Ending Poetry Month with a Bang

and by bang, I mean the pounding of my fingers against the keyboard as I desperately worked to finish the number of challenges I set for myself at the beginning of the month.

Sunday, I travelled up to San Francisco for an evening of words at The Alchemy Slam & Open Mic, located at F8 bar & lounge. Unfortunately, I mixed up the times, so I missed the first half of the show, but caught the second half, which was plenty full up of amazing poets whose words filled the room with feelings. The Grand Slam Champion, Casey Gardner, with Hadas Goshen, Kyle Liddle, Apollo, and Mic Ting rounding out the Alchemy Slam Team, which will be going on to nationals.

Announcements!

  • Winners for the Big Poetry Giveaway! Brian Wong and Renee will soon receive copies of Southern Cryptozoology by Allie Marini and A Heart With No Scars by Brennan DeFrisco, respectively. (Winners were selected by a random number generator.)
  • Dirty Chai Press announced the winner of their Dirty Chaps Contest — Unapology by Courtney Gustafson — to whom I offer a hearty congrats! I’m also thrilled to note that my manuscript, The Things I Own, was named as a finalist!
  • Laura Madeline Wiseman and I have have received an acceptance for two poems — “Eleven Wild Brothers” and “Maestros of the Farmyard” — for publication in The World Retold anthology, edited and published by The Writers’ Guild of Iowa State University.

I managed to post three poet spotlights this month with three wonderful women:

What I’m Reading

I’ve finished up the 30 selfies with poetry on my Instagram, which highlighted both new poets I’ve discovered and works that I’ve loved for years. I’ll list my complete poetry reading for the month tomorrow.

Still working on In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood. So far she’s shared how she perceived genre as more of a fluid thing and her reasoning behind using the term “speculative” instead of “science fiction” to describe her own work.

What I’m Writing

There were a few days toward the end of the month in which I began to doubt my ability to complete the 30/30 challenge. It wasn’t the number of poems left, as there were only about a handful left to write. But at a certain point I began to loathe every word I put down onto the page. It happens.

With reminders from fellow writers that these are meant to be drafts, not completed poems, I worked through the frustration. One of the ways I did this was to switch from screen to pen and paper for several poems and just free wrote as fast as I could to outpace my inner critic.

And it worked. I completed a total of 30 poems in 30 days and I feel good about most of them. I’ve never managed to do anything like that before. So, I’m feeling rather good.

Poems I completed last week (all will be taken down at the end of May, maybe):

Goal for the Week:

  • Take some time to chill.
  • Start editing 30/30 poetry collection.
  • Write at least one poem from Twelve chapbook.

Linky Goodness

“The practice of developing any kind of spiritual practice, anything that brings you greater awareness of yourself and your relationship to the world around you, is a process of stepping into a fire and allowing the flames to eat you whole. It is not gentle. Often, it even seems unkind,” writes Robin Lee on the dark side of being full of light.

100 Must-Read Sci-Fi Fantasy Novels By Female Authors!

National Poetry Month 2016 – It Begins

National Poetry Month is one of my favorite months of the year, because I get to be all excited about poetry and people don’t stare at me weird — okay, they stare at me less weird, or less people… Nevermind.

In addition to reading all the poetry I can, I have a number of poetry thingies going on.

Poetry in process meme
Whiskey. Whiskey will be an April necessity.

First, I’m offering up two books of poetry as part of the Big Poetry Giveaway 2016.

I am also participating in ELJ Publications’ 30/30 challenge, in which I will attempt to write thirty poems in the thirty days of April. For that challenge, I’ve created a separate blog to house all the poetry that I create.

I’ll be posting a #selfiewithpoetry a day on my Instagram.

And, if all goes well, I’ll be sharing four new Poet Spotlight interviews on my blog.

So, yeah, it’s going to be a busy, wonderful, and word-filled month!

What National Poetry Month look like for you? Share your plans (or lack thereof) in the comments. 

Big Poetry Giveaway 2016!

Big Poetry Giveaway 2016

As National Poetry Month is around the corner, it’s time for the Big Poetry Giveaway! Allyson Whipple has taken over hosting duties from the amazing Kelli Russell Agodon.

Other blogs participating in the giveway will be listed online shortly.

But first, let me introduce myself as I have a feeling that there are going to be a number of new faces around here.

Andrea Blythe - poet

I write poetry and fiction with primarily a speculative bent. Images of fairy tales, mythology, and folklore often appear in my work, sometimes in unsettling ways. Some of my poetry has appeared in print and online publications and a few of my poems have been nominated for awards. I also on the rare occasion attend open mics and poetry slams where I perform my work in front of actual people.

Beyond the writing life, I am trying to convince myself that I’ll someday run a marathon. I also watch an inordinate amount of creepy television and horror movies, plan for the zombie apocalypse even though I’m not convinced it will happen, and shower my nieces and nephews in love.

Ahem, moving on…

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The Books

I don’t have any of my own work to offer this year, but I am happy to present two chapbooks from two poets I love.

Chapbook 1

Southern Cryptozoology by Allie Marini

Southern Cryptozoology: A Field Guide to Beasts of the Southern Wild by Allie Marini delves into beautifully unsettling territory, as these poems present (possibly mythological) creatures that live and hunt in the Southern states of the U.S. (Cover art is by MANDEM.)

“Then the kegger at the party rock: furred & scaled & unexplainable,

grunting, tossing tires from a cliff as though they were rings in a carnival shill’s booth. Suddenly, chaos, the squeal & stink of rubber on dirt & asphalt. There are rumblings of LSD in the keg: There’s got to be some natural explanation.”

— from “Southern Cryptozoology 4: The Lake Worth Monster,” in Southern Cryptozoology

Chapbook 2

Cover-a heart with no scars

A Heart with No Scars by Brennan “B Deep” DeFrisco is a witty set of poems with layered messages examining how we relate to the world around us and to each other. Brennan is an amazing spoken word poet and his words will hit you right in the feels. (Cover art is by Arthur Johnstone and Livien Yin.)

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How to Enter

To enter, just comment on this post with your name and email address by 11:59 p.m. Pacific on April 30th. I will select the winners shortly thereafter using a random number generator.


THE WALLS AROUND US book review and giveaway

“We went wild that hot night. We howled, we raged, we screamed. We were girls — some fourteen and fifteen; some sixteen, seventeen — but when the locks came undone, the doors of our cells gaping open and no one to shove us back in, we made the noise of savage animals, of men.”

A few years ago now, I read and fell in love with Nova Ren Suma’s Imaginary Girls, an emotionally complicated sister-centered story with a touch of creepy and unsettling magical realism. It’s a story that still haunts me, sneaking from behind the shadows into the foreground of my mind. A book that I treasure in my soul and a level of achievement that I aspire to in my own writing.

Nova Ren’s latest novel, The Walls Around Us, has the same kind of haunting quality, and not just because it’s a ghost story. It’s a tale that lingers long after you’ve put it down.

Three girls are the center of this story — Amber is a young woman convicted of murder who has been locked in prison for years; Violet, a ballet dancer with a dark secret; and Orianna, a girl caught in a tide of misfortune who binds the other two together. Their stories weave together unveiling lies and secrets and the truth behind a murder.

Alternating between Amber and Violet’s points of view, the story unfolds with a feeling of inevitability, a sense that everything has happened before and cannot be stopped from happening again. Neither girl is nice or easy; instead they are both complicated and difficult, having made dangerous decisions that lead to catastrophes that define their lives. Where Nova Ren’s skill is clear is in how she manages to generate a feeling of fascination and sympathy for both of these girls. Violet in particular is an awful human being, and yet I found myself pitying her and how she has cut herself off from feeling for anyone else in the world and a part of me wanted her to make it to Julliard despite all the things she’s done.

Amber is particularly interesting to me in the way she erases herself into the group of her fellow prisoners, rarely using the singular “I” and more often using the plural “we”, as though their stories and her own story were the same, as though they are all one body of girls moving through the prison system. Her own personal story slowly unfolds but never quite condemns or absolves her of any crime. She is both guilty and a victim of society and circumstances, screwed over by the man her mother married and the system. A girl taken for granted, as many in the prison are.

Rich, gorgeous prose brings the world inside this prison for young women and the outside world (for this books seems to divide the world into two realms – inside and outside) to vivid, brutal reality. The supernatural aspects of this tale are subtle, weaved in among grounded real-world details enabling a level of plausibility. The effect — of not just the supernatural elements, but the entire story — is unsettling in all the right ways. Although the end is satisfying, this is a novel without easy answers, one to ponder after finishing, and then to go back and reread and ponder some more.

For a further exploration, here are some great interviews Nova Ren Suma has done regarding the book:

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Giveaway

As it turns out, I ended up with an extra copy of The Walls Around Us and I want to share the love, hence a giveaway! I’ll send the copy of the book to someone in the U.S. or Canada.

How to Enter: Just leave a comment telling me about why you would like to read The Walls Around Us.

Signups end on August 31, at which point I will pick the winner randomly.

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We have winners!

bigpoetrygiveaway2015

Using a random number generator, I’ve determined the winners for my little corner of the Big Poetry Giveaway.

Robin A. Sams has won a copy of Cedar Toothpick: The Tomboy Diaries.

Shawnte has won a copy of The 2013 Rhysling Anthology.

Congrats to you both!

Note: Oh, dear, I drafted this days ago and forgot to press publish. Anywho, here it is now!