Monday, April 14, 2014

Outwitting Gravity: The Leap, The Blog Tour, and Forthcoming Poems

I had a dream of dancing in such a way gravity was arrested when my feet left the floor in the ecstasy of whirling from one side of the room to the other. At the height of each leap, arms would extend in grip of midleap and body linger motionless.

Couldn’t help but liken the sensation to writing…the way we outwit time, taking the moment of the poem’s core and drawing it out in words for so much longer than the instant in real time.

I had this dream the night before I received the news that one of my poems, Black Angel, Scripted, Never Shot (referencing Iowa City's beloved Black Angel), is forthcoming at Soundings East and was a runner-up for the Claire Keyes Poetry Competition.  Also in the dream was another figure I couldn’t make out, keeping pace with my spinning across the floor. I like to think it was my sister, featured in the poem, in a parallel image of spinning I can share with you via the fall issue of Soundings East.

Poet Scott Withiam was the other runner-up and the winning poet was Amy Pence. While the poems chosen for Soundings East obviously won’t be available until the fall, I couldn’t resist putting up an existing poem trail for the other poets: For runner up Scott Withiam: Sweet Talking (Drunken Boat) and The Petty Snow (Rattle). And for winner Amy Pence: Age Defying, 1976 (Drunken Boat) and Cyclamens  and Pink Jasmine (storySouth).
On other “taking the leap” fronts, up on my main Transformative Blogging Site is a post for the #MyWritingProcess Blog Tour; I am grateful to Marilyn Bousquin of Writing Women’s Lives for the invitation. Here’s a link to
First Poetry Book Publication, Reckoning with Exposure, and Astral Rubbernecking. I’ll be adding links to the posts by the three bloggers I invited to carry the tour forward. Here’s one up already today by my writing colleague, friend and collaborating blogger at Mother, Writer, Mentor, Jessica Powers in which she talks about a new collaborative writing project she is undertaking with her brother. And here's the second, by my friend Edith O'Nuallain (writer, blogger, reviewer) at In a Room of My Own: ruminations on the writing process of a writer mama. (April 18 update: And here's the link for the third of my trio of bloggers, by my friend and writer Marlene Samuels in which she discusses how she writes about her family's experience of the Holocaust, how she writes across genres, and her interview project about women's regrets.)

Where are you "taking the leap" in your writing life? How and where did you get the courage to leap?
I'd love to know. It takes a village to raise a writer.
 Photo:
Taken by my daughter, Instagram's Queen of photography and videos on the fly.
Other forthcoming poems:
Thumbelina at NonBinary Review.

Mordred's Dream at Poetry Flash (and I'm hoping to have the corresponding micro-movie complete by May 1).

Other Related Links:

Poems by Claire Keyes (@ Women Writers), White Water (Redheaded Stepchild)

An essay by Claire Keyes: Marianne Boruch and The Art of Surprise (Valparaiso Poetry Review)

A review by Claire Keyes: Dream Cabinet by Ann Fisher-Wirth (Blackbird)
 
 

4 comments:

  1. Congratulations Tania, and thanks for the mention! :)

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  2. Where am I taking a leap in my writing life? How and where did I get the courage to leap?

    Surely this can only be answered by saying this:

    1. I am taking a leap by exposing more of my writing process to my readers online. And sharing this with my writing students moves us all closer- there is no secret potion. Also, I am taking a leap over the shadow I host that tells me I am less than for having not been published all over the place. LEAPING!

    2. Where and how? From my writing sisters, from you Tania, from Marilyn Bousquin, from the women in the blog series I run and in the Anthology. And from the community of women I am in here in the Berkshires and online.

    I am deeply grateful for this Village. xo S

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  3. Edith--thanks for playing on blog tour! Looking forward to your future postings, and excited to come to know your three bloggers up next week.

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  4. Suzi, amen, there's no secret potion. Just lots of good company along the way! So glad to have found you and Laundry Line Divine and to watch you weave so many kindred hearts together. Often invisible work, it feels, but just know how much it matters...much love.

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