To celebrate twenty years of the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in November 2024, Printed Matter Vancouver and Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic co-hosts Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, and Morgan Paige have collected poems from ones read by Ghost Town readers over the years for their third anthology
…
Making It to Semi-Finalist: “Your Going Away Party at the Hotel Dread”
When I first returned to writing poetry, way back in 2005 and 2006, I took a series of classes through an organization called Writers on the Net. I was incredibly lucky to stumble on an outstanding teacher, Bob Haynes and his courses, Daydreams I and Daydreams II…
Publication News: “Lamentation: A Cento”
My poem, “Lamentation: A Cento,” has been published in Issue #14 of The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry and Art. After ten years, this will be the final issue. I wrote this poem as part of a cento-centric project during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic
…
(Re)Publication News: “Six Degrees”
I have taken many trains across these United States. Many of them have romantic-sounding names—the Coast Starlight, the Empire Builder, the Capitol Limited, the California Zephyr, and the Texas Eagle are the names of a few
…
Writing in Form: A Narrative Poem in Syllabics
My narrative poem in syllabics, “Old, New, Broken, Blue,” was published in the Traditional Form issue of Blast Furnace, Volume 2, No. 2 in Spring of 2012. The pattern is this: Each stanza has lines bearing five syllables followed by a final line of two beats…
Published Online after Being in Print: “And I will tell you a story”
The opening poem in my poetry collection, Every Door Recklessly Ajar—“And I Will Tell You a Story”—was recently re-published online in Fall 2024 at Poemeleon: A Literary Journal. It previously appeared in print in the journal, Gold Man Review, out of Salem Oregon.
Playing with Form: The Abecedarian
In Summer 2018, riverbabble published my poem, “First Line of Defense: A Cento.” Not only does this poem use the cento form, stitching together lines borrowed from other poets into a poem all its own, but it is also an (almost) abecedarian. An abecedarian is a poem in which the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet…
…
A Group Poem at Tupelo Press
Several years back, the good folks at Tupleo Press came up with the idea for The Million-Line Poem. Poets would submit two lines—a couplet—and the world would see what a collaborative poetic effort could and would became. My two lines were from a poem I wrote long ago about The Combat Paper Project, which per Wikipedia, was“formed to help veterans cope with experiences in the war…
Publication News: Margie, the Journal of American Poetry
My poem, “The Weight of Too Much,” was published in Margie: The American Journal of Poetry in Fall 2006—one of my first poetry publication successes! Margie is an annual literary journal based in Chesterfield, Missouri that features the work of the nation’s leading poets. It journal was established in 2000; it is named after and dedicated to the memory of Marjorie J. Wilson (1955-1977). …