Welcome...join me for a year of transformative and collaborative inquiry with a focus on women bloggers.
Photo Poem Montage
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Nefertiti Among Us
The TV’s neutral male voiceover covers what we love about Egypt and their pharaohs: house-sized rocks that formed the pyramids dropped ... more
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Photo Poem Montages
In seeming counter-intuition to the usual process of listening to poetry and allowing each reader to supply his or her ... more
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She Dressed in a Hurry (for Lady Diana)
She dressed in a hurry or perhaps never wore a slip. The photo the press loved: a girl in a ... more
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Nefertiti on the Astral
Nefertiti on the Astral I did what I came to do. Dead, I have the luxury to know: the locus of ... more
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Amelia
Blood-wing blackbird, deserting again the nest of spice, to burn, in the circle of my domain: the open miles of sky, ... more
Transformative Blogging
Fairy Tales, Facebook, and Poetry Prompts with Guest Blogger Erica Goss
Erica Goss writes a video poetry column, The Third Form, for Connotation Press (something I discovered not too long ago when I was foraging for video poetry sites). Her new book, Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets, is a collection of writing prompts that wrote itself in part online, prompt by prompt, on a Facebook page. Here’s the story of the book’s genesis, a look at the advantages of working with a small press, and an excerpt from a chapter titled, “Fairy Tales.” When I became Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, a small town in Northern California’s Silicon Valley, I began posting poetry writing prompts every Friday on the Los Gatos Poet Laureate Facebook page. Some were more successful than others – for example, my prompt to “write a poem in the voice of someone twice your age” elicited wry comments from individuals who stated that they would be writing in the ... more
First Poetry Book Publication, Reckoning with Exposure, and Astral Rubbernecking
The My Writing Process Blog Tour is spiraling through the blogosphere, offering the inspirational Mother lode on process specifics for those of us between writing groups, classes, or retreats. Pull us up on Twitter using #MyWritingProcess to see multiple answers to four simple questions: What are you working on? How does your work differ from others of its genre? Why do you write what you write? How does your writing process work? No sooner had I added “blog tour” as part of my to-do list for this fall’s poetry book promotion than appeared Marilyn Bousquin’s invitation to join the tour. I first met Marilyn at She Writes; over the years I enjoyed the warmth and pith of her comments so much that I signed up for her newsletter at Writing Women’s Lives where she mentors women writers. I love her site’s tagline: Your writing. Your story. Your life. Where craft meets consciousness. Marilyn nails the ... more
The Conjuring of a Poet Tarot Deck: An Interview with Two Sylvias Press
I’ve been on the Royal Road of Tarot for many years with all the usual detours in focus (degrees, children, career). But once on such a path, one is always a pilgrim in some form and blessed by synchronicity. I spent the month of February preparing to teach a new on-line course focusing on writing and the tarot, Exploring the Minor Mentors of Tarot: A Tour Through the Suits (starts March 17, 2014; enroll here). And then I pored over lists of carpool schedules for my three children so they’d survive the five days I’d attend my first AWP Conference in Seattle (held annually by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs—hundreds of presses, MFA program tables, thousands of writers and panels and more). Though I tucked two tarot decks into my suitcase, the full tilt itinerary meant I never had time to throw cards. But at AWP's evening reading featuring Robert Hass, Gary Snyder and ... more
Classes
Beginning Blogging
Two out of five of your friends have started a blog. Why? Should you be blogging ... more
Poetry Play: A Tour Through the Forms
Do you haiku? Ever written a haibun, aubade, or epistolary poem? Want to try your hand ... more
Exploring the Minor Mentors of Tarot: A Tour Through The Suits
Approaching the tarot from a relaxed, inspirational point of view, we will explore what the images ... more
Transformative Blogging: Inquiry via Mask
Writing exercises bookend the making of a three-dimensional mask that serves a dual purpose: to provide ... more