Yes, Valentine’s Day is nearly a week past, but I’m just tomorrow sending cards and greetings to friends near and far, mostly to put a dent in the Love postage stamps recently purchased through USPS. All those kitten and puppies and doves accessoried with tiny hearts and red accents need to fly, even if late in their arrival. I’m a sucker for such seasonal postage, even if my efforts are less than timely.
I’m happy this morning to come across the recent publication of The Wild Word’s issue, Love. Their fine editors have included three of my poems in this issue and I’m over the moon at this odd little gathering of three: poetry as a lover, the wonder of scallops, and a hodge podge of Valentine ephemera haiku. The issue promises of all kinds of good reading. The editors are good humans to work with in this world of words and publishing.
Happy New Year, peeps! It’s still just the 6th of January, so I think I can employ this greeting for a bit more time, give it s-t-r-e-t-c-h for as l-o-n-g as I can, maybe even until the vernal equinox.
As I usually do at the start of the year, I look back on the data of a calendar year of writing. 16 poems in 12 paper copy journals or anthologies. Humbled that one of my poems landed in an anthology not too many pages away from poems by the writer Sheila Bender and Joseph Powell, one of my creative writing professors at Central Washington University. In 1993, he published his collection of poems, Winter Insomnia. I attended that launch and in the copy of the book I purchased after, his inscription encouraged me to “keep up the fine writing and send me a copy of your first book.” I made true on that in 2017 when I mailed him a copy of Something Yet to Be Named. I still have the letter he wrote in return.
Additionally, I published 18 poems in online journals. I am so very grateful for all editors who take a chance on writing and move it from a page in a writer’s hand to a greater reading world.
And because I’m an absolute believer in seeing the whole picture, 2023 landed me 23 rejections and 15 still-waiting-for-confirmations, or in the words of Submittable, “Received” or “In Progress.” And that’s all bundled up in the beauty of writing as well.
Finally, the ravens here are my desk muses. Raven Ladies are from the wildly creative Yukon artist, Donald Watt. You can read more about Donald and his art at Yukon Artists at Work.
Cheers to a the new year ahead. May it be truly happy, full of possibilities both hoped for and surprising. Keep on writing!
The Bluebird Word is an online literary journal featuring poetry and flash. Thank you to writer and editor MK Keffer for including my poem, “If Not Glitter, If Not Gold” as part of the Winter Holiday Reflection issue. Accompanying photo is from laura adai on Unsplash. Much holiday bauble eye candy to be found at the Unsplash link.
Horseshoe Literary Magazine is based in Western Newfoundland. Given past summers of driving Anchorage to St. John’s and back, later flying across Canada to backpack the South Coast, and 10 years ago driving cross-country again to visit L’Anse Aux Meadows, of course I was eager to submit some poetry to this publication. As it turns out, the magazine’s editors accepted two poems for publication, “Flame Flower” and “Border Closure,” and of course I was over the moon. Cheers to Newfoundland, their journals, and my adventuring memories of that sweet, other island in the other ocean.
Such a joy last weekend to attend one of a few readings organized by Editor Cassandra Arnold to celebrate her release of Alchemy and Miracles (Gilbert & Hall Press, 2023). Everyone read so beautifully! This collection is filled with nature poems written by 83 poets from all over the world, including three writers from right here in Southeast Alaska. Yes, I’m over the moon to have work in this compilation with fellow Blue Canoe writers Mandy Ramsey from Haines and Bonnie Demerjian from Wrangell. If you get the chance, give Cassandra Arnold a follow on Instagram (@cassandra_art_and_stories) where you’ll surely be inspired about all things poetry. And yes, she designed this lovely cover, too! Alchemy and Miracles may be purchased through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Happy Autumn, all! In true, Southeast Alaskan form, termination dust on the high peaks yesterday morning.
It’s June and the rhododendrons are in full bloom. From my window, shades of scarlet, blush, magenta, neon pink. These colors remind me of the various lipsticks my Ballard grandmother would wear and I explored this in a poem I’ve been working on all morning. There’s no shame in too much coffee and pajamas at noon, especially when the rain pours and the drive to write is hot. But I’m also leaving soon to roadtrip through Yukon, British Columbia, and Washington. So a blog entry before my departure.
Also grateful to have “Hometown” included in Issue 6: Midnight of the Australian journal, Authora Australis, another well-curated gathering of work that can be found across many issues here.
Also sitting in my email account are notices of an upcoming publication acceptance from Tokyo Poetry Journal and quite possibly a moon poem in the Waco Word Fest Anthology. The moon poem has at least made second round.
With that, I’ll catch you on the flip side of July. Looking ahead with great anticipation to mountains, markets, familiar faces and new, and reading a bunch of Canadian and PNW poetry as I go. Did I mention chasing coffee houses?
It’s May. Finally. And typical of May, I see verdant things and bright bloomers where I swear snow piled or rain pooled one hot minute ago. It’s such a vibrant month in my pocket of the world. There is the high drama of another school year coming to an end (my 28th) contrasted with the promise of summer adventures: Endless roads to travel, new-to-me coffee shops and hole in the wall cafes, meeting strangers who somehow become friends. I adore summer and ride that pony until I’m reminded of what I do for this living and turn around to head home.
May is much like the interior of my email inbox right now; varied and eclectic. It bridges this spring with its publication notices, publication opportunities to come, and the business of the day that needs tending.
I published “Of Paper Moons, Glimmered Words” in the Spring 2023 issue of October Hill Magazine. I’m happy to publish with them again. They assemble a sweet journal, and it was three years ago that I not only published in their winter journal, but was invited to read my work at an online reading. It was a cozy assembly and the kindness of editors during Covid is certainly an event and aspect that lingers even today. A wonderfully warm reading all the way around.
I have shared gratitude for the editors at Cosmic Daffodil Journal who published three of my short poems: “Untitled,” “Early Spring,” and “This Pot” in their Buds & Blooms issue.
My advice to you? Write on through all the delights this month will bring. Summer is all too short. Find all the ways necessary to collect, savor, and share those words.
It’s April and poetry friends near and far are scrambling to post their daily poems. I admire their efforts, I really do, as I have jumped into this marathon before. Fill a month, many months, a year even with poems. The end result has always offered a plethora of writing to revise, edit, move into the publishing world.
In the little galaxy of my high school Creative Writing class, my students last week engaged in several “Poem in Your Pocket” activities listed out by the Academy of American Poets. After a weekend, they returned to class Monday to report out on what they tried. Many called, texted, or even emailed their poems to friends and family members. Some folded their poems into origami cranes to test their seaworthiness. Others filmed their reading efforts from porches and other outdoor spots. A few poems landed on the community bulletin board at Sea Mart, our grocery store with a parking lot that extends into the ocean and where most of town takes their sunset photos to include our local volcano, Mt. Edgecumbe, or L’ux as it’s named in Lingít Aaní. There’s nothing better than taking poetry out of its expected setting (book, classroom). Taking it for a walk and seeing where it might land you.
This past winter put me in the seat facing my laptop. I returned to the groove of not only writing regularly, but submitting work regularly to poetry journals. And the results of those efforts have been just a little staggering. For example, in a two-week period in late March/early April, I published a dozen poems in a handful of journals. I can’t say I’ve had such a streak before: 12 acceptances, 1 rejection. It makes me hopeful, and keeps me writing.
It may be months yet before actual publication in some instances, but some returns are beginning to land on my desk, including a few from the mail this week. Huge shout out and much gratitude to editors everywhere, but in this moment to the editor of Tidal Echoes, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and Wingless Dreamer. These covers are beauties and welcome spring to my desk.
February 23rd revealed the one-year anniversary of Putin’s war on Ukraine. I remember well its start, the sound of bombs dropping on faraway cities over the airwaves of NPR, CBC, BBC. It was a year ago this day that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s name began to roll off our tongues and appear in social media memes that ultimately hinted not only of his personal and charismatic strength, but wide support of his country’s sovereignty. I remember my own anguish at this unjust act of aggression at the heels of the world weathering Covid and just beginning to emerge from the controlling grip of the pandemic. Simply unfathomable.
As is the way of poets and readers, we seek the trail of words that will offer us greater understanding of not only ourselves, but the greater world around us. It was with great anticipation that I awaited publication of Dick Westheimer’s poetry collection A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022). And was well worth the wait.
I’m struck first by the beauty of the cover created by Ukrainian artist Olga Morozova. It captures the blue and yellow tones that have surfaced widely in the support of a country whose flag sports these very colors of field and sky. It’s a lovely accompaniment of color and energy to the book’s poems and represents the strength, beauty, and spirit of those under siege.
The book is dedicated to “the people of Ukraine and refugees and truth-tellers everywhere.” In fact, a visit to Westheimer’s blog will not only walk you through news articles that inspired the writing of his poems, but acknowledges that all proceeds from this collection will go to the Ukraine Trust Chain which is a network of volunteers that works to move people from war-torn areas in Ukraine to safe zones.
“Holodomor” leads the collection, unveiling a methodical listing of disappearance and death in the shade of year of war: Fish, songbird, the good, the generous, “the prostitutes [that survive] their johns.” As the poem moves outward, it ends with the idea that we all too often share, “that it can’t happen here.” Poems following document the everyday: Shuffling the cards for Durak, a long-played card game, the baking of bread, scouring of pots and pans, the trash collector going about his business of lifting and emptying cans, while young clubbers stumble their way home. War is at the edges, but not yet trampling upon the moment.
One of the clear news to poetry connections is that of the poem, “A Ukrainian Woman Confronts a Russian Soldier in Henechesk.” This, widely reported on at the time, recalls the occasion of a woman asking an enemy soldier to carry sunflower seeds in his pocked so that they may sprout upon his death in her country. The poem begins with the question, “What seeds will you carry?” and ends with the reflection, “What will grow from the breakdown of your life / depends on the seeds you carry when that time arrives.”
As is the way of war, the innocent bear the brunt of destruction. Neither children nor animals can escape the brutality of conflict and often surface in the poems gathered here. In his poem, “An Open Letter to the Poets, Editors, and Redditors Who Have Moved on from War,” Westheimer calls to task those whose duty is to stay the course, to continue writing about the conditions and consequences of the war, to not leave it to chase the story of the day, “billionaires in space” as example. His final stanza in this poem reads,
So here’s your prompt for next week’s poem: war
never ends. The dead speak in blank verse.
The dispossessed scatter like bitter alyssum seed.
It is with a poet’s eye that I appreciate Westheimer’s exploration of form. “Demi-Sonnet for the Dead” is just that, a half sonnet that reveals not the living, but the burying of those made victims of war. The speaker has a preference for pine-box or ash-urn burials, but never ditch or pit, and that burial, when done properly, requires “…one sifted fistful at a time, / dirt mixed with tears. Sometimes blood.” The collection’s concluding poem is “Ghazal for the Trees,” a fitting end that offers some hope that war is like seasons, that as it comes it also goes. This ghazal hints of peace, of the song to be sung to trees.
Poet Dick Westheimer reminds us that while the war may not physically be outside our door, we nonetheless bear witness to these events and the stories that emerge. Overall, A Sword in Both Hands is a superb collection, and one to add to the shelf of keepers.
The weather is grim, friends. In recent weeks, the days have alternated from snow to rain, but often settling into a fine blend of sn-rain. Such is winter in the rainforest of Southeast Alaska. A few more minutes of daylight each week is the sole sign that spring is coming.
The continued indoor time has kept me hopping with pen and keyboard. Sheila-Na-Gig has held recently a series of poetry readings both in late January and through February to celebrate new publications! The time difference between there and here allowed me to partake in poet Simona Carini’s reading of her new collection of poetry, Survival Time. Such a bright gathering of work here, this is a book to add to the shelf.
Additionally, George Franklin’s new collection, Remote Cities, is soon to be released. I’m so eager to read this! And, there is a 20% discount on preorders if ordered by February 28th.
I’ve been quite motivated this winter to return to previous years’ efforts to write regularly and submit work weekly. Duotrope helps me achieve the latter.
Huge gratitude to both Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine and Compass Rose Literary Journal for publishing my work. The first picked up “Lavender Shortbread in February” for Issue 4: Valentines. Compass Rose picked up “No Headstone” for their Inaugural Issue.
Kersten Christianson, Poet 