Outwitting Gravity: The Leap, The Blog Tour, and Forthcoming Poems

I had a dream of dancing in such a way gravity was arrested when my feet left the floor in the ecstasy of whirling from one side of the room to the other. At the height of each leap, arms would extend in grip of midleap and body linger motionless.

Couldn’t help but liken the sensation to writing…the way we outwit time, taking the moment of the poem’s core and drawing it out in words for so much longer than the instant in real time.

I had this dream the night before I received the news that one of my poems, Black Angel, Scripted, Never Shot (referencing Iowa City's beloved Black Angel), is forthcoming at Soundings East and was a runner-up for the Claire Keyes Poetry Competition.  Also in the dream was another figure I couldn’t make out, keeping pace with my spinning across the floor. I like to think it was my sister, featured in the poem, in a parallel image of spinning I can share with you via the fall issue of Soundings East.

Poet Scott Withiam was the other runner-up and the winning poet was Amy Pence. While the poems chosen for Soundings East obviously won’t be available until the fall, I couldn’t resist putting up an existing poem trail for the other poets: For runner up Scott Withiam: Sweet Talking (Drunken Boat) and The Petty Snow (Rattle). And for winner Amy Pence: Age Defying, 1976 (Drunken Boat) and Cyclamens  and Pink Jasmine (storySouth).

On other “taking the leap” fronts, up on my main Transformative Blogging Site is a post for the #MyWritingProcess Blog Tour; I am grateful to Marilyn Bousquin of Writing Women’s Lives for the invitation. Here’s a link to
First Poetry Book Publication, Reckoning with Exposure, and Astral Rubbernecking. I’ll be adding links to the posts by the three bloggers I invited to carry the tour forward. Here’s one up already today by my writing colleague, friend and collaborating blogger at Mother, Writer, Mentor, Jessica Powers in which she talks about a new collaborative writing project she is undertaking with her brother. And here's the second, by my friend Edith O'Nuallain (writer, blogger, reviewer) at In a Room of My Own: ruminations on the writing process of a writer mama. (April 18 update: And here's the link for the third of my trio of bloggers, by my friend and writer Marlene Samuels in which she discusses how she writes about her family's experience of the Holocaust, how she writes across genres, and her interview project about women's regrets.)

Where are you "taking the leap" in your writing life? How and where did you get the courage to leap?

I'd love to know. It takes a village to raise a writer.

 Photo:

Taken by my daughter, Instagram's Queen of photography and videos on the fly.

Other forthcoming poems:

Thumbelina at NonBinary Review.

Mordred's Dream at Poetry Flash (and I'm hoping to have the corresponding micro-movie complete by May 1).

Other Related Links:

Poems by Claire Keyes (@ Women Writers), White Water (Redheaded Stepchild)

An essay by Claire Keyes: Marianne Boruch and The Art of Surprise (Valparaiso Poetry Review)

A review by Claire Keyes: Dream Cabinet by Ann Fisher-Wirth (Blackbird)
 

 

Do you Haiku?

Come play with me tomorrow at San Diego Writers, Ink, over at Inspirations Gallery. I've been busy ferreting out my favorite haiku to put in a hat for us to read...and reading versions of Basho's opening paragraph of Narrow Road to the Interior. After perusing my finds, we will fearlessly write our own stellar haiku and haibun and more...The list of forms we are trying our hand at writing is, I admit, daunting...

Haiku

Haibun

Aubade

Letter or Epistolary Poems

Sestina

Sonnet

Villanelle.

...and I'm not sure anyone has ever written seven poems before in those seven forms in a four hour window, but we could be the first. I'm new to San Diego Writers, Ink and this will be my debut class for them...help me put down my writing roots in my new city.

 Class runs from 12:30 to 4:30; sign up here if you are interested:

 Poetry Play: A Tour Through the Forms

 

 

April Courses: Beginning Blogging, Poetry Workshop, and a Tarot Writing Exercise for You

Thursdays April 10-May 22: Beginning Blogging, Coronado Adult Education:

I’m looking for two more San Diego area or Coronado bloggers to round out my beginning blogging class through Coronado Adult Education. The course runs on Thursday evenings from 6:00-8:00 p.m. starting April 10th through May 22nd (7 weeks) for $77 or $69 for Sr.  To register, visit Coronado Adult Education's Website.

Course description:

 This course offers beginning bloggers the chance to create material to launch a blog or to recalibrate an existing blog through completing a series of writing exercises and inventories. We look at blog platforms and blog technique; we also preview the Web for examples. We create content, discuss image use, and refer to a checklist towards blog launch. Students will emerge with sample posts and a map in hand for how to proceed in the future. While students may bring laptops or iPads to class, I welcome writers and bloggers at all stages of comfort level with technology, so please bring a notebook and pencil to each class (laptop/ipad not required).

Saturday, April 12: Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms

I’ll also be braving it across the blue bridge for my first time teaching for San Diego Writers, Ink—this 4 hour workshop is slated for Saturday April 12 and runs $60 for SDWI members and $72 for non-members. I hope you’ll come out for a wild ride through as many forms as we can get to during our workshop. To register, visit San Diego Writers, Ink. Course description:

Do you haiku? Every written a haibun, aubade, or epistolary poem? Want to try your hand at a sestina, sonnet, or villanelle? During this four-hour 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, or aubades, for a love lost or left at sunrise. And then, hearts astir, we turn to the letter form: if you could write a letter to anyone, placed at any juncture in time, who would you address?

The last three of our forms—sestina, sonnet, and villanelle—present challenges of rhyme and word repetition and more, but fear not: we will map out a potential course for poems you’ll write later on your own. Bring a notebook and pen; writers across the spectrum welcome, including absolute beginners. While I will provide examples of each form, please feel free to bring in favorite poems written in these forms to share with the group. Come out and play!

A Writing Exercise for You to Try:

Earth, Air, Fire and Water: Using the Tarot to Inspire Your Writing Practice is a guest post I wrote for Jan Marquet, a colleague at Story Circle Network, live at “Free the Pen.” It is a gentle way to begin to understand the structure that most Tarot Decks use at their basis for the Minor Mentors. This exercise encourages us to start with our own experience of the four elements before turning to the cards for depictions of how our experiences of the elements might manifest.

Writer Heavens: San Diego Writers Ink, Chi Chocolat Truffles and Writer Residencies by Train

Though we relocated to San Diego just over a year now, I’ve only recently discovered San Diego Writers, Ink, located just off Pacific Highway at NTC Liberty Station. I seem to learn the city best by showing out-of-towners around, this week my sister (I’m overjoyed to spend time with her). A writer herself, my sister willingly came with me to a Brown Bag session for a wonderful hour of on-the-spot writing at the Ink Spot. Here we are, pictured in front of the Alfonso Arambula Archangel statue gracing the courtyard below.

I will be teaching a four-hour poetry workshop (Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms—from haiku to sestina) for San Diego Writers, Ink Saturday April 12 from 12:30-4:30. After sharing our fast-writes with our newfound writer friends, we also cruised the Inspirations Gallery next to the Ink Spot where we fell in love with the mosaic horseshoe artwork of Jill G. Hall. 

(We went back today--March 18, and wrote, and I took a few photos of the horseshoes for you...here they are.)

Next stop for two sisters on a sunny San Diego afternoon outing before kid pick-up: the exquisite Chi Chocolat coffee shop located just below Inspiration gallery and the Ink Spot writing room. We sampled (ok, devoured) our truffles: purple dragonflies featured a lavender flavored interior, green owls (see the “hoot” spelled out? downright adorable) featured mint, the nova oval a Mexican spice interior, and last, pretty much the ace for us:  the 1 of diamonds with its soft cardamom dark chocolate filling. We sat admiring a beautiful wooden chess set at the table next to us perched waiting for players and savored our coffee, truffles, and memories of Narnia prompted by the lantern gracing our table.

I'm re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia to my youngest son from an original set of volumes that belonged to my grandmother. Coincidentally earlier this month, while cruising the library for poetry volumes, I discovered The Magician’s Book, A Skeptics Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller. I skimmed the book, intrigued, but a bit hesitant to quell the joy of rekindling childhood memories by analyzing the methods or intentions of C.S. Lewis. A quote from Miller's website about The Magician's Book reads:

In her search to uncover the source of these small books’ mysterious power, Miller looks to their creator, Clive Staples Lewis. What she discovers is not the familiar, idealized image of the author, but a man who stands in stark contrast to his whimsical creation—scarred by a tragic and troubled childhood, Oxford educated, a staunch Christian, and a social conservative, armed with deep prejudices.

As a child, I went some Sundays with one grandmother to Catholic church and some Sundays with the other grandmother to Christian church; later my parents took us on an adventure to an Illinois commune where our leader borrowed from a great many religions across centuries so that by the time we were turned loose into the world as young adults to think for ourselves, my siblings and I each found our way to our own understandings of source or God. Without a solid reference for the symbols of Narnia early on, I enjoyed them more or less as images without context or much associative halo.

I learned from Miller that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were friends, though they were not necessarily mutually enamored of one another's work. When I was five, my father read us The Hobbit and The Trilogy, so both authors figure as the heavyweights of my early image-scape. Miller’s book confirmed for me the stubborn grip my child’s heart still has on that numinous imagery of Narnia (wardrobe and magician's pools as portals into parallel worlds, a lion unafraid to offer his mane to the hands of little girls). Child-brain trumps adult brain, forgiving the possible patchwork of sources and images, the possibly weak array of girl characters should one extend them into womanhood.

As a mother, I understand more than ever the responsibility of defining and living one's "happily ever after," our outside-the-gender-box female strength still in need of claiming (exhilerating and frightening by turns, but worth the risk). See Justine Musk’s TedxOlympic Blvd Women talk, The Art of the Deep Yes, or read the transcript, in which she states “The deep yes is the right to dream your dreams and live an authentic life as the hero of your own unfolding epic. It’s a yes to all your imperfections and the knowledge that you’re fabulous anyway."

In hopes that a mother of three can still aspire to adventures and the open road, I’m applying to Amtrak's Free Residency for Writers for one of 24 writer residencies (boy will they be shocked at the flood of applications. March 14 update: according to The Wire over 7000 have applied thus far)… I mean, who doesn’t want to get away for two to five days on a train and take along a blank notebook? To ruminate in one's own sleeper car equipped with desk and private bed and outlets? With a book tour on the horizon in the fall to celebrate first poetry collection (forthcoming from Saddle Road Press) and first anthology I’m editing of the stellar poems and interviews by the writing mothers we’ve published at The Fertile Source (forthcoming from Catalyst Book Press), I hope Amtrak will send me out to the heartland in time to give a fall reading or two with other writers featured in our anthology (Laurie Klemme and Tonja Robins).

Here’s a link to a CNN blogpost about the writer responsible for throwing out the idea, Alexander Chee, and the first writer responsible for tweeting about Alexander’s idea (thus garnering Amtrak’s attention and completing the first successful unofficial residency): Amtrak's Free Residency. I even opened an Instagram account (I imagine chosen writers will be tweeting, facebooking, and instagramming their way across the country). With less than two minutes on Instagram, my daughter swapped out my profile photo in favor of the one with the cat riding on my shoulder...how can she already have my password?

Where would you go and what would you write? The last time I traveled on a train, it was twenty years ago... when I took advantage of a brief holiday from my MFA program in the heartland in order to confront a love triangle...rode the California Zephyr, if I recollect accurately....but that is a story...or a series of poems...I would write...if I could, alone on a train again for a few solid hours...with green eggs and ham...

…dare to dream...#AmtrakResidency...

[Added March 14: A cautionary note by a writer scrutinizing Amtrak's terms and conditions:
Rights and Concerns: Amtrak Residency. I am with the blogger on hoping Amtrak will modify this portion of the application.

And here's a post from The Wire in which Amtrak addresses some of these concerns: Nervous Writers Have Questions about Amtrak's Residency (And Amtrak Answers Them For Us)

and another From Scratch Magazine, regarding tax information as well:
All Aboard! Irrevocably, Absolutely, In Whole or In Part! )

and one from The New Yorker, Writing Powered by Amtrak] Now back to the fun:

Train Poems:

One Train May Hide Another, Kenneth Koch (poets.org)

Peter Ashley’s Ten Favorite Railway Poems (The Guardian)
Peter Ahsley edited Railway Rhymes, poems celebrating the railway, Everyman’s Library, 2007

Always on the Train, by Ruth Stone (poets.org)

Travel, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (black cat poems)

 

The Railway Train, by Emily Dickinson (poem hunter)

 

Railway, by Fred D'Aguair (poetry foundation)

Related:

Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down, An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, Edited by Andrena Zawinski (Scarlet Tanager Books)

Mother of Three Escapes to AWP 2104, Returns with Poet Tarot Deck

Photo by Robyn Beattie

To say I needed to get away this month would be an understatement. My daughter lit her bookshelf on fire (via candle to tissue box, a four foot wall of flame rushing ceiling with help of a bottle of perfume). She timed it perfectly to coincide with her brother’s birthday sleepover party (built in audience of nine). How neither her shoulder length hair, surfer poster nor closet curtains caught still puzzles me. Less than an hour later, the toilet backed up in one bathroom and the fluorescent bulbs in the other winked out for good. By then, dusk beat us to night and my husband under-cooked the burgers for the kids in the dark so we pulled out the frying pan in the house, promising the kids we’d remember which bite mark went with which kid.

Other casualties of the month: the lower living room window (light-saber match between my youngest and the neighbor friend). The old-school window spoked out in a comic strip POW, triangles of glass littering the shrubbery. During the two weeks it took for the new shatter-proof window to arrive, the Husky punched her way through the remaining 4 triangles unscathed, heartbroken, in pursuit of my husband on his way to the ocean when he failed to walk her one morning.



Photo by Robyn Beattie

These outer details pale in comparison to the emotional spiral I'm walking as I being my initiation into parenting tweens and teens--thankfully in my orbit are writing mothers like Suzi Banks Baum, who continues to run guest posts that make my struggle bearable at Laundry Line Divine, most recently: What do Mothers Make: Connections. Her description of being shot out of the serenity of the center of the lotus blossom resonated with me. As did her astute suggestion to lower one's expectations in a gentle way during the often temporarily unbridgeable span of disconnections that can so quickly flare. No surprise, then, after the usual three pages of carpool notes and instructions, I left my husband at the helm to meet friends and bolster my inner life as a writer, boarding an airplane for Seattle.

This was my first time attending AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference). With graduate school a healthy number of years in my past, I surmised accurately I’d be coming at AWP from a very different perspective than a young prospective MFA student. A friend forwarded me a link to poet Kay Ryan’s 2005 witty review of her AWP experience: A Lifetime of Preferring Not To. I laughed my way through it but ultimately decided not to forego the conference (though I felt better equipped to scale my expectations to the venue). And with more than a dozen friends I planned to meet and support, I couldn’t wait to get away.

Two Sylvias Press Poet Tarot Deck

I packed tarot decks--just two--as last time, travelling to A Room of Her Own Foundation’s summer retreat, I brought all ten decks nestled securely in their silk bag which caused security to ask me to open my suitcase (oddity of the two round decks, Motherpeace and Daughters of the Moon, nestled amid various sized rectangular decks?!). I waited while they cleared the other suspicious traveler, a woman with gorgeous grey streaks in her white hair and a suitcase full of oranges and shoes. I had to repeat the word, “Tarot,” several times and unwrap several of the decks before they waved me through. “Aren’t we dangerous,” I joked to the woman repacking her oranges as I refolded the silk and cinched the drawstring tight.

While AWP’s itinerary of choices meant I never threw my own tarot cards, I came home with a fabulous new deck to add to my collection. Two Sylvias Press created a Poet Tarot Deck featuring poets on some of the cards; the subtitle of the guidebook reads, "A Deck of Creative Exploration" and includes exercises meant to help writers and artists with creative process. I couldn’t resist the urge to interview Annette and Kelli. For this deck, they chose to represent male and female poets equally, as well as to choose deceased poets of British and American descent. I asked them:

If you were to make a second, feral deck (without constraints of choosing deceased poets of British and American descent), whom else would you love to include (for a living poets’ deck)?

Annette Spaulding-Convy: I imagine in a living poets’ deck—Olena Kalytiak Davis as the Chariot, Cate Marvin as the Tower, Richard Siken as the Hierophant, and Marie Howe as the High Priestess. My imagination goes wild with this question as there are so many amazing contemporary poets whose work I truly admire. One more—I think Jane Hirshfield would be an awesome Temperance.

Kelli Russell Agodon: For a living deck, I’d love to include Denise Duhamel as the Wheel of Fortune, Kay Ryan as the Hermit, and Li-Young Lee as the Moon.  They are three of my favorite poets, each very different in style from each other and I’d love to highlight them so more people could learn about their work.  In another deck of dead poets, I would love to include Pablo Neruda for the Lovers card. He is a poet I’ve always connected with.

Here’s a link to the rest of the interview with their generous responses at Transformative Blogging this week: The Conjuring of a Poet Tarot Deck: An Interview with Two Sylvias Press. I am thrilled to add this deck to those I’ve already chosen to share with my writing students for my upcoming class, Exploring the Minor Mentors: A Tour Through the Suits (forming with a solid base already, and we'd love to have you join us--starts March 17) which combines writing and tarot.

Ruth Thompson and Lisa Rizzo at Saddle Road Press Table

I’ll write more later about the amazing readings I attended at AWP, but for now, want to close by thanking my editor Ruth Thompson of Saddle Road Press for the anchor of her beautiful table, a reason for coming, in support of authors Michelle Wing (debut poetry book, Body on the Wall) and Carol Houlihan Flynn, author of the memoir, The Animals. These women are my Saddle Road Press sisters, so I will blog up “writer-views” of their work in support of their books and offer the links here shortly. 

Related Posts:

Tarot Butterflies 2

March 21, 2014 addition:

Here's a fun link to a tarot synchronicity involving The Poet Tarot, Two Sylvias Press, and one of their poetry books, Dear Alzheimer's in a post written by Michelle Wing, poet and blogger at The Poem Whisperer

Related link, on flowers, catching fire:

Dyed Carnations, by Robyn Schiff

AWP 2014

Ruth Thompson of Saddle Road Press (with Tania)

Just a quick note to say I’m so very excited to be at my very first AWP ever; I’m here in support of Saddle Road Press, A Room of Her Own Foundation, and Catalyst Book Press. Here’s a photo of the lovely Ruth Thompson of Saddle Road Press. She is my editor for November Butterfly, scheduled for November 2014 release (poetry). We are at table P7; would love to see you there where you'll find us talking up all the Saddle Road Press books, including the forthcoming Body on The Wall by Michelle Wing.

I am overwhelmed by the choice of panels; flew in yesterday in time to help Ruth set up the table and attend AROHO's reception with Hedgebrook for the announcement of an amazing new award for women playwrights, shepherded into being under the careful guidance of Ellen McLaughlin. Here's a link to a post on AROHO's website, What if Shakespeare had a Sister.
 

And here’s the view from my room—I’m staying on the 25 floor, with space needle in view; artwork on the cover of my journal is by my childhood friend Michelle Hallinan. More as we go...

Tarot Butterflies 2: Exploring the Minor Mentors of Tarot

The Ace of Cups is the open heart, the clear heart, the trusting heart, the spiritual heart. This is the Holy Grail sitting within the emotional nature...Angeles Arrien, Ace of Cups, from The Tarot Handbook

I discovered a second link between tarot and butterflies this week while preparing to teach Exploring the Minor Mentors of Tarot on-line for Story Circle Network in March (I wrote about the first link in Tarot Butterflies and Poem Disorder). As a poet /image celebrant in love with the narratives images impart directly, I find tarot helps me connect with my own soul and that of others. I borrow the term for the course’s title from Eileen Connolly who refers to the minor arcana as Minor Mentors. Engaging in several years of writing based on the cards with a tarot companion (Feb 19 addition: Mary Allen: Under The Tarot Moon, Tiferet Journal) inspired me to design this course and work with the cards in new ways. We’ll be using the tarot as a source of inspiration to generate writing, spending a week on each of the four suits: Pentacles (earth), Swords (air), Wands (fire), and Cups (water). You can read the full description here: Exploring the Minor Mentors of Tarot: A Tour Through the Suits (no prior knowledge of the tarot required).

Tarot has been part of my life for over twenty years now. I scavenged deep in my files to find the logo I used in my life BK (before kids) from when I gave readings in Iowa City. I also photographed a few selections from my library to share with you. Preparing to pose questions to my students--What is your tarot lineage? How did the cards first come to you?-- I came across an entry I started but never finished for a column:

The Royal Road: 100 Butterflies and a Bicycle

The summer I graduated from college, I was living in the Sacramento Valley, surviving a record heat wave and the state of indecision that descends on every undergrad: where do I go from here? In search of shade, I threw on a pair of overalls and headed out by bicycle towards the olive groves. Tar from the road stuck to my tires while heat-waves wrinkled the horizon. Suddenly, the sky filled with hundreds of butterflies fluttering softly in droves across four lanes of traffic from Interstate 80 and down the frontage road, wafting over my hair and shoulders, fluttering between my tire spokes and peddles. I braked and hopped off, the road littered with pale yellow wings of the cabbage whites. What to make of the omen, I wondered, and filled my bike basket with handfuls of the glittering wings of the perished and rode home.

At that time I had trouble taking responsibility for my future or claiming a space of my own, crisis plaguing my love relationship. I meant to ask for a room of my own to write in but hadn’t, meant to write daily but wasn’t. So I staked out a corner of the bedroom, filling a basket with rocks and pine cones and the limb of a madrone tree the neighbor had cast out on the curbside. Below the tree limb, I scatted the lifeless butterflies on driftwood I had gathered earlier at the mouth of the Russian River where it meets the sea in Jenner. I felt oddly calmed by the stilled butterflies, inert and grounded just like I was.

Later that day, I found a deck of tarot cards tucked into the bookshelf. It was my lover’s, but not being used, and from that day on, the colorful cards became my quiet allies as I turned inward to begin the long journey to wholeness through listening. Without the deck’s corresponding book of explanations, I began my tarot journal by pulling one card and meditating on its possible meaning each day, guessing at the interpretations, reading each card as if it were a dream delivered in the night. I found a temple nearby where self-teaching was celebrated and learned more about the tarot under a woman named Reverend Jacqueline.

That summer of inner contemplation culminated in my decision to formally pursue my dream of becoming a writer. I applied to grad school. In the heartland I attended the program of my dreams. In addition to its university community, Iowa City hosts an intense group of spiritual pilgrims, scholars, channelers, psychics and body workers including (at that time) astrologers Quan Tracey Cherry and Bonnie Orgren. Both of them offered me a deeper look at the tarot through the lens of astrology.

Eventually, post MFA, while scoring essays by day and teaching as an adjunct English instructor by night, I’d give tarot readings between shifts as a retail girl at The Vortex Crystal and Gem Store in Iowa City. Working there meant exposure to a diverse braid of seekers and speakers. Sadly, The Vortex has since closed its doors, but I will always remember the crew of brilliant fellow workers (and our employers, generous and large-hearted enough to watch over us all like protective parents). Nor will I forget what it was like closing a late night shift, the store at last void of customers, the massive vibrant brown and red hued Buddha in the front window next to the door-sized purple amethyst crystal cathedral, snow falling steadily outside, diagonally, while I vacuumed between the thousand beautiful items I hoped to someday be able to afford.

Further contemplation:

(April 10, 2014 addition) Tarot Writing Exercise:

Earth, Air, Fire and Water: Using The Tarot to Inspire Your Writing Practice

If you’d like to join us, sign up here. Cost for 6 week class for members of Story Circle Network is: $192 and for nonmembers: $240

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Here is a question, in honor of Valentine’s Day, from the week we focus on the suit of cups:

Where in your life do you offer the cup of your heart?

Prior posts on the tarot:

Tarot Butterflies, Poem Disorder, A Call for Butterflies and Not Saying Goodbye to Feral Mom

My Cat, My Familiar: Manifesting Totems

Truth or Dare: Sculpture Gardens

Rejection, Rhino Rear Ends and Rapunzels

A few sites of some of my favorite established tarot scholars:

Angeles Arrien

Mary Greer

Rachel Pollack