! Books !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Welcome to our meeting place where we talk about writing, making, reading, and reviewing books!

I am writing to you on Martin Luther King’s birthday. I write to you on this auspicious day to honor Dr. King and you, Dear Reader, as a member of my Beloved Community. Though Fellowship of Reconciliation founder Josiah Royce coined the term Beloved Community, Dr. King popularized it with the intention of advancing goodwill for all people sharing life on Earth.

I have been thinking a lot about the connections books facilitate and how reading engenders community, communing, and conversation. Conversations like the one I have with you here, and the conversations I have with other writers.

On December 11, 2024, Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters hosted a space for Canadian poet T. Liem to interview me on the making of my fourth chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

In the interview’s introduction, T. Liem describes their reader’s enagement with the poems of The Whole Catastrophe:

Read my response to T’s opening remarks and the entire interview, titled An Inked Shorthand of Marks, in which we talk about exploding vilanelles, what poetry can do for us, verbing and nouning words, and personal and ecological grief. Join our conversation!

When poets offer poetry readings together, they make possible multiple facets of connection and conversation between themselves, among their books, and with the readers/listeners who attend. On December 7, 2024, POG Arts Tucson and Chax Press hosted me, Sarah Rosenthal, and Valerie Witte at Tucson’s 326 Gallery to read from our recent poetry collections.

The action shots (above) of us, our introducers, and some of the beautiful audience members who extended their ears and hearts to us, made for a lovely, rich, full evening of conversation about books.

Sarah, Valerie, and I have planned more gathering places for ourselves, our books, and others in Santa Fe later this month and early February. Join us if you can!

Reviewing is another facet of conversation that spirals out from books. A review faciliates conversations between author and reviewer and between reviewer and other readers of the book, and carries the possibility of building a community of readers around a book. In 2024, I offered 40 reviews, totalling almost 12,000 words, to poetry titles. Two long-form reviews were published in Colorado Review and The Malahat Review. Thirty-eight short-form reviews were published in NewPages. I tried to write four reviews a month… See the list below for when I achieved that goal.

2024 REVIEWS: An offering of 40 reviews!

Reviewing is much more than a numbers game to me. I think of my reviewing as a practice in attention for myself and as service to writers in my/our creative community. I focus my attention especially on the underrepresented voice of writers who identify as women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ, and the small presses within the publication world. I write reader’s response reviews to understand how a book has impacted me, to support the writers and publishers of books, and to support the magazines that publish reviews, which in turn support me by publishing the reviews I write. Together we form a big, beautiful community, congregating around books. Hurrah, books!

Before there can be any of the outward spiralling from books described above, there is the inward spiralling as reading impacts my reader’s imagination. Books teach me how to read. They teach me the thrill of discovery—of knowledge, interest, art. They offer company, and through representation, inspire me to be the person, woman, and artist I want to be in the world we share.

If you have been following these ! Books ! posts, then you may recall #mypersonalBigRead project. Begun in 2018 to address the stacks of unread books towering around my desk (and, if I am honest, throughout my house), the project now centers around my education in poetry and connection with other writers and readers.

In 2024, I read 262 books! Here are the stats for the project’s seven years:

Ahem, that is a total of 2000 books, Dear Reader. I read 2000 books in seven years. I have to repeat it to believe it. Perhaps because I was a child of a single parent who neither read to me nor encouraged me to read, perhapas because I have a learning disability, perhaps because I am scared each time I pick up a book, wondering if I will be able to read it, reading 2000 books in seven years is a big deal! Hurrah books! ❤

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The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! Welcome, welcome to those of you new to these dispatches on reading and writing books. May you find inspiration for your writer’s life!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and Eleni Zisimatos, Editor, and Leigh Kotsilidis, Designer, for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (2024) with me.

+ Thank you bows to T. Liem for their generous and generative conversation on the making of The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

+ Thank you bows to POG Arts Tucson, Chax Press, Sarah Rosentha, and Valerie Witte for making and sharing space.

+ I bow to the editors who support my reviews and the publications where they were published: Denise Hill at NewPages; Stephanie G’Schwind at Colorado Review, and Jay Ruzesky at The Malahat Review.

+ I bow to Claudia Keelan and Andrew Nicholson, series editors, and the series board Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo Wilson of Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series, who selected The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press).

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to my publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain/West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al staff at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp, whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows to Nomados Literary Publishers, Meredith and Peter Quartermain for making my chapbook Instinctive Acts (2018)with me.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook Mind of Spring (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait (2017) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me! I would love to hear from you!