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 20^th  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)

The Sands of Time, A Poetry Workshop, and A Permission Slip Movie for Mother

Sands of Time photo Robyn Beattie

Oh the sands of time!

Just when I feel squeezed of breath and hours, here comes an external image to capture how I’m feeling internally… this week Urgent Care for a child pulling a muscle using resistance bands during his early morning workout. The resultant right-side excruciating 24-hour pain mimicked appendicitis…so off we went to sit behind our thin blue shroud pulled shut on its curved ceiling track where the predicaments of the more seriously injured float through to us even as we cringe and try not to hear.

While we wait for his chest x-ray, my son takes selfies in his Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum hospital smock. And there go the hours slated for writing and teaching. What can we do, my son and I—he, but to make art of his “self” and me to peruse email, finding inspiration in the images my poetry movie collaborator Robyn continually sends to my inbox, reminder of the precious and timeless field of collaborative delight we share.

I have a backlog of images from Robyn for our latest movie for The Three Oranges (from the poem in November Butterfly). All the images have been plunked along a timeline to music and voice recordings; I just have to figure out how to get each image to stop zooming in and zooming out in the new software I’m learning how to use. I’ll post a link when the movie goes live.

Poetry Tour of the Forms

Here’s a Haiku Mobile I made last Father’s Day (for my father). I think of it as a physical premonition to the beautiful Feral Haiku Chandelier we assembled at Ghost Ranch on retreat at A Room of Her Own Foundation. Come out and write your own Haiku with me this month at San Diego Writers, Ink! Pass it on to all of your San Diego friends with day hours to spare!

Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms, In Person at San Diego Writers, Ink

Four-hour workshop: a poetry fest!

10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Tuesday October 20, 2015

$60 members, $72 non-members

Do you haiku? Ever written a haibun, aubade, or villanelle? Want to try your hand at a sestina or a sonnet? During this one-day workshop we will fearlessly and playfully write our way towards working drafts of as many of the forms as we can.

We’ll start with the deceptively simple but evocative gem of haiku. Then we’ll breathe into the slightly pithier prose lead required of the haibun with its haiku chaser. Next up: dawn songs (otherwise known as aubades) for a love lost or left at sunrise. And then, hearts astir, we turn to the gift of intricate form and the unusual word choices form often invites. We will draft sestinas, sonnets and villanelles.

To sign up and read rest of course description visit Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Motherhood and Art: Uneasy Bedfellows: A Guest Post by Tina Pocha

Also up this month at Mother Writer Mentor, a beautiful post by Tina Pocha (I met her at Ghost Ranch this summer) about the and/or dilemmas of motherhood when mothers are also artists and/or writers. Can we do both? All three? How? Pocha muses:

I had hit the limits of my imagination, the boundaries of my fear. I didn’t know how to raise children and still grow me. I didn’t know how to serve their needs and mine. I didn’t know how to be everything I wanted to be.

As part of considering her dilemma, Pocha introduces us to an Italian poet/sculptor Mirella Bentivoglio. In an interview at Literary Mama Pocha selected for us to reference, I see mirrored back a part of my own journey as co-founding blogger at Mother Writer Mentor. Interviewer Toti O'Brien writes, “Since she [Bentivoglio] continually promoted other artists, mainly women, she didn’t feel confined in a lonely, private struggle.” That sums up how it feels to be part of Mother Writer Mentor. I love engaging and learning from the mothers writing and sharing there. Thank you Tina! Read the rest of Pocha's post here: Motherhood and Art: Uneasy Bedfellows

Photo by Robyn Beattie

My Geppetto: Fairytale Review Finalist

One of this year’s new poems, “My Gepetto” was a finalist for the Fairytale Review’s 2015 Awards in Poetry and Prose; I’m honored, and motivated by the gesture--I’ll be writing a new crop of poems, and of course, submitting again. I hope you’ll send The Fairytale Review your best fairytale work next year as well. Good luck!

The Permission Slip Movie: Curator’s Choice Finalist at Doublebunny Press

Last spring I took part in supplying footage for a movie one of my favorite artist/writer mother colleagues, Suzi Banks Baum (of Laundry Line Divine), put together with Lynette Lucy Najimy about what it takes for mothers to get to their creative work. When asking us to take part in this project, Baum wrote:

I hear from so many women that they feel “their feet are nailed to the floor.” They cannot picture what it would look like for them to step away from the dishes, the television, and the two and a half jobs and find fifteen minutes behind a closed door to write or think or sit in the dark, alone.

Out of hours of footage, Baum and Najimy created this six-minute video you may enjoy if you too are a feral mom trying to get her to work as I have been for years. Baum prefaces the video on Vimeo with these questions:

Do you find yourself composing poetry while folding laundry? Have you been putting off writing until your kids are off to college?Out of the Mouths of Babes is a circle of creative women who express from inside motherhood. This small movie may be the permission slip that gets you started.

Here’s a link to the video, which was a Curator’s Choice Finalist at the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival hosted by Doublebunny Press, on Vimeo: The Permission Slip

Screening of November Butterfly Poetry Movies

My poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie will be presenting a film screening of five of our poetry movies as part of the Guerneville Library Fall Art Show that opens Friday, October 2 at 3 p.m. Robyn will be screening our poetry movies from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14. Robyn will read the poems, show the movies, and discuss her images.

List of Movies:

She Dressed in a Hurry, Lady Di

Amelia

Mordred’s Dream

Thumbeline

The Corridor, Guinevere to her Mother

And, in case you teach poetry or write, here are links to poetry prompts I wrote based on the poems and the movie imagery:

She Dressed in a Hury for Lady Diana

Amelia, Crossing for the Crossing

Mordred’s Dream

Thumbelina Weighs Her Options

The Corridor, Guinevere to her Mother