Tarot at AWP Portland 2019

Calling Your Writer's Block Bluff: Three Card Draws (Mini Tarot Readings)

AWP, Portland 2019
Oregon Convention Center

Drop by the Saddle Road Press Booth to sign up for a free mini tarot reading in celebration of the Heart's Compass Tarot and Writing Workbook, forthcoming soon from Saddle Road Press.

I will be giving ten minute readings on Thursday March 28, 2019 from 9-4 and Friday March 29 from 2-5. These three cards draws will be based on your writing project at hand or any other question of the heart.

You can also pick up a sample chapter from the tarot workbook that gives you an exercise for using tarot principles to write a cento (poem compromised of lines by other poets).

Here's a list of Saddle Road Press authors and the books you will find at our table:

• Dane Cervine, The Gateless Gate and Polishing the Moon Sword
• Erika Howsare, How Is Travel A Folded Form? 
• Stefan Kiesbye, The Staked Plains 
• Ire’ne Lara Silva, Blood Sugar Canto
• Ire’ne Lara Silva, Cuicacalli: House of Song
• Don Mitchell, A Red Woman Was Crying (2019 edition)
• Tania Pryputniewicz, November Butterfly
• Jessamyn Smyth, The Inugami Mochi 
• Ruth Thompson, Whale Fall & Black Sage
• Rolf Yngve, Dog Watches

Unmasked: Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After 50. Join us also on Thursday evening from 5-7 p.m. for an off-site reading from Unmasked featuring eight poets and essayists who contributed to the anthology. They include Debbie Brosten, Roberta Feins, Ellaraine Lockie, Tanya Ko-Hong, Bernadette Murphy, Lisa Rizzo , yours truly, and Cathie Sandstrom. The event will be at the offices of Nurture Realty, 1100 SE Division Street, Suite 120, Portland, 97202.

Unmasked Kicks Off a Beautiful Conversation

Kathleen, Renata, Lisa, Barbara, Tania, and Marcia at SOMOS

…between men and women regarding sex and intimacy. I am newly returned this weekend from New Mexico where we were blessed to read in Taos (at SOMOS) and Santa Fe (at Op.cit), six of us, in celebration of the anthology, Unmasked: Women Write about Sex and Intimacy After 50 (Weeping Willow Books). Given the polarized climate we find ourselves in at present (with Ford/Kavanaugh hearing leading to an FBI investigation this week) and my own stress-level triggered by the ongoing public conversation around sexual assault (see last week’s post if you wish), I was grateful to let down and laugh with my fellow readers and audience members as we shared poetry and prose about the range of ways we express ourselves when it comes to sex.

Tania at Op.cit Santa Fe

I also loved questions we fielded from men and women in the audience about how we can foster avenues for intimacy and ways we can view our ability to love one another through previously unimagined lenses. What portals have we never sought out before that might lead us to greater bliss? What unmapped and undiscovered ways of connecting might we explore at the edges of the familiar, known ways of relating? May the conversation blossom in person and in future books.

Pictured above are contributing author and co-editor Kathleen A. Barry, PhD, contributing authors Renata Golden, Lisa Rizzo, Barbara Rockman, yours truly, and co-editor Marcia Meier. We were blessed with some coverage by the Taos newspaper in the article Nothing to Hide that gives you a window into the process behind the anthology’s creation. You can order a copy of Unmasked at  Weeping Willow Books. And if so inclined, we'd love it if you leave us a review on Amazon or Goodreads. 

Poetry News

The Write Like You're Alive 2018 anthology, from Zoetic Press, is available for download for free here: WLYA 2018.

I love Zoetic Press for many reasons, but especially for their 30-day challenges. I create new work and meet new authors, as I did this past August when I had the chance to read at Bookshow in LA with Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Laura Reece Hogan, Wendy Zimmer, Kevin Ridgeway, Joe Iraggi, Mathieu Cailler and Ashley Perez.

This year’s 30 day-challenge became a way for me to write poems for my mother (we lost her in January of 2018). You can find one of those poems for her here in the WLYA anthology; “Duck” appears on page 61. Gratitude goes to Lise Quintana and Kolleen Carney! 

And here’s your word cloud preview at a glance of the work included in the anthology:

Belle Plaine     heroin     fox     gossip     gunshot     puppetry     staples     dragon fruit         weddings     fever     spelling bee     lemonade     magnets     arcade     psychic     transgression     renovation     matriarchy     office     Oklahoma     rainbow     wheelchair     lavender     icepick     Apollo     baseball bat     shrine     power     homestead     talons     guitar     bees     Dan     workshop     insect     toes     bus     Miffy     teeth     subway     witchery     discontent     reefs     nuns     envy     torpedoes     Persephone  

Poetry and Tarot Writing Classes

There's still time to sign up for Poetry Basics (we start tomorrow, Wednesday, October 3) or to join Tarot for Joy (we start next Tuesday, October 9 at 11 am). My online classes promise a deep dive in community with joy, compassion, love, laughter, and the serious work of writing and coming to know oneself in good company.

Fortnite Widow: A Fortnite Poem

Fortnite Widow

                                   

“Dinner’s ready, come to the table when you die,”

my refrain, arrived home from another two weeks

of caring for my mother. I’ve lost my sons, my

husband too. He’s nicknamed himself The Medic,

tiny voices of six-year-olds from Canada, New York, 

England asking, Are you a boy or a girl? a fair 

question, my husband’s character a buff female

who wears black and white camouflage, a pink 

backpack, her hair in a pony-tail. He stationed

our couches in rows like airplane seats and bought 

a second screen, his gold controllers at the ready.

He used to sit behind my sons and shout Navy SEAL

tactical advice. Which they tolerated, then shortly

met with sincere pleading: Shut up, Dad. Once they

confided they played worse when he watched,

I told my husband, You can’t give advice

unless you learn to play. Regrettably, he does

just that. Here he is again, doling out Band-Aids

to the wounded, swearing now that he’s visible

and knocked by snipers, outraged when pick-axed

to death, Why can’t they just leave me crawling?

most often taken out by the storm itself, lamenting

the treasure he’ll forfeit as the cone of light

descends to claim his Medic’s soul, his plate

of meatloaf and peas congealed under

dewed plastic-wrap on the kitchen counter.

This poem is dedicated to my mother, Mary (1947-2018). And every other mother listening to the sound of Fortnite day, night, dreamtime, and all the hours between. Seven months after my mother passed away (we lost her in January to cancer), I was finally able to write poems during the Write Like You’re Alive 31- day challenge hosted by Zoetic Press this July. And after dashing off thirty somber poems, I needed a little comic relief. 

Rest assured I passed the poem by my husband; he is no stranger to starring occasionally in blogposts, whether it was the time he brought home a puppy without warning (Hopeless Carnage: Sisu the Siberian Husky and the Song of Sedna) or the time he fell in the ocean with a chainsaw and a cell phone (Feral Wife: Two Chainsaws, the Ocean and an Untended Husband) or the time someone called the cops on him when our child was having a tantrum (Car Tantrums, Non-parental Observers, and the Cops). I am not proud of the Fortnite mayhem under our roof, but we are in negotiations to stem the take-over, one day at a time, and isn't the first step just to admit the feral reality? How are you coping with Fortnite Fever? 

Fall Poetry Classes

I love teaching at San Diego Writers, Ink on the second Saturday of every month in the Inspirations Gallery. I am blessed to meet with a fabulous group of writers; we speak from the heart and give our best feedback to encourage the strongest incarnation of your writing self. Here’s a link to the class: Second Saturdays: Poetry Read and Critique. Walk-ins and all level of writer welcome; bring a poem of your own to share with us and you’ll come away with worksheets, submission targets, and example poems to keep you busy until we meet the following month. Our theme for next month is the wide wide world of sports and we meet next on Saturday, October 13.

Or if you prefer, join me online for Poetry Basics which starts *note amended start date: Wednesday, October 3. Whether you are a seasoned poet or just finding your way, come examine the building blocks of poetry. We use the question “What is poetry?” as our guiding inquiry and take a close look at how sound, imagery, comparisons, voice, revision, and titles work together to create your best poems.

Fall Readings

I’ll be reading from the anthology Unmasked: Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After 50 in New Mexico with Renate Golden, Barbara Rockman, Marcia Meier, and Lisa Rizzo at The Society of the Muse of Southwest on September 29, and Op.Cit on September 30. Visit my Events page for more information. Here's a blurb about the anthology by Gloria Steinem:

“Sex for women after fifty is invisible for the same reason that contraception, abortion, and sex between two women or two men has been forbidden: sexuality is supposed to be only about procreation. This lie was invented by patriarchy, monotheism, racism and other hierarchies. Sexuality is and always has been also about bonding, communicating and pleasure. Unmasked helps to restore a human right.”

         -- Gloria Steinem

And if you can't make it to the reading, here's a link to the original version of the story I first shared here on Feral Mom: From the Unsharable Files: Self-Care, Hammers and Sex in a House with Three Children. The rest of the anthology is full of such a fabulous range of experiences, forays, failed and consummated dates, the choice to abstain, and more from women aged fifty and on up. It's a beautiful read, full of perspective and wisdom, definitely something I wish I'd read when I was younger so I'd realize just how wide the spectrum of choices is that we have before us when it comes to love, self-love, risk, and joy.