Call for submissions: As Good as a Feast

I am currently seeking submissions for an essay/poetry anthology that I am compiling titled, “As Good as a Feast.” I will be paying for up to ten of the essays that will appear in this collection. Any additional accepted submissions will still be eligible for publication in the anthology. However, there will be no monetary compensation for these.

I am currently accepting submissions via eLance through July 25, 2015. If you miss this deadline, you may still submit via the Elderfly Press website through August 30, 2015. However, monetary compensation is available only for those essays submitted via eLance.

Submission Requirements

Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie book series will no doubt be familiar with the expression, “Enough is as good as a feast.” Ma Ingalls often uttered this phrase as a reminder to her children that as long as they had “enough,” they had all they needed.

Wordle your blog

Here’s a cool blog post topic you can feel free to steal from me. I was playing around with Wordle this morning and thought it might be fun to see what words it would pull from my blog. Here’s what I ended up with:

 

Some of the words that showed up in my wordle were expected (write, writer, writing, trashy,) but there are a few of them that I don’t remember ever using on my blog. There are also a couple of words I thought would take some prominence that didn’t show up at all (somehow, I got “cows” but no “CAT?”)

National Poetry Month Collaborative Twitter Poem

Poetry (Photo credit: V. H. Hammer)

Well, here we are. It’s April 1^st, and once again time to celebrate National Poetry Month. I haven’t really been writing much poetry lately, so I thought it might be fun to do a collaborative Twitter poem challenge.

For this challenge, I am going to give you a one-word prompt/Twitter handle. Next, you come up with a poem – either one short poem that will fit into one 140-character Tweet, or a longer poem that you can split up, posting one verse per Tweet – and share it on Twitter using the provided hashtag. I am starting the challenge here today, and then I would love it if some of you would volunteer to host one or a few additional prompts on your blogs throughout the month of April.

Another “damn rape poem”

I came across this on tumblr this morning and had to share.

“The Rape Poem to End all Rape Poems” by the Rutgers University slam team:

Spring is coming

Spring is coming,
we’re halfway there.
Days grow longer,
Tho’ the weather’s unfair

How much space does your body occupy?

I saw this video of Lily Myers reading her poem, “Shrinking Women” on UpWorthy and had to share. I have watched it like eight times and cried every time. She totally exposes the truth about what it is to be a woman in our society.

 

It seems to me that, while some women shrink to make room for the men in their lives, others unknowing expand in order to be seen, to prove their existence.

Less | An Original Poem

And to go with my poem: A picture of my car (the blue Equinox,) which came this close to being totalled a couple of days ago. The truck that hit it totalled 2 other vehicles, but my car got away without a scratch. Someone was watching over me that night!

Here’s a little poem I wrote a while back. Thought you might enjoy it:

Less

I wish I had less,

could pack everything I own

in the back of my car

at a moment’s notice,

blocking the rearview mirror

so there’s no looking back

as I drive away.

I need some advice on self-publishing

It’s probably pretty pathetic that something as simple as designing a book cover is what is keeping me from self-publishing my poems, huh?

A few semesters ago, I took a poetry writing course. I don’t really consider myself a poet, but I like to dabble from time to time. I wanted to take a course that would challenge me to think about my writing in a different way, and this poetry course definitely fit the bill.

At first, I had a hard time writing poems on demand. Then I started reading poetry on a regular basis, and the ideas began to flow. I started jotting stuff down as it came to me, and I ended up with a stock of poems to choose from whenever the time came to turn one in for a grade.

What makes a poem a poem?

Walt Whitman’s use of free verse became appreciated by composers seeking a more fluid approach to setting text. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is a poem? Some may think a poem has to rhyme. (I disagree.) Others believe the syllables must be counted, or that a poem must be stuffed full of alliterative language. But what about free verse? What makes a block of words, a sentence chopped up onto several lines, a poem, rather than a mere chopped-up sentence or a paragraph scattered over several lines?

To me, writing a poem is about capturing a moment. It could be a feeling, a natural occurrence, or a quick glimpse into the life of one person. Most of my poetry describes just one, very small moment. These moments might last only a few seconds, or as long as several minutes. Rarely does the poem capture more than a very short block of time.

Another poem for National Poetry Month: Love Long Distance

I want magnetic words like this so I can carry poems on my car with me wherever I go. | Poetry (Photo credit: Kimli)

It’s funny how I write a lot of poetry when I’ve been reading a lot of poetry. I don’t really read much of it at all, unless I have to for school. But this month, several of the blogs I follow have been posting poems as part of the Poem-a-Day Challenge. So, here I am, popping out poems when I should be working on my novel. But I guess I could use the distraction. Who knows, maybe my prose will be the better for it.

Here’s my latest:

Love Long Distance

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