https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNbUqGcJ8PE

This is me reading a poem I wrote at Bennington, and it now appears in the wonderful journal Forklift, Ohio. I read this poem in New York at the Cornelia Street Cafe, and the poetry editor, kind woman Amanda Smeltz, suggested I submit it. I am so glad to see it finally out in the world! I hope you enjoy the poem, and my apologies for the weird smirk at the end. I don’t often read my poems on street corners.

Last night was the most recent Feats of Poetic Strength, and it went fabulously. It was such a joy to hear these women’s words I’d read and fallen in love with on the page. Below are some pictures of them reading, with two exceptions. For Elizabeth Langemak and Sheila McMullin I was sitting right in front of them, and as a result took terrible photos. And part of hosting a literary series is to do your readers the favor of not releasing horrible photos of them to the wolves of the internet. Elizabeth Langemak (I will add a headshot later if I can get one–got it!) opened the reading with her gorgeous and moving poetry. I was delighted that she read this poem, “A Photograph of Her Showering,” because I had read it online and just effing loved it, so it was great to hear it read aloud. She was the perfect opener to the series, and I highly recommend following this rising star!

Our next reader was Sheila McMullin (again, will post a headshot if received-got it!), who took us on an emotional journey with her poems. Her invested performance left me on the edge of my seat. I am grateful she trusted us with her story. Poems revolving around sexual assault are a large part of the reason why I began the series, as I said last night. I want Feats to be a place for women to tell stories they might not otherwise feel comfortable sharing. Sheila’s three poems really transcended entertainment to create a deep bond between audience and poet.

Elizabeth Hoover was next, and she read some utterly amazing poems, with subjects ranging from Coco (of Ice-T & Coco) to hysteria (a theme picked up later by poet MaryAnn L. Miller). The smart, feminist themes running through her work were so strong, and I loved what she had to say about trigger warnings. She is also just a straight up hoot. Pictured below.

We then passed the hat for local feminist collective Permanent Wave Philly, and Candice (pictured below) spoke on their behalf. We raised $134 for this great group!! (That’s Sheila in the B&W dress behind Candice, offered as evidence that I did not make her up). After intermission, VCFA graduate K.T. Landon read. She had selected poems from her submission, so I was elated to hear those, plus others I hadn’t read before. Her poem, “An Andalusian Dog” astounds me, as does her great manipulation of time. I am sure she will be a name we will hear more often!

Next was MaryAnn L. Miller, who I think has a secret second career as a stand up comedian. She read poems chronicling her own diagnosis of hysteria, which was in actuality a degenerative disorder (I believe that’s the right phrase). Her poems tackled this difficult subject wryly, and with wonderful imagery that enabled the audience to picture the intangible. The poems she read were from her new manuscript she is working on with Feats alumna Hila Ratzabi.

Closing out the show was poet and all around wonderful woman Anne-Adele Wight. She gave us a wonderful mix of environmental poetry and poems with female themes. I am grateful she was able to step in to read, and her closing poem, “Cat Pills,” ended the evening on just the right note.

Thank you so much to them for reading, and to the audience for listening. I am grateful to you all for helping this vision to become a reality. I would gush on and on, but I am off to bake cookies at a friend’s house, because it’s Sunday, and life is quite wonderful.

I spent four days on an emotional roller coaster after learning I was shortlisted for the 2015 Booth Prize, out of over 1,200 submissions ten were selected for this honor, but I sadly did not win. They are still publishing my poem though, so I am feeling pretty a-okay about the whole thing. I also got to tell a lot of people I would have taken them out to dinner with the $1,000 prize money without actually having to do it, so that was a nice perk!

Congrats to the winner, Paula Brancato, and runner-up Rachel Flynn. May they take their friends out for a nice meal (not Mendy’s).

Also, a long time ago I was accepted for publication by the new online journal based out of Brooklyn (how often does that phrase appear in the blogosphere?), Prelude. which features lovely work and has a super fast response time on submissions. So I recommend checking them out and sending some work their way.

Posting twice in one day, hoo hoo, oh my, hmm hmm!

I have a reading this Sunday at 5 PM at Headhouse Books in Philly as part of the Jubilant Thicket reading series. You should come! I’ll read poems about my childhood, my parents’ childhoods, my love life (wait am I selling this? I have a poem about gorillas too), will make awkward banter between poems (when I started seeing poets read from tablets I knew we’d finally reached the year of Back to the Future), and will fail terribly at networking. In addition, to the other poets, I’m excited to read with Ysabel Y. Gonzales, who is a Feats of Poetic Strength alumna.

SPEAKING OF–

There is a new Feats of Poetic Strength coming up! Again, you should come! Facebook tells me 54 cool people are (and I know people never RSVP cavalierly to things on Facebook), so it should be a fun night. (Note to self, buy more wine). Readers include: Anne-Adele Wight, stepping in for Violet LeVoit, who suffered a car accident but is largely doing okay, K.T. Landon, Elizabeth Hoover, MaryAnn L. Miller, Elizabeth Langemak, and Sheila McMullin. These ladies were chosen from a pool of nearly 100 applicants, and are travelling from far distances to read for you. The reading is also a fundraiser for Permanent Wave Philly, a feminist collective of which I am a part.

Hearts and stars and Mallomars,

Shevaun

Two new journals have picked up my work, and I am grateful and super excited! Plus, my kind friend Alice, who blogs fabulously here, nominated me for Apiary Magazine’s feature on locals’ favorite Philly poets with my poem “Local Church Falls in Love with Area Library” (Apiary post with Alice’s comments is here, full poem at Four Chambers Press is here). So that is a wonderful act of friendship for which I am grateful.

On to the two new journals!

Washington Square Review, which is a nut I’ve been trying to track for several years, picked up my Dorothea Lasky influenced poem “What if I don’t even like you?” which is, despite its title, a love poem. I will post a link to purchase the issue, or the poem itself if it goes online, when the time comes.

Painted Bride Quarterly, which is a super wonderful Philly based journal out of Drexel University, who hosts readings and slams and all the things the cool kids do, picked up my poem “When the World Ends,” written in a apocalyptic state of mind, as the title might imply.

I hope you will enjoy these poems when they come out!

1) My poems that won an Honorable Mention at The Feminist Wire are now live! Please read my sexual lego ramblings here, as well as another poem that is a bit harder to glibly summarize. Other honorable mention recipients were Coco Owen and Kimberly Reyes, for whom I couldn’t find a link. Owen’s poem “Who rled” was an especial favorite of mine. I really liked Evie Shockley’s, the judge, selections as a whole, including the winner and finalists. Very experimental choices.

2) A book review of a book I truly loved, Michalle Gould’s Resurrection Party, is up at Entropy, and I was so glad to work with them again! I would recommend them to anyone looking to get into book reviewing.

The second Feats of Poetic Strength went off without a hitch! Thank you to all the readers, audience members (including Feats of Poetic Strength Alumna, Hila Ratzabi), Gus from 1fiftyone gallery for hosting us, and Girls Rock Philly for the PA rental.

Before photos, I am going to plug Volume III of Feats of Poetic Strength, please RSVP! It features readers K.T. Landon, MaryAnn Miller, Violet LeVoit, Elizabeth Hoover, Elizabeth Langemak, and Sheila McMullin, and is sure to be as powerful as the first and second. It is also a fundraiser for Permanent Wave Philly, a great feminist collective of which I am a part.

Now, photos!

Liz Solms, our first reader, took us on a volley between Jamaica and Philadelphia. Lovely words.

Elliott BatTzedek (who blogs at thisfrenzy) was a hoot, particularly her poem pertaining to peaches.

Ysabel Y. Gonzalez was a great performer who had the audience clapping between every poem.

Jennifer Hook read poems from her book “This is How He Left Me,” and took us on an emotional journey recounting her life after her husband’s passing.

Catherine Bancroft finished up the night with her hilarious and moving poems, full of imaginative leaps.

The crowd after the reading discussing the work. This gives you an idea of how cool the space was!

The readers line up for the mug shot.

And that’s me on the left!

Thank you again to everyone, it was wonderful!!!

“Ode to Kingsessing,” “Engagement,” and “Thin Walls” have been accepted by Storyscape Journal. I love these poems, and am so eager to see them in this wonderful journal. They are my most recent works to be accepted, and it is great to have some confirmation that I am heading on a good path with my writing.

The journal has an interesting premise, where instead of categorizing into prose/poetry, etc., they categorize by “Truth,” “Untruth,” and “We Don’t Know and They Won’t Tell Us.” So after my poems were accepted, I had to label them one of the three. It was a really challenging decision!

My poems are heavily influenced by confessionalist or post-confessionalist themes, and at their core they are all true. But then the muddiness of the details! I take liberties here and there in the writing process (the hissing cockroaches in “Thin Walls” are typically found in Madagascar, not in Philadelphia kitchens, for example), and it was a fascinating moment for me to decide if such a detail made these poems “Untruths.” Thinking of James Frey, I can imagine an argument for making them “Untruths.”

But I felt that negated so much of the poem’s meaning. And poetry is not likely to be held to the same standards of truth as memoir, for reasons I am both unsure of and grateful for. I think it has to do with, in part, the expanse of your audience. I believe I would prefer the right to change a detail here and there if it better suits the meaning of the poem, then to be bound to an exact (while malleable, fluid) truth.

So I decided on labeling my poems “Truths,” and don’t have a fear that I’m about to be kicked out Oprah’s book club as a result. It was a great process, deciding what drew the line where, and it’s one I’d suggest for all writers.

Oh, and of course, a great way to do so is to submit and have your work accepted by Storyscape! Link to submissions page here.

Elated to announce that Crab Orchard Review has accepted my poem “Lucky Ones” for their special issue, “20 Years: Writing About 1995-2015.” Crab Orchard Review was the first journal I ever submitted to when I was 19, so it is a really big deal for me, 11 years later, to know I will soon appear in their pages.

The poem is about the 276 girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the title is a sort of irony referring to those who were able to escape, but will still spend the rest of their lives scarred. For those of you wondering, I wrote this poem well before meeting Vashti at the Winter Poetry and Prose Getaway, but did show it to her. She said it was like I was there, which meant a great deal to me, as I did a lot of research and invested much of my heart and time into writing the poem.

When I wrote it originally, it was in many couplets, and had a very neat and tidy order on the page. I meant this to provide a contrast to the chaos it was describing, but when poet Leonard Gontarek was reviewing it, he suggested trying these longer, more unwieldy lines, and that is its present incarnation, one I am much more pleased with. I am learning to be less clever and analytical in the construction of my writing through working with him.

I am very glad that it was picked up, as it is one of my favorite poems I have ever written, and I couldn’t think of a better place for it to find a home.

You can find the link here. I am grateful the journal accepted my poem, as well as the time they took with getting the spacing as it appeared in my original submission. They are currently seeking poems and prose written by women to do with American music. I really encourage you to submit, as they have been great to work with!

You can hear a recording of the poem that my old friend Brandon produced here.

A note on some of the other submissions in the journal: I was, of course, elated to see friend Denton Loving, author of Crimes Against Birds, published here with his piece “Hatred with Wings.” It’s wonderfully written, with amazing moments of dialogue. Denton is also the editor of drafthorse, another journal to which I recommend you submit.

Two women’s poems in particular also jumped out at me, among many excellent pieces of writing. The first was “An American Meditation” by Shandiel Beers,  an enviable poem that does so much in a surprisingly small amount of lines. The second was “Mechanicsville, Iowa” by Amanda Moore. Favorite poems of mine (think Bidart’s Ellen West) create characters devotedly, and this is one of those poems. The subject matter is loved and well cared for.

As a whole I think it is a wonderful issue, and I am glad to be a part of it!