Here are the covers of the twenty-five books I reviewed for the first year of Sticks & Stones. As you can see, the covers make a lovely collage, and each one reveals something about the poems inside. Every one of these books was an adventure, a chance to […]
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. […]
In October, I was happily writing a poem about gardening, when it took a sudden turn and revealed its true topic: the calamity of immigrant children held in cages at the US/Mexico Border. That day, I posted “For some reason my nature poems keep turning into political poems” […]
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 […]
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 […]
I just received the proof from Lulu of my first self-published book, titled STONE empty chair. It’s a collection of my best haiku, starting about ten years ago and ending in August, 2018. It’s a little book full of little poems – just 6.5 x 4.5, with 50-odd […]
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 […]
Right now, hundreds of fires are burning in the Western United States. The air in Washington and Oregon is the worst in the nation. Every morning, the sun shines an eerie bronze light over the land. The sky over Eugene, Oregon, where I live, reminds me of the […]
Thanks to Trish Hopkinson and Dick Allen for this wonderful list! I especially like 2, 3, 4, 12, and 13. Trish Hopkinson Great guest blog post rewind up today from Dick Allen… the 13 ways to support poetry below include what to ask your local library, how to […]
I’m an inveterate recycler. I have a compost pile and six chickens so I can turn food scraps into soil and eggs. I love repurposed items: quilts sewn from old clothes, wind chimes made of bent spoons, collages of torn magazine pages. Therefore, I was delighted to discover that […]