I’m going to jump straight to the important business here, that is, how much we raised for Women Against Abuse, a local domestic violence shelter in Philadelphia, and the answer is: $270!!! I am so excited, that’s the most we’ve ever raised at a Feats event. If you missed your chance to donate, please visit this page. They are especially interested in monthly givers. $5 a month can really make a difference to a woman and her children in need!

Special thanks made again to all of our friends who made this evening possible, including Larry Robbin for cohosting as Moonstone Arts, Brandywine Workshop for allowing us to use their gorgeous space, and all of the donors, including major donors Franny Forsman and MaryAnn L. Miller.

Now, a recap of the reading in pictures. You can watch the “clouds cavort” (to quote Cynthia Atkins, our first reader) in the background, preparing to unleash a torrential rain later that night. Below, Cynthia reads her beautiful poems on the themes of mental illness.

Next was JoAnn Balingit, who read poems touching on, in part, family dynamics. She read poems both hilarious and moving.

Then Julie Kseleman, a supervisor at Women Against Abuse, spoke about the healing power of poetry she’d seen with the workshops I lead at the shelter, and how the women left the workshops feeling strong and empowered. It really touched me. $270 will make a big difference to these amazing women.

*Intermission. The clouds grew darker*

We regrouped with Sarah B. Boyle, who read us poems from her hot off the Porkbelly Press chapbook, available for purchase here. She too read poems rooted in humor and family, but her poem based on the pathology report of her miscarriage had me tearing up.

Next was Anne Harding Woodworth, who does work at her own local domestic violence shelter, so the evening’s beneficiary held great meaning for her. My favorite poems of hers were on the themes of great female athletes, and they included visual aids! I love when a reading includes visuals. You can see her holding up one of the athlete’s pictures below. Special thanks also to her husband Fred for playing a wonderful part in her reading.

The evening closed with Kita Shantiris, a poet and psychologist who was on a tour from Los Angeles! She was a wonderful closer, reading erotic poetry that explored themes of power, humorous poetry, and then two poems at the close that were especially moving. Then she said the nicest things about the series and the work it does for women! I was so appreciative.

Anne had to duck out before the obligatory group photo, but I share it here below with the hopes someone will photoshop her smiling, generous face in!

It was a wonderful evening all around, and learning that we raised $270 for Women Against Abuse makes me excited all over again!

Until the next one,

Shevaun Brannigan

The next Feats of Poetic Strength is fast approaching, which means so are my stress dreams! Will a bottle of water explode all over one of the guests? (This has happened) Will one of the readers be hit by a car? (This has happened) Will the heat be out at the venue and the audience have to huddle together for warmth (This has also happened but is less likely to be an issue for this reading, crap air conditioning could go out, crap)?

I really encourage you to come, it is June 20th at the Brandywine Workshop in South Philly. We have some amazing readers and I am very excited about it!

I also have a call for submissions for the August reading! Please submit! Call appears below:

Feats of Poetic Strength, an all female poetry reading series, is seeking an additional reader for August 22nd, 7 PM reading at Yell Gallery in Philadelphia. Spots may also be offered for a to-be-scheduled October reading. To apply for this reading, please send 3 poems on any theme in the body of the email or as an attachment to featsofpoeticstrength@gmail.com by 6/10/15. Notification will follow shortly thereafter.

Friends of Shevaun Brannigan, the curator, are asked to submit under a pseudonym. All poets who do not identify as a cismale are invited to apply, particularly poets of color.

It is possible a small honorarium may be offered, pending crowdfunding results. Poets are asked to read for 8-10 minutes. The event also typically functions as a fundraiser for a local organization which benefits women. The next reading (details found here:https://www.facebook.com/events/874628345931101/) benefits Philadelphia’s local domestic violence shelter, Women Against Abuse.

Past readers have included: Hila Ratzabi, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Dawn Lonsinger, Chloe Martinez, Liz Solms, Catherine Bancroft, Elliott BatTzedek, Ysabel Y. Gonzalez, Jennifer Hook, Elizabeth Hoover, Sheila McMullin, MaryAnn L. Miller, Anne-Adele Wight, Elizabeth Langemak, and K.T. Landon. The June 20th reading features Cynthia Atkins, Sarah B. Boyle, JoAnn Balingit, Kita Shantiris, and Anne Harding Woodworth.

I look forward to receiving your submission by 6/10/15 to featsofpoeticstrength@gmail.com. Thanks!

Shevaun Brannigan

Hello! My poems are live at Storyscape, I have three: Thin Walls, Ode to Kingsessing, and Engagement. I also got to travel to NYC to do a reading at the KGB bar for this journal, and take some very dark pictures of me with friends from all walks of my life!

From left to right, that’s my friend Rachel from college, me, Marcia from grad school, and Rachel from when I was in Girl Scouts ages 5-12 or something! That is why we are all doing the girl scout pledge. Oath. Hand signal.

It was so much fun, and I had a wonderful time in NYC. I love doing readings there! I WILL DO YOUR NEW YORK READING. I’m sorry, that was really forward and Philly of me.

Anyway, there is a lot of good to read in Storyscape, including work by Kimberly Ann Southwick, who broke my heart by reading her poems about her dog who passed away, as well as Diane Simpkin’s Mrs Hoppleman, which I also got to hear read aloud and cracked up at the persona she creates in her story. The whole journal is a delight, and I recommend spending some time with it.

I think that is all to report on the publication front, as May was a slow month for me (as slow as you can be when you are at a dead stop), but I hope to have more news to report soon!

Click here for my NSFW review of Alexis Rhone Fancher’s erotic poetry collection “How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen.” I had fun writing it, despite two computers dying on me in the process.

Super cool Brooklyn based journal Prelude published two of my poems online this week. I share them with you here: Jackpot, which is an ode to the body, and Why My Mother is Still Afraid of Heights, which is a companion piece to “Why My Mother is Afraid of Heights” (link goes to video of me reading it), and the two poems together track my empathy and then growing frustration with my mother and her fears. It is a terrible thing to post on Mother’s Day.

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!