Good Blinis To You
Tiffany Paynter: Pride, Poetry and the Power of the Spoken Word — Repeating Islands
The Bermuda National Gallery features artist and writer Tiffany Paynter. To read full article and interview with the artist, and to listen to her reading of “God Gap” in the 2018 Bermuda Biennial, visit the BNG blog. Tiffany Paynter describes herself, in the words of feminist writer and Civil Rights activist Audre Lorde, as ‘a black lesbian woman […]
Tiffany Paynter: Pride, Poetry and the Power of the Spoken Word — Repeating Islands
The poems of Leslie McGrath: ‘an oral historian of the alienated’
When she was a college student, Leslie McGrath, a poet who lives in Essex, majored in Spanish and psychology and immersed herself in literature from Mexico, Spain, Central and South America, reading everything from Don Quixote to contemporary poems in Spanish. She wrote poems in Spanish, not seriously writing poetry in English until her 40s.
Critic Grace Cavalieri has called McGrath “an oral historian of the alienated.” Many of McGrath’s poems are set in Connecticut and are often concerned with the lives of women and the dignity of the mentally ill. She also writes about the pleasures of good food. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: “Feminists Are Passing From Our Lives,” (2018), “Out from the Pleiades: A Picaresque” novella in verse (2014) and “Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage” (2009). She is the winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Gretchen Warren award from the New England Poetry Club. She is series editor of The Tenth Gate, a poetry imprint of The Word Works Press.
McGrath was born in Connecticut and has lived here all her life. She teaches creative writing at Central Connecticut State University and says she is “proud to be of Connecticut and so lucky to teach the young adults who are its future… Some students come to my classes with an interest in poetry; others are there just to fulfill a credit for their degree. But every semester I watch as a few students who have never thought of themselves as particularly sensitive or creative realize that they have a hidden affinity for poem writing and poetic thinking. It’s a kind of superpower. And I know that once they realize they have this, they will have its comfort for the rest of their lives. They’ll know where to look for words of wisdom when they’re confused and words of comfort when they’re down.”
— Ginny Lowe Connors, former poet laureate of West Hartford
Call for Pandemic Poetry Submissions
Due to the overwhelming response to our four Pandemic Issues we published in April, and continued interest, we will once again publish poetry concerning the pandemic. Please send us your best work and how the pandemic has affected you, your neighborhood, and your country. As the virus continues its unrelenting attack, we urge all to be safe and wear a mask.
Send your submission in one Word doc. with no more than four poems, including a 50 word bio. Please send to sahmsguarnieriandreutter@gmail.com . The deadline for submissions to the new pandemic issue is August 10th. Due to the anticipated response we will not be able to respond to each individual submission and all submissions received after August 10th will be discarded.
North of Oxford presents The Pandemic Issues.
North of Oxford – The Pandemic Issue #1
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2020/04/19/__trashed-2/
North of Oxford- The Pandemic Issue #2
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/north-of-oxford-the-pandemic-issue-2/
North…
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It Transports You to Location
New review on Amazon:
Highly recommend The Salty River Bleeds
The Salty River Bleeds is another terrific creation by Stephen Page. It transports you to location with descriptions of nature and imagery. Wonderful poetry! My book magically disappeared and it turns out my teenage daughter had taken it and left it in her room. She also loved it! I highly recommend Stephen’s sophisticated poems.
Mark 3 by Caitlin O’Neil Amaral
New story in the new Tampa Review, featuring guns, motherhood, and the compromises we’ll make for a sense of safety. During the ‘new normal,’ a mother attempts to keep her sanity and raise her children in safety.
http://tampareview.blogspot.com/2020/01/caitlin-oneil-wins-danahy-fiction-prize.html
Caitlin O’Neil, a writer and college professor from Milton, Massachusetts, is the winner of the thirteeth annual Danahy Fiction Prize, judged by the editors of Tampa Review. She receives a cash award of $1,000 and her winning short story, “Mark,” will be published in the forthcoming Spring/Summer issue of Tampa Review.
O’Neil is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University and currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.Her short fiction has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Kenyon Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Calyx, Calliope, Beloit Fiction Journal, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has previously won the Ninth Letter Prize in Fiction, the Women Who Write International Short Prose Contest, and received a Massachusetts Cultural Council individual artist grant.
Circe by Madeline Miller
My wife loved the Spanish translation of Circe so much, she kept reading the last few chapters over and over again or going all the way back to the beginning whenever she neared the last sentence. After she finally finished reading it, she placed it on one of her bookshelves with the cover facing out.
Weekend Lockup
Leslie McGrath: The Death of Dogs — Vox Populi
In the middle of the night when he thinks I’m asleep, Bill will weep without sound shaking the bed like a curse at God
