June 5, 2013

After a crazy month of packing, stressing, and cleaning (my aching back and neck and swollen knees stretched to their limits), I’ve finally moved.  A Boston poet on the South Shore!  Culture shock, but it’s very pretty and reasonably quiet here.  I miss the house where I rented a room for two and a half years – a real home that kept me together after the loss of my mother in September 2010, despite the cast of yahoo neighbors.  And I will sorely miss seeing my brother on the way to the Cambridge public library.

But it is good to be forced to make a change every now and again.  I’m still hoping to break the halfway mark on the Moby-inspired poetry collection.  Maybe I’ll get some chapters added to the second novella also.  One never knows what summer will bring.  All my brain likes to do in warm weather is write love poems.

I made a pot of chili last night – with ground beef and pork sausage instead of ground turkey – O, sin!  Looking forward to day-old chili for dinner.  This is the first place I’ve lived in that has CA; it’s always 70 degrees.  Good thing the grocery store is 15 minutes away walking so I’ll get exercise instead of hopping the bus to the nearest market.  It’s so cool in here I could bake a pie for the 4th of July.  Off to google red, white, and blue pie.   “One never knows…do one?”

 

 

March 1, 2013

Well, it’s really only Feb. 27 at 3:30am, but close enough.  So my back and neck are still protesting having to sit still for 3 hours Monday night, and the cold I refused to let get the best of me until Tuesday is wiping me out…BUT it was totally worth it.

The launch of Hidden Charm Press with its first title Extra MoJo! at the Stone Soup Poetry reading in Central Square, Cambridge, MA on Monday night was fantastic!  The open mic was great.  My sisters-writers were an outstanding feature, making poems from the anthology leap off the page.  It was truly enthralling!  I couldn’t be prouder.

Hidden Charm Press (HCP) was created in July, 2011.  It took until July, 2012 to put together a first draft of the Extra MoJo! anthology. By Winter, 2012 I had a cover artist and layout artist on board to make the manuscript into the book that the 20 writers deserve.

Hurrah to my co-features Toni Bee and Robin White; kudos to Denise Washington whose poem is on the back of the book; woo hoo to cover artist Jessica Grundy and to my football buddy, layout artist Steve Glines, for making a pile of papers into a gorgeous book!

The Press’s inventory for the evening sold out, so now I can afford a new computer battery, the HCP website purchase, and incidentals like food all at the same time

photo of Robin White, Mignon Ariel King, and Toni Bee by chad parenteau

February 1, 2013

Yay!  the first book of my new press Hidden Charm Press is finished. CLICK HERE: Extra MoJo!

..and I’m writing my second novella…even though the first one has now been rejected 3 times.  “The joy of victory…and the agony of defeat!”

Un-be-liev!-able Techno Updates

Finding out that Hotmail is changing so I’ll need to switch to Outlook eventually, I decided to be proactive and make the change now.  What the hell, I’m already re-organizing my entire creative life anyhow during these underemployment/writer’s block/August stinks doldrums.

What a hassle!  The goal of merging 6 e-mails into 4 was apparently overly ambitious, so for now I’m down to 5.  My three professional e-mails and sites are for now:

MoJo!    mojo_hcp@outlook.com         http://mojowriters.com

HCP    mojo_hcp@outlook.com       http://hiddencharmpress.wordpress.com

U.M.Ph.! Prose   umphsubmits@yahoo.com           http://umph-prose.weebly.com

Frankly, that’s all you need to know!

Mignon and Friends, Brockton 2010

Writing My Fingers Off!!!

 

I’m reading Moby-Dick and continuing the poetic synopsis while reading Steven Tyler’s latest autobiography and writing a review on Goodreads (link below); and I’m editing the Extra MoJo! anthology-to-be as well as subbing some of the zillion poems I’ve written so far this year.  Whew!  Let’s see how much more I can write before the heat kicks in.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/339386257

Annual Sonnet

Perhaps Love?

If one is going to post only 1 poem for NaPoMo, ‘Od’s teeth, let it be a Shakespearean sonnet!  Don’t try this fast and loose version at home, kids.  Your English teacher will give you an “F”!

Oh, Husband…Poetry

This love affair has gone on
… long enough that friends
now voice concern
about my lust.
“Please, leave the house,
go try some other stuff,”
is what they plead.
“Variety’s a must.”
But you and I transcend
what others think.
Inherently, we’re bound
til death and past.
You breathe through me.
You are my food and drink.
“Unhealthy” is a charge
we will outlast. Variety is not
the spice of love–as committing
to a goal is our forte.
Our bond is a rare gift
from high above. Ignore
naysayers. They will go away.
And when I close my eyes
it will be clear that God spoke you
to life. His words are dear!

A Century of Black Voices 3: 1912-2012 Photos!

Photo by Jack Scully.   Thank you to the First Church in Cambridge!

{Sorry folks, no MAPS-ONE: A Century of Black Voices annual reading for 2013.  The host was launching a new Press and didn’t have enough gas to do both.}

Toni Bee, Poet Populist of Cambridge, MA; (Bridgit Brown, Boston writer, not pictured; Mignon Ariel King, Boston-born writer and Deliriously Happy Host; Denise Washington, Roxbury writer; Sam Cornish, Poet Laureate of Boston; Charles Coe, Cambridge writer and Event Co-host;  Beatrice Green, JP writer and composer.  Aren’t we a stylish group?

Photos by Pat Williams:  
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150711770136457.454550.749876456&type=1&l=748b100dfa

Thank you to everyone who read, listened, helped.  The reading Saturday was great.  It was a pleasure as always to host and to listen to 7 of my favorite local poets at this annual event.  Old and new friends made set up and breakdown a breeze.    –And Happy Belated Birthday to my big sister!  She gave me the sumptuous sweater in the photo.

Missing Winks (memoir)

All I want to do in February is sleep.  I’d always assumed this was due to the snowy, cold weather.  The cold outside makes settling into soft white socks, heart-printed thermal underwear, and a plush robe a moment of sheer sanctuary.  Armed with a cup of tea, shortbread cookies, and a serious book, I’m a literary woman warrior taking a stand against hostile elements.  There’s also a bit of “back home” nostalgia stirred in to this fantasy.  “Back home in New Hampshire we had to get out of bed in the dark to start a fire. …and at night we’d make a big Dutch ovenful of beef stew and dip biscuits in it.”  I have never lived outside of Massachusetts.  My parents met in Boston in the late 1940s, settled here after marrying.  Yet I was so used to them–having grown up on opposite sides of New Hampshire–refering to that state as “back home” that part of me grew up longing for the deep, dark woods, a creek, or a barn full of chickens.  Being comforted by the indoors is combined with respect for the outdoors and with a love of those mighty winters that give bookish homebodies an excuse to fall asleep reading in an emotional and physical retreat.  Maybe if I close the blinds and drapes I can pretend a blizzard roars without.  I’ll drop marshmallows into liquid chocolate and finally doze off.

One Feb. Feature Down, One to Go!

After a crazy week of a semi-intruder in the house, 4 cats hanging out in the basement, my voice bailing via a headcold so I had to make major poem subs, et cetera, leading up to it — and a friend’s calamity the morning of – I somehow made it to the PTAOW feature.  I don’t remember anything but the good-natured audience and the splendid little girl who gave me Valentine’s candy after, but apparently I didn’t botch it.

I have a habit of writing myself notes in case stage fright freezes me.  Good thing.  I subbed two poems and tossed in a bar from a Bob Dylan song at the last minute, for reasons I couldn’t tell ya, but I had notes here and there.  Some pushy broad directed “Read_____!”   Whatever possesses me to read in public?  Who knows?   Thank you to the hosts, the open mic readers, and the exceedingly patient audience for making the mad dash to the Red Line on a Sunday worth it.  I missed my co-feature Charles.

Thank God I didn’t hear about Whitney Huston until after.  Words might have failed me.

Rock on!

This illustration by Bruce Hammond [Copyright 2011] is based on the last line of my poem “Oxygen & Aerosmith” [Copyright 2009] about a dream I had about Steven Tyler.  Unlike my favorite rock stars, I don’t use illegal substances.   This is what my mind does on valium: