Poems of mine are appearing in a spring crop of publications. My thanks to the editors of Iron Horse Literary Review, who chose my poem “My God as the BBC Sherlock,” and especially to Managing Editor Jennessa Hester for making this fabulous video trailer for the poem! (If you’d like to support the journal, you can order an issue or subscribe here.)

And thanks to the editors of Cider Press Review for including my poem “Give Me a Story to Busy My Mind”, about the horse I grew up with, in Volume 24.6.

In addition, my gratitude to the editors of Pontoon, the online journal of Floating Bridge Press, where two chapbook manuscripts of mine reached the semifinalist and finalist rounds in last year’s competition, for featuring two poems from those manuscripts. “Landscape with Selfobjects” mythologizes you-know-who as Narcissus, and “On the Twelfth Day of My Faith Crisis” is a backwards Christmas carol about climate anxiety (and also a love poem).

And finally, a poem from my chapbook Impossible Lessons is reprinted in the anthology Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems, out this month from Orison Books, edited by Nomi Stone and Luke Hankins. I’m very grateful to them for including my work in this beautiful collection of contemplations and interventions by contemporary poets. You can support the press by ordering a copy here.

Later this year, I’m excited for issues of EcoTheo Review, Whale Road Review, and RHINO Poetry containing my poems.

I get to do my first live poetry reading since the start of the pandemic! It’ll be with Dayna Patterson and Allie Spikes, members of Madrona Writers (one of my workshop groups), at SoulFood Poetry Night in Redmond, WA, 6:00 p.m.

SoulFood Poetry Night, hosted by Michael Dylan Welch, is a long-running reading series attracting a warm, engaged community of poets and poetry lovers. I’ve had the pleasure of reading there twice in the past, and am looking forward to doing so again with my groupmates on January 19th!

This year has brought good news for my poems published in journals. I’m gathering them here to share with you and express my thanks!

The beautifully curated River Heron Review published my poem “After Rain, My Husband and I Hike the Tree Farm Slope.”

Watershed Review, out of Cal State Chico, published my prose poem “Look to the Sky and Shake Your Head.”

Pacifica Review, from right here in Washington State, published “Landscape with User Instructions.” (Check out the stunning cover photo on the journal’s home page.)

The Pennsylvania journal Lake Effect published “Self-Portrait of Lilith, to Eve” in their Spring issue.

And Braided Way nominated my poem “Placebo Effect” for a Best of the Net award!

I’m grateful to the editors & staff of all these journals for including my work and curating such lovely issues. And I have to say: it’s still a marvel to me to find my poems surrounded by the work of writers I’ve admired for many years–a wonder to see my words placed in conversation with theirs.

In 2023, I look forward to new print issues of RHINO Poetry and Iron Horse Literary Review that will contain my poems. I’m also excited for the April release of the anthology Between Paradise and Earth: Eve Poems from Orison Books, which includes a poem from Impossible Lessons. The anthology is open for pre-orders if you’d like to reserve a copy and help out the press!

You may remember my being commissioned, back in 2018, to write the libretto for a cantata reframing the mythical Sirens by Seattle composer Aaron Grad. Our collaboration resulted in Honey-sweet we sing for you, an eleven-minute cantata for soprano, flute, and harpsichord. The cantata premiered in March 2019 with Burning River Baroque of Cleveland as part of its program “The Other Side of the Story: Untold Perspectives on Familiar Tales.” The performance by Seattle Baroque Orchestra, originally scheduled for spring 2020, was delayed by the pandemic, so we made a video series featuring snippets and adaptations of the planned performances, along with performer interviews, for audiences to view online.

Finally, with the arts reopened, I’m thrilled to say that the full program of “For All Our Sisters” will be performed at Town Hall Seattle on Sunday, June 12th, 2:00 p.m. The hour-long program will consist of works reinterpreting the stories of mythical women–Syrinx, Semele, and the Sirens–for the #MeToo era. It melds original poems by former Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna and by me, dance by Mylvia Pacheco, and performances for soprano and ensemble of Michel Pignolet de Montéclair’s 1713 Pan et Syrinx, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s 1715 Semelé, Bach’s Sarabande (for Semele), and Aaron Grad’s Honey-sweet we sing for you. You can read more here about the performers and program, and detailed program notes here by Dr. Paula Maust of Burning River Baroque.

Ticket options are for the live performance on June 12, and for the virtual performance available online starting Saturday, June 18th, 7 p.m. PST. I hope whether you’re near or far, you can join us for this program!

My gratitude for two pieces published in journals recently:

My essay “Spiderwebs and Thimbleberries” in the current print issue of Indiana Review. This piece weaves reflections on walking, eco-anxiety prompted by Pacific Northwest drought, and my experiences as a prospective juror in a federal trial in Seattle. Plus birds!

My poem “Placebo Effect,” reprinted from my collection Impossible Lessons in the online journal Braided Way:

PLACEBO EFFECT   

So I go to the doctor of philosophy
for my annual metaphysical. He asks me
the usual questions: Any irregularity
with your epistemology? Are the meds
still helping with those intermittent bouts
of doubt? I tell him Yes, but that recently
it has taken on a hyper-Cartesian
tinge, going beyond the use of “not”
as a helpful tool for testing a suspect
reality. It has progressed to a troublesome
tendency toward generalized negation, a habit
of rejecting every supposition. The doc says,
Then we’d better increase your dosage
to get this under control. With your
phenomenological pressure so elevated, I think
you are at risk of rupture. Well, I say,
that may be, but how would you know?
He’s good, that doc. He comes right back
with How do you know that you’re not?
So we agree I’ll try a higher dose.
But don’t go thinking I am going to believe
that it will work.

I’m delighted to participate in a multi-author reading of this beautiful new anthology, edited by Carla Shaffer, of poetry of the winter and summer solstices–two very distinctive times of year here in the Pacific Northwest. Thank you sincerely, Carla, for including my work in this beautiful book!

J.I. Kleinberg describes the event here: https://thepoetrydepartment.wordpress.com/2021/04/10/solstice-tomorrow/.

Village Books in Bellingham is hosting the event on Zoom: https://www.villagebooks.com/event/litlive-sostice-041121 . Please click through to register, and we hope to see you there!