Last week was a leisurely, slow-travel road trip with a friend to the southeastern hills of Eastern Washington and Spokane then a loop back to PDX via Moses Lake and Yakima. We took in many truly awesome sights, scenes, vistas
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Found Poem: Gratitude Posts from a Dying Friend
Below is a found poem that was part of a Zoom memorial service celebration for a neighbor during the isolating years of the pandemic. I created it from the amazing trove of gratitude posts my neighbor made over the years before she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer…
Publication News: Clackamas Literary Review
In the dark days of 2019, what made a poem political? Was it the subject matter? The tone of voice? Was it engagement with current events, hot-bed issues in the national or regional press? There generally are no final answers to these existential questions.
Perfecting the Third-Person Author Bio…
Some journals want brief ones—fifty words and no more—and you begin to worry you will somehow be punished if you go over the limit. Others let you ramble on and on, a veritable laundry list of publications and schools attended. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of approaches…
Ekphrastic Poetry: Image Meets Word
In April 2019, one of my poems was part of an exhibit at Gallery One in Ellensburg, Washington called Double Vision: An Exhibition of Image & Word, featuring photographs curated by Zemie Barr from Portland’s Blue Sky Center for Photographic Arts…
Babbling Rivers of Poetry
Over the years, a number of my poems were featured at riverbabble, a literary journal that unfortunately is no longer online. riverbabble was founded in Berkeley, California in 2002…
Publication News: “Runaway”
My poem, “Runaway,” appeared in the print collection, Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place, published by Sundress Publications in 2014. It was also included in my poetry collection, Every Door Recklessly Ajar…
A Fun Literary Event Sidelined by the Pandemic…
In April 2020, my friend, David Pickering, and I were both scheduled to be featured poets at that year’s Inland Poetry Prowl, a weekend-long poetry event hosted by various venues within easy walking distance in the heart of historic downtown Ellensburg, Washington…
What Gandhi Considered Sins…
Seven and deadly and, still, sadly, beyond relevant today.
1. wealth without work.
2. pleasure without conscience.
3. knowledge without character. …
The Tupelo 30/30 Project
Back in August 2016, I participated in Tupelo 30/30 Project. What did this mean? I applied to be a participant and was accepted. Then I wrote one poem a day for 30 days. And Tupelo Press then published these poems on their 30/30 Project web site each and every day. Poems from the 30/30 Project are considered “rough drafts” …