! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Dear Gentle Reader,

Hello, and may your new year be off to a bright, shiny start! I have been making it a practice to note what shines in each day—sunrise pinking the sky, house sparrows conversing, receiving a postcard from a friend, discovering a long-sought book in a used bookstore, sweet deep purple hyacinths, walking beside bodies of water, sun’s setting mauves—breathing in the color, sound, texture, weight, and scent of the felt world and allowing the world to affect me. I think this sensorial exchange is, in part, what it means to be a writer.

In these first weeks of 2024, my life as a poet, editor, reviewer, and teacher has been alive with possibility and response.

Ocean State Review is currently featuring my poem “Asterisk to What Branches to the Perfect Including,” along with a note on the poem’s collaborative beginnings during the early months of the pandemic. You are cordially invited to read the poem and my note on how the poem came to be.

In January, the manuscript for my second collection of poems was named one of fourteen semifinalists for the Test Site Poetry Series and Besty Joiner Flanagan Award in Poetry. And, on the second day of February, the manuscript was named one of ten finalists for these two prizes! How can I tell you what these acknowledgments mean to the life of this poet? Wings. Lift. Flight.

Once I return to Earth, this acknowledgment hurries me to the page. So, I joined The Stafford Challenge to write a poem a day this year! The Challenge is inspired by William Stafford (1914-1993), who made a practice of crafting a poem daily. Here is one of his poems: “Traveling Through the Dark.” As my newborn poems take their first breaths, I have also been tinkering with the poems in my fourth chapbook, forthcoming from the Vallum Chapbook Series in the summer. I also sent out writing for consideration and received three no-thank-yous. Breathe in and out; that is the process.

As well as write a poem a day this year, I plan to continue #mypersonalBigRead project. I started this project in 2018 to challenge myself to develop a consistent reading practice, trying for a book a day. I read twenty-one books in January.

One of those books was a manuscript of a first novel by a writer dedicated to her writing dreams. What this fiction writer has accomplished is an example of intention and perseverance. During the past three years, this writer and I worked together to bring three short stories to life and then publication. Then, having proved what she could accomplish in short-form fiction, she channeled her momentum into writing a novel. She had carried the idea for that novel in her head for years. It was time. For a year she kept her butt in a chair at her desk and wrote the novel of her dreams. And, in January, I had the pleasure of offering editorial commentary on her five-hundred-page first novel! Our mentoring relationship has been super gratifying, and it has been inspiring to be a part of this writer’s process. Intention and perseverance: Two necessaries for a writer.

As a teacher, I have been planning another iteration of Write, Write, Write, the five-day all-genre writing course designed to get writers writing, offered online at Simon Fraser University. I and the fiction writer above first met in Write, Write, Write. She built momentum by enthusiastically and fully engaging in the course, availing herself of everything the readings and writing practices and I had to offer. Dear writer, you could do the same! Write, Write, Write starts on February 10 and goes until February 14, 2024. Might this five-day course be your writer’s valentine to yourself?

From my teaching and mentoring practices emerges gratification and inspiration. From my reading reviews sometimes emerge. My long-form review of Kate Cayley’s poetry collection Lent (Book*hug, 2023) was published in The Malahat Review Winter Issue #225. In January, I wrote two short-form reviews of poetry chapbooks. My reviews of Maya Clubine’s Life Cycle of a Mayfly (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2023) and Sarah Rosenthal’s We Could Hang a Radical Panel of Light (Drop Leaf Press, 2022) are forthcoming at NewPages.com. So far in February, I have written reviews of Emily Hockaday’s In a Body (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023) and Tina Carlson’s A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery, two full-length poetry collections. These reviews are also forthcoming at NewPages.com.

From writing emerges, poems, reviews, novels, editing, publications, and invitations. I have accepted an invitation to read at the celebration of the Cascadia Zen: Bioregional Writing on Cascadia Here and Now (Watershed Press, 2023). The reading will take place at Vancouver’s People’s Co-op Books on April 20; I will read my poem from the anthology. I have also agreed to read for Vancouver’s Dead Poets Reading Series in the fall.

I think of my life as a writer as a feast. There is no famine; writing is endlessly giving. I celebrate the times of private conversation between me and the page, the page and the word, the word and language. And, I celebrate when that conversation expands to include magazine editors, book publishers, award judges, fiction writers, poetry writers, and event organizers—the precious-to-me people who respond to what I write, edit, and teach. Hurrah my alive weeks as a poet, editor, reviewer, and teacher!

Tell me about your life as a writer. Tell me, what is shining in your day? Send your comments below.

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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 their generous, loving support, inspiration, and encouragement.

+ I bow to the editors and the existence of the anthologies and literary magazines, such as Cascadia Zen: Bioregional Writing on Cascadia Here and Now (Watershed Press, 2023) and The Ocean State Review where I gratefully find support and community.

+ I bow to the editors and the existence of publishers of poetry, such as Interim’s Test Site Poetry Series and the Besty Joiner Flanagan Award in Poetry.

+ I bow to the editors who support my reviews and the publications where they were published: Denise Hill at NewPages; Manahil Bandukwala at Canthius; James M. Fisher at The Miramachi Reader, and Jay Ruzesky at The Malahat Review.

+ 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 with me.

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

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christen Kinkaid for making my chapbook Landscape of The Wait 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 Reader, Dear Reader!

October 15, 2021 was a rather grand day of publication in my life as an editor and a poet. The Fall 2021 of The Maynard, the online poetry journal I co-founded and at which I am the editor entered the world and four of my poems were published in the Fall 2021 issue of BlazeVOX. Tra la!

Here’s the fierce and fine cover of the Fall 2021 issue of The Maynard, “Tiger Orange” created by Clare Owen and a list of the issue’s poets.

The Maynard Fall 2021 issue represents six months of my work as an editor. From February 1 to July 31, 2021 300 batches of five poems each were sent in for consideration for the Fall 2021 issue. I read close to 1,500 poems from which 28 poems were selected for the issue. How long does reading 1,500 poems take? I clocked my reading rate at an average of 15 batches per hour, which is about 20 hours. From that first reading phase, I collected the poems I want to return to because there’s something about them… Then, I went back and read all of those poems more deeply and in repetition. Some poems slide away, some stick. Those poems that stick are shared with my colleague who has gone through a similar process. During two and a half hour meetings (four of them), we went back and forth reading to each other the poems on our long list. We become outrageous. We become passionate as we argue for the poems we most want, we are disappointed when a poem doesn’t hold up to our imaginations, but we relent, and finally we are giddy for the poems left on the table. First stage letters go out. From there, I conducted line edits on the poems. Second stage letters go out. Then, I take my findings, comments, and suggestions to an editorial conversation with each of the 24 poets. There was lots of email back and forth about commas and uses of this or that word and what Blake called “Minute Particulars”: “Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones.” The “Little Ones” in this case being the details that are crucial to a poem’s full life. After the editorial phase arrives the proofreading phase. More email. The correction of the proof. More email. More email. Then, miraculously, publication!

Read the Fall 2021 issue of The Maynard!

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Welcome to the Fall 2021 issue of BlazeVOX where four of my newer poems appear! In his introduction, editor Geoffrey Gatza writes: “In this issue we seek to avoid answers but rather to ask questions. With a subtle minimalistic approach, this issue of BlazeVOX focuses on the idea of “public space” and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment: the non-private space, the non-privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting. The works collected feature coincidental, accidental, and unexpected connections, which make it possible to revise literary history and, even, better, to complement it.” Later in the introduction, Gatza writes: “These pieces demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own “cannibal” and “civilized” selves.”

The four poems of mine that appear in the Fall 2021 issue of BlazeVOX are from a series of thirty-one poems begun in 2014 during a time of intense contemplation of the War in Afghanistan, the nineteen-year, 10-month conflict that took place from 2001 to 2021. I was particularly focused on the stressful and traumatic effects of war on those who go to fight as well as those who stay home to wait. The poem titles: “If There Were Anywhere But Desert,” “Countenance,” “Who Bed Is This to Lie On,” and “O Beautiful for Post-Traumatic Stress.”

In August 2021 during the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, maybe as a way to cope or as a way to answer the destruction of war with creative energy, I was called to return to this series of poems. I took a chance sending them out; a poet always enters the game of chance when sending work out for consideration. And, hurrah, editor Geoffrey Gatza liked them enough to offer to publish them all together. Hurrah! These are the first poems from that as yet untitled series that have been published. I’m grateful to Geoffrey Gatza and I am grateful that the poems are together.

Read my poems in Fall 2021 issue of BlazeVOX!

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+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention!

+ Thank you bows to my colleague at The Maynard, and to the 24 poets and cover artist Clare Owen who trusted us with their art.

+ Thank you bows to BlazeVOX editor Geoffrey Gatza for his confidence in my poems.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to 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 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 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!