NaPoMo Wrap Up!

I always feel a bit sad after NaPoWriMo is over.  Especially after finishing a big project like this one.  What fun that was!  And what wonderful leads I still have to follow about local history around Sonoma and Napa Counties.  (If you have any ideas, or old stories you've dug up, please do post a comment and let me know by posting a comment!)  I'm taking a couple of weeks off and then I'm diving back into my project until it is book length.  So look out!  More history-based poetry is coming your way.  I may even be teaching a class this summer on writing historically-based poetry/creative non-fiction at The Sitting Room in Cotati, CA.  So, if you are interested, stay tuned for details!   Most importantly, though I've had to take a few days off toward the end of the month to prepare for an interview at Napa Valley College.  As most of you know, I love teaching.  But, I love teaching even more in an environment that is student-focused and filled with colleagues who share a joy of teaching.  I've found such a place at Napa Valley College. It is the kind of place I'd like to teach at for the rest of my career.  Tomorrow morning is my final interview.  Wish me luck!

This past month, thanks to National Poetry Month and World Book Night I got to share some incredible literature with my classes.  If you haven't already, check out these free programs that help you connect students with literature:

•  World Book Night, which gives away sets of novels for the purpose of getting more people to enjoy literaure.  I gave away a class set of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou to a group of students who have just begun reading their first novel.  And I gave The Secret Life of Henrietta Lacks to another group of writing students who had read many books in their lives.
• Poetry Magazine which gives away whole class sets of their April edition (with a teaching guide) for teachers to use in their classrooms.  My students loved getting a copy this year.
• Poem in Your Pocket Day where you can find out about one of my favorite days of the year!  A day when you can walk up to complete strangers in the supermarket, and hand them a poem.  I give my students extra credit if they take a handful of poems and take photographs of themselves passing them out across campus, or in town.  The students are always skeptical at first, but most really, really enjoy the experience.

Below are a few photos of my students with copies of their books! Hope you enjoy!

Finally, I will be posting results from my Big Poetry Giveaway later this week!  Stay tuned!  

Poem-a-day Begins Today

Happy National Poetry Month!

For the past two years I've written a poem a day throughout the month of April in celebration of National Poetry Month.  It's an amazing experience.  Today I'm writing a poem from a prompt given to me by Molly Fisk and Lisa Cihlar "How will I find you without a map?"  So, I better stop blogging and start writing!  If you are interested in joining us just post a comment with your contact information below and I'll email you the details.  Good luck! 

You can also sign up to receive a poem a day in your email inbox here.   It's a lovely way to read poetry every day even after National Poetry Month has ended.
And don't forget to leave a comment on my blog post about The Big Poetry Giveaway!  You can win a book by the poet Amy Lowell or an anthology my work was featured in called What Redwoods Know. 

The Big Poetry Giveaway Has Begun Again!

It's that time of year again - National Poetry Month.  A time when many of us poets get frenzied and start doing crazy things like writing a poem a day, handing out poems to random passersby and giving away books of poetry.  This year, I'll be doing all three!  More on the poem-a-day project and poem in your pocket efforts later.  Today's post is about The Big Poetry Giveaway.  Kelli Russell Agodon over at her blog The Book of Kells has been organizing this giveaway for the past three years.  Last year I gave away a copy of my chapbook Inheritance and a copy of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons.  This year, I'll be giving away a copy of the wonderful anthology I'm a part of, What the Redwoods Know  along with a book of poems by Amy Lowell.  

As many of you know, Amy Lowell has been an important part of my journey to becoming a poet.  I wrote my dissertation on her influence on modern lyric poetry.  I'd be happy to give away a copy of Lowell's Selected poems edited by the lovely poet Honor Moore in hopes of getting more people to read Lowell.  In case you haven't read Amy Lowell's work, below is one of her short lyric poems from Two Speak Together.


July, Midnight
 
Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees,
Flicker in the lower branches,
Skim along the ground.
Over the moon-white lilies
Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars.
As you lean against me,
Moon-white,
The air all about you
Is slit, and pricked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame
Starting out of a background of vague, blue trees.

What Redwoods Know was an extraordinary book project I was a part of this past summer.  As many of you might know many of our state parks in California are facing permanent closure.  In response to this terrible threat, the Sonoma County poet Katherine Hastings organized hikes for poets in Annadel, Sugarloaf and Jack London State Park.  On these hikes we wrote and spoke about the places we were in.  This anthology is a result of the creative work that came out of these hikes.  Below is one of my poems which is included in the book.  It's about Jack London State Park -- the place where I discovered I was a writer on a six grade field trip many years ago. 

At Wolf House

This time, I walk directly to the back steps. 
No circuitous journey.  No wide gaze
accumulating the destruction of this place.
This time, in full light, I meet the gaze of your ghost.

And the world drops away leaving only
flies orbiting, a tether of bird song, distant, tenuous,
a heat that rises from the earth like a promise.

O fairy ring of Redwoods sprung from fiery tongue,
open the blue box of heaven you gate with green fingers. 

There are two wills at work here:
that which will destroy and that which will stubbornly remain. 
Stone ruins rise, half-shadowed and covered in moss. 
A few iron girders propped to hold up walls.

But the breath of wind, that velvet tongue, licks the place clean as bone. 
Spirit and story are what keep the fire-washed stones in place,
that keep the stones lifted off tongues.  What reflects back isn’t recordable:
it grows in you—seeds to places unknown. 

If you are interested in entering to win a copy of Amy Lowell's Selected Poems, or a copy of What the Redwoods Know, all you have to do is write a comment below that contains your contact information.  On April 30th, I'll randomly draw a name out of a hat and send the books to you!  Good luck!