! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Hello, Gentle Reader!

Thanks very much for meeting me here to talk about writing, making, reading, and reviewing books!

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. | Oscar Wilde

Lately, I have been thinking about artistic attention, luck, and obscurity—and how each shapes creative expression. I gravitate toward intransigent, nonconforming artists (Gertrude Stein, Leslie Scalapino, Diane Arbus, Ana Mendieta, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson…) who create on their own terms. Despite pressures to conform, I take inspiration from their windy lead and endeavor to do my own thing in the lines of my poems and in their forms on the page.

One can perhaps please one’s self and earn that slender right to persevere. | Marianne Moore

Honestly, few people pay much attention to my writing, which is sort of a gift. This freedom allows me to conduct experiments and make discoveries according to my own creative process and standards without being swayed by external expectations or trends. Without the anxiety of meeting an imagined reader’s standards of quality, I find joy and fulfillment in wordplay for its own sake. That often leads me to push language further to meaning’s margins and make a word-thing that surprises and pleases me.

Obscurity grants me artistic freedom and playfulness, and occasionally, my writing resonates with the “right” reader. That feels like true luck—when someone gives my writing their attention.

The lucky gift of attention! Judges MA|DE and Kevin Spenst named my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) a finalist for Meet the Presses 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award! Woohoo! What an excellent surprise!

This recognition as a finalist is especially special because the poems in The Whole Catastrophe are, to my mind, not trying to be anyone else’s or other than themselves. They are doing their own sonic linguistic idiosyncratic thing on the page.

I’m oodles grateful for the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award judges’ acknowledgement.

Above is a screenshot from wee three-minute finalist video—the background cover photo of The Whole Catastrophe by Dennis A. Boyd, features thousands of sandhill cranes at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area—shown at H of the Night.

Hosted by Meet the Presses collective, H of the Night celebrates Canadian small press publishing and the glory of chapbooks! Hurrah chapbooks! This year’s H of the Night announced the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award finalists and shared excerpts from our short-listed chapbooks.

I couldn’t have made my three-minute video without pre-production assistance from JRW and post-production stichery from the collective’s Aaron Tucker. Thank you! Thank you!

You’re cordially invited to tune in to H of the Night! Click to 38:51 to listen and watch my reading from The Whole Catastrophe which includes a dawn liftoff of birds in the thousands! It has to be seen to be believed in your heart!

The gift and luck of attention! From generous editors of literary magazines to whom I am grateful for giving my writing airtime: Two poems—”Once Upon a Time According to the Promise” and “What moves in the river is only the river”—in Diode; Four poems—”Two Autobiographies,” “To the Jury,” “Dual Scythes,” and “Mind of Snow”—in BlazeVOX-Poetry Extra Extra section; “The Fire Walker” in Taos Journal of Poetry; “Cold Record” in Action, Spectacle; “Snow is” in JMWW; “Backyard Fable” in SWIMM Every Day. You’re cordially invited to read some poems!

These publications are important to me because they are tangible artifacts of writing new or revising draft poems and sending out those poems for consideration, even while I am between projects—The Whole Catastrophe (September 2024) and The Long Now Conditions Permit (December 2025).

“Start a new project,” a writer friend advised me in a long-ago conversation about what to do when a book project is resting in completion. I took that to mean: Don’t wait! Write! So, I write. Of course the “rejections” (71 poem batches!) outweigh the “acceptances” (8 poems!), but both offer me what Marianne Moore called “that slender right to persevere.”

Some more lucky attention from organizers of readings and their audiences! Gathering with other poets—just look at those shining faces above—to read my poems aloud to an audience is nerve-racking and heart-special. It’s not like anything else.

If writing poetry is an inward-reaching gesture then reading poetry aloud to precious others is an outward-reaching gesture—two partner energies coming together in a gorgeous wholeness.

I and my poems have been out and about! In Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Tucson, and on Zoom with Mercy Street Readings and Lit Balm: An Interactive Reading Series. Click on the live link to watch my reading at Lit Balm!

At each event, I read a different mix of poems from The Whole Catastrophe and The Long Now Conditions Permit, adding in poems from The Minuses, Landscape of The Wait, and Instinctive Acts (out of print). It was creatively gratifying to connect themes across collections and discover what’s still relevant to me in the continuum of writing poems.

This year, I have also given my attention to other writers. In addition to teaching creative writing courses at Simon Fraser University, I moderated a panel at Tucson Festival of Books and offered workshops and a reading at the Mining for Gold Writing Retreat in Gold Bridge, British Columbia. These conversations were filled with the sweetness of learning and having fun with words!

A metaphor could change your life. | a fortune I received recently

Whether I offered a reading, moderated a poetry panel, or taught in a writing retreat, each of these occasions required accepting invitations, showing up, giving attention, and receiving attention. The luck of attention! The gift of attention!

: : : :

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 here!

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

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) 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 Meet the Presses and the judges of the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award for their support and acknowledgement of The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024).

+ Thank you bows to the intrepid organizers for making space for me and my words at Sandbox Music, Chatter: Contemporary Chamber Music, form & concept gallery, Tucson Festival of Books, Tucson Arts Poetry Society, Interim, Mercy Street Readings, Lit Balm, and to the very fine writers who joined me and shared space.

+ I bow to the editors who supported the publication of my poems and the publications where they were published: Jen Karetnick at SWIMM; Jen Michalski at JMWW; Adam Day at Action, Spectacle; Catherine Strisik at Taos Journal of Poetry; Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Patty Paine at Diode.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) 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, 2025).

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

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

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) 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!

! Books !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Dear Gentle Reader,

Hello, may you be healthy, and have had a marvelous summer. Happy Autumn!

Welcome back to my dispatches about making and reading books!

When I wrote to you in June, I was preparing to proofread the galley for my fourth chapbook The Whole Catastrophe. Galley v.1 arrived via electronic file, I printed it, then served the document’s pages to myself at the dining table where I commenced reading from the blue and white layered over a purple straw placemats with my chosen implements: a No. 2 pencil, a pink highlighter, and a TUL pen in purple.

From June 19 to July 17, Series Editor Eleni Zisimatos, Designer Leigh Kotsidilis, and I formed an editorial team of three patient souls devoted to preparing an error-free, print-ready manuscript of The Whole Catastrophe. We read and corrected. We took a break and awaited the bibliographic record for the Library of Congress (CiP data) and International Standard Book Number (ISBN). We fiddled with the front and back coversr. We read again and corrected again until we caught all of the niggly typesetting bits and pieces that went wonky when my Word file was transferred to a chapbook file. On July 9, the CiP data and ISBN arrived. On July 12, we finalized Rosie Long Decter’s attentive words (below) for the back cover. On July 17, we made the last line break correction to v.5. Et, Fin!

Publication Announcement

THE WHOLE CATASTROPHE
Vallum Chapbook Series No. 38
Jami Macarty

The Endorsement of Rosie Long Decter

In Jami Macarty’s The Whole Catastrophe, every asterisk indicates something precious. Macarty uses the poetic form to create space for what is otherwise omitted: the fresh air outside car windows, the stars blotted out by city infrastructures, a friend gone too soon. Chronicling a road trip to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, Macarty reflects on fragility, greed and the disasters we must withstand, from toxic feedlots to carbon monoxide poisoning. “We are never very far from an explosion,” she writes, but this is no reason to disengage. Rather, The Whole Catastrophe is a testament to the necessary entanglement of all things. “They can’t out-reverence us,” Macarty writes. Here, resisting destruction means holding onto a sense of wonder, annotating cows in their fields, waving hello to grief, knowing catastrophe like a constellation above.

— Rosie Long Decter

Hurrah, Rosie and her endorsement! I especially love “a testament to the necessary entanglement of all things” for these words get at the soul of the poems in The Whole Catastrophe. Poetry Love!

Sandhill Cranes Incoming, February 7, 2024

The first time I saw Dennis A. Boyd‘s full-color photograph of Sandhill Cranes at Arizona’s Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area (above) was on February 7, 2024 in a Facebook group of Arizona photographers. My heart took flight and my mind wilded. Every time I see Dennis’s gorgeous photograph, I am overcome. Something within in me mends. So, the moment I first saw Dennis’s photograph I knew it had to accompany the poems of The Whole Catastrophe which feature both Sandhill Cranes and Whitewater Draw. Hurrah, Dennis A. Boyd for agreeing to accompanying my art with his. Bird love!

I want to take you to Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area, one of my favorite places on Earth. From October to March, Whitewater Draw is a crucial roost site for migrating Sandhill Cranes (stock image, right). Some 20,000 thousand Sandhill Cranes overwinter at the Wildlife Area where they wade flooded fields and nibble corn stubble. They are typically joined by thousands of Snow and Ross’s Geese, among other migrating waterfowl. The cranes are an elegant sight to see and uproarious orchestra to hear! To get a sense of what it is to be in the presence of this many Sandhill Cranes, and to hear them, tune in to this two-minute video of Sandhill Cranes at Whitewater Draw recorded on January 26, 2024 by Arizona Game and Fish.

Now, let me tell me a bit about the poems in The Whole Catastrophe. The chapbook is comprised of three poems that mix documentary, elegiac, and ecological poetics attendant to the precariousness of our human and earthly lives. “Allowing for Betweens,” one of two long poems in the chapbook, records a roadtrip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico and grieves the shocking death of a dear friend. A Mesostic poem, a type of acrostic poem invented by John Cage, celebrates the thousands of overwintering Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache. The chapbook closes with the title poem, a celebration of the ecstatic between lovers on a camping trip and a pledge of allegiance to wild lands.

I would love for you to read The Whole Catastrophe! I would love to know your reader’s response to the poems. Would you like to read The Whole Catastrophe? If so, you can purchase a copy from Vallum. Or, if you would like a signed copy, purchase one directly from me. I would be ever grateful to you for your best-of-all book-buying support. Contact me via a comment or email. xo

Forthcoming! Forthcoming!

  • Soon, on behalf of Vallum, T. Liem will be interviewing me about the composition of the three poems in The Whole Catastrophe.
  • Soon, Interim – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics (Since 1944!) will be publishing their “Finalist Issue,” featuring the semifinalists, finalists, and winners for the Test Site Poetry Series prize. That issue will feature some poems from my Test Site prize-winning manuscript The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press). Included in the issue will also be one of the poems from The Whole Catastrophe (#38, Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024)…

: :

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 their generous, loving support, inspiration, and encouragement.

+ 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.

+ 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!

& Instinctive Acts

Posted on by Jami Macarty

As the sand drains to the bottom of December 31’s remaining hours, and just like the end of 2017, lasts, like this day, point me toward reflection and acknowledgment, announcement and celebration. In my previous post, I took stock of my year in poetry, bowing to those who joined and supported me. 

In this post, I announce Instinctive Acts, my third chapbook of poetry, published in October 2018 by Nomados Literary Publishers, edited by Meredith Quartermain and Peter Quartermain. 

Here’s Meredith Quartermain unveiling Instinctive Acts on October 19, 2018 at Nelson The Seagull (cafe). Instinctive Acts joins my other two chapbooks of poetry. 

Landscape of The Wait
Mind of Spring

In my first chapbook, Landscape of The Wait (Finishing Line Press, 2017), a poetic response to my nephew William’s car accident and year-long coma, the landscape is hospital and waiting rooms on the Atlantic coast in the Northeastern US, where I grew up and where my family still lives, and the conceptual landscape waiting carves in the minds and hearts of the waiters. In my second chapbook, Mind of Spring (No. 22 Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), the landscape is the Sonoran Desert that surrounds Tucson, Arizona, and includes streets and neighborhoods (Barrios) of the city’s Downtown. This long poem in three parts also takes place in corporate America and oil-rich Middle Eastern countries surrounded by the Arabian Desert. 

I A covers (2)

The landscape of Instinctive Acts is Vancouver, British Columbia’s Downtown Eastside and Gastown neighborhoods. In these poems, I’m writing to locale/dis/location; place/dis/placement; neighbor/neighborhood. The poems are written as taking place in the city and so by that association they are of a city. Weirdly perhaps, I do not think of them as commentary on city (the urban) or in contrast to the (suburban) small village I grew up in on the other side of the continent or to the desert. Place is important because of a feeling of exile, displacement, immigrant status, and, the loneliness that comes with being new and other in a place, especially one that tends to remind you of your otherness. 

Everyone has their pre/occupation. In these poems, mine is: How do I and my neighbors live together? What is neighbor/neighborhood? Who belongs–the geography of self? Who is inside/outside–figuratively and literally? How do we connect? Where do we find community? What is home? Where is it found? To what elements of deconstruction are connection, community, and home vulnerable? 

The vulnerabilities are revealed through: Woman walking. Violence–against women. Writing on the wall, as literal and metaphoric implication. Talking to walls. Speech. Communication. Listening/watching in order to locate. In order to be. In relationship. In community. With self, other, streets, alleys, restaurants, birds (nature), and rain. It wouldn’t be Vancouver without rain.

In Vancouver, rain is often a source of complaint, keeping residents inside. By contrast, in Tucson, rain is a cause for celebration, dancing residents into the streets. I’ve always loved the rain. Rain that washes but that’s not what it’s for. Rain that punctuates but that’s not what it’s for. Rain no matter what. Rain on everything. Rain indiscriminately. 

Rain–its absence or presence. Birds. Location. These are three constants in my work.

I want to tell you a bit about how the cover came to be.

As with the other two chapbooks, I wanted a photograph for the cover. Meredith Q. was hesitant, so I was in the process of accepting a text only cover for Instinctive Acts when I had a dream in which a photo of the gargoyle, as I call it, in an alley near where I live became the cover of the chapbook. The next morning, I contacted Vincent Wong, my friend and a wonderful photographer to see if he’d come take the gargoyle’s picture. He agreed! 

Here are some of Vincent’s beautiful captures of the day.

Once I had Vincent’s wonderful photographs, I selected the one (bottom left) and mocked up a cover for Meredith to see. She loved it, and when I told her about my dream, the new cover was born! 

What a joy it was to collaborate with Meredith and Vincent on the book! I bow to them, and to Joanne Arnott and Wayde Compton, who offered their endorsements for the poems. Terrific artists all, who make Vancouver’s arts and my community more vibrant.

With the book all together, it was time to celebrate! 

Rolf, the owner of People’s Co-op Bookstore, where we gathered to celebrate Instinctive Acts welcomed us. First up: Jacqueline Turner, a new friend and wonderful poet read from her new work forthcoming from ECW Press. Next Jacqueline and I read part of a poem we wrote in collaboration for Pandora’s Collective Poetic Pairings reading (October 30, 2018). Then, it was my turn! I read 10 poems from Instinctive Acts. The reading closed with Japanese poet, Soramaru Takayama and I reading two more poems from the chapbook. I read in English, Sora read his translations of my poems in Japanese; then, we read the poems in our respective languages simultaneously (Go to this post on my Facebook page to listen to Sora’s and my performance).

There’s another chapbook of my poems into the world. Tra la! Will you read it and then share with me your response? That’s a poet’s hope! Happy All Year!

 

 

& MAKING SPACE

Posted on by Jami Macarty

November. The 11th month of 2018 during which I’m thinking about space–being made for my poems and me–and those who generously made it.

Making space for makers is a community-minded, inclusive action of high order!

I am deeply grateful to those who have made space for my poems and me the months of this year in their readings series, at their microphones, in their ears, in their eyes, in their bookshelves, in their imaginations, in their conversations, in their publications…

Come on this tour of gratitude-filled maker spaces…

In reading series–

  1. Phoenix Poetry Series: Finishing Line Press Poets 

Fri Jan 26, 2018 at 7pm | Phoenix College, 1202 W Thomas Rd, Phoenix, AZ

A panel-style craft talk about the challenges of writing familial trauma by three Finishing Line Press (FLP) poets: Jami Macarty (Tucson), Virginia Chase Sutton (Phoenix), and the co-host of PPS, Rosemarie Jeana Dombrowski, followed by a reading of our poetic works. Thank you pro hosts Rosemarie Jeana Dombrowski and Nadine Lockhart!                Images: John R. Welch

2. Casa Libre presents…

Sat Mar 24, 2018 at 7pm | Casa Libre Reading Room, 228 N. 4th Ave, Tucson, AZ

With a much compromised voice, I read from Landscape of The Wait and Mind of Spring, with admired Tucson poet Joni Wallace, who read from her Kingdom Come Radio Show and some new work, followed by a Q & A to an audience of intimates at Casa Libre en la Solana. Thank you intrepid host: Sally Roundhouse! Images: Eleanor Kedney

3. Poets Corner Reading Series

Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 7:30p | Massy Books, 229 E. Georgia St., Vancouver, BC

I read from Landscape of The Wait, Mind of Spring, and new poems with lovely Vancouver poet Daniella Elza, who read from her new work, followed by a Q & A to a receptive audience at Massy Books. Thank you smiling hosts James Felton and Franci Louann! Images: Deb DeJong

4. Dominion Reading Series #16

Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 6:30p | BC Artscape Building, 268 Keefer St, Vancouver, BC

Cythia Sharp, Warmest Poet
Candie Tanaka, Coolest Host
Clean Up Crew!

With special colleagues and poets Bonnie Nish and Cythia Sharp, I breathed poems–from Landscape of The Wait, Mind of Spring, and a new collection–into the rarified air of the monthly reading series, taking place in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Candie Tanaka, the coolest, is the host of this literary salon and conversation where each writer gets 20 minutes:  10 mins for a reading, 5 mins for discussing their creative process, 5 mins for talking about a hobby or something else of interest, and an extra couple of mins for questions. Plus, Candie offers the best snacks and refreshments. Thank you, host extraordinaire: Candie Tanaka! And, for the images: Bonnie Nish! Listen to my reading!

In radio Interviews–

5. Wax Poetic (Listen on CFRO 100.5FM)

Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 2-2:30p | Co-Op Radio, 370 Columbia St, Vancouver, BC

wax poetic.png

In this interview (prerecorded on May 29 at 3:30pm), I joined hosts Pamela Bentley and Kevin Spenst, allowing each poem I read–from Landscape of The Wait and Mind of Spring–to guide us in conversation at the confluence of the words the world inspires. Thank you thoughtful hosts: Pam and Kevin. Listen to the interview!

In artistic collaborations–

6. Tower of Babel

Sat, Jun 2, 2018 at 1-3pm | Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC

Soramaru Takayama
20 voices giving voice to 20 langauges

In this outdoor public poetry reading, Japanese poet’s Soramaru Takayama’s “Tower of Babel,” was delivered in 20 voices, giving breath in 20 languages, to celebrate Vancouver’s diversity. I had the honor of reading the English parts of the poem. Thank you bows to gracious hosts Tasai Collective, Steve Frost, Yurie Hoyoyon, and Soramaru Takayama! Images: Manto Nakamura

7. Sustenance Anthology Reading

Sun, Jun 17, 2018 at 11am-1pm | Farmer’s Market| Dude Chilling Park, Vancouver, BC

Sustenencae reading Dude Chilling Park June 2018

Fresh local poets who contributed to the anthology Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond of the Subject of Food, were paired with produce at the BC Farmers Market. Proceeds from the sale of Sustenance go to support the BC Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon Program. Purchase a copy and help provide a family in need with local, fresh food, all the while supporting BC farmers, ranchers, and fishers. My poem, “Hunger” is at this meal of writing, and I acquired and edited 10 other voices also included in the word feast. Thank you to hosts Rachel Rose and Anvil Press!

8. Pandora’s Collective: Poetic Pairings

Tues, Nov 30, 2018 at 6:30pm | Britannia Library| 1661 Napier St, Vancouver, BC,

This is one of my absolute favorite events in Vancouver, programmed by Pandora’s Collective executive director Bonnie Nish, wherein two poets are paired for approximately three months during which time they put their imaginations together and arrive at a collaborative response to concerns of their own creative design. This is the second time I’ve had the good fortune to be included in these most fascinating proceedings, and this time I worked with wonderful Vancouver poet Jacqueline Turner on a two-phase poem, each of six parts, concerning itself with risk the saying as antidote to demands of silence related to violence against women. Thank you to respectful host: Mary Duffy! Images: Wendy Bullen Stephenson

In publications–

9. Celebration of SFU Authors, Contemporary Verse 2 (CV2), EVENT, Light – A Journal of Photography & Poetry, Otoliths, and The Paddock Review (a Finishing Line Press project)

Ephemera
Catalog for Celebration of SFU Authors
listing in Celebration of SFU Authors
EVENT 46.3
“Family” in EVENT
CV2 40.3
2 poems in CV2
Light–a journal of photography and poetry
Otoliths
The Paddock Review

My 2017 good luck publications Landscape of The Wait and Mind of Spring were recognized at the annual Celebration of SFU Authors in March 2018. The literary journals: Contemporary Verse 2 (Canada),  edited by Sharapal Ruprai and Jennifer Still accepted two poems; EVENT (Canada), edited by Joanne Arnott accepted one poem; Light – A Journal of Photography & Poetry (United States), edited by Manny Blacksher accepted five poems and appointed me a Featured Poet (!) of the issue, Otoliths (Australia), edited by Mark Young, accepted six poems and The Paddock Review (United States), edited by Leah Maines accepted one poem. Each editor took a chance on my poems (15 in total); their confidence in my work is a life spark. I am deeply grateful to these editors for their support.

In ears, eyes, & bookshelves–

10. You!

On day 310 of the year 2018 and all seven days of each week in these 11 months–thank you for welcoming my poems and me into your ears and eyes and bookshelves. Thank you with my whole art heart for your welcoming! Poetry Love!