Erica Goss

In January of this year, I spent four days at a retreat for women entrepreneurs. Located on the Oregon Coast, we were blessed with amazing weather, a lovely beachside house, great food, and each other’s company. I brought my journal, because I always bring it wherever I go. I noticed that most of the other … Continue reading Writing at a Non-Writers’ Retreat

I was reading my Christmas present, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963, when I came across a mention of syllabic verse. Plath’s poem “Mussel-Hunter at Rock Harbor” is written in stanzas of seven lines, each line containing seven syllables. In a letter to her brother Warren, dated June 11, 1958, she writes about the … Continue reading Syllabic Verse

Two of the books I received for review consideration in 2018 came from poets who live and write in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California: Starshine Road by L.I. Henley, and Waking Life by Cynthia Anderson. Henley writes of growing up in the Mojave, of walking down dirt roads as a child past a house filled … Continue reading The Poetry of Place

In October of this year, my almost-brand-new Instagram account was hacked, starting a long chain of unpleasant events that included stolen passwords, barrages of phishing emails, my inadvertent deleting of my entire hard drive (I got it back, thanks to the Cloud) and weeks of stress and paranoia. At the end of this awful experience, … Continue reading Haiku Book Leads to Hack

I recently picked up a copy of Pages, the Creative Guide for Art Journaling & Bookmaking. Illustrated journaling is one of my hobbies, and I was drawn to the project on the magazine’s cover (“mini ZINES create your own!”) At the end of the magazine, I found the article “Gathering Your Story Elements,” by Jeanne … Continue reading Storyboards for Creative Writing

After attending the Oregon Poetry Association’s 2018 conference, I’ve been thinking about what makes a good conference. I’ve attended many, from small events put on by a few dedicated volunteers to big noisy affairs (AWP comes to mind). What struck me most about the OPA conference was its collegial, non-competitive atmosphere. It was a pleasure … Continue reading The 2018 Oregon Poetry Association Annual Conference, September 29-30, Eugene, OR

A couple of times a year, I search my submission spreadsheets for poems with the dubious distinction of having collected the most rejections so far. If these poems are not currently under consideration for publication, they go into a special category: Most Rejected Poems.Then I print them out and spread them on the floor of … Continue reading Saving the Most-Rejected Poems