A Tarot Angel, Residency News, and a Free Poetry Workshop for You

A Tarot Angel for Kalli

Happy June! Life is swirling past at an epic rate, or at least it feels that way with my firstborn on the cusp of graduating from high school. Here’s my latest composite tarot card sketch. If I’ve done anything for my girl, I hope it’s to teach her to love the second sun of her heart, right there in the middle of her body, and to steer forward with joy, heart-connected. May the angels watch over all of our children as they move on and blossom. Congratulations to all the mothers and fathers traipsing through this emotional landscape…what a blessing.

Rockvale Writers’ Colony Award

I am so pleased to announce that “Two Gardens” (from Berkeley Postcard, a manuscript of poems about my mother) has won the first Rockvale Writers’ Colony poetry contest on the theme of Time. “Two Gardens” will appear in Rockvale Review Issue Five (November 2019). The prize also includes a week-long residency at Rockvale Writers’ Colony. I am so looking forward to the time to focus on my writing projects.

Founder and Director Sandy Coomer writes generously here about choosing the poem and the synchronicity of the timing in relation to the residency, its location, and healing a lost opportunity. Both the poem, “Two Gardens,” and Coomer’s comments can be accessed here:  Two Gardens

June Poetry Opportunities

Not Your Usual Father’s Day Poetry Workshop: Letters, Rhyme, and the Senses. Join me in Carlsbad on Sunday, June 9, 2019 from 1:30 to 4:30 at the Georgina Cole Library (Community Room), 1250 Carlsbad Village Drive, Carlsbad, CA. This poetry workshop is free (and graciously sponsored by the Friends of Carlsbad Library). Come with paper and pencil and we will explore the epistle form, drafting our own conversational letter poems as well as working with rhyme and the senses. Poets on our worksheet include Gary Snyder, Thom Gunn, Eavan Boland, Megan Arlett, Penina Ava Taesali, Lan Lan, and others.

Second Saturdays Poetry Read and Critique

Second Saturdays Poetry Read and Critique meets this coming Saturday, June 8 at Liberty Station from 10-12. We’ll be looking at Instagram Poets and our worksheet title is Reversals and Secrets. Come join us…we are a passionate and lively group of poets. Walk-ins welcome. Cost for this group is $30 for SDWI members, $36 for non-members.

Related Links: 

Rockvale review previously published two of my poems, “City Boys” and “The Marriage Counselor Channels King Solomon” (paired with photography in Issue Two, May 2018, Rockvale Review).

Two Poems: The Marriage Counselor Channels King Solomon and City Boys

Photo by Robyn Beattie

The poems, “City Boys” and “The Marriage Counselor Channels King Solomon” are up today at Rockvale Review. Both poems riff on the past and are from a new manuscript I’m working on about love. Not just the upsides of love, but the heart work we do to stay married and the terrain we pass through over the course of the years. Where would we be without counselors? And humor? And the grace to try again? Rest assured my husband encourages me to write about him—any time I get a poetry rejection, he asks, “Was it about me?” and “Surely they would have taken it if it was about me…” 

Here’s a word cloud I created for the issue, one word per poem:

Creosote     scorpions     Ironworkers     shearers     Leon Spinks     ex-lover     toolbox     Folgers     furrows     ridgeline     wasp     compost     catfish     goslings     son     coqui     disappeared     ‘Yes’     canoe     moon     saliva     tailpipe     death     armadillo     letters     greengrocer     mermaid     future     compass               ancestors

My thanks goes to Rockvale Review Founding Editor Sandy Coomer (and her editorial team Nancy Posey, Roseann St. Aubin, Christine Fraser, and Laurie Kolp). Photographer Michelle Casady pairs photos with each poem. Following each pairing is a note by Michelle describing her process of choosing. Here’s the link where  you can either buy a print copy or access the links to the individual poems and photographs: Rockvale Review, Issue Two.

Related posts from Feral Mom about marriage:

Key to My Heart

Marriage Alone: A Modern Odyssey

When a Poet Marries a Triathlete

Some Mother: Abalone Vs. Coffee

Feral Wife: Two Chainsaws, the Ocean and an Untended Husband

Upcoming Classes, Online and In Person:

Writing Our Angels, my next online writing class, starts next Monday, May 7, 2018. 

Second Saturdays: Poetry Draft, Craft, Submit, walk-ins welcome. We meet at San Diego Writers, Ink. May's theme is Friendship. We meet next on Saturday, May 12 from 10-12 am.  If you can't make it in May, try us in June (Visitors), or July (Museums).