Writing the Life Poetic

National Poetry Month starts tomorrow. Are you ready?

April is National Poetry Month--a tradition that was introduced by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 and is celebrated today by poets, schools and literary organizations throughout the U.S. This April, I invite you to dip your cup into the poetry stream every day.

There are endless ways to tune into the poetry of your life. I offer here just a few of my favorites:

Participate in the April Poem A Day Challenge at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog. Not only does Robert Brewer offer an inspiring, inviting opportunity to get your pen moving every day, but this year you'll have a chance to see your work published in an e-book! (I'll be one of the guest judges.)

Sign up to receive the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day email! Receive some of the best poems written this year by email every day!

Participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 30. Carry your favorite poem around with you and share it with the people around you! If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I heartily encourage you to pick up a free Pocket Poem at Mrs. Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts in Berkeley throughout the month of April! You can then share your Pocket Poem with friends, family, colleagues and strangers on April 30! If you're really, really lucky, you'll get one of Mari L'Esperance's gorgeous poems from her new book The Darkened Temple, winner of the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry Series.

You could also let your eye wander over to the top, right hand column of this blog and fill in your email address where it says "Sign up for our email newsletter." This will subscribe you to the Writing the Life Poetic Zine, a fabulous new monthly publication published by yours truly. Launching in the next few weeks, the Writing the Life Poetic Zine will come directly to your email in-box, featuring some of Portland's most inspiring minds! I sure am grateful to have access to their wisdom, and I suspect you will be, too! Each issue will include: a writing prompt, interview of a poet-to-know, publishing recommendations, coaching tips on cultivating a poetry practice, wisdom about the poetic life, information and inspiration about cultivating poetic community, and so much more! Don't miss the April issue! Sign up now!

Want more ideas about how to read, write and enjoy poetry throughout April? Learn about 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month!

What else are you doing to fire up your poetry engines this month?

Cup of Comfort offers a Webinar about writing winning stories

Want to Write a Winning Cup of Comfort Story? You can participate in the inaugural Cup of Comfort Webinar and learn how!

In this webinar, the publishers of the Cup of Comfort series will guide you through the story creation process so that you'll be able to write a successful story every time! The webinar will cover many topics:

Story Basics: The definition of an inspirational story and a discussion of its structure, voice, point-of-view, and more!

Top Ten Reasons Why Stories Are Rejected: A straightforward discussion of the ten pitfalls you need to avoid!

Deconstruction of Favorite Cup of Comfort Stories: The editors will break down two effective stories and elaborate on what made them that way.

The Submission and Editing Process: The nuts and bolts of how stories get from your computer to our books!

How to Market Your Published Story: Your story is in one of our books. Great! Now how do you get the word out? We'll show you how.

Q&A: An open dialogue where your specific questions can be addressed.

This is a can't-miss event for serious storytellers!

Date: Thursday, April 30th
Time: 1:00 pm EST
Duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Cost: $49

Click here to register!

Two poems on Writers' Dojo

My poems "Leaving Buckhorn Springs" and "Nagoone Berries" just went live on  Writers' Dojo!

Sharing a meal of poetry

By Kherry McKay

As much as I want to write for TV or be the next Stephen King, I seem to end up writing poetry because there's so much room in poems to explore, to just "be" (seems counter-intuitive since they're generally shorter than fiction). I start out with a line and realize I can describe all of human consciousness in just a few more lines. I never quite accomplish that, but it's the journey, the journey. . . .

I was once in a library, reading Mark Strand. I stumbled across his poem, "Eating Poetry," about becoming consumed with the consumption of poetry. I saw myself. Then I saw myself seeing myself, which was Strand's intention - the joke. I laughed. I then realized he HAD LAUGHED WHEN HE PUT TOGETHER THIS LITTLE MOMENT for me, and that made me laugh out loud. I'd never connected to a poem quite like that before. He'd anticipated the future and sent a futuregram to where I'd be. Time and space collapsed. There was the poem, Mark Strand, and me; and our mutual laughter. I never felt so Not-alone in my life!

Kherry McKay thought at first he wanted to be an engineer, then a public relations writer, then a New Age pianist, the likes of George Winston. Now he hangs out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he's making poetic friends and rarely does his dishes. He's been published in Pennsylvania anthologies such as Got Verse! and had poems included in the first Alberta Street anthology in Portland, Oregon. He's single and wants to find a forgiving, patient woman who too likes eating poetry.

Come on out to the Writers' Dojo Day of Literary Celebration on March 28!

This Saturday, March 28, will be a very special day for the Portland literary community at one of our most auspicious gathering places. Join many fabulous local writers for a full day of workshops and discussion at the Writers' Dojo. I'll be teaching a workshop titled Turned Loose: Liberating Language into Poems with my hero, poet master Paulann Petersen. This free, two-hour workshop from 10 a.m. to noon will be devoted to generating new work. All levels of experience welcome!

EVENTS SNAPSHOT

Saturday, March 28th

Morning Poetry:
9:00–10:00—poetry performances with Casey Bush and Charles Sorgie
10:00–noon—workshop with Paulann Petersen and Sage Cohen

Midday Publishing Forum: 
2:00–3:30—with Whitney Otto, Karen Karbo, Rhonda Hughes, David Biespiel, Ken Arnold, and Paul Pearce

Afternoon Prose:
4:00-6:00—workshop with Joanna Rose

Get all the details and come on out to join us for a literary day to remember! 

A teachable poem by Kristin Berger

Boiling Beets

You choose them for their solidity and shape,
their ability to stain the heart from under the produce light.
Their edible greens, too, the red-veined and cooled trails
the morning sun once stalked in the furrowed fields.

You carry them home with other necessities wrapped
in plastic and brown butcher paper, flowers
for yourself in an extravagant fuchsia funnel,
reach for them first out of all the other chores,

charm them to settle together
like sleeping children into one bed,
sandy cheeks ruddy with dreams,
ignite the fumarole to flame and will

those roots to tremor and roil, your face
the moon rising above earth-steam
filling the kitchen, governing the boiling hour.
And when they finally give up their skins and slip

between your fingers, glassy and calm,
you follow their growth-rings, a striated map,
with a whetted knife, releasing cross-sections to the jar
and pour vinegar like a salve to preserve their luster.

The rubied water swirls down the drain.
Wipe your hands over and over against your apron
but the beet stain will outlast the rage cooked
out of the pot, vented to the afternoon shafting

through the leaded window. The sun turns
towards a new field of seedlings.
The next crop surfaces, leaves sluicing light
to their buried, molten hearts.

--Kristin Berger
from For the Willing, Finishing Line Press, 2008.

About “Boiling Beets” by Kristin Berger

This poem began with an act and a conversation, a convergence of ideas from two people. My good friend, Cindy, turned me on to pickled beets from her garden, and I have forever been trying to duplicate her recipe. I have been in love with the growing of beets, ever since… such a rewarding crop, so fun to pull, so child-friendly!

One day I was having a conversation with another mother about our day, and I had just caught her after a struggle with her toddler, trying to put him down for a nap. All she wanted to do was get to her kitchen, cook something delicious, and find that place where she could both be released and be replenished. Cooking for her is like that, an art form, an alchemy of spirit. She was trying to find a place for the anger she had just waged, and cooking calmed her. Geologist that she is by training, she described herself as a volcano after the eruption. How ok she felt NOW, but oh the blast-zone left in her wake!

I knew I had a poem in the works…. the language of food and geology are where I feel at home (I often feel that I was dirt or basalt in a past life!). I started with placing myself in my friend’s “blast zone,” and imagining what it would take to accomplish one satisfying stint in the kitchen, boiling and pickling beets. There was also the under-current of tension, this rage that needed cooling off, needing a release. I used many geologic terms and imagery because the language of emotion, while so often belongs to water, also lives in the realm of fire and earth. What happens to something that is born of the earth, a root-crop, how is it transformed, under what conditions, what makes it pliable, nourishing, what makes it tender towards others? These are all questions easily asked about people, about mothers in particular. Caring comes with compassion, but how do we get there?

The poem’s form lent itself to a cyclical reading… that what is finished will begin again, that just as the season’s evolve, revolve, the body continues to want food and comfort, and the days’ rhythms repeat.

I don’t think I thought a lot about these bigger issues when I was doing the actual writing. Mostly, I had a lot of fun in the re-writes, playing with the language, layers and references, and finding the 4-line stanza form – which helped keep the momentum tense and forward-reaching, just like plodding through the day. Writing “The rubied water swirls down the drain.” after 5+ stanzas of build-up was the most satisfying line I have ever written. This poem was all about the re-write, and instead of feeling daunting, or like I was “messing” with it, the process was playful and not too challenging.

It always makes me hungry after I read it!

Kristin Berger’s poems and essays have appeared in Alimentum, Mamazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Sea Stories and The Oregonian, among other publications. She received runner-up for both the 2008 New Letters Readers Award in Poetry, and a 2009 EDDY Award (given to Edible Portland). Her chapbook, For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008) has been nominated for an Oregon Book Award. Kristin is an editorial collective member of VoiceCatcher, an anthology of Portland area women writers. She lives, gardens and studies clouds in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two young children. You can visit her and read more of her work at www.kristinberger.wordpress.com.

An interview with Fiona Robyn, author of The Letters

Fiona Robyn, author of the new novel The Letters, is one of my favorite people and writers. For years I have been delighting in her blogs as well as her two previous books A Year of Questions: How to slow down and fall in love with life and ‘small stones: a year of moments’. I admire Fiona's gift of finding, sharing and inviting her readers to discover for themselves what is meaningful, poetic, humble and true in this world. And I am very excited about her newly released novel The Letters! Following is a blurb about the book borrowed from Fiona's web site and an interview with the author.

Violet Ackerman has drifted through a career, four children and a divorce without ever knowing who she is or what she wants. After moving to the coast, she starts receiving a series of mysterious letters sent from a mother and baby home in 1959, written by a pregnant twenty-year-old Elizabeth to her best friend. These letters intersperse Violet's turbulent relationships with her lover, her infuriating son and the eccentric fellow members of the Village Committee. Who is sending Violet these letters, and why? 'The Letters' invites us see what happens when we don't run away. Will love be enough to encourage Violet to stay?

What was your greatest surprise or discovery in writing The Letters?

 I can't let you know about my greatest surprise, because it would spoil it for people who haven't read it yet!  I'll whisper it into your ear....  I find my stories through my characters, and so most of my novels feel 'discovered' rather than 'invented' - sometimes I wish I was a plotter, but most of the time I really enjoy being a 'seats of my pantser' (as a fellow writer described it).

How does your training as a poet influence your fiction writing?
 
I hope that years of writing poetry has improved my 'ear for words' - I think the sound of prose read out loud is very important, and I do this as a part of the drafting process.  I also hope writing poetry has helped me to pay attention to details - the kind of details that bring a character or a setting alive.

You've published your own books and also been published by Snowbooks. How do those two experiences compare?
 
It was very helpful for me to publish my own poetry and non-fiction, as it put me back in control of something while I waited to find a publisher for my novels.  It gave me some great experience of having my books 'out in the world', and marketing my books.  Being published by someone else has been wonderful - having someone else believe in my books is a real gift - but I've struggled occasionally with not being able to do everything exactly as I want it to be done!  It's been a period of learning to let go - which has, again, been very helpful to me.

How do the rhythms of blogging compare to or contribute to the rhythms of novel writing?
 
I'm very ad hoc with my blog writing, and write when the urge strikes me - I always complete blog posts in a single sitting, and then it's immediately 'out there'.  I have to be much more disciplined to get the novels written, and do some every morning before I do anything else (including checking Facebook!).  I like being involved in writing a novel - having a big project which allows me to spend a year or two with the same characters and story - but I also love the now-ness of blogging.  There may be a better word than now-ness, which I just invented...

How can the Internet support writers with both creating new work and promoting it?
 
The wonderful thing about the Internet is that it contains a multitude of opportunities for writers - groups, forums, blogs, ezines, social networking sites...  I've met many fellow creatives on the web that are now good friends, which feels vital as a support structure to creating new work.  I think maybe the trick of promoting your work is to find a few tools that suit you, and that you enjoy, and use them consistently over time.  For me this is blogging and sending out weekly newsletters.

I heard a rumor that you love American writing more than British writing. Tell me about that!
 
A rumour, eh?!  Yes - I've always been more drawn to American novelists and American poets.  I'm making a HUGE generalization here, but I think maybe American writers tend to be a little more open - a bit less worried about coming across as sentimental or flawed.  There's a kind of 'worship of intellect' that can crop up in British poetry.  American writers sometimes seem broader to me - more human.  This does feel tentative, and of course there are many British writers I LOVE and many American writers who leave me cold.

You're a therapist, a poet, a novelist, a blogger...How do you do it all--and do it all so well?
 
I'm not a mum, so that helps!  My therapy practice is very contained - I see clients in the afternoons and evenings - which leaves the mornings free for writerly work.  I try to pare all non-essential activities from my diary.  I try to keep things simple.  I try to give myself space.  I've been practising for many years now.  Occassionally, for a day or even for a whole week, I succeed!

Fiona Robyn's new novel The Letters is available now in most bookshops, or:
Buy from Amazon UK    Buy from Amazon US     Buy from Snowbooks

Published by Snowbooks * £7.99 * ISBN 9781906727062

Fiona Robyn is a writer and blogger living in Hampshire with her partner, cats and vegetable patch. 

Her three debut novels will be published by Snowbooks - The Letters is already out, The Blue Handbag in August 2009 and Thaw in February 2010.  Her other books include A Year of Questions: How to slow down and fall in love with life and ‘small stones: a year of moments’. 

Her daily blog is at a small stone and her blog about being a writer is at Planting Words.  Her main site is at www.fionarobyn.com. She can be contacted at fiona@fionarobyn.com.

The poem of the body

I write poems because there is room enough for me in poetry. A poem can not be defined by definition. Every time we try to draw a line around what a poem is, something spills over into the next frame, shifting the point of view and demanding new names: olive, token, flax, daffodil. A poem is all of these, or none of them, depending on the quality of light and how the blade in the next room stirs the night.

In the past few months, I have experienced through a number of interviews and his documentary Philippe Petit, the French daredevil who walked (or some say danced) across a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. When an interviewer suggested that Petit is a world-class athlete, the tightrope artist countered, "I am not an athlete. I am a poet. I write poems with my body." With one single death-defying act, Petit reshaped our sense of of what is humanly possible--in life as well as in poetry.

Then last week I read about a woman who transformed loss into beauty. (Isn't this the best of what poetry has to offer us?) Nadya Vessey, who lost her legs in a childhood illness, says she once told a small boy who asked what had happened to her legs that she was a mermaid. The idea stuck. Now, thanks Oscar-winning movie special effects wizards Weta Workshop, she looks and swims like a mermaid--with a fully functional mermaid tail prosthesis and an attached suit. Rewriting "amputee" to "mermaid." From missing to magical...If that isn't a poem of the body, I don't know what is!

As my son Theo celebrated his half-birthday this week, I've been contemplating the poetry of childbirth. Pregnancy was the profoundest of metaphors. I equaled everything I saw in the world that had the innate intelligence to multiply. I'd say that Theo's birth was a poem that rewrote me.  

How is your body a poem?

We did it! Time for the amazon.com spike day party favors

I am thrilled and grateful to report that--thanks to you--amazon.com spike day for Writing the Life Poetic  was a great success! Reported in amazon's Movers & Shakers as #5 on March 17, Writing the Life Poetic leapt from a ranking of 243,882 to a low of 240 (and I've heard it even got a little lower)!

Thanks so much to all who celebrated in my book's virtual birthday party! You helped my brand new book get off to a great start with the visibility it needs to get noticed. Now it's time for the party favors!

As promised, I'll be sending a copy of my poetry collection, Like the Heart, the World to the first 15 folks who sent me receipts for their book purchases:

1. Jen Lemen
2. Donnella Wood
3. Erin Goodman
4. Janice Clayton
5. Kerri Buckley
6. Leanne Grabel
7. Lisa Cihlar
8. Jean Hendrickson
9. Carol Stephen
10. Gigi Rosenberg
11. Shawn Sorensen
12. Carolyn Martin
13. Livia Montana
14. Carmen Borthwick
15. Margot Griffiths

Other party favor winners are as follows:

• The Darkened Temple by Mari L’Esperance: Kristin Berger
• VoiceCatcher 3—two copies!: Stephanie Portnoy & Shawn Sorensen
• Get Known Before the Book Deal by Christina Katz: Ellen Saunders
• Writer Mama; How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids by Christina Katz: Nancy Paul
• In The Margins Of The World by Willa Schneberg: Heather Hart
• Storytelling in Cambodia by Willa Schneberg: Tricia Schulte
• The Writer's Digest Guide to Query Letters by Wendy Burt-Thomas: RJ Clarken

Grand prize!!

• Free 10-page poetry manuscript review + half-hour phone consult with me: Jill Elliott

All party favors will be going out in the mail by early next week.

Thanks again for making my very first amazon.com spike day a day to remember! When you get your copy of Writing the Life Poetic, I'd love to hear about how it influences your poetry practice. C'mon back here and let us know by leaving a comment, won't you?

Tuesday, September 17: Time to buy Writing the Life Poetic!

Tuesday, March 17 is my official "Amazon.com Spike Day," where I attempt to boost the rankings for my new book, Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry. You can help! Buy a copy of Writing the Life Poetic from amazon.com and win my eternal gratitude, plus many fabulous party favors!

Writing the Life Poetic is a creative companion that anyone can use to write, read and enjoy poems. Craft, process and content lessons are all designed to invite readers to tune into the poetry of their lives—then get it down on the page. With beautiful illustrations and lots of wisdom (and of course poetry) from great poets everywhere, Writing the Life Poetic is a friendly, fun resource for poets and writers of all levels.

Just click here to order Writing the Life Poetic--and email me your receipt within 24 hours! You'll be entered in the drawing to win free books or a poetry editing consult!

Here's what one reader had to say:

"Instructional without being text-bookish, inspirational without being preachy, suggestive without being demanding, Writing the Life Poetic goes beyond the assemblage of quality how-to poetry books to become a work of art--with endless rows of blank canvasses on either side for the reader's own brush strokes." -- Shawn Sorensen, Oregon Writers Colony

See you at amazon.com on Tuesday, March 17!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!