Poetry Bingo

New Year's Eve here in the midwest usually ends up being an ice-bedecked beautiful wonder that is dangerous to travel through. So I spend it at home. If you are looking forward to some quiet hours during the year-change, here's a poetry game you can use to wind down the hours.

This spreadsheet is a good tool for cracking open a writer's block, or a new year, whichever comes first. It's virus-free, but if you share with anyone please rescan to make sure you haven't added a virus to it, and please leave the attribution information on it. This is modified, only slightly, from John Walkenbach's MeetingBingo, a spreadsheet to generate ideas for business meetings. I think poetry is a better use for it, but the original MeetingBingo spreadsheet gets credit for the idea, design and function.

Get your copy here: http://www.box.net/shared/67hh748ux1
The directions are on the 'Sheet1' tab, where you can change any and all of the words in the first column to create your own list of inspirations. My intent is that you use each row of the bingo card as 'word seeds' to create a stanza of a poem. You can do whatever you darn well please with it, though.

Countdown to . . . Ho Ho Ho!

I'm busy watching Santa's progress tonight courtesy of the NORAD system (http://www.noradsanta.org/en/video.html). Your tax dollars at work, and for a good cause.

He's about an hour and a half away from Cherry Pie Press right now, and according to the videos and the Google Earth tracking efforts, he seems to be taking regular stops for . . . poetry readings?

Dream on, it's just cookies and milk as usual.

Pushcart Prize nomination!

Cherry Pie is honored and delighted to announce a nominee this year for the esteemed Pushcart Prize --“Women at Sunrise” by Mary Ruth Donnelly, from her chapbook collection Weaving the Light.

We DID see you there!

The reading at Left Bank Books was a delight. Thanks to all the poetry fans who braved some nasty weather to listen to us and see all the chapbooks from Cherry Pie Press. gaye gambell-peterson read from her two recent chapbooks, and I read some of my own work and then selections from the 9 chapbooks from Cherry Pie Press.

The photo is courtesy of gaye's husband, Jerry Peterson. (I've oftened wondered how those two get along so well -- he with normal capital letters in his name, she insisting on lowercase throughout. I guess they thrive on that delightful dissonance.)