolsters the older author's chance of getting published but it provides a positive energy to those who engage in its literary community. Seniors writing in concert creates a greater strength of the working mass and a writer's association within the group bolsters each writer as an individual.

I searched the web to find journals of interest to older writers and found one well written, mostly up-to-date article on the subject. It's called: 6 Lit Mags for Writers Over 50, A list of lit mags for writers 50 + by Becky Tuch on Apr 30, 2021. https://litmagnews.substack.com/p/friday-findings-6-lit-mags-for-writers

Here's a lit-mag list for older writers, courtesy of Becky Tuch. My favorites, Persimmon Tree and Passager, are featured on Becky's list, plus more:

Persimmon Tree. This online journal limits submissions to women writers over sixty. Persimmon publishes fiction, non-fiction, essay, poetry and art. https://persimmontree.org/submissions/

Passager. For writers 50 or older. A book publishing company, querry letter reqired prior to submission. They publish an annual poetry issue called Passager Journal. The poetry contest opens on February 15, 2023. The open issue for poetry and prose, opens July 15, 2023. https://www.passagerbooks.com/submit/

Crone: Women Coming of Age. Writing by crone women. No age restriction. The magazine celebrates the merits of crone age living, death and spiritual wisdom. http://www.cronemagazine.com/cm_writerguide.html

Quartet. For women writers over fifty. Poems, Interview, Book Review. https://www.quartetjournal.com/submissions

SBLAAM: Smoky Blue Literary & Arts Magazine. Invite senior submissions, all submissions judged without age bias on quality of the writing. New submission period opens Feb. 1, 2023. For poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir and art. https://sblaam.com/guidelines/literary/

This month's column highlights some literary journals from an older writer perspective. As a 76-year-old writer, I personally appreciate and enjoy reading literary magazines that feature older voices and celebrate crone wisdom. I hope this list of resources is helpful.

Happy writing in the new year of the Rabbit!

March 2023

Publishers of Parenting Writing

Life cycles are like seasons, changing as the years pass. An ancient riddle marks this movevent in feet: from four feet, to two feet, to three. Here's the riddle: Which Creature Walks On Four Legs In The Morning Two Legs In The Afternoon And Three Legs In The Evening? The answer: a human. First a baby crawls on four legs, next a grown man walks on two and last in old age, the third leg is a cane. The writer's writing life progresses through all seasons and captures in the words and art memorable life experiences.

Humans reproduce in writing as well as in parenthood. At two-legged age, many adults become parents. As parents who are writers, they delve deeply and write about parenting. The know about raising children from personal, family and friend's experiences. Eventually, many who had children become grandparents, and they too write about that life changing time of parenthood.

Writers produce a quantity of parenting writing. Where does the writer go to publish that writing?

A good start would be to read an article by Julie Vick, Markets That Publish Parenting Writing, Nov 30, 2021. https://julievick.medium.com/markets-that-publish-parenting-writing-9fe8ae42e8f7

Julie Vick identifies three mainstream literary magazines that target mothers as readers.

Literary Mama

Raising Mothers

Motherwell

Another good article that lists parenting magazines for the writer to submit to is "26 Parenting and Family Magazines That Pay Writers", by Erica Verrillo, PublishedToDeath BlogSpot, June 16, 2017 (Updated 3-17-22) https://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/2017/06/36-parenting-and-family-magazines-that.html

Erica Verrillo's list contains popular journals that publish how-to-parent information, resources and advice. Here are eight good ones:

Literary journals form around communities of people with shared interests. Many people are parents. Parents read about parenting. Writer parents read and write about parenting. A demand for parenting content develops. A select group of publishers in the literary marketplace becomes a supplier of writing on parenting. The parent-writer finds a compatible match with a literary journal and a publisher accepts the submission for publication.

Whatever you write, may your writing flourish and be published in March!

April Is Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month is vibrant with opportunities for writers to join with other writers in community. There are free online author readings, series of daily poem projects and new daily prompts to write and post online.

The saying is, The more you write, the better you'll get at your craft. Writing to daily prompts and posting your poems in a responsive community is a great way to inspire yourself to write every day for a month. If you haven't done a Poem-A-Day practice before, I think that you'll find that there's no better time than April 2023 to begin this venture.

Here's a list of five prominent and long-running writing projects that provide daily writing prompts for 2023 April:

Poetry Super Highway's A Writing Prompt-A-Day for National Poetry Month is on! They're posting a poetry writing prompt every day during the month of April. The prompts, submitted by PSH's poets and readers, are posted daily at PSH's website and Facebook page and Twitter feed. Go to: Comments to post the poems you write in response to these prompts.

Toasted Cheese's April 2023, Daily Writing Prompts, Pen in Each Hand. To receive 30 prompts for the 30 days of April is Poetry Month, go to: https://www.toasted-cheese.com/calendar/ Click on: Subscribe to Calendar.

Writer's Digest Magazine's 2023 April PAD Challenge. Poem-A-Day Challenge is by Robert Lee Brewer, Poetry Editor at Writer's Digest. Go to: 2023 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. To post poems and comment, participants must enroll at Discus: go to Disqus

Na/GloPoWriMo's been featuring a writing prompt a day for the month of April for 21 years! For 2023 April is Poetry Month, Day 1 writing prompt, go to: https://www.napowrimo.net/

NaHaiWriMo is a haiku version of Poem-A-Day for 2023 April. Steve Ralph is guest editor for 2023 April Prompts. Steve's daily haiku prompt is posted on NaHaiWriMo's FaceBook Page. Participants respond to the daily prompt by writing a haiku, posting it, and by commenting. To participate, go to: https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo

Here's a short list of some other 2023 April is Poetry Month Online Events and Resources that may be of interest to writers:

Literary Hub / Happy Poetry Month / 103 Links to some of their favorite poetry-related writing that appeared on Literary Hub. https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea8aa180f243d65361904ih1oo.1pmi/84fd1423

Poetry In America Marathon, April 10-13, 2023. Poetry Month Marathon on WORLD Channel.Where do you turn when you don’t have the words? This National Poetry Month, read unforgettable American poems with Joe Biden, Shaquille O’Neal, Gloria Estefan, Nas, Sonia Sanchez, Tony Kushner, Tracy K. Smith, Elena Kagan, John McCain, Yo-Yo Ma, Katie Couric, Bono, and more — with an afternoon marathon on the WORLD Channel. Watch Poetry in America on your local WORLD Channel on Monday April 10th through Thursday, April 13th, between 2pm and 5pm ET (11am and 2pm PT). Check local TV listings for more airings near you.Or, stream all episodes for free throughout the month of April, at www.poetryinamerica.org/tv-series. Go to: https://www.poetryinamerica.org/poetry-month-marathon-on-world-channel/

Mike Maggio's 30 for 30. Features a poem-a-day series to celebrate April is Poetry Month. To subscribe to Blog by email, go to: https://mikemaggio.net/sally-toner-4/

Atlantic editors recommend 10 must-read (and must-reread) poetry collections. | The Atlantic

NaNoWriMo 's Write Daily in April 2023. For fiction and non-fiction writers, this is a prose version of writing every day in April. The daily writing camp project is called NaNoWriMo. It's a self directed writing challenge in a writing community for April 2023. To sign up, go to: https://twitter.com/NaNoWriMo

Writing to daily prompts and posting your poems in a responsive community is a great way to inspire yourself to write every day of the month. I think that you'll find that there's no better time to begin than April 2023!

Happy springtime!

And may your writing prosper during

April Is Poetry Month!

April 2023

Diaspora Writing

The stories people remember are those that shake a reader awake. These stories, songs and art evoke passion. The works strike like a kick. The words bring sighs or tears. The words make the reader laugh. The surprised reader says Ah-ha. Says Ahhhh! Or goes Ha-ha. The reader is moved. Diaspora stories have that kind of power.

The diaspora is a dispersion of people from their homeland. Diaspora writing refers to literature written by people who have migrated from their homeland or have ancestry from a particular cultural or ethnic group. You may be a refugee or an immigrant. You may flee for your life. Or get forced out. By exile. Or progrom. Or political suppression. Or slavery. Or genocide. Or poverty. Or war. Or more.

A move from your birthplace results in significant losses: native language, culture and history. Often those dislocated feel like aliens and outsiders in the adopted country. A rich, compelling and sometime sad diaspora story shouts to be heard.

If you or family members have diaspora stories, you have the source material for strong writing. These stories are yours to tell. Unless you write them, they will be forgotten.

If you write about the diaspora, where do you find a publisher? Online literary journals provide an excellent platform for publishing diaspora writing. These journals often focus on the experiences of these communities and provide a space for marginalized voices to be heard.

Five examples of online literary journals that publish diaspora writing:

The Common: The Common is an award-winning literary journal that publishes a diverse range of writing, including works by authors from around the world. The journal is committed to publishing works that explore the intersections of culture, place, and identity. https://thecommon.submittable.com/submit

World Literature Today: A renowned literary magazine features works from diverse cultures and countries. The journal showcases the best of world literature and promotes cross-cultural understanding and exchange. https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/submission-guidelines

Kweli Journal: A literary journal that focuses on publishing works by writers of color, including those from the African diaspora. The journal features poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and is committed to promoting social justice through literature. https://kwelijournal.submittable.com/submit

The Bare Life Review: A literary magazine that publishes works by refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants. The journal is committed to providing a platform for marginalized voices and promoting cross-cultural understanding. The Bare Life Review Submission Manage

May 2023

June 2023

ChatGPT for Writers

All over the world, writers as well as people of every profession are checking out ChatGPT. It can be used as a valuable writer tool but has both merits and deficiencies.

Some student writers misuse the tool in an unethical way to generate homework. Be aware that teachers and professors are on the outlook for this kind of plagerization and there are serious penalties for cheating.

This being said, a writer may wish to utilize the program to test the waters and see what ChatGPT produces. The program generates a synthesis of various writing styles and emulates writing forms. A writer can "play" with the program to test its capabilities and compare it to their own writing. Used as a teaching tool, the program may prove to be one way for the emerging writer to improve the quality of writing and learn the craft.

I "played" with ChatGPT to see how it could help me with researching a subject. ChatGPT scans the wealth of online publishing for models and research, which I found extremely helpful. In regard to research, I found that ChatGPT serves as a valuable timesaver. The program not only surveys indepth research available online, but it produces a rough written draft that outlines the subject. This provides a good starting point for the writer to use. But be aware that AI (Artificial Intellince) does not deferentiate between "fake news" from "reliable" news sources. What ChatGPT writes may include some false information. So when it comes to writng a finished essay about any subject, writers who value sound and valid arguments are cautioned to evaluate for themselves each statement of fact. Overall, I found this computer generated writing to be a good way to assess whether I missed some areas when I researched a subject myself.

Caution: Be sure you check the accuracy of sources cites. The internet hosts lies as well as truths. ChatGPT indiscriminately reports what's out there.

If you are a writer curious about ChatGPT and its capabilities as a writer's tool, I recommend that you read about the program's strengths and weaknesses before you start. A writer who uses ChatGPT will wish to consider the issues and ethical concerns related to its use. Like any writer tool, it's usefulness will be determined by the skill and integrity of the writer who uses it.

Here are some articles to learn about ChatGPT & its potential dangers:

ChatGPT: How to use the AI chatbot that’s changing everything. By Fionna Agomuoh and Luke Larsen, April 26, 2023, Digital Trends

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-use-openai-chatgpt-text-generation-chatbot/#:~:text=Is%20ChatGPT%20free%20to%20use%3F,-Shutterstock&text=Yes%2C%20the%20basic%20version%20of%20ChatGPT%20is%20completely%20free%20to%20use

‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead. By Cade Metz, New York Times, May 2, 2023. For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now, he has quit his job at Google to warn us that A.I. could cause serious harm. This is why the “godfather of A.I.” is afraid for our future. →

A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn: Leaders from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and other A.I. labs warn that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons. By Kevin Roose. May 30, 2023, Updated May 30, 2023. New York Times. A group of industry leaders warned on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence technology they were building might one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a societal risk on a par with pandemics and nuclear wars.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/technology/ai-threat-warning.html#:~:text=A%20group%20of%20industry%20leaders,with%20pandemics%20and%20nuclear%20wars

Literary Hub has been covering ChatGPT news and AI developments. Literary Hub has published some groundbreaking articles. Links to two good ones, courtesy of Literary Hub:

ChatGPT’s getting an upgrade, but it still can’t pass AP English class. By Kevin Jiang, on Tue., March 14, 2023. Article was updated Apr. 05, 2023, The Toronto Star. OpenAI unveiled its most advanced AI model yet: GPT-4. It can compose songs, pen screenplays and process images — and is now available to subscribers of ChatGPT Plus.

update. ChatGPT might be able to help with your science homework, but it still can’t pass English class.

https://www.thestar.com/business/technology/2023/03/14/chatgpts-getting-an-upgrade-but-it-still-cant-pass-ap-english-class.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit%20Hub%20Daily:%20March%2016%2C%202023&utm_term=lithub_master_list

8 NOVELS FEATURING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. On MARCH 31, 2023 BY EVIE GREEN . VIA BERKLEY, Crime Reads. Evie Green looks at 8 novels featuring artificial intelligence.

ChatGPT. For the intrepid writer who wants to check out the ChatGPT hype and assess its possibilities, here are instructions to create a free online account:

Set up a free account with OpenAI.

Choose an easy login with a Google or Microsoft account, or enter your email address.

Enter a phone number. You are issued a confirmation number.

To enroll, enter on the registration page and begin.

chat.openai.com

To those in the Northern Hemisphere, may your writing flourish this summer. And the same to you entering winter in the Sourhern Hemisphere!

July 2023

Prestigious Writer Workshops in the US & UK

Many organizations and institutions offer workshops for serious writers to explore the art and craft as well as the business of writing. Admitance to these workshops is highly competetive. Attendance does not favor the emerging author. The applicant may be required to submit a work portfolio for review and evaluation. Entrance is often contingent of having a demonstrable history of publication. High quality, popular programs tend to be costly but partial to full schlarships may be avilable for exceptional students. Candidates awarded financial aid will likely have a record of prior publication and writing achievement.

These workshops give younger published writers an opportunity to learn from successful career authors. The teachers are some of the best writing professionals in the English writer world, they share their knowledge of craft and the writing field with new comers. The most accomplished writers often showcase their work in concerts at these venues. What these workshops do well is to gather together new writers of talent with the established professionals at the top of the field. Each program fosters the growth of writers in community and provides the opportunity for writer networking.

US Workshops:

Community of Writers: This organization offers various workshops for writers, providing a supportive community and opportunities to learn from experienced professionals. Their workshops cover different genres such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and memoir. You can find more information on their website: https://communityofwriters.org/workshops/writers-workshops/
Iowa Writers' Workshop: A highly esteemed graduate-level writing program based at the University of Iowa offers workshops and seminars in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The program focuses on developing writing skills, exploring literary techniques, and engaging in critical discussions. Students work closely with faculty members who are accomplished writers themselves. Program information at the University of Iowa's website: https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/
Sewanee Writers' Conference: The annual gathering is held at the University of the South in Tennessee. It brings together aspiring writers and established authors for workshops, readings, lectures, and panel discussions. Participants have the opportunity to learn from renowned writers, receive feedback on their work, and immerse themselves in a community of fellow writers. For details: https://sewaneewriters.org/
Tin House Summer Workshop: An intensive writing program organized by Tin House magazine in Portland, Oregon. It offers workshops in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, taught by accomplished authors. Participants engage in craft seminars, manuscript consultations, and have opportunities to attend readings and lectures. The program provides a supportive and immersive environment for writers to enhance their skills and network with others in the literary community. Workshop information: https://tinhouse.com/workshop/
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference: A prestigious gathering held annually at Middlebury College in Vermont. It offers workshops, lectures, and readings for writers across various genres. The conference provides a unique opportunity to interact with renowned authors, receive feedback on works-in-progress, and engage in conversations about literature and the writing process. For more information: https://www.middlebury.edu/bread-loaf-conferences

UK Workshops:

Arvon: An organization that offers residential writing courses at different locations throughout the UK. Their courses cover a wide range of genres, including fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and playwriting. Participants stay in a conducive writing environment and receive guidance from experienced tutors. Arvon emphasizes creative exploration, personal growth, and the development of writing skills in a supportive community. For information about Arvon's residential writing courses: https://www.arvon.org/
The Guardian Masterclasses: Their writing masterclasses are writing workshops and courses organized by The Guardian newspaper in London. They cover a wide range of writing topics, including journalism, creative writing, scriptwriting, and more. The workshops are led by experts in their respective fields, providing participants with practical skills, industry knowledge, and networking opportunities. Check out: https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-masterclasses

These workshops and programs provide a nurturing and educational environment for writers to develop their craft, explore new ideas, and connect with fellow writers and industry professionals. Note that workshop schedules and availability varies. Go to each website for the most up-to-date information on workshops, dates, and registration.

Best wishes for successful writing in July!

Poetry Postcard Fest

Postcard Poetry exchange projects are becoming increasingly popular. My favorite one is Poetry Postcard Fest, a project of Cascadia Poetics Lab of the Northwestern Mountains and Seacoast in the US and Canada.

I look forward to PPF each year. Where I live in Pennsylvania, USA, it's late summer in August. Hot and dry, it's doldrums weather. PPF brightens August with the anticipation and participation in the annual Cascadia Poetry Postcard Fest.

This will be my 8th year of Poety Postcard Fest. Each year, I enjoy meeting a new group of terrific poets worldwide by exchanging postcard poems with them. Poets who sign up commit to write an original, spontaneous poem-a-day on a postcard during the month of August. Each poet writes a poem-a-day to 31 members in an assigned group. Many poets select annual themes and even design or make card art. Annual registration closes on July 4th when address lists are distributed to each group. PPF participants begin to write and mail small poems in July. Many poets create a theme. Some even design or make original postcard art, though that's optional. Postcards in all shapes and sizes arrive in your mailbox. Each poetry postscard brings a surprise from a place unfamilar or unknown, sometimes with the gift of beautiful artwork or photography.

I am a PPF participant who develops an optional postcard theme each year. In 2022, I selected: Cascadia Poetry. In 2023, my theme is the poetry of the Place Where I Live: Amish of Northeastern Middle Atlantic Region. Plain and simple Amish are my neighbors, they maintain old-fashioned dress, lifestyle, culture, language and faith of the pre-industrial 1700s when they immigrated to the US from Germany. This year, I enjoyed my search for a wide variety of Amish themed postcards. I'm writing poems about Amish farmers, dairymen and manual laborers who live without electricity and travel by horse and buggy.

I highly recommend Poetry Postcard Fest. It's an informal poetry daily practice for the month of August and another way to help grow poetry in community. Each PPF postcard poem brings a smile, delight and surprise from a friendly stranger. Some poems shake me awake. Some of the original artwork is outstanding. Cards and poems can be quirky, passionate and just plain fun. During PPF, I look forward to mail delivery each day. This July, I received eight early postcard poems from my Group, each one a treat. It's a pleasure to know that many more postcard poems will arrive in my mailbox before August 31 when the project ends. Poetry Postcard Fest is a no-pressure time to enjoy writing while I practice my craft and meet other poets. I welcome each different postcard poem, those I get & those I give!

Now is a good time to consider joining Poetry Postcard Fest by Cascadia Poetics Lab for next year (August 2024). PPF was originated by Paul E Nelson in 2007. This annual literary event celebrates the Cascadia Mountain Region of Northwestern US & Canada. A small registration fee supports Cascadia Festival and events. Each participant writes 31 original poems to exchange with participants in an assigned group before the end of August. Poets come from the US and all over the world. New PPF registration opens annually on September 1.

For more information about Poetry Postcard Fest: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/category/poetry-postcard-fest/

Write well and enjoy August 2023!

January 2024

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SEPTEMBER 2023

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On Post Modern Writing

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Poetry of Witness for a Missing Amish Girl

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April 2022 APRIL IS POETRY MONTH

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APRIL IS POETRY MONTH