In March 2016, I was asked to by the then-director of Alberta Main Street to come up with a proposal for haiku that could be etched onto art benches here and there throughout the Alberta Street arts district neighborhood….
San Marzano Tomatoes Are in the House…
A September Sunday of rain on the long holiday weekend. Harvesting the San Marzano tomatoes at our community garden plot after giving a tour of the garden to passersby…
Award News: Oregon Poetry Association Contests
Not long after I returned to poetry writing, I began to enter my work in the adult contests sponsored by the Oregon Poetry Association. The Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) is a vibrant organization spreading its passion for poetry to every corner of the state of Oregon and beyond…
Publication News: A Poetry Triptych in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine
The Fall/Winter 2017 issue of Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine (Issue #7) had a special section, “Social and Political Issues of Today’s World.” My three-part poem, “After the 45th President Unveiled His ‘America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again’ Budget..
Be a Member of the City of Ideas
The city of ideas remains alive and well and living between the covers of many a book. I seek out volumes that teach me things, that remind me of the necessity of history and creativity and having an open and curious mind. I like to read stories of lives
Publication News: AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
In 2016, my wildly experimental free verse poem, “Devil in a Blue Dress” appeared online and later in print at Azure: A Journal of Literary Thought, a project of the Lazuli Literary Group…
Poetry for a Beloved’s Funeral Service
It’s almost a cliché by now: We use poetry to mark rites of passage, to commemorate profound and seismic societal events, to celebrate a life’s beginning, and to mark a life’s end. When my dear, dear friend LaVerne died on January 6, 2016,…
Publication News: The Dreamers Anthology
In 2019, the Beautiful Cadaver Project of Pittsburgh, Pennsyylvania put together an outstanding collection, The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jt. and Anne Frank; two of my poems, “Politics and the American Language” and “Still Birmingham” were published in it…
Reconstructing a Website…
In the early months of 2023, my website, www.nancyflynn.com, which had been up and running since 2005 thanks to the lovely design work of Cynthia Frazier-Rogers, disappeared. It seemed my site went MIA thanks to a combination of technology platform changes…
Party Time: Alice Munro Won the Nobel Prize!
So I was ecstatic when one of my favorite authors of forever won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. So I bought a cake from the legendary Helen Bernhard’s of Portland, Oregon. And, after that, wrote a poem. Because who does not love Alice’s stories and chocolate cake as well?…
