Announcing The Collaboration Hub

Check out my latest project, inspired by AROHO's summer 2011 retreat. I've posted the text of the Mind Stretch Presentation I gave at the retreat here at my She Writes blog, as well as taken up the challenge of hosting a new group called The Collaboration Hub (for AROHO retreat attendees, She Writes members and anyone brave enough to find us) where collaborataive pairs or those looking to pair and collaborate over the course of the coming year can expect to share support, conversation, questions, resources, and more. Wish us luck, or better yet, join us.

The Seamstress: Reading Diary#1

As mentioned in an earlier post, I’m looking forward to attending A Room of Her Own Foundation’s August Women’s Writing Retreat (still accepting applications here). A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO) offers hands on networking support to women writers--from serious grant support (check out their Gift of Freedom Award)—to sponsoring a number of writing contests and retreat offerings throughout the year.

In addition to rubbing elbows with a diverse score of writers, I will be presenting some photo poem montage work (the most recent--Nefertiti on the Astral--currently up at Prairie Wolf Press) and facilitating a small writing group titled, “The Exquisite Now with Feral Mom, Feral Writer” during which we’ll generate writing based on daily photographs, keeping the blog schedule on track, no doubt posting on the oddity of the week’s extreme quiet (shifting from our three child, one puppy, four feral cat, chainsaw wielding husband household to a room and bed of my own).

I’ve challenged myself (August bearing down) to read as many books as possible by fellow retreat attendees and have posted the first of these bite-sized reading diaries over at my She Writes blog, starting with a look at a holocaust account by Sara Tuvel Bernstein titled, The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival (read in full here).

5 Things I Learned About Writing in 2010

I pledge to return with renewed vigor in January 2011! I bow down, for now, before the altar of teaching (I returned this fall semester to teaching after a ten year hiatus from the formal classroom). I did manage to post, in response to She Writes co-founder Deborah Siegel’s prompt “5 Things I Learned About Writing in 2010,” to my She Writes blog.

Motherhood, Matrices, and Accountability can be read here:

http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/motherhood-matrices-and

Notes from the Road: Footprints, Storefronts and Valentine Mimes

This Valentine's Day we did the moonscape—the snowdrop white Pismo Dunes, pristine and lovely where the kids babooned up and down for hours. Sheer cliffs away, we never lost sight of our three speedsters against the two color panorama—miles of blue sky, miles of warm, gold sand with wind-sculpted ribs we couldn’t resist footprinting.


I set this storefront photo aside for the infamous day of love--took this photo on a recent excursion with my niece Natasha in San Francisco.






And this one—we both loved the way the houses across the street reflect over the statue’s torso.

Also wanted to share this intriguing call for submissions for an anthology from writer LA Slugocki at her site: Tales from the Velvet Chamber (http://talesfromthevelvetchamber.blogspot.com/). She is looking for:

Stories that radically revise stereotypes of "bad women" in the Bible, in myth and in fairy-tales. Stories that aren't afraid to be literary, transgressive, dark, and sexy. Think: Lilith, Medea, the Wicked Stepmother, the Evil Witch, Pandora, Eve, crones, sibyls, fates, muses. Contemporary adaptations are fine. Mythical adapations equally welcome. The spine: We begin to see these women through another lens.

I came across this call for entries, and a plethora of other inspiring ideas, through She Writes (http://www.shewrites.com/) —a fabulous network comprised of over 5000 women writers, editors, bloggers, you name it, all talking about writing and what it takes (from first time writers to seasoned published, book-toured authors). Hope you’ll check them out, and consider joining. Sometimes I get “internet head” or “high speed fog” with all the social networking outlets tugging at my writer’s time, but I love having the option to post specific questions and mingle with writers from around the world minus cost of airfare.

I had it in my head to post this poem for St. Valentine, but was eclipsed by the road trip and a less than spectacular ability to keep a grip on my (self-imposed) deadlines while driving, so here it is, a belated, cynical Valentine, just for fun, contrary as it is to my current state of relative equanimity.


Envy

the mime his concentration
like the chased in a pair of lovers
lost to the now, so busy moving,
gloved hands ever edging the door,

or women their addictions of the moon,
marking their gardens with morning blood
in cups of tin to ward off deer (in the knotted spent lust
of chocolate, tears over road-kill, yelling at the kids)

or young boys their absolute
disinterest in girls, given
the thrill of dead cars, bottles to shoot,
a can of beer to split in the fort

or Cupid his logic, messy as wolves in Grandmother’s
clothes and hatchets. Granted: one’s fated to grow,
bad love’s still love. And after, one’s less likely to join
the casually cruel in the audience willing the mime to falter.



I will be reading a couple poems at the March 6, 2010 mini WOW (Women on Writing) Conference at Skyline College for a 3 minute open mic spot I've been promised. Haven't read in public since 2005 (Copperfields Bookstore, one poem), so I'm a little nervous. But even I can get through 3 minutes of reading. By 2015 maybe I'll be up to 3 poem readings. Looking forward to the face-to-face contact with other writers after so many months of e-mail or blog comment conversations.

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