! BOOKS !

Posted on December 2, 2025December 2, 2025 by Jami Macarty

Dear Gift Reader,

Hello, may you be healthy and in pursuit of what makes you happy.

I am happy to welcome you to this conversation about reading and making books. Today is a Big Day in my writing and publishing life. Today, December 2, 2025, is the official publication day for The Long Now Conditions Permit!

In this ! Books ! dispatch, I share with you the story of how my second full-length collection has come into being—from writing individual poems to their publication in literary magazines to the selection of the manuscript, The Long Now Conditions Permit, as winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize to finding the perfect cover image.

AnnouncingThe Long Now Conditions Permit!

**THE LONG NOW CONDITIONS PERMIT**
by Jami Macarty
University of Nevada Press, December 2025

The Long Now Conditions Permit confronts the persistent brutalities of our world through poetry that both names and resists the injustices shaping it. From the quiet sorrows of everyday slight to the overwhelming crises of ecological collapse and gendered violence, these poems document what is occurring—the horrendous and the intimate, the anguished and the magnificent.

With ethical attention, Jami Macarty’s collection engages the political, ecological, and personal forces that shape and mark our lives, offering an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. Each poem meditates on power, insists on articulating what is being lost—and what must be saved and reclaimed.

Amid the exploitation and violence, these poems find moments of grace: the scent of a sea rose, a desert walk in spring, the company of birds, Earth entire. The Long Now Conditions Permit is both tender elegy and urgent call, exhorting readers to grapple with the devastating failings of humanity and the saving possibilities of love.

Winning the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize

On March 4, 2024 my second manuscript of poetry marched forth to its life as a book when I answered a call from Claudia Keelan, editor, who told me The Long Now Conditions Permit won the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize!

The 2023 Test Site Poetry Prize Semifinalists, Finalists, and Winners!

The Test Site Poetry Series is the collaborative book-publishing project of Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and the University of Nevada Press. Interim, established in 1944 by the late Wilber Stevens, is housed in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is one of the longest-running “little” literary magazines in the United States. Interim editors and poets Claudia Keelan and Andrew S. Nicholson serve as Test Site Poetry Series editors. The Test Site Poetry Prize-winning book is chosen by Claudia Keelan and an advisory board, which includes poets Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.

The editors and advisory board are looking for manuscripts that engage the perilous conditions of life in the 21st century, as they pertain to issues of social justice and the earth. The winning book will demonstrate an ethos that considers the human condition in inclusive love and sympathy, while offering the same in consideration of the earth. Because we believe the truth is always experimental, we’ll especially appreciate books with innovative approaches.

Now, some of the delicious words The Test Site Poetry Series editorial board members shared about The Long Now Conditions Permit!

from Sasha Steensen (on Facebook):

from Ronaldo V. Wilson (the book’s endorsement):

from Claudia Keelan (the book’s endorsement):

from Donald Revell (the book’s endorsement):

These poets’ words for The Long Now Conditions Permit, heart-expanding gifts!

Finding the Cover Photo

The first time I saw Masahiko Kuroki‘s photograph of the tree (above) was early December 2024, scrolling my Facebook feed. It was late at night after a long day’s driving in a highway-side hotel. I had been stressing over the just-right photo. The publisher didn’t care for my ideas, and I wasn’t wild about theirs. Such is the often fraught book cover conversation!

It’s a mystery as to why Masahiko Kuroki’s photo appeared in my feed. I wasn’t following him. I had never heard of him. Nor had I previously seen any of his photos. Yet somehow rather miraculously his photo appeared. When I saw it, I slid off the edge of the bed. Then recovering myself from the floor, I shined the image toward my partner’s face and asked, What about this for the cover? As if falling off the bed wasn’t enough!

When I shared Mashiko Kuroki’s photograph with the University of Nevada Press team, they said: “But we’re really loving the final image… It’s the most unique of all the images you’ve suggested, or that we’ve found, and I love that the tree can be interpreted literally as a tree, or with just a bit of imagination, as a woman with her arms outstretched.”

As we moved through the design process, their admiration for Kuroki’s photograph grew: “Again, our team just loves this image! It’s so evocative and interesting. I think it’s really going to pull readers in.”

And, as we arrived at the cover’s final design: “For what we’ve started calling the “tree woman” image here in the office, I still think this is the best option, by far. If you want something unique that you’re not going to find on another book cover, this is the image to choose. We were talking about it in our staff meeting this morning, and everyone agrees this is one of the most striking covers we’ve proposed in quite a long time.”

I experience Masahiko Kuroki’s photo viscerally every time I behold it. I feel an upward reaching within me. Masahiko Kuroki’s photo is perfect company for the poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit which feature the figures of trees and women and seek a freedom from the threat of violence that all too often pervades natural and domestic environments.

Thank you to, Masahiko Kuroki, for agreeing to accompanying my poems with his photograph!

Writing the Poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit

I freshly wrote or deeply revised all of the poems in The Long Now Conditions Permit over ninety-five days between January 2020 and January 2021. The poems were drafted/revised among a shifting cohort of other poets during five days in person at a goddess table in January 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was just coming to our attention. Then, over three thirty-day online poem-a-day writing sprees in July 2020, October 2020, and January 2021. I loved the practice of trying to write a poem-a-day. The intensity! There were duds, but there were keepers. The process gave me an experience of seeing just what writing I could accomplish in a relatively short period of time. It showed me the momentum of daily practice and power of cumulative effect in writing. The practice offered me a community of writers. And I made some poetry pals!

Generous Publishers of Individual Poems

What makes a full-length collection? Individual poems! They are the building blocks and act as gateways from poem to poem, and engender conversations between poet and editor, poet and publisher. Individual poems have their own lives and are part of the lives of full-length collections. Individual poems are the beginning of a book, and they point to a book when it comes into being.

While searching for my book’s publisher, I tweaked the poems and tried out the revised versions by sending them out for consideration with literary magazines in Canada and the US. This editorial process offered me valuable information about which poems would make up the manuscript of The Long Now Conditions Permit. Sometimes the poems editors believed in were also the poems I believed in. Sometimes not. So, I had to figure out which poems mattered most to the life of the book.

Thirteen editors of literary magazines selected individual poems from The Long Now Conditions Permit for publication in their the literary magazines they helm. I wish to acknowledge the hardworking and devoted editors, staff, publishers, and printers for giving time, attention, and space to my writing. Thank you, Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Matthew Cooperman at Colorado Review; Haley Lasché at Concision Poetry Journal; Claudia Keelan at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; Simone Muench at The Jet Fuel Review; Robert Julius and Alyssa Froehling at The Journal; Charles Kell at Ocean State Review; Richard Greenfield at Puerto del Sol; Jackie Janusis at Redivider; Jaimie Gusman at Tinfish; Eleni Zisimatos at Vallum Magazine and Vallum Chapbook Series; Gillian Conoley at Volt; Sue Goyette, editor of the anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2020). Special thanks to Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Vallum Magazine, and Vallum Chapbook Series for their ongoing support of my writing by publishing my poems in several issues between 2020 and 2024.

I take the time and space above to name these editors and publications as a gesture of gratitude because they took the time with and offered space to my writing. They are important to my writing life. And they are part of the valuable conversation I want to have about my poems and poetry in general.

Seeking a Publisher

In December 2021, I offered for consideration to The Test Site Poetry Series the first version of the manuscript. It was one hundred and twenty pages long! That’s long by most standards. Typically, the recommended length for manuscripts is around seventy pages. The manuscript’s title was, and has always been, The Long Now Conditions Permit. It was named a finalist for The Test Site Poetry Series. Spur! The next year and the one after that, the manuscript was on the shortlist with Canada’s Brick Books. Spur! Spur! Then, in March 2024 it won the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize! In all, I offered the manuscript for consideration forty-one times.

For me, the story of how The Long Now Conditions Permit came into being sums to two words: Persistence! Perseverance!

Now, Seeking Readers

Now, for my book I seek readers! Gentle, generous readers who will give The Long Now Conditions Permit the gift of their attention. I would love to count you as one of my poetry collection’s readers! Will you be one of The Long Now Conditions Permit‘s readers?

: : : :

Thank You Bows!

+ 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 precious community. To everyone who support my writing, especially women/women-identified writers for not coveting or competing, but sharing and supporting.

+ Thank you bows for supporting The Long Now Conditions Permit (2025): +Bows (continuous!) to my publisher the University of Nevada Press and staff for making my book The Long Now Conditions Permit with me. +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 (University of Nevada Press, December 2025) as the 2023 winner of the Test Site Series Prize. +Bows (continuous!) to Claudia Keelan, Donal Revell, and Ronaldo V. Wilson for offering your word-endorsements! +Bows to Mashiko Kuroki for his luminous tree-woman photo for the cover! +Bows (continuous) to the editors of literary magazines who supported the publication of individual poems from The Long Now Conditions Permit: Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX; Matthew Cooperman at Colorado Review; Haley Lasché at Concision Poetry Journal; Claudia Keelan at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; Simone Muench at The Jet Fuel Review; Robert Julius and Alyssa Froehling at The Journal; Charles Kell at Ocean State Review; Richard Greenfield at Puerto del Sol; Jackie Janusis at Redivider; Jaimie Gusman at Tinfish; Eleni Zisimatos at Vallum Magazine and Vallum Chapbook Series; Gillian Conoley at Volt; Sue Goyette, editor of the anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2020).

! Books !

Posted on November 14, 2024November 19, 2024 by Jami Macarty

Gentle Reader,

We meet again here, where I share with you another word-ante into our ongoing conversation about making and reading books. Hurrah, you are here!

What makes a chapbook or full-length collection? Individual poems! They are the building blocks of poetry chapbooks and full-length collections. Individual poems act as gateways from poem to poem, and engender conversations between poet and editor, poet and publisher. Individual poems have their own lives and are part of the lives of chapbooks and full-length collections. Individual poems are a beginning of a book and they point to a book when it comes into being.

Behold Interim – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics (Since 1944!) Issue 41.1, the “Winners & Finalists” Issue, featuring the eight finalists and the winners of the Test Site Poetry Series Award—Jami Macarty!—and the Betsy Joiner Flanagan Award—Geoffret Babbitt.

The issue features five of my invidual poems. Four of the poems are from my Test Site prize-winning manuscript The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025). The fifth poem, “Whole Catastrophe,” is from my September-published chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (#38, Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024). This Interim issue is an example and celebration of how individual poems lead to and become books.

Discovering individual poems and poems that make up a manuscript is the purview of editors of literary magazines and presses. In Interim‘s case, that is poet and editor Claudia Keelan. Poem by poem and book to book, Claudia has changed my life as a poet. She has published indivual poems from my first and second full-length collections and my fourth chapbook in Interim. She endorsed my first full-length collection, The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020):

“The poems in Jami Macarty’s devotional collection swing upon a hinge that is the recurring site of the poet’s perception in time, where what is seen shows the inherent connection of each thing to its other: ‘honey given : honey taken.’ The Minuses‘ brilliance lives in what the poet is able to give up for the possibility of finding a wholeness that is ongoing: ‘I come and go / from myself as I am / I will not return.’ A seer is, after all, one who sees. Jami Macarty is one who sees.” -Claudia Keelan

It takes a seer to know a seer. Claudia Keelan is also a seer. Under her penname, Lucy Aul, she wrote a review of The Minuses that made birds take flight in my heart. Her words blew me off my perch. I tell you true; I fell off the couch when I was reading her review of my book. And Claudia was part of the editorial team that selected my second full-length collection The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025) as winner of the Test Site Poetry Series Award.

I do not know Claudia but in her I find a dream-come-true ally to my poems; Claudia understands and reads for the devotional spirit of my poems. Her readership is a poetry-expanding and heart-expanding gift.

Gentle Reader, your readership is also a gift! I cordially invite you to read my poems in Interim – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics. To whet your reader’s appetite, I offer “Harbinger” (above). Read my poems and be introduced to The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and The Long Now Conditions Permit (forthcoming University of Nevada Press, 2025). While you are visiting Interim Issue 41.1, visit my colleagues, the other poets whose individual poems join mine. May your reading kindle inspiration for your pages. Happy Reading!

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The Pluses!

+ 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!

! BOOKS !

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Jami Macarty

Dear Gentle Reader,

Hello! It has been a while. Where have I been? Paddling on the river of words, of course!

How about you? How do your words flow? And, what words flow to you through books you are reading? I’m curious.

One idea I have for flowing your words: Join August’s Write, Write, Write, the five-day generative writing course I offer in person at Simon Fraser University. Writers in the course meet for 2.5 hours Monday-Friday to experiment with language, engage in word-play, and pursue their stories, poems, and memoirs, while dissolving writing blocks and befriending the sometimes cranky inner critic. Is one of the remaining seats available, yours? I would love to write with you!

Invitation: Join me in Write, Write, Write this August.

Publication news to share

Haiku Hike 2024 | Serenity

2024 marked Tucson’s Fifth Annual Haiku Hike Literary Competition. The 2024 theme: Serenity. Haiku entries were judged by Tucson’s Poet Laureate, TC Tolbert. The Stats: 2,069 haiku were submitted; 1,385 submissions came from Tucson; 29 different states were represented in the submissions; 27 different countries were represented in the submissions.

I entered three haiku in the competition. And, one of my haiku won! Tralala! Of the 2,069 haiku that were submitted, there were 20 winners. Each of the winning poems was embossed on clear plaques which were then planted in big pots of flowers that line one of Downtown Tucson’s major corridors for all pedestrians to read (See map below).

A wee story: The day I took myself on the Haiku Hike to see and read each of the 20 haiku when I arrived at my haiku there was a lovely person there already visiting with my poem and I overheard her say, “Oh, I like this one.” Is there sweeter music to a poet’s ears?

Preview each winning haiku in the 2024 Haiku Hike Literary Competition with accompanying images taken for the Downtown Tucson Partnership (DTP) by JJ Snyder Photography.

Invitation: Then, after you take in the 20 haiku, write some of our own.

Cascadia Zen

To celebrate the publication of Volume one of Cascadian Zen: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here & Now, anthology co-editors Paul E. Nelson, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, and Adelia MacWilliam came to Vancouver and convened with contributors Kate Braid, Daphne Marlatt, and me (Jami Macarty) at People’s Co-op Bookstore for a lovely and loving community-based celebration of Cascadia. Image L to R: Kate, Paul, Adelia, Jason, Daphne, and Jami.

Invitation: Listen to the reading’s audio.

A Journal of the Plague Years

Some of you know that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote the essays “Endangered Species” and “Protest, Police, Pandemic & Palimpsest—Tucson, Arizona” accompanied by poems for The Journal of the Plague Years, Susan Zakin, Founder and Editor.

Then, for a while, I served as the Poetry Editor for the journal. In that capacity, I had the chance to acquire a group of terrific poems written by poets I respect. Four of those poets—Lauren Camp, Maxine Chernoff, Paul Nelson, and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer—and their poems join my essay, “Endangered Species” in the journal’s anthology A Journal of the Plague Year (Blue Books, 2024), which Dean Kuipers at Red Canary Magazine called “A fascinating and cathartic read about an experience that is not over, but keeps getting weirder and more dangerous.”

It is gratifying for me to see my efforts as a writer and poetry editor come together in one volume.

Invitation: Read my and the poets’s poems.

“Comfort Food,” by Lauren Camp
“Zonal,” by Maxine Chernoff
“Endangered Species,” by Jami Macarty
A COVID-19 Sonnet: “Sonetos De Cascadia 16-March-2020,” by Paul Nelson
“Still Swimming,” Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Orbis International Literary Journal, #208-Summer ’24

A poem I started writing in January 2020, “The Giant Redwood Addresses Subhradeep Dutta” was given space in Orbis #208. This is my writing’s second appearance in Orbis, and I am grateful to Carole Baldock, Editor for her kind attention to my poems. All in good time, my prettys!

Reading & Writing Practices

I have been keeping up with writing a poem ish thingy each day. As for my reading practice, I am not reading as many books as I sometimes do, but what I am reading feels just right. Since I last wrote you, one long-form and seven short-form reviews have joined the words of the world. You can find all of the reviews I have offered, among other things on this site’s Poet page.

Invitation: You are cordially invited to peruse!

Forthcoming! Forthcoming!

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) and a poem from my forthcoming chapbook The Whole Catastrophe (#38, Vallum Chapbook Series, summer 2024). I am right now in the process of proofreading the galley for the chapbook, so stay tuned for more about that process and and my fourth chapbook’s publication…

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The Pluses!

+ Thank you bows to my community of women/women-identified writers for their generous, loving support, inspiration, and encouragement.

+ I bow to hardworking editors, publishers, readers, and printers at literary magazines and anthologies who publish individual poems and who have supported my writing, especially TC Tolbert at Haiku Literary Competition; Paul Nelson at Cascadia Zen; Susan Zakin at A Journal of the Plague Years, and Carole Baldock at Orbis International Literary Journal.

+ Thank you bows to Vallum Chapbook Series and editors Leigh Kotsilidis and Eleni Zisimatos for making my chapbook The Whole Catastrophe 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 April 29, 2022May 28, 2022 by Jami Macarty

National Poetry Month commenced in the United States in 1996 when the Academy of American Poets brought to the foreground this appreciation and celebration of poetry; Canada joined in the fun in 1998. Why April? That has to do with the opening line to T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem “The Waste Land”: “April is the cruellest month.”

I get where Eliot is coming from, it being muddy, sluggish spring and all, but instead of getting into whether or not April is cruellest month of all and why. Or, vying for December’s rank. I will offer that no month is any crueller than another and get on with sharing with you my recognition and acknowledgement of my writing practice, especially where it pertains to the making of my second collection of poems and to celebrate and appreciate poet and editor Claudia Keelan and one of her special editorial projects: Interim: A Journal of Poetry Poetics.

On my way there, allow me to share with you a poet’s dream scenario and a bit more about my second collection of poems, The Long Now Conditions Permit. I wrote the majority of the manuscript’s poems in ninety-five days, which consisted of a five-day writing spell in January 2020 and three thirty-day writing spells in July 2020, October 2020, and January 2021. Realizing my intentions to write five poems in five days and thirty poems in thirty days (three times) proved to me again just what I am able to accomplish when I am determined, passionate, serious, and persistent.

I say “again” because starting in July 2013 and for the next three-and-a-half years ish, I wrote just about a poem a day. The math: something like 1,300 poems. Talk about a writing practice that puts into perspective the valuation of “good” and “bad” and balances that duality with simply intending to write and accomplishing the writing of a poem each day. Day by day the poems mount, and as they do the poet becomes less precious and fetishistic about what poems are and more playful with what they can be and can do via diction and form, image and association. Plus, that daily word-play over an extended period taught me about the meaning of aiming for the target, gaining experience, and getting to know the poems I make and myself as a poet.

Back to the coming-into-being of my second manuscript. Each day in December 2021 by method of butt-in-chair, I revised all of the poems written between January 2020 and 2021, which included some deep recasts/revisions, drawing also on a kernel of some poems written during that three-and-a-half-year spell. Once the poems were revised, there was the decision process of which to include, then onward to ordering those poems into a book. There were a few rounds of those two steps as the book honed. Et voilà! On December 30, 2021, I sent the manuscript to Interim Test Site Poetry Series for consideration.

Even so, the book was not quite at its resting place. Here and there, a few points of precision within lines, images, and words still gave me hesitation and were not yet satisfying. So, after three days away from the manuscript, I continued tuning, honing, and shaping on my own, considering comments I received from a trusted editor. After another two weeks, I arrived at a resting place for the manuscript and got on with sending poems from it out for consideration and reading from my stacks. O, the stacks!

Then on February 21, Claudia Keelan, Editor of Interim Test Site Poetry Series notified me that my manuscript was a semi-finalist and still under consideration. A thrill for the poems and the poet! On March 6, Claudia wrote again to notify me that my manuscript was one of fifteen (1/15) finalists. More excitement! Kissing and dancing upon Earth. Tra la! Tra la!

Claudia and Interim’s associate editors’ belief in and embrace of my manuscript is gratifying and thrilling feedback, especially for a poet whose first book took ten years to find a publisher. For me, this near to immediate, positive feedback bodes well for the life of this book. O, Poetry Gods! Though The Long Now That Conditions Permit was not crowned winner, in recognition of being a finalist, Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics, selected and published five poems from my manuscript.

Interim, where Test Site Finalists’ poems appear

This second manuscript continues and furthers the ecofeminist focus and positioning of my first book, The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020) The selection of poems in Interim will orient you to how the poems engage the various conditions and systems that prevent the freedom of women who desire the liberty to walk Earth as they are, wounded but free. You are cordially invited to read the poems! Here’s an excerpt from “Bardo Friend and I Belly Up to Smattering Stars.”

Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics and Editor Claudia Keelan have been enormously and gorgeously supportive to my life and the lives of my poems. She published two poems from my first poetry collection The Minuses and offered the book these wonder words:

The poems in Jami Macarty’s devotional collection swing upon a hinge that is the recurring site of the poet’s perception in time, where what is seen shows the inherent connection of each thing to its other: ‘honey given / honey taken.’ The Minuses’ brilliance lives in what the poet is able to give up for the possibility of finding a wholeness that is ongoing: ‘I come and go / from myself as I am / I will not return.’ A seer is, after all, one who sees. Jami Macarty is one who sees.”
—Claudia Keelan

And, Claudia has been equally, vitally supportive to the poems in my second collection, The Long Now Conditions Permit. She selected six poems from the batch of poems I wrote during July 2020 (some of which are in the second manuscript) for publication in the all-women print issue of Interim 2020. Plus, in that issue she offered a review (under her penname Lacy Aul) of The Minuses that made birds fly in my heart.

*Interim*, 2020 with Gretchen Gales’ art on the cover

And, she selected a poem from The Long Now Conditions Permit for the 2021 all-women print issue.

Interim, 2021 with Despy Boutris’ cover art.

You see what I mean? Claudia: Enormously, generously supportive. A dream-come-true of support for, belief in, and embrace of me and the poems I write. Claudia’s is a consciousness on Earth I would not want to be without in mind or spirit.

And, on that note, allow me to take a bow and my leave. But, before I do, thank you dear readers, for the gifts of your time and attention as I share with you what I have been appreciating and celebrating in my writer’s life.

: :

The Pluses!

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

+ Thank you bows to Claudia Keelan, beautiful poet, special friend, and generous editor.

+ Thank you bows to Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Andrew S. Nicholson, Assistant Editor, and Kathryn McKenzie, Managing Editor.

+ Thank you bows to Interim Test Site Poetry Series and the editorial team for your unique attention to my poems.

+ 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 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 the chapbook Instinctive Acts with me.

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

+ Thank you bows to Finishing Line Press and editors Leah Maines and Christin Kinkaid for making the 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!