! 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

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! ❤

: :

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!

! 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.

: :

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!