Thursday, December 17, 2015

December 20 Submission Workshop for San Diego Writers

Salvage Your December with Tania Pryputniewicz at San Diego Writers, Ink

I'm looking for a few more students to come out this coming Sunday, December 20th  for three hours to join me for my Submission Blitz workshop. We will bring work, work in progress, and lists of places to potentially submit. We will match work with targets so that January 1 you are ready to come out of holiday haze ahead of the game and eager to submit to new venues.

Remember to bring your own list of targets to share and any hard copy zines you want to let us peruse as well as at least one in-process poem or short story or project you are revising. I’ve printed out a copy of Tweetspeak Poetry's Submission Map for us to flag state by state to indicate where we’ve published as a class. Bring a friend…you’ll keep one another accountable to your goals!

All the details here: Salvage Your December with Tania Pryputniewicz.

Interview Live at r.k.v.r.y. Quarterly Literary Journal with Tina Pocha


Suffering was incredibly grounding. It brought everything into perspective--what was important, what was painful, what was undoing. It returned me to love—Tina Pocha

I had the honor of interviewing poet Tina Pocha this week for r.k.v.r.y. Quarterly. You’ll find a link to her poetry and her reflections on the gift of disclosure and other musings on addiction, the role of labels such as “addict” or “poet,” and the ways Pocha’s childhood in India weaves itself into her approach to valuing the process of writing poetry:

In Indian tradition, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati is thought to be symbolic of the ultimate integration of the soul, the achieving of enlightenment where we bring together all the (seemingly) disparate parts of our selves into one whole. I’m tired of living divided—head from heart, strength from tenderness—and poetry helps me to bring it all together.

We’d love it if you have a moment to read her poem and interview and drop a comment if so inspired.

Quest 2016

I’ve committed to blogging in response to prompts offered by Tracking Wonder’s December line up of visionaries. (Yes, you can still join us if you want to play in public across platform of your choice and/or in private Facebook Forum. To join, visit Tracking Wonder's Quest 2016 page; from that page, you can also view my short video about the work last year's Quest helped me develop with Tarot and Writing as well as videos by my stellar Quest mates and their projects). This year, I’m using the lens of the Tarot and blogging in response to what I see as well as creating a synthesis image of the cards in colored pencil. Most recent posts address:

The Star Card as Daydreaming Self…(Barry Kaufman’s Daydreaming Prompt)

Re-visioning the Aeon Card Through Lens of Birth…(Seth Godin’s Miss Me Prompt)

Heart Lighthouse on the Horizon…(Jeffrey Davis, an extra Horizon Exercise Prompt)



Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Pet Bedlam: Three Takes to Record a Poem

Luna, oh innocent Luna
I spent this morning trying to make a simple recording of “Walking the Laguna,” a poem I wrote dedicated to poet Reginald Shepherd, and which TAB, A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, accepted for Spring 2016 publication.

Silly me….thought I could record in peace! Kids at school, husband at work. Garbage day behind us. Early morning motorcyle thrash of traffic long past, no storm gale thundering surf. We’re talking about 3 minutes.

Take 1: Heading into couplet 4, Luna--preferring musky stem water to her own drinking water, takes down the vase on the dining room table, scattering bouqet. Rivulets chase her sleeping counterpart, Sam, off the new red sparkling chair cushion Grandma just bought for the house at Thanksgiving. Luna lifts her paws daintily out of the way and looks at me, forlorn, waiting for rescue. As if. Of course, how can I be mad at a cat famous for keeping the kids company while they read?!

Take 2: Four lines left to go! The Husky bolts up from her nap in the stripe of sun in our bedroom and tears to the front door in search of The Phantom Guest, her four paws’ worth of nails clicking across the floor all the down the hallway past my microphone. Unmistakeable in playback: the solid thud of her body hurling against the front door.

Take 3: Success!

(A special thank you goes to my father, for Nessie, my so easy to use microphone! She plugs right in to the Mac, hooks right up to Garage Band...so easy....)

Submission Workshop
Letter Press by Robyn Beattie

Please do come out on December 20th  for three hours to join me for my Submission Blitz workshop for writers at San Diego Writer, Ink; we will bring work, work in progress, and lists of places to potentially submit. We will match work with targets so that January 1 you are ready to come out of holiday haze ahead of the game and eager to submit to new venues.

All the details here: Salvage Your December with Tania Pryputniewicz.

Quest 2016

I’ve been blogging up a storm with a growing group of creatives at Tracking Wonder. We answer prompts doled out by visionaries Jeffrey Davis chose for us, so far Susan Piver, Jonathan Fields, Debbie Millman, and Dr. Tina Seelig. We envision our best coming year across layers of our lives, including business artistry and how we might apply ourselves to making a difference.

My Quest 2016 Dragon of Imagination
For my version of Quest, I am pulling three Tarot cards to deepen my relationship to each prompt as well as drawing my answer as a synthesis of the three cards. I’m posting the drawings in process as I can’t seem to keep up with the pace of finishing drawings and blogging and keeping the cats Off The Table While Recording Poems and feeding the kids...Here is my Dragon of Imagination, a reminder from my Future Self to play more.

Remember you can join us on Quest 2016 if it sounds fun at any point. Honestly.  Here are the posts so far:





Photo by Robyn Beattie
Last but not least, here’s a guest post I wrote for Ginny Lee Taylor at Women of Wonder; I “met” Ginny on Quest last year and have long admired the work she does on behalf of survivors. In this guest post, I address one of her Compass Points for Healing: Own Your Story, by explicating three of the poems in November Butterfly, “Absolute Power,” “Peer Counselor,” and “(25) Floors Up An Open Balcony Guinevere Fails to Appear” in order to address the healing power of poetry and nature. You’ll find writing exercises for survivors at the end of the post


Also check out Ginny’s beautiful post on Quest along this topic line, a haunting look at the collateral affect of a survivor’s path through life; Ginny acknowledges lost dreams for survivor, family, community, and more:


Photo Credits: Letter Press and Frost Rose by Robyn Beattie