My thanks to Catherine Lu for creating a beautiful radio piece about my poetry to close out National Poetry Month at Houston Public Media. You can hear the story here. It’s part of a month-long series about Houston poets called Voices & Visions.
Where I’ll Be at #AWP18
WITS Alliance @ #AWP18 | Booth #812Tampa, Florida |March 7 – 10, 2018
Wednesday, March 7th:
- AWP Board of Trustees
- AWP Awards Ceremony feature Joy Harjo 6:30pm, Il Terrazzo at the Marriott Waterside Hotel, Tampa
Thursday, March 8th:
- 12 Noon | Book Signing: Dear Red Airplane (Seven Kitchens, 2018) at University of Houston CWP/Gulf Coast Magazine, Booth 1523/1527 in the Bookfair
- 1:30pm | Poetry in Public Places: Room 5 & 6, Tampa Convention Center, 1st floor with Meggie Monahan (WITS Houston), Laurin Macios (Mass Poetry), Scott Cunningham (O, Miami), Martin Farawell (Dodge Poetry Festival), Aisha Sloan (University of Arizona Poetry Center)
- 2:00pm | Book Signing: Teeth & Teeth, Headmistress Press, T1932 in the Bookfair
- 4:30pm | The Literary Twitterati: Room 16, Tampa Convention Center, 1st floor
with Analicia Sotelo, Dorothea Lasky, Ruben Quesada, Kaveh Akbar, Eve Ewing
Friday, March 9th:
- 9:00am | WITS Alliance Meeting: Room 13, Tampa Convention Center, 1st floor
Writers in the Schools (WITS) Alliance invites current and prospective members to attend a general meeting led by Robin Reagler, Executive Director of WITS Houston. We will discuss how to start and/or expand a WITS program in your community, fundraising, strategies for growth, technology in classrooms, and more.
- 10:30am | A WITS Alumni Reading: The Unfiltered Imagination: Room 14, Tampa Convention Center, 1st floor
with Jack McBride, Niki Herd, Nicky Beer, Karyna McGlynn, Ramon Isao
- 1:30pm | Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! The Unconventional Writing Career: Room 14, Tampa Convention Center, 1st floor
with Michele Kotler (Community-Word Project), Martin Rock (Exploratorium), Abby Travis (Milkweed Editions), Thomas Calder (Mountain Xpress), Giuseppe Taurino (University of Houston Creative Writing Program)
Saturday, March 10th:
- 10:30am | Small Experiments with Radical Intent: Room 14, Tampa Convention Center, 1st floor
with Alicia Craven, Kima Jones, Ramiza Koya, Janine Joseph, Desiree Dallagiacomo
- 1:30pm | Loud Because We Have to Be: Literary Advocacy in Today’s World: Room 7, 8, & 9, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
with Tina Cane (WITS Rhode Island), Diane Lane (Get Lit), Erin Belieu (Writers Resist), Britt Udesen (LitNet), Nina Ozlu Tunceli (Americans for the Arts)
- 8:30pm | Reading by Mark Doty, Khaled Mattawa, and Layli Long Soldier, Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets
Book Signing at #AWP18 in Tampa
I’ll do two book signing stints for two new chapbooks at #AWP18 in Tampa. Both will be on Thursday, March 8th, the first day of the conference.
I’ll be signing Dear Red Airplane at the University of Houston booth #1225 at 12 noon. If you’re at the Bookfair, please come thru! It would be great to see/meet you.
Get your copy of Teeth & Teeth and say hi at the Headmistress Press booth #T1932 at the #AWP18 conference in Tampa on Thursday, March 8th, at 2 pm.
A Box Full of Teeth
A big box of my new chapbook arrived this week. I’m still feeling completely stunned by it. Teeth & Teeth is the winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize, selected by poet Natalie Diaz and published by Headmistress Press. Here’s how Ching-In Chen describes it:
Robin Reagler’s Teeth & Teeth is a wild-mouthed dispatch from the cities of mourning we all inhabit, a desperate love letter to the waiting selves which grow out of exile from normalcy. In the face of the wearing down of the body, despite loss, these poems demand gratitude for the fierce habits of the living. —Ching-In Chen
You can purchase Teeth & Teeth at Headmistress Press or amazon.com.
Public Poetry 1/6/18
I’ll be reading poems at Public Poetry on Saturday, January 6, 2018, with Corinna Delgado, Amanda Ortiz, and Miranda Mahoney. Join us at 2 pm at the Jungman Branch (5830 Westheimer Road, Houston, Texas 77057) of the Houston Public Library. FREE
.
Next Stop: National Poetry Month
April 1st marks the beginning of National Poetry Month. If you’re crazy enough to try writing a poem a day during April, home base for this dizzying enterprise is NaPoWriMo.Net. They will offer writing prompts and encouragement all month long. Write About Now is leading a 30/30 group on facebook with prompts and feedback loops. Other sources of inspiration include:
As you discover other NaPoWriMo 2017 sites, please share them in the comment section, and I will add them to this list.
MAYDAY Magazine’s LGBTQ Issue
The most recent issue of MAYDAY Magazine features LGBTQ poets, writers, and artists. Heartfelt thanks to the guest editors, Chad Dimock and Amy King, for including my poem “The Heights” in this issue.
National Poetry Month 2016
I’m way behind, but here’s my annual list of daily prompts for National Poetry Month:
Punk Trumpet (revised)
google
made of magic
magenta-colored plastic
this song
limps with an instep
muscling in the brass
sound with its punk mind-set
I’d say it’s like murder
with an ostentatious backstory
or it’s smashed music
sizzling like an old concept
mashing
to pulp the whittled judicious
biscuits and iconic
red eye gravy.
Prompts to Fight the Blank Page Freeze Burn
Here’s a list of sites with prompts to help with NaPoWriMo 2015:
NaPoWriMo
Found Poetry Review
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/pomosco-celebrating-national-poetry-month-2015/
Poetic Asides
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/2015-april-pad-challenge-guidelines
30 Day Poetry Challenge
https://www.facebook.com/30dpc
Vince Gotera
http://vincegotera.blogspot.com/
This is a list in progress so please suggest other sites, and I will add them.
Who Will Write a Poem a Day for NaPoWriMo 2015?
It’s almost April – once again. And time to face the cruelty known as NaPoWriMo. Who wants to try writing a poem a day starting tomorrow? I’m trying to gather some muster myself. Leave me a link if you’re planning to blog your poems.
Where Gaming Meets Poetry
A new video game called “Elegy for a Dead World” takes the gamer on a journey and the result is poetry. The game, developed by Dejobaan Games and Popcannibal Games uses classic poems by Keats and Shelley. Read more about the poetics of gaming on Harriet.
Shocking Polaroids by Phillip Stearns
Artist Phillip Stearns experiments by applying electric shock to Polaroid film. The results are wild.
Stearns has exploded the moment and an exhibit of this work is on display at the Transfer Gallery in NYC. For more information, check out this story in the Huffington Post.
Chino Otsuko, Then and Now, All at Once
Memory plays tricks on us, confounding us with the passage of time. Photographer Chino Otsuko demonstrates this phenomenon through her exhibit Finding Me. In My Modern Met, The artist photoshops herself into travel photos from the past to create a double moment in time. Otsuko explains her project:
“The digital process becomes a tool, almost like a time machine as I’m embarking on the journey to where I once belonged and at the same time becoming a tourist in my own history.”
For more on the project, visit My Modern Met.
Cross-Cultural Collage Graffiti by Lili Jenks and 10H23
via Wooster Street:
Working with silkscreen artist 10H23, French street artist Lili Jenks (also known as PAPERGLUEnSCOTCH) is making collages that cross borders. The team collected strips of paper from billboards in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil then swapped and reorganized the billboard strips into large collages with screen prints of old photos by 10H23. After making huge photocopies of these pieces, PAPERGLUEnSCOTCH pasted the collages as posters, spreading her work far and wide.
