Poetry Tips: Spring Break and Spring Cleaning

I have to admit I don’t have a Spring Break vacation to look forward to but it is that time of year when everyone ventures out on vacations with their children or with their significant others to warmer climates. It is also a time when the weather is warming up and we begin the annual spring cleaning of our homes. This week take a break from trying to come up with new poetry and start spring cleaning in your home instead. Why? Often you’ll stumble upon things that you’ve long forgotten about and when you release yourself from trying to come up with a new creation you’ll often be inspired by something forgotten and will create new works naturally. Or if you are one of the lucky ones going on vacation, abandon yourself to absorbing the sights and sounds of your surroundings and take photos. When you come back refreshed you will also have refreshed your creativity. Try it and see for yourself!

Good luck and please drop in again next week…

491 Magazine Open Submissions

While I did my best to look over the website and its guidelines I have to admit they are fairly vague. The good news is that they tend to look for poets that aren’t already well known (and not many of us are) so I say try their on-line submission manager and submit three to give poems. The response time is around 5 months but they appear to be open year-round, so give it a try by using the link below:

http://www.491magazine.com/faqs.html

Good luck to all who submit, please stop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.vivacepress.com/studyingariel.html
Studying “Ariel” by Julia Gordon-Bramer

http://boltsofsilk.blogspot.com/2011/02/watching-by-joanna-lee.html
“Watching” by Joanna Lee


Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Single Ply and Soaked Through by Leah Angstman

Leah Angstman’s latest collection from Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press, single ply and soaked through, shoots straight from the hip with pared down memories about hip urban scenes, former hometowns, and the interactions of daily life with loved ones and strangers. I am happy to share a few poems that stuck with me:



dull roar of the crowd

how to make myself fit in among them
stretch the skin to envelop their ideals
their fashions
hairdos manicures
how to laugh when someone tells
a silly something so unfunny
that one just has to laugh

unless one is one
whose mold just doesn’t stretch
from the corner where i occupy
the table of one
who fits that mold

lonely music plays and
fiddles whine and i hear it
where others hear themselves
and yet try to make
our own sounds more important
more necessary
louder and casual
until it’s as empty as
this unstretchable skin
i wear

this mold
i’ve broken

This poem sounds like my own experience at a party or social gathering where I don’t know the people I’m with very well. I’m sure most of us have had the experience of trying to fit into a new crowd or setting and noting how some people try to make themselves sound important to fit in while others sit back and watch instead. I love the idea of “whose mold just doesn’t stretch/from the corner i occupy” because I can relate directly to it. How about you?



no, tom brady doesn’t come here

look around this bar
and tell me
what tom brady would find here

yet he visits up the road a piece
his dad a regular at the
difference a few blocks
a few more wines can make

when jon malkovich used to
sit back at booth 24
i thought it a good fit
his quiet bohemia mingling with
pbr’s and dim lights and
bad-tipping tufts students

but he was no football star
the ooohs and ahhhs not so grand
below the breaths and eyes
quick to turn away
easily distracted by the equally mundane

no supermodels on arms
no small talk because he’s been
hit too many times
to think of anything clever

yes that’s what this bar needs
more glamour less intellect
less poetry
more shoulder pads

I had to ask Leah Angstman about this poem and she revealed she worked in one bar in Cambridge while her friend worked at another up the street that tended to attract big names. While celebrities came to Leah’s bar, the flashier and more glamorous celebs came to her friend’s bar. She says John Malkovich was a regular and I have to admit I am jealous. I like that the poem pokes fun at her friend and hints that Tom Brady is short on intellect compared to John Malkovich.



today i was fitted for new ear plugs

shaped to my inner ear
and the battlefield scars of my
holed non-waterproof eardrums

bulky and protruding
with large r and l indicators
tiny grips for convenient removal
and embarrassingly bright blue

in the mirror i see them
as others see them
bold blue beacons of differentiation
and confidence loses its
reflection

flashbacks to childhood
those bits of wax the size and
shape of hominy
tiny chunks that would break off
get lodged in my ear
requiring surgical removal

the humiliating days of
middle school locker room showers
when it was apparently humorous for others
to poke fingers in my ears at the plugs
despite my sad begging looks of
a thousand starving children

now the future is here
in molded plastic and a comfort fit
pieces that don’t break off
waterproof with a tiny carrying case
annoyingly labeled with my name
in case you didn’t know the defective one
complete with chain to wear as beach bling
to the special Olympics

specially formed for my
scarred and damaged eardrums
to go under water in complete comfort
without design flaws
except one
for my confidence
but hey doc
i’m sure no one will notice
that they’re
bright fucking blue.

This one makes me smile because everyone has their own stories of embarrassing childhood memories that continue to pop up into adulthood. For Leah it is the ear plugs to protect her damaged ear drums and I can relate, why would the medical companies make these stand out so much? For me, it was head gear, and all manner of devices for my teeth growing up. A poem that pays tribute to those embarrassing items we rely on for a “normal existence” but portrays us as anything but normal is a funny yet heart-string-tugging poem. Thank you Leah, for putting your own embarrassment front and center because we can relate to you and you can relate to us.



If you enjoyed this sample of poems and would like a copy of single ply and soaked through by Leah Angstman, you may purchase a copy for $5.00 (+$2.00 U.S. shipping/handling or +$3.00 outside-U.S. shipping/handling) by using the link below:

http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#single_ply_and_soaked_through


Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Poetry and Poets in Rags

Rus Bowden of New England has an entertaining and edgy poetry blog if there ever was one with live tickers, and describes himself as a car salesman who dabble in poetry, check it out at:


http://poetryandpoetsinrags.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for another featured poet…

Poetry Tips: Sensationalize

Everywhere we turn there are celebrity headlines that sensationalize even the most mundane of events in their lives. This week I want you to sensationalize the mundane events in your own life through poems with catchy headlines to match. Examples may be “Bob Overfills Coffee Machine Again” or “Spouse Gouges Coffee Table With Butter Knife” or anything you can come up with. Have fun and you may even end up with a poem you’d love to share with friends, family, and maybe even poetry editors. Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for dropping in, please stop in again next week…

Boxcar Poetry Open Submissions

I have copied-and-pasted the guidelines for you:

SUBMISSIONS
Boxcar Poetry Review seeks top quality poetry, artwork, photography, interviews, and reviews. Due to increased workloads in our non-Boxcar lives, we have recently switched to a quarterly format.
poetry
Email 3-5 poems as a Word or RTF file to poetry@boxcarpoetry.com with "POETRY-SUB: your name" in the subject line of the email. Include a brief bio in the text of your email. Simultaneous submissions ok with immediate notification. Please wait for a response before sending a second submission. We do not consider previously published material. While we currently are unable to pay our contributors, published work is eligible for Peer Awards ($25 for best poem of the issue) and the end of the year Oboh Awards (top three poems of the year).


To learn more, check out their website at:

http://www.boxcarpoetry.com/submissions.html

Good luck to all who submit, please drop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.boxcarpoetry.com/025/williams_phillip_b_001.html
“The Theory of Moths” by Phillip B. Williams


http://www.spl.org.uk/poets_a-z/williams.htm#poem
“Volcano” by J L Williams (scroll down)


Thanks for clicking in, please stop in tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Rabindranath Tagore's The Lover of God

Rabindranath Tagore lived from 1861 to 1941 and became well known at a young age when his poems first appeared in 1875. Tagore had invented the name Bhanusihma, or Sun Lion, and his poems were mistaken as a seventeenth century Vaisnava religious poet by the prominent Calcutta Journal of Bengali, Bharati. Once it was discovered that a fourteen year old boy was behind the poems that told the love of Lord Krsna as addressed by Krsna’s lover’s friend, the scholars and critics were embarrassed and the original eight poems faded away. However, Tagore would work on these poems for the rest of his lifetime despite receiving accolades for numerous literary works in poetry and prose under his own name. Tagore did not confirm or deny that the name Bhanusihma was his throughout his literary career yet they have become part of the fabric of Bengali’s literary tapestry.

To provide some additional background, Lord Krsna is famous for taking young cowherd maidens as lovers. This collection features his lover Radha and the friend who addresses Lord Krsna remains nameless. Devoted followers of Lord Krsna are called Vaisnava poets and the poetry written is termed Vaisnava songs or Vaisnava poetry.

The collection of these initial eight poems and more such poems that Rabindranath Tagore has written in the collection The Lover of God have been translated from Bengali by Tony K. Stewart and Chase Titchell and have been published by Copper Canyon Press. This collection also features the original poems in Bengali with its English translation on the other side. It is just as fascinating to learn about Tagore as it is to see the characters that make up the Bengali language when reading the translation. The poems are beautiful, sensuous, and express Radha’s friend’s advice and wishes to Lord Krsna in regards to his chosen lover. I have been granted permission to present one poem in its entirety which is very difficult but I assure you the entire collection is enchanting and I urge you to pick up a copy for yourself:


Poem #7 expresses Radha’s point of view and then her friend’s voice closes the poem:

Listen, can you hear it?
His bamboo flute speaks
the pure language of love.
The moon enlightens the trees,
the path, the sinuous Yamuna.
Oblivious of the jasmine’s scent
I stagger around,
disheveled heart bereft of modesty,
eyes wet with nerves and delight.
Tell me, dear friend, say it aloud:
is he not my own Dark Lord Syama?
Is it not my name his flute pours
into the empty evening?

For eons I longed for God,
I yearned to know him.
That’s why he has come to me now,
deep emerald Lord of my breath.
O Syama, whenever your faraway flute thrills
through the dark, I say your name,
only your name, and will my body to dissolve
in the luminous Yamuna.

Go to her, Lord, go now.
What’s stopping you?
The earth drowns in sleep.
Let’s go. I’ll walk with you.


This poems tells of the anticipation of Lord Krsna’s arrival from Radha’s perspective, her senses tingling and listening for the flute he often plays to draw the young maidens to him. Radha’s friend calls to Lord Krsna to go to Radha and satisfy her.


To read and enjoy several poems more from The Lover of God by Rabindranath Tagore for a better understanding and/or to purchase a copy for yourself for $15.00 (not including Shipping and Handling) please use the link below:

https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/browse/book.asp?bg={8E8620FF-38D9-4546-B48C-5070EFF15956}


Thanks always for reading, please drop by tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

3by3by3 Blog

This site takes poems straight from the headlines with fascinating results, check out how you can do it yourself and submit to this blog and definitely read the poems featured by using the link below:

http://www.3by3by3.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop in tomorrow for another featured poet…

Poetry Tips: It's All in a Name

There has been a variety of reasons why individuals’ names have garnered my attention. Some parents have come up with fairly creative names that make me wonder about their personalities, names such as: Silver Ware and Bee Flowers (I’m not making this up).

How on earth would you dedicate a poem to someone with such unusual names without laughing or making it tongue-in-cheek? So this week pay attention to names and if you find any unusual ones or any that have a nice “ring” to them, then see if you can dedicate a poem to that individual. It doesn’t mean the person will ever read it, it’s just for fun, and if you want to share the poem, by all means, do so.

Have fun and please stop by again next week…

Saltgrass Journal Open Submissions

You may submit up to three previously unpublished poems via a single word document attachment via e-mail to editor Julia Cohen Poetry Editor at saltgrassDOTjournalATgmailDOTcom


Check out the journal and further details by using the link below:

http://saltgrasscontents.blogspot.com/2007/04/submission-guidelines.html

Good luck to all who submit, please drop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.juked.com/2011/02/bingo.asp
“Bingo!” by Howard Good

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174826
“The Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

An Interview with Aleathia Drehmer about You Find Me Everywhere

Aleathia Drehmer’s latest collection of poems, You Find Me Everywhere, was published by Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press in October, 2010. Inside the poems are filled with moments of everyday life that take on new meanings and connections to the past and the future. From revelations to sentimental moments I found myself nodding in agreement with someone whose words and ideas sound so familiar that you wonder if Aleathia Drehmer lives next door. Ms. Drehmer has published two other collections of poems through Kendra Steiner Editions and a shared collection with Dan Provost by Rank Stranger Press. You may also recognize her as the creator and editor of Durable Goods which has been featured on Poet Hound before and she is also the editor of the book The Beards from Tainted Coffee Press. After reading her collection or poems in You Find Me Everywhere I decided I needed to seek her out and ask her about her collection and she graciously accepted:

1) Your collection’s title leads me to wonder who finds you everywhere, would you mind expanding on how you came up with the title “You Find Me Everywhere?”

The title was taken from a poem that has the same name that appears inside the collection. The poem “You Find Me Everywhere” came from the realization that my interconnectivity with nature was something deeply ingrained in my person, not something I could remove very easily. This connection is more of a spiritual one, rather than the idea that I am a nature buff. When I go outside, I feel my surroundings. I feel a part of them and in this connection with elements such as wind and water….you could essentially find me carried everywhere. I had seen the cover photo by Amanda Oaks on a women’s literary site called Hem, which I am a part of. I loved the idea of the pins all crowded together marking all the places one could be found. I think the collection encompasses how all over the place I can be. The title was never meant in an egotistical way. It was meant to say, if you need me, you can find me everywhere you look.



2) Also, your collection is divided into sections titled Love, Observations, Medicine, and Ends. Were these shorter collections you had started and put together or do they have more rhyme and reason as I assume they do since the entire collection flows nicely together?

When I was asked to do this collection it took me completely by surprise because it came shortly after the publication of “A Quiet Learning Curve” from Rank Stranger Press. I never expect to get asked to publish my work and was honored that Leah Angstman wanted me to put together something. The works were divided into sections because I thought there needed to be a small pause between them…a single word to set the mind to frame up what the reader was about to take in. The section “Love” isn’t filled with mushy love poems. I often don’t think of love that way, but I hope it shows all the small and silent ways a person can love and be loved. “Observations” comes from watching how people interact with each other and how I fold myself into that mixture. It is about awareness to the human condition that so many of us ignore because it isn’t flashy. I have spent my entire life in quiet observation. “Medicine” was meant to be a play on the idea that “laughter is the best medicine” and the poems included in it were all written with playful feeling for me which wasn’t something I had ever entertained before. I had the misconception that poetry always had to be serious to be taken serious. Life teaches you otherwise. Lastly, “Ends” is simply about the ending of things. My grandmother had died the year before and I didn’t get to say goodbye before she left this earth and several of the poems are for her. We have to recognize the ends of things as the beginnings of something else. It is what keeps us going.



3) There are many poems that tugged at my elbow that I’d like to ask for more details about. The first poem is “Off Guard.” A sock falls out of a dryer and sticks to you which makes your heart race in search of the mystery man it may belong to but the search comes up fruitless. It reminds me of my college days in Laundromats between boyfriends. I’ll feature the poem with the questions: How did you come up with this poem? Who is the mystery man you seek?


Off Guard

His sock falls out of the dryer
and my heart beats quicker.
I think, has it been that long
since I have seen something
of a man’s mixed in with colorful
panties and tiny kid shirts?

It tricks me into thinking
he is here, somewhere
in the next room with book
cradled in hand, succumbed
to short story classics—lulled
by the quiet filtering through the windows.

I catch glimpses of him,
now and then, when the light
moves across the ceiling, or the room
is persecuted with stillness.
And then he flees as quickly
as he arrived, and leaves me
standing in front of an open machine,
heat clinging to the hem of my skirt
with one sock against my chest.

The sock fell out of the dryer at my own home while I was doing laundry. My boyfriend, Dan Provost, lives in Massachusetts and we have been maintaining a long distance relationship for some time. One of his socks got mixed into our laundry without me realizing it. He had left that morning to go home and it was when our relationship was just getting started after both of our endings to other long term cohabitations. I had lived without a man in the house for several years so his man-sock was like this strange reminder that he had been here and that he was gone and that it wasn’t all a dream. At that time, I never thought I would miss a man in that way and it took me off guard.



4.) “He wanted a love poem” is a title that so many poets can relate to. Before I began to read it I imagined all the men I dated who hoped I’d write a love poem or all the people who asked for my help writing a love poem for their own lover. The poem itself sounds, to me, that whatever poem was written or spoken cannot be undone and that the man who received it could never appreciate it even if he had wanted to because of who he is as a person. With the poem I ask: Is this poem inspired by a true story in your life and what details can you provide about this poem’s origins?

He wanted a love poem

you can never undo that imprint
i lifted from the fibers of your
mind, those intricate wires
nestled in your nerve centers
whose electricity never failed
to defibrillate me whenever
you came close.

i wanted to whisper these things
behind your ear, let them grow
there like untended wildflowers
but i knew you would weed
them out in disbelief—your heart

empty like this watering can.

“He wanted a love poem” came about after the writer Jesse Bradley sent me a new poem he was working on and he wanted my opinion. I had never met this writer personally, but I had read his work before and published some of his fiction on my online fiction website, In Between Altered States. In the poem he mentioned that universal idea that his ex-girlfriend never wrote him a love poem and he was questioning the validity of love because she didn’t write him something. This was an off the cuff poem for me. It was a reaction to what he had written and the sentiment in this poem has no real personal connection to him. I love these sorts of poems because it allows me to step outside myself and pretend. This always elevates the work, because it allows me to dig into layers of myself I had not mined before. When writing it I imagined I was a woman whispering this poem into a man’s ear and because he had waited so long to hear it, he didn’t recognize what it was when he had it, thus leaving him empty still.



5.) “It takes a village” is a poem many women can relate to, even if they don’t have children. A group of women chat at a playground as their kids play together and this particular group of women are learning each other’s names for the first time despite the mentioned year spent together. You note that the gestures made are the same ones that your mothers and grandmothers have made and that you carry on the tradition, hence the title of “It takes a village.” What inspired this poem that so many of us can picture and relate to so clearly? Why are the three women unlikely to chat together? I love the line “this social mountain”, could you expand on what you mean by that line? Is this “social mountain” related to why it took so long to ask each other’s names as adults chatting on the playground? The ending lines are wonderful, too, about generations of women holding down the corner of their neighborhood while have dreams of spreading their wings to fly—can you expand on that as well?

It takes a village

We hold down the corner
on the divergence of our block,
three unlikely women together
in the stages of morning before we
are truly ready for the world.

There is a triangulating of bodies
and speech, naming each other
for the first time, though
we have spoken every day for a year
standing in morning suns,
our children running circles
about us creating their own connections
and carving a path around
this social mountain.

When they have gone, we become
an ecosystem of experience,
fleshing out common ground
in the bustle of moving cars and
noisy lawnmowers drowning
parts of our voices;

we gesticulate the rest of our words
as we have seen our mothers
and grandmothers do in the years
before, when we never thought
we would be that old; when we climbed our
own mountains and ran circles,
when they too had dreams
of leaving and spreading wings
standing on the corners
they held down.

When my daughter was just starting kindergarten, we moved into an apartment community that had many types of ethnic folks living here. There were people from Africa, China, India, Russia, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Mexico. I chose this neighborhood because of this diversity. I wanted my daughter to grow up not really recognizing the color of skin as something that separates but as something that connects you to places you have never been before. Every morning that year of school I walked my daughter to the bus stop where I met these other two mothers. There were always the usual good mornings and talks about the weather or projects at school. It was all very nice and pleasant. One day after we had them all on the bus, we had stopped at the corner where we usually went our separate ways to our apartments and began talking. I can’t even remember the conversation, but I remember that sense of feeling connected to women as a gender, because that was something I had struggled with most of my life. I was usually “one of the guys” in my social circles.

I was naïve then that we could be women who were unlikely to talk to each other. One was a Latin woman from California, the other an older woman from NYC and then there was me, the token country white woman. What I learned from that day was that our geography doesn’t change the basic needs we have as women and as humans….to have connection and acceptance and friendship.

The “social mountain,” for me, is this looming interaction of people for which I often feel awkward participating in. As humans we are always making connections and jockeying for position even if we don’t realize it. We observe those around us to learn social customs and language and how we should act. We do this instinctively. I have always been one that was tempted to do whatever would make me accepted rather than doing what made me an individual. In my life, I have always been attracted to people, especially women that have the ability to do this. These women weren’t social conformers and they had these great ideas and interesting complex lives that I wouldn’t have known about had I not stood there on the corner participating in “social mountain” experiences.

As for the ending and holding down the corner, it is a tribute to what our mothers and grandmothers gave up in raising us. Did they give up dreams? What would they have done if they didn’t have the burden of raising us? Would they have gone on to be famous or discover something that could save the world? I think in this world and in the writing world, mothers are not appreciated for what they do. It is the hardest job in the world to steer another human being in the right direction and provide for them moral stepping stones and social stepping stones so that they can go into society prepared to think and be open and understand the things happening to them. Mothers juggle their lives to make everyone happy and to provide opportunity. That line in the poem encompassed this idea for me.



6.) I love poems about books and this one is titled “Nightwatchmen” which I find fascinating. The idea that books watch over us at night is something I’d never thought of. In this poem you ask the old, familiar book spines “Who wants to take me somewhere?” and note that they are the ones who see you as you truly are day in and day out. How did this poem come about and what about books in general speaks to you in this way?

Nightwatchmen

I stand blank-faced, excited inside
asking all the books in my house
“Who wants to take me somewhere?”

I ask them, and not those books
alphabetized and homogenized—
ones who claim their powers
in neon signs and bright covers,

but the ones in my home
sitting on dusty shelves;
the ones who watch me
cry into the pillow at night;
the ones who see me laugh
out the window; the ones
who watch me touch myself;
who see my flaws and still stay

waiting and patient
and quietly, alone.

My bedroom is filled with bookcases and many sorts of books. I was particularly melancholy this day and feeling lonely. I sat up in my bed and looked around the room at all the art from friends and books of poetry and novels and pictures of loved ones and realized that in each of those items there was a memory; in each of those books an adventure I had not gone on yet. When I read a book I become one of its unseen characters. I cry and laugh out loud. I feel connected to these fictional people that touch my heart and there is a small, quick grief process at the end of a book for me. These books watch out for my soul. Each book calls to me when their certain experience is needed in my life. I don’t read them for pure entertainment, I read them to figure out something about myself even if it is challenging and hard to digest. I rarely read a book twice because there are too many books in the world to read. Having said that, I do have authors that I visit often like Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, and Wallace Stegner. I am a prairie girl at heart.



7.) In your poem “Hurricanes of Snow” we look at a funeral home with you in two perspectives: The one from your childhood in which it held no more significance than just another building to run around and the one as an adult in which you stand outside as a result of a death of someone you loved. The juxtaposition is familiar yet striking, there are many times childhood and adulthood perspectives clash within the same person and could you expand on how this one came to inspire this poem? May I ask who it is that passed away, especially important since you mention that it cuts into your daughter’s eighth birthday and your grandmother’s house from childhood? How did it affect the rest of your family that day and how did that shape your poem as well?

Hurricanes of Snow

I stood outside the door
of the funeral home
watching the winds
carry loose snow across
the back lot like an icy
hurricane no one took
notice of as it twisted
and cut into the beginning
of winter, into my daughter’s
eighth birthday.

When I look closer through
my frozen stalled breath
I realized that, as children,
we would cut through this lot
from my grandmother’s house.

In the summer, we would run
through the maze of underbrush,
stop to pick blackberries and tiger
lilies, hope beyond hope we didn’t
misstep and end up in the swamp
full of skunk cabbage and green
slime; we carefully triangulated
the stones we’d use to cross
the crick if it were low enough.

It was always cooler there next
to the high concrete wall and we
could smell the donuts frying
next to the funeral home and
never thought it was a scary place
because of it.

But now it is different after seeing
her lie in an open casket for two hours,
waiting for her to say my name
and slap my arm and laugh. This place
is cold and circular and filled with
darkened hearts and though I’ll
never cross that crick again, it somehow
changes the thrill of adventure.

My father’s mother died a few days before my daughter’s eighth birthday and her funeral was on my daughter’s birthday. I had to miss her special day to bury my grandmother in Connecticut.

The strange thing about this poem is that most of the memory is relative to a grandmother who is still alive. My mother’s mother lived in that place behind the funeral home that I speak of and those memories of her place embody the essence of childhood for me. In the last 5 years or so she had moved from that place to another across town. That had been my “home” for my entire life no matter where I lived. Her moving was a little bit of a death for me. It broke off a piece of my heart. Standing at the side door of the funeral home for my other grandmother’s wake, I was able to merge these two losses and somehow also bond them with the good memories.

I saw my father at the funeral and our relationship has always been very distant and awkward for which neither of us know why. His mother was the rock of their family while also being the biggest party animal. She was a force to be reckoned with and survived a very hard life. To the end of her life she lived it as she wanted to and that is admirable to all of us in the family. I was not as close with her as my other cousins were and my violently sad reaction to her death surprised me. It filled me with regret about how much time I had wasted and how little connection I had with my father’s family. Her death has built more conversations with my family that weren’t there years ago.



8.) Are there any other collections you are working on? Are there any poems or collections coming out in the future we can look for? Thanks so much for consenting to the interview and please keep us informed of upcoming projects or any blogs or web-sites we may visit to read more or your work and learn more about you.

I am not specifically working on a collection for anyone, though the phases of writing I go through tend to make themselves into collections. I seem to be amassing a group of sestinas as well as a massive group of ekphrastic poetry. I have been writing collaborative poems with my very good friend Brad Burjan that I hope might find a home someday. I don’t write in terms of making books. My poems are my memories of every adventure I have and of the things that move me. I write them down for a time when my memory has gone so I will not forget where I came from no matter how painful or beautiful it might have been.

Thank you so much for inviting me to do this interview. It always takes me by surprise when such things happen. Right now, I am preparing to table at the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair in March with the lovely Lynn Alexander from Full of Crow. I am a regular participant in Alternating Current’s Abandoned Blogs project and find myself helping out folks here and there when they need it. This last year or so has been about trying to build a community in the small press and emphasizing that helping each other succeed benefits us all. I am going to be doing some readings in Cleveland this summer as I make my way on an art museum tour from upstate New York to Chicago and back.

My previously published poetry and fiction can be found at www.myabdication.blogspot.com and my online fiction website In Between Altered States can be found at www.inbetweenalteredstates.wordpress.com.

Thank you so much for having me and asking such great questions. Be well.

Aleathia




If you enjoyed the sample of poems and the interview as much as I have, you may pick up a copy of You Find Me Everywhere by Aleathia Drehmer for $5.00 (+ $2 US or $3 Out-of-US shipping and handling) at Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press at:

http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#you_find_me_everywhere

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Winedrunk Sidewalk Blog

This features a single poem every day, which I love. Visit John Grochalki’s prolific poetry at:

http://winedrunksidewalk.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for another featured poet…