In this month’s post for One Clover & A Bee over at Hilltown Families I recommend a writing challenge based on a poem by the inimitable Frank O’Hara.

O’Hara might seem a strange choice for a column devoted to poetry for families, but in this case (and many others, IMO), he’s the perfect antidote to our aversion to the ordinary.  In the world of O’Hara— if you look closely—there is no such thing as ordinary. Instead, the more you look at the “stuff” of the world, the more you find to think about, maybe even celebrate. The same is true of this poem: read closely and you see that the celebrating has a somber side, too.  (Hint: “beachheads” & “biers”)

Here’s the poem:

Today

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

[1950]
 The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara

If you want to read the column and try the writing challenge, go here. Right now! And the next time you think you have nothing to write about, take a Frank O’Hara and call me in the morning.

Karen Weyant, AKA the Scrapper Poet
&
Deborah Kate Hammond

Karen gets a copy of my book, Grass Whistle, and Deborah gets Maya Smith Janson’s Murmur & Crush

Keep an eye on your mail, ladies!

Thanks to everyone for participating and most of all–thanks for being poetry writers and readers.

Somewhat appropriately (or ominously), the venue for this year’s MaPoFest is Salem, MA, notorious for its history of dunking any citizens suspected of being…different. What better place for a bunch of poets to gather?

Lots of great readings, workshops and music will be going on, including the Boston Typewriter Orchestra (going to that!)

I’m taking part in two events Saturday, May 4:

New Books Reading

with Aimee Sands, Jennifer Barber, Howard Faerstein, Annie Finch

Amy Dryansky, Steven Cramer & Michael Cantor

12-1:30

Omen (really, that’s the name of the venue!)

184 Essex St.

&

Our Side of the Pond

a reading by poets publishing with the Irish Press, Salmon Poetry–

with Lori Desrosiers, Amy Dryansky, Mary Pinard, Valerie Duff

Aimee Sands & Mary O’Donoghue

1:30 – 2:30

Hawthorne Hotel Library

Hope to see you there! (No dunking)

Come hear some of the “fellows” and finalists who write poetry & prose

and maybe something in-between

at the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC)  2013 Commonwealth Reading Series 

Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 7 PM

Forbes Library, 20 West Street

Northampton MA

Amy Dryansky, James Heflin, Brendan Mathews,

D.K. McCutchen, Patricia Stacey, Julie Wu

Yes, it’s free!

MCC_CommonwealthReadingSeries

Susan Rich over at The Alchemist’s Kitchen is guest curating the fourth year of the poetry extravaganza known as The Big Poetry Giveaway. Seeing as it’s The Cruelest (aka National Poetry) Month, I thought I’d get on board, and you can, too. If you want to get with the giving, go to Susan’s place and sign yourself up–you have until April 10!

This is the deal: leave a comment here with your name and at the end of the month I will draw the names of two readers (using the Random Number Generator) who will each get a free book of poetry. If you go to Susan’s blog you’ll see a long list of folks who are also doing poetry freebies—so get surfing, and get your poetry on!

One person will get a free copy of my brand spanking new book, Grass Whistle, and I’m also giving away a copy of Maya Janson’s new book, Murmur & Crush, just out from Hedgerow Books. And maybe some more, we’ll see what happens.

I’ll say more about The Giveaway and these books soon, but for now…here’s what some folks have said about Maya’s book:

“Wide-open love of the world and its mad inhabitants is one of the holiest of the heart’s affections. And that’s what you get in Maya Janson’s Murmur & Crush—total acceptance of the as-is world, seduced into being by that beautiful tag team, Bemusement and Sorrow.” —David Rivard

“Maya Janson’s richly evocative poems embody through visible things the turbulent cross-currents of the interior world where one thing spawns another in a wild tumult of images, producing an exuberant vision of beauty outlasting what destroys it.” —Eleanor Wilner

So, you could buy a bunch of Powerball tickets or…you can leave Pokey a comment for free and take a chance at getting one of these  fabulous books.

No purchase necessary. No obligation. No time-share tour. Let the words begin!

Ms. Donovan

Here, at long last, is the Next Big Thing post from Karen Donovan!

Karen is the author of Fugitive Red (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), which won the 1998 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as FIELD, Seneca Review, Conduit, THE GERM: A Journal of Poetic Research, Spiral Orb,and Prime Number. She was co-editor, with Walker Rumble, of the ¶: A Magazine of Paragraphs (where Pokey was thrilled to have some work many moons ago.). She works as the marketing and communications officer for The College Crusade of Rhode Island. (BTW, in case you want to read some of Karen’s work, here’s a link to a long poem of hers at Blackbird.)

I am especially pleased to host Karen’s post here, not just beacuse she’s so smart and I admire her work, but because it just so happens that lately, Pokey’s been having conversations with her daughter like this:

 Daughter:               I hate bio! I hate math! Why do I have to learn this? I’m going to be an artist! I’m never going to use any of this in my real life!

(Accompanied by much waving of arms, throwing about of one’s body and slumping over the counter.)

 Pokey Mama:        I know, I remember saying and feeling the exact same thing at your age. But now I love learning about weird science and math stuff and using it in my writing—maybe you’ll do the same thing with your art. Lots of artists do!

(This is Pokey at her best, when she’s not tired or stressed. So, about .06% of the time)

Imagine my delight, therefore, when Ms. Donovan’s post arrived in my in-box, chock full of poetry AND science.

Yes, ribosomes!

What is the title of your next book?

I just finished a final round of edits on a book-length poem. Next up for revision is my biochemistry book, which is called Ribosome 2.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Okay, so all the proteins in your body are made up of only 20 amino acids glued together, end to end, in a gazillion different
configurations. The ribosomes in your cells make every single protein this way, by reading the code in your genes and picking out the right amino acid to stick on next. It sounds crazy, but I found myself thinking about that all the time. Language as raw material that gets strung together into something useful to the body.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. And obsession.

Which actors would you choose to play the characters in a movie rendition?

I can hear a soundtrack with xylophone and tabla.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of this book?

Poet imagines being a ribosome; ribosome imagines being a poet.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The answer to that question is in the stars.

What other books would you compare this project to within your genre?

You’ve totally got me on that. Anything with sentences? This might be
a good time to say that I acknowledge a debt of gratitude for my
dictionary.

Karen’s first book

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Amazement and grief, as usual.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I finished the first part of it in 2004 with a long poem called “5 Codon Sequences.” The next piece, called “Parts List Counted in Ogham,” took a few more years. Other pieces accumulated. Thanks a lot for helping me realize it’s been nine years so far.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Here’s a quote from Matt Ridley that I might use as an epigraph:

“Before the discovery of the genome, we did not know there was a document at the heart of every cell three billion letters long of whose content we knew nothing.”

                                                                 *     *     *

And there you have it ladies and germs. Can’t wait to have my daughter read this.

So, the deal with Grass Whistle is that it’s being published by an Irish press, Salmon Poetry, and it comes out in Ireland and the UK first, and then it’s officially distributed in the US.

It’s available NOW at Salmon,and if you order 2 copies shipping is free. It’s actually quite fast, too. And Salmon gets to keep more of the profit if you order directly from them, so that’s nice because they are a tiny press under huge financial pressure and even so, they remain loyal to poetry.

But, if you’re a die-hard Amazon fan, you can pre-order it with Amazon now. And then write a review! That’s what they like there. And I would love to hear what you think of the poems.

Last, if you’re at AWP in Boston this weekend you’ll find me (and the book), where I’ll be celebrating and reading a couple of poems along with some other Salmon poets.

Salmon Poetry Reception/Launch
Friday, March 8
7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Reception Room 303, Hynes Convention Center

and here:

Booksigning
Saturday, March 9
11:00am – 12:30pm
Salmon Poetry Booth, #203 Plaza Level

Come by and say hello, introduce yourself!

…and here are the links to two of the folks I tagged in the Next Big Thing project: Carlen Arnett & Patrick Donnelly…two very different writers with unique talents and a great way of talking about writing. Go on over and see what they’re up to!

http://robinblack.net/the-next-big-thing-for-carlen-arnett/

http://www.patrickdonnellypoems.com/site/Next_Big_Thing_interview.html

Here it is–the cover of my new book, Grass Whistle, with beautiful art courtesy of Barbara Reid!

I’ve been tagged in a blogging project called ” The Next Big Thing,” so since this is mine, read on if you want to know more about the book.

First, thanks to Ellen Dore Watson for inviting me to do this blog-tag shenanigan. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it was totally fun. Ellen’s interview is here: http://www.massreview.org/blog/next-big-thing. Check it out! Ellen is an amazing poet and translator and all-around mensch of a human being.

So, here are my answers to:*Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing*

What is your title of your book?

The title of my new poetry collection is “Grass Whistle.” Due out from Salmon Poetry in March! Since Salmon is an Irish press, even though it will be “launched” at the AWP conference in Boston, it officially comes out in Ireland/UK first, and then in the US in the fall. But it will be available for pre-order and on Amazon very soon.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I didn’t really have an “idea.” I don’t usually know what I’m writing until after I write. But I certainly have obsessions and those surface throughout the book. The title of the book, and the epigraph I chose definitely reflect those obsessions. The epigraph is from Richard Brautigan’s, “In Watermelon Sugar:”

“Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to

travel and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon

sugar. I hope this works out.”

 The idea of “watermelon sugar” being all we have to find our way, and making “music” from a blade of grass and our breath comes from a feeling/notion (fauxtion?) I have about making what we need from whatever materials are at hand, even if those materials are limited or flawed.

I think that idea comes from my childhood, being part of a family that valued the act of making things (art, writing, cooking, furniture, clothes) and also of working toward something—a goal or ideal. So if I wanted something I was expected to figure out how to get it, and make what I had work as best I could (this was way before re-purposing, mind you).  Anyway, most of the time what I ended up with didn’t resemble what I thought I was making, but it taught me a lot about process, and the value of mistakes.

I’m pretty sure this notion also comes from my early years as a parent, when I felt like I was always messing up, and trying to figure out how to adapt to my new life: the total lack of time and space for writing. At first I kept banging my head against the wall about not being able to go to my desk first thing in the morning and not be interrupted, blah, blah, blah. After a while (a pretty long while, since I’m a slow learner) I figured out that I needed to let go of my old way of doing things, quit whining, and just get stuff down when I could, jam in the time between feedings or whatever and make that my new process. Make it work.

In a larger sense, the poems in the collection are “about” where we find ourselves in life at any given moment, and what we do with that. The speakers in my poems are often either moving (physically or psychically) or stuck, and waiting to move. Maybe deep down the book is about the illusion of progress and how I need to believe I’m moving forward even when I’m still the same old me.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Well—Lili Taylor would play me. I don’t even need to think about that.  And maybe Liev Shreiber—because I have a crush on him–can play my husband. And Meryl Streep can play everyone else.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

How about: “Girl refuses to read map or ask Siri, resulting in ‘Lost’ meets ‘Lost in Space’.”

I can’t actually explain it in one sentence, so here’s the official description:

“In her second collection of poems, Dryansky’s intrepid speaker sets off once again, this time into the deceptively open field of adult life. Along the way she pushes at the boundaries of identity and connection, questioning our perceptions of selfhood and motherhood, marriage and relationships, fidelity and faith. These poems have a sense of humor; they play with language and meaning, but the questions they ask are serious: what do we want to be when we grow up? How will we know when we get there?”

(Other people have also said some really nice things about the book, but that’s for another post.)

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

An agency. That’s so funny. I’m a poet! Who writes these questions?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

This book was a long time in the making. I started it when I was an Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mt. Holyoke College, where I was trying to figure out what I was doing as a woman/mother/poet.  That was 2004. Yikes!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Mostly, Dante’s inferno. But shorter. And I didn’t have Virgil as a guide, which could be why it took me so long to get to hell and back.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, I can’t not write. It’s the only way I can figure out what I’m thinking or feeling. But I did struggle mightily with the making of this book, and trying to figure out what my “context” was in my new role as what I like to call a Mother AND…I felt so snowed under by the idea that somehow my work would be labeled as “domestic;” it really stymied me. So, I believe I was mostly inspired by my own struggle and by other women poets, past and present, who are writing challenging, complex, and inspired poetry and managing to raise kids/work multiple jobs/care for aging parents at the same time.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

There are some sexy poems. Not many, but you can always skim the rest. Also, there’s food, pets, jealousy, murder and true love. The usual.

and so it goes…

Interested? Stay tuned for info about how to get the book. In the mean time, I’m tagging more folks in this project, and their posts will be up next week.  I’ll put those links up very soon.