Wednesday evening, the Bellefonte Art Museum hosted a poetry reading with the 2023 winners and runners-up of their monthly Ekphrastic Poetry Contest. I was one of the runners-up for January with my response to If 10 Million Fireflies by Danielle Austin. Since we went in chronological order, I was first up and unsure of the crowd … Read more
It’s here!!! Paperback: Amazon Ebook: Amazon Kindle | Nook | Smashwords This is a collection of poems from an especially fruitful poetry season — the year and a half I was living in Siberia. In a sense, this book is a tribute to that time, that place, and all the beautiful souls I met there. … Read more
This poem began as a response to Mary Oliver’s “I Have Decided” (found in A Thousand Mornings) and quickly flew off in its own direction, until during my revisions I had to cut the response part of it entirely. The original remains scribbled in my notebook, which I’m glad I had with me at the … Read more
Fika is a Swedish term for having coffee, frequently with some sweet dessert, and often with colleagues, friends, or family. I’ve loved this idea ever since I first heard of it, and this year I’ve started my own variation: poetry fika, in which your coffee break date is actually a poet, speaking to you through words on … Read more
One of my favorite poems of the German language is Bertolt Brecht’s “Erinnerung an die Marie A.” The themes of youthful love, impermanence, and fading memory stuck with me the first time I read it, and the poem continues to give me a wistful feeling each time I reread. Perhaps someday I’ll attempt to give it … Read more