Kay Ryan, new poet laureate

Surely you've heard by now that it's time for a change of hands at the post of Poet Laureate. Kay Ryan is the new one -- the Washington Post has an article and video of her reading a wonderful poem (although beware that the video quickly spins on to the next one on file so you might suddenly be listening to John McCain!)

The Post article describes Ryan's long path to seeing herself as a writer, the longer path to getting anything published, anything recognized, and the support from her partner of 30 years, Carol Adair, and how that solid support helped organize a private campaign to keep sending out poetry submissions through the usual swamp of rejection letters. That long swamp is where most of us begin to limp, to say it might not matter, and turn inward or away. Luckily, Ryan kept going. The last few years have been a long-awaited carnival of recognition -- I saw her work first when it became a regular feature of Poetry magazine -- but that's just the last few steps on this long path. Her story is an inspiration for poets still in the swamp of despair. Take heart!

Small publishers and the chapbook marketplace

Looking for a small press? Here's one more place to browse if you're trying to find one that fits your aesthetic (and might be interested in your poems):

http://www.poems.com/pubs_noted.php

Books and chapbooks are listed for about a year after being received. Links are provided to books available through Amazon (so only those from the larger presses, since Amazon has locked out the small low-budget presses that can't afford to pay the fees and 40% cut to Amazon).

You'll see this year's Cherry Pie chaps listed on http://www.poems.com/, but without, of course, the Amazon links.

Oh Canada

A few weeks ago I mentioned the fun you can have entering poetry contests that force you to write quickly. The one I'd entered was from a Canadian journal, Contemporary Verse 2, and supplied a list of challenging words to use in a poem written under a 48-hour deadline. The words ranged from "buckle" to "thorax" (no, I'm not kidding -- oh those Canadians). I had been reading a biography of Walt Whitman, and although he is an un-Canadian theme he was thoroughly ensconced in my mind at that point, so the poem ended up being about Whitman. Well, results are in and my Whitman poem placed on the "longlist" of 17 runners-up. I'm delighted! It was thoroughly fun.
See the poem here: http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca/contest_2daylonglist08.html#9.

Assembling the Poems - The Map Yeats Left Us

As I'm going through the process of reading poems for the next chapbook and making suggestions about how to order the poems -- oh, there are so many ways to do it -- I found a captivating presentation by the National Library of Ireland on exactly this topic. William Butler Yeats' volume The Tower is traced from original poem drafts through publishing in periodicals through publishing in separate volumes, culminating in the collection called The Tower.

To find this "map" go to the National Library of Ireland website, and in the Yeats exhibit look for the "Interactives" link at the bottom of the main page, and follow it to Poetry in Process: Building the Tower. You'll get a map of the poems, and you can trace each one through drafts and publications. Look especially for the poems that display a little reel-shaped icon -- these take you to a "tutorial" which is an extended walk through the drafts of the poem, showing how Yeats revised, in many cases going back to his original word or stanza pattern after many revisions. Such tutorials are included for Leda and the Swan, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, and Sailing to Byzantium.

The other parts of the exhibit are interactive and allow you to tour all the rooms and display cases of the exhibit, with detailed information for each piece you click on. It is beautifully done, a wonder to behold for anyone interested in Yeats. This is a far cry from women poets in the U.S. midwest, to be sure, but I found it a trip worth the taking.

The exhibit:
http://www.nli.ie/yeats/main.html

Happy Birthday, Gloria Gordon!

Gloria Gordon, treasured member of Loosely Identified writing group (and many other writing, social and political groups) is celebrating a well-earned birthday, and in honor of that I'm posting one of her poems that appeared in the group's anthology, Breathing Out: Poems by Loosely Identified.

Ode to the Refrigerator
(after Neruda's Odes to Common Things)

How noisy you are!
I forgive you because you are old
with surgical scars
yet still keep working in summer heat.

Your faithful heart beats
even when no one is here
putting carrots in, taking tomatoes out;
more vigorous this summer than last!

You are a miracle from Pre-Plastic History--
metal drawers open and close with authority;
the solid clink of your glass shelves.
What persistence!

Thank you Gloria Gordon, for a terrific poem, and all your terrific years.

The Urge to Believe - noted by Left Bank Books

Left Bank Books has picked The Urge to Believe is Stronger than Belief Itself as a 'recommended pick' in its July newsletter. A short review by Left Bank staff member Erin Quick:

St. Louis poet Erin M. Bertram's latest chapbook, The Urge to Believe is Stronger than Belief Itself, is a collection of prose poems grounded in the experience of dealing with cancer--namely breast cancer, though it largely goes unnamed in the book. With a daughter's kind, eager eye, she looks at what safety can be found in a name, gleaned from the seeming order of definition (whether from a dictionary or medical pamphlet) even when faced with the treachery of meaning. From the opening lines of Rilke to the book's final words, the solid actuality of language belies our frankly human experience of loss and its echo, pain. In such a world, where we are always reaching, even our mother's breasts bear the fragility of existence. In such a world, "any change is worth noting."

Poetry to Read on Summer Vacation

Some poetry miscellany to uncover interesting new reads:

Maxine Kumin - Christian Science Monitor has a wonderful audio slideshow of Kumin reading from her newest book set against pictures from her farm. Note that the farm is named "Pobiz."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0415/p13s01-bogn.html?page=1

Wikipedia list of poets -- slanted for lots of reasons, but still an interesting place to browse, discover new poets, follow links. The list is alphabetical, but alternate links at the bottom of the page allow you to organize them by many interesting categories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poets

A blog that provides birthdays of poets. You can find poets that share your birthday, or you can follow throughout the year and learn a new poet or two every day.
http://birthdaysofpoets.blogspot.com/

Review: Legacy, by Jane Levin

I recently received a slender, elegantly printed book of poems in the mail from Jane Levin, former St. Louis resident now in Minneapolis. She had found this blog, and sent off the poems. I recognized her name from past involvement in the women's movement here in the 1980s, but we had never met. This encounter through the blogosphere, with a slim volume of poetry as the conduit, is the sort of lucky and random connection computers allow.

Legacy is Jane Levin's first book, and is from Moonflower Press (price $8, inquiries to moonflowerpress at gmail dot com). It is slim--20 poems, and most of them are brief...in the way Emily Dickinson's poems are brief. Spare, finely edged, and the resonance afterwards is huge. Here is the opener:

Atoll

her life

is an
atoll

tiny islands of dependency
alluring from oooooo afar
up close
a relationship
of sand

she leaves at
oooooooooooo high tide

oooooooooooo floats

Some of the poems are about the author's fight with ovarian cancer; some are deeply sensual lesbian love poems, or poems about the harder societal aspects living a lesbian life; some are about Jewish culture; some are funny. One of my favorites, perhaps because of the title that splices one type of gambling (emotional) into another (financial, as in the commodities market) and layers it into a new understanding of risk, is this:

Futures

Clumps of wavy brown hair cover my pillow
like November leaves.
She leans close,
scoops a curly nest into her cupped palm,
wraps it in tissue paper, whispers
just in case.

Tears trickle down my chest,
flat as Nebraska.
She licks the moist prairie,
files its taste under "beloved."

Understated and overpowering -- rare in a first book, where the usual tendency is to over-write.

Lines here will draw you in, and the small poems will enlarge you. They invite close attention, and give it back.

Preservation

In the interest of conservation
recycle a poem

to kindle
reuse each word
every line

The Urge To Believe

The latest release of the Midwest Women Poets Series from Cherry Pie Press is an extended piece by Erin M. Bertram.

The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself is a meditation on connections and cleavings. Its backdrop is a story about how breast cancer recreates the ties between mother and daughter. Seen through the lens of language, relationship is stronger than illness. Bertram’s poetry is a quiet crescendo of love and attentiveness that connects and redefines whatever it touches.

“But are you not, as you said, your body. Is it not, in its own quiet heft, 2 percent your agile frame. I’ve done the math, twice. One night, on a dare, I tugged one of mine from its cup, placed it on the postal scale on my desk. It rested there awkwardly, weighed 2.5 lbs. Once I woke clutching them both, groping for a loophole, a patch of dry skin, guilty of having & holding what you no longer possess.”

Erin M. Bertram's The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself (ISBN 978-0-9748468-8-0) is available locally in St. Louis at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, St. Louis, MO 63108 (ph 314.367.6731), or from the publisher cherrypiepress@yahoo.com.

Click here to view a downloadable flyer/order form for The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself.

Erin M. Bertram is a fellow and instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studies Women & Gender Studies and poetry. She is the author of three other chapbooks: Alluvium (dancing girl press, 2007); Body of Water (Thorngate Road, 2007) which won the Frank O'Hara Award; and Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007) with Sarah Lilius; and the micro-chapbook Wise Raven (Big Game Books, 2008). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barn Owl Review; Bloom; CutBank; Forklift, Ohio; Knockout; So to Speak; and others. She edits Shadowbox Press.

A mother of us all - Joan Lipkin

This Mother's Day, I'm thanking Joan Lipkin for all the mothering she's done over the years. She is the quintessential example of how to use art to change the world and to improve the lives of individuals. She's recently written an article on her own Mother's Day mode of honoring her mother's contributions to the world and to the development of her own mettle, and describes it here: http://www.thevitalvoice.com/node/255.

Joan is an essential part of St. Louis and its art, St. Louis and its heart. She has brought theatre and audiences together in unexpected, challenging ways, working with high school students, people with disabilities, all the while up-ending and challenging the audiences thoughts on democracy, disability, gender roles, and the power of art. Last year she won The Ethical Society's St. Louis Humanist of the Year award (http://www.ethicalstl.org/hoy2007.shtml).

You can read more about her on the web site of her theater creation, That Uppity Theatre Company, http://www.uppityco.com/index.html. Thank you Joan, for all that you've brought to so many of us.

Poem Bakeoff Winners!

Thanks to all who sent in a poem for the Cherry Pie Poem Bakeoff. Competition was hot, plentiful, and -- I'm glad to report -- yummy. I had planned on picking a single entry, but there were three competing for that spot, even after multiple read-throughs. So the results include a first-place winner, and also a second-prize and third-prize winner. I'll also mention some choice lines from other poems.

The first-prize winner will receive free copies of all three Cherry Pie chapbooks to be published in 2008. Since second and third prizes are now included (it's just so hard to say "no" when the poems are good!), those winners can each select one free chapbook from the 2008 selections.

The three Cherry Pie chapbooks for 2008 are:
The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself, by Erin M. Bertram (May 2008)
A Stranger Here Myself, by Niki Nymark (late summer 2008)
Weaving the Light, by Mary Ruth Donnelly (fall 2008)


Here are the winning poems.

First Prize goes to an untitled cinquaine (loosely) from Dianne Ladendecker. I was charmed and astonished each time I read this economical little wonder.

The brine
Then there's the knife
It's out of proportion
I hear eerie sounds of half-life
Opera

Second Prize goes to Gaye Gambell-Peterson for a pantoum about a middle-aged mermaid. I was intrigued by the well-used effect of the pantoum's interlocking structure, and completely sold on the "C-sharp half-life, caught in the half-light" which mingles echoes of music, radiation/decay/science, time, and water so beautifully.

Mermaid’s Pantoum

I am unrepentant mermaid, middle aged.
Flesh and scales still in seemly proportion,
though wrinkled by brine and tattered by time.
Still adored, a diva of fathomed opera.

Flesh and scales still in seemly proportion,
a siren, chanteuse, my voice a knife-edge
shrill, adorned. A fathomed opera’s diva
in a C-sharp half-life, caught in the half-light.

A siren, chanteuse, my voice a knife-edge
cutting through tides. Me, under the weather,
caught in sea’s half-light with only a half-life,
still luring men with plaintive arias.

Cutting through tides, me, under the weather
though wrinkled by brine and tattered by time,
still luring men with plaintive arias.
A middle-aged mermaid, unrepentant am I.

And Third Prize goes to Elizabeth M. Johnson, who gains an extra point for incorporating the full title of a Cherry Pie chapbook (Kiss Me Cold). Some of the required five words in this poem were used in variant forms (e.g. disproportionate instead of proportion) and although I've seen many contests be strict on that count, I'm constitutionally unable to be strict and so will allow it. The poem's worth it.

Ending It

Last summer, in the months without an “R,”
we ate oysters, the jagged edges of
the shells were sharp against our tongues, the brine
cool in our throats, delicious as the crisp

sea salt against our skin, the beach bonfire,
the Great Bear asterism far above,
an operatic swell in the timeline
of us, peace tenuous but in our grasp.

But now the months have “Rs.” Also, “-embers.”
You lumber toward me, and I try to move
away; your heavy body next to mine
seems wildly disproportionate. You clasp

me, kiss me, cold, your lips a slick steel knife
at my throat. No half measures, just half life.

Congratulations on the great poems! The other entries were wonderful, and I hope everyone had fun with the contest.

Notable lines or moments from other entries, that I just couldn't resist:

From Bobbi Lurie, a prose poem that started off: "brine she says is nothing but the half-life of the pickle. . . "

And from Gail Eisenhart, a sinister love poem that included: "this tryst / has the half-life of house-fly."

To wrap up, an unexpected "non-winner" that simply must be mentioned for its refusal to follow any rules, and for the delightful poem that resulted. This is from Katherine Mitchell, who attempted a poem using the five required words but ended up with a poem that used a form of one of the words, did not use the other four at all, and is titled as a haiku but is, in fact, not a haiku. So here is a poem of . . . great resistance? Katherine sent it in as a non-entry, and I reproduce it here as such. Not a prize-winner, but in many ways a winner!

Summer Haiku

paddle boats float
on two tanks
painted copper lake

paddlers wear pajamas
hold champagne flutes
small rising circles
happy tongues

water smoothed
butter knives in cake frosting

orange bursts
over the horizon
sending heat
inside our paper lantern faces

Poem Bakeoff - Get those last-minute entries in!

Poems have been rolling in, embracing a banquet of forms. Sonnets, pantoums, free verse, we got 'em! You have until midnight tomorrow to send in your entry if you've been dallying.

Big Diesel Chapbook

What better place to publish a poem than a vehicle that moves constantly through the city with an all-day captive audience? The Poetry in Motion project this year has selected 15 poems -- one of my lucky poems among those -- to appear on local buses. Think of it as a big diesel chapbook.

See the poem posters here -- scroll through all the selections by clicking on the arrow at the lower right corner of the displayed poem.
http://www.artsintransit.org/PIM08.html

Contest update -- Poem Bakeoff, a report from the kitchen

Thank you, ambitious souls who have already submitted entries! There's still plenty of time left for those of you still crafting your poems. And for those of you who've grumbled about the difficulty of combining opera, proportion and brine (those seem to generate the most angst) in a single poem, I refer you to Contemporary Verse's contest, which runs only 48 hours and this year presented a list of 10 words, one of which was . . . thorax.

Yes, thorax. You can be grateful that contest is already over -- you're too late now to sweat over that one.

So, no whining. Get back to the kitchen, bake me a poem.

(Full disclosure -- I did enter their contest, thorax and all, but the subject of my poem was Whitman, and the magazine is Canadian, so I'll guess my chances are .... zip?)

What's it like to publish your first book?

Browse these interviews of poets publishing a first book. Interviews are from Kate Greenstreet's blog, Every Other Day.

http://www.kickingwind.com/interviews.html

Contest -- Cherry Pie Poem BakeOff Contest

To celebrate Poetry Month and the three chapbooks forthcoming from Cherry Pie in 2008, we're announcing the first annual Cherry Pie Press Poem BakeOff Contest.

1st Prize: Free copies of each of the three chapbooks to be published in 2008 (by Erin M. Bertram, Niki Nymark, and Mary Ruth Donnelly). Even better, the winner's poem will be published here on the Cherry Pie Press blog.

Rules: Contest is open now through the end of April 2008. To enter, write an original poem in any style or format using all five of the words listed below (one word selected from each of the published Cherry Pie chapbooks). You can see this contest will increase in difficulty each year as the list of publications grows, so enter now while it's still easy!!!

Words to use: brine, half-life, knife, proportion, opera

Notes:
brine is from Colleen McKee's My Hot Little Tomato.
half-life is from Helen Eisen's The Permeability of Memory.
knife is from Donna Biffar's Kiss Me Cold.
proportion is from Nan Sweet's Rotogravure.
opera is from Martha Ficklen's The Palm Leaf Fan.

Submission of entries: Send your poem in an email by midnight April 30, 2008 to cherrypiepress@yahoo.com. Please put "Poem BakeOff" in the subject line, and include your name with the entry. Submission of a poem for the contest implies permission to publish the winning poem on the Cherry Pie Press blog.

Eligibility and Judging: Poets previously published by Cherry Pie, or scheduled for publication in 2008, are not eligible to enter. Judging, due to the perennially low budget here, will be done solely by the Editor (me).

Review -- In Mi'kmaq Country

In Mi'kmaq Country: Selected Poems & Stories is a new book by Alice M. Azure. I was delighted to be gifted a review copy from Alice, who is a solid and enlightening presence in two of the local writing groups I participate in.

Alice Azure's poems have previously appeared in publications such as Shenandoah, The Cream City Review, and Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust. I'm excited to see her work now collected in her own book.

I'll excerpt two poems that I think convey the flavor and some of the range in her book.

Northwoods Haiku

Spring was cold that year,
the trillium wouldn't open.
Then you came to me.

Gisoolg

...is a verb, an action. When we say "Gisoolg," it means that you have been created, and you are being created. Stephen Augustine, Mi'kmaq Elder

listen
listen
a voice
pulses above
above in the stars
they pulse
clear
like the voice
early early
this winter day
listen listen
Paradise pulses
participates
Paradise participates
at times
times
times like this
participates
with thee
thee
listen
thee listen
Paradise participates
pulses
for thee
listen listen listen
thee listen
participates
with thee

The book is beautifully produced by Albatross Press, with a striking woodcut by the author as the cover image. It is available locally from Left Bank Books, which is always glad to handle mail orders, and is also available from the author (speelya@aol.com).

Colleen McKee -- news and publications

News about Colleen McKee (author of My Hot Little Tomato) --

Are We Feeling Better Yet?, an anthology of personal narratives about women and U.S. health care, co-edited by Colleen McKee and Amanda Crowell Stiebel, will be published by Penultimate Press in October 2008.

Colleen McKee also recently won a Poetry in Motion Award from Metro St. Louis. She will receive a $50 mystery gift certificate, a subscription to Poetry, and her poem "Dream of the Enchanted Supermarket" will appear on local trains and buses. Additionally, she won Third Prize (and a certain sum of money) in the Wednesday Club's Annual Poetry Contest for her poem "Terminals and Gates." Another recent prize was First Place in the River Styx Nanofiction Contest for her story "Piss and Vinegar, or, The Decision," which garnered no publication or money, just glory and a six-pack of Schlafly Ale.

Her poem "Grand Station" will appear in qarrtsiluni's "Nature in the Cracks" issue in March or April.

Local poet Jane Ellen Ibur honored by 2008 Visionary Award

Grand Center, St. Louis’ premier Arts and Entertainment District, announced the honorees of the Sixth Annual Visionary Awards, which recognizes women for their contributions to the St. Louis arts and culture community.

Jane Ellen Ibur, poet, writer, and teacher was chosen as Outstanding Arts Educator.

Grand Center created the Visionary Awards to highlight the wide-ranging work of women artists and arts leaders in the community. The Visionary Awards will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Ave in Grand Center.

For other honorees visit www.grandcenter.org.

Niki Nymark poem to appear in Lilith Magazine

Niki Nymark, with a chapbook forthcoming later this year from Cherry Pie Press, has received a letter from Marge Piercy that her poem, "Chava," is accepted for publication in Lilith Magazine.