Suddenly it’s April. For National Poetry Month, Barrelhouse is publishing poems about or told in the voice of movie, TV, and novel characters. They published two of my X-Files poems–“The Abduction of Fox Mulder’s Sister” and “Scully Tallies Her Losses”–on the first. A few months ago, Ninth Letter published two of my poems for their writers-of-the-American-South-themed Web Edition. I’ve also had poems published in JuxtaProse and online at LUMINA.
Another exciting poetry-related event that has occurred is that the Tin House Writers’ Workshop accepted me to their summer workshop and retreat. I’m not sure that I can actually go, as that will be contingent on whether they offer me a scholarship, but it’s flattering nonetheless that I was accepted. I’ve been dealing with a lot of poetry rejections lately and am thirsty for any sort of writerly validation (so it seems).
In other big news, after not even a full year of living in Colorado Springs, we will be moving to Montgomery, Alabama in July. My spouse’s military career took an unexpected sharp turn, and a lot of our assumptions have been upended about where and how we thought we were going to spend the next several years. None of this is bad news, it’s just different. The good part is that I’m really jazzed to live in Alabama (my home state) again. I’ve been missing the South, and it will be good to fill up my tank, so to speak, before we move on to the next adventure. We’ll most likely be in Alabama for only about a year, which is probably exactly the right amount of time.
But–as being a military spouse has demonstrated to me repeatedly over the last 13 years–you never know.
Here are a few poems and books of poetry I’ve been enjoying the last few weeks.
Three poems by Brandon Courtney
“What the Cold Wants” by Dobby Gibson
Kate Gaskin 