Noctiluca Live at One

Poetry Publications: “Noctiluca” and “Walking the Laguna”

I’m honored to usher in December with the publication of the poem, “Noctiluca,” in which the ocean, Midwest, and the dreamfield converge. “Noctiluca” is live today at Jacar’s Press online magazine, One. I think you’ll enjoy the cover art, “Dirty Laundry,” by Katie O’Hagan and the rest of the poems in Issue 7 selected by Richard Krawiec and his team of editors. The issue has been carefully put in order and is meant to be read in sequence...let me know what you think.

Also forthcoming in the spring: “Walking the Laguna, for Reginald Shepherd,” online at TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics.” TAB also publishes recordings of the poems in each issue, so I’m at work on an MP3 of “Walking the Laguna.” I will post a link here when the issue goes live in the spring.

Submission Workshop: Salvage Your December

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Most writers I know are pretty grumpy around holiday time—don’t get me wrong—we love our friends and our families. We just also really love to write. Come join me on Sunday, December 20 to brainstorm potential submisison targets for the New Year for your work; that way you can relax for the rest of holiday season knowing you have a map for January 1, 2016. You’ll need to bring a list of your writing inventory (list of work either complete and ready to send out or nearly ready to send out). We will meet and share submission targets. I will bring my own list and ask each of you to bring your list. We will also reserve time to free-write or revise one piece of writing during our workshop. While poetry and blogging are my specialties, I will bring lists for other genres as well.

This is an in person workshop offered at San Diego Writers, Ink from 10 a.m -1p.m Sunday December 20, 2015 at Inspirations Gallery at NTC, Liberty Station.

Cost is $35 for members or $40 for nonmembers; join a great group of students already signed up and working on their inventory lists. To register, visit Salvage your December with Tania Pryputniewicz.

*I will be also bring example magazines to our workshop; please feel free to bring in your own stash of physical publications or magazines that have showcased or published your work or bring in your favorite potential target magazines or publications.

Photo by Robyn Beattie.

Catalyst Door Quest 2015

Business Artistry: Quest 2016 Kicks off December 1st

Tomorrow I’ll be joining Tracking Wonder on Quest 2016. Here is a "Catalyst Door" I drew last year on Quest 2015. I'm once again opening my heart to visioning a prosperous and creative year with a group of like-minded creatives.

Quest 2016 promises to be another dynamic business artistry adventure under the guidance of Jeffrey Davis and his team at Tracking Wonder. You can view the short video testimonials by my fellow questers and I about our highlights from last year’s Quest on a range of topics from Authenticity, Connection, and Saying Yes to Expanding Medicine, Bravery and Permission Slips here: Tracking Wonder Quest 2016. In my video you'll hear a bit about my Tarot Writing project that I developed on Quest last year.

There’s still time to sign up and join us if you wish; we’ll be responding to prompts and questions posed by a series of visionaries Jeffrey has assembled for us (Chris Brogan, Jonathan Fields, Charlie Gilkey, Seth Godin, Todd Henry, Sally Hogshead, John Jantsch, Scott Barry Kaufman, Jen Louden, and Susan Piver so far). I have met, and continue to meet, an amazing group of artists from all walks of life through Tracking Wonder. We'll be conversing throughout this adventure on Twitter using the hashtag #Quest 2016 and I'll be blogging on my main website in response to the prompts (www.taniapryputniewicz.com).

New Post up at Mother Writer Mentor by Ann L. Carter:

Also, if you missed it, a lovely post is up at the site I co-curate for writing mothers; check out our latest guest post by Ann L. Carter:

The Art of Slowly Softening Butter

And please don't hesitate to send me a guest post of your own; latest call for guest posts is on the topic of Mothers and Daughters and Secrets (based on a presentation I gave this summer at A Room of Her Own Foundation). To read about this call for submissions, visit Secrets Between Mothers and Daughters.

Last Day to Sign up for Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms in San Diego

Homage, Hess Collection, Leopold Maler
photo by Robyn Beattie

Get your creative fires burning! With me...and other writers...I'll be teaching in person tomorrow at San Diego Writers, Ink; our class is forming up nicely, so join us if you can between 10-2. 

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

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 Jamie Clifford

Interview Live

Also newly posted is an interview conducted by Casey Cromwell, SDWI, in which we discuss the power of writing groups, "female to female inquiry," and a bit more about my first poetry collection, November Butterfly. Here's an excerpt on journal writing:

I set aside time to fringe pages of past journals with post-its (mostly I use long strips of paper, bookmark size) I’ve labeled with a word or image at the top of each passage I want to revise towards a poem or blogpost. Because I’m also an artist, I use colored pencils to circle phrases or words. I think just like we get “blank page” anxiety, we can get “revising page” anxiety…so many words to re-arrange and winnow! A little color keeps it playful. 

Read rest of SDWI Interview with Tania Pryputniewicz

New Poetry Prompts for November Butterfly 

This month I went back to my project of creating writing prompts based on the poems in November Butterfly. Here are prompts 12 and 13: 


Mordred's Dream

The Corridor, Guinevere

Related Links:

Photo at top of post by Robyn Beattie.

Link to website for Leopold Maler.

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