Finished a couple pieces and am playing around with another asemic art or writing piece. The big-nosed magpie on board is finished. I posted it earlier. I’m still playing around with drawing/writing on crossword puzzles. Used a fixative, but am struggling with (albeit intrigued by) how media behaves on the cheap newsprint/manila paper. Conjures memory of hauling around huge sketchpads as an undergrad. So consider it an in-progress shot. The hare poem is now finished (an earlier state posted in another blog post. The original poem was called “Shoulder Story” and published in Rogue Agent. I shortened it, cut it up, and used it in the piece. I like that there’s a weird positive/negative play and the large black shape could be a womb, a black flower, or a fist. The stem might be entrails . . .
Eat the Storms Poetry Podcast
Episode 13, Season 3. This is tomorrow (Saturday, 10-2-2021) and I’m reading (or I did a recording). I’m the only Yank. Everyone else, I believe, reads beautifully with their gorgeous UK, non-midwestern accents. I left several flaws so as not to offend the gods, although I regret it a bit seeing who else is reading. Find it at: https://eatthestorms.com/listen-to-the-podcast/ @EatTheStorms is available on 12 platforms including @Spotify #Anchor @ApplePodcasts @Podbean #Breaker#Google#PlayerFM @Pocketcast @CastBox @itunes @radio_public #overcast#Hosted and #Produced by @damiboy.
Best of the Net 2021
I’m really touched today that Bending Genres nominated my Toby and Lady piece for fiction for Best of the Net 2021. It means so much coming from such a talented bunch of writers. Other BOTN nominees included Lannie Stabile for poetry, and, well, you can see the Bending Genres Twitter list here. And read “The Fall of Toby and Lady” here.
Poem | A Modern Highway Death | Spillway
This is throwback Saturday, I guess. This poem was previously published in Spillway 27.
Poem | Millais’ Ophelia
CW SUICIDE | Once a sonnet, once a not-sonnet, longer and in Entropy in a haibun, now reduced to this. Included is a photo of Millais’ Ophelia, which in its original form was too festively colored to convey the tragedy, imho. I started writing this in my head and with my camera in 2017 . . . With Max’s help. I hate it when artists romanticize suicide, and this wasn’t my intention in writing this. It’s more a poetic recording of an event and conversation. A distancing container.