Outside of the exhibit, four thousand shipwrecked girls are building their castaway huts
with the shells of my heart. By night they sweat coolly. Hear how their throats contract
with each gorgeous sip of water. Such a liminal ache. But you can’t touch them. They
wouldn’t want your willowy adulation, the way you search their irises for the future you.
They are busy with strips of bark and conch, they are busy with the soak and weave, with
the one two three, lift, my love. The singularity of their beautifying this place. When the
exhibit is finished, they will walk through their warm doorways and stay there. They will
become bodies of history. Kneel on the sand, prayer. Look at what they are making of our
wreckage.
This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!
Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
The exhibit is an astrology lesson. It says the world is made of spheres. They slide back
and forth and around and between without knowing prepositions. One sphere holds
everything we know. The second sphere holds everything we don’t know. Every morning
something catches on fire. The third sphere holds the other spheres but is still lonely
because the fourth sphere holds love. When she cranes her neck up at the sky, at night,
she shivers. This may be because she is trying to find Scorpio. She is more afraid of
falling up endlessly than gravity. The night is colder than it should be. She wonders if one
of the spheres has a hole. A leak that hisses the light out like a deflated tire. The fifth
sphere holds the sun. Spheres six and seven don’t know what love is but can recite
equations. We sat under them when you said you were leaving. The cold came in then
like a guest that wants to love you all night. The eighth sphere is rounder than the gold
ring at the bottom of the drawer in the attic. Even a guest knows this, having never seen
the dust’s halo. The sun is quieter than you would imagine. I am the ninth sphere.
This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!
Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
The exhibit is multimedia. In this room, a film on the wall. Looped. You watch her mouth
move. It is a dark hook, it is a hole you wish would fall into you. For the purposes of this
exhibit: a ghost is a dead but-not-dead memory. You watch her mouth move, helpless,
your heart a towed car. In the film, the other girl hitches her other winch to her steel
memories: heaviest love: velocity burnt out. There are still ghosts in this exhibit, but they
are driving home now. A song you remember later and assign to this moment. An engine
you disconnect. The other window wants to be this window. The girls leave the room.
This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!
Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
2016 AWP Roundtable #6: Manuscript Masseuses and Book Midwives – Shop Talk for Coaches, Aspiring Coaches, and the Writers Who Need Them
When a crit group just isn’t enough and you need a professional eye, how do you get expert help without breaking the bank? If you love the idea of working directly with writers, how can you set yourself up as a coach?
In this roundtable, experienced writer-coaches Kristy Lin Billuni, Linda González, and Minal Hajratwala share tips and tricks for building a thriving business, choosing the best coach for yourself, and guiding writers past their blocks and on a path to success.
What do writing coaches do? Do you call yourself a coach, teacher, tutor, or what?
Linda González: Coaches assist writers to expand their mental and emotional capacity to live a writer’s life. I help writers understand how their writing fits into their overall lives and then find achievable, heart-driven goals that include both the actual writing and the marketing aspect. Since I coach mostly women and people of color, I connect their platform building to a bigger vision of equity and paying it forward – they easily see that and move to a place of seeing their writing as empowering themselves and others.
Kristy Lin Billuni: I like the word “teacher,” and use it, but I never correct writers or clients when they use other, similar words for me: coach, collaborator, tutor, book-therapist, and many more. I am all these things at different moments in the work, and part of my skill, I think, is being able to understand what the writer and the project need and then filling in that role.
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What does your coaching practice have to do with your own writing?
Minal Hajratwala: Coaching pushes me to be in touch deeply with what I’ve learned over twenty-five years of writing. And I also get to learn continuously, which is fantastic for someone like me working outside the academy. My clients “teach” me things all the time, from new software they’re using to books they recommend to the latest publishing trends they’ve heard about in their genres. Often, in giving a client a suggestion or a writing prompt, I realize that I should try it myself, too. I love being in constant conversation with other writers about process, strategies, structure, narrative issues, sources — all the many complex aspects of creative work.
I have so much compassion for “my” writers as they engage in the valiant struggle — which reminds me to turn that same compassion toward myself, when I might otherwise be tempted to beat myself up about my own work, pace, or process. I only work with people when I feel there’s a good fit, so my clients also come from or become part of my wider writing community. We’re all in it together, ultimately.
Kristy Lin Billuni
What were you doing before you started coaching? How did it prepare you? What made you decide to start coaching writers?
Linda González: I was and still work at times as a facilitative consultant and trainer with organizations seeking to increase their capacity to work collaboratively with a focus on equity. It prepared me because I bring a systems approach to my coaching – seeing a writer in the midst of their own systems (work, family, etc.) – and assisting them to integrate writing as a non-negotiable practice that is their gift to the world.
Kristy Lin Billuni: I started out editing novels for a larger editing company. Some of my editing clients needed bigger-picture support, so, with my boss’s permission, I started freelancing with coaching services for those few clients. Before I knew it, I was doing a lot more coaching than editing, and I was able to launch something on my own. I took a business class for women entrepreneurs, which really helped me take myself and my business more seriously.
When I moved to a new home, a loft in the SoMa district of San Francisco, my clients responded positively to the new space. It’s really true what they say about location being a key to business success. There’s something that feels good to my writer clients about coming to work with me in my “artist loft” in a city and neighborhood associated with creativity.
That’s when I began blogging as the Sexy Grammarian. At first, it was just an experiment to see if I could bring more of my own identity to the work and to see if social media might be a good way to market. Very quickly, I found it was an ideal brand for me in many ways. It drew more of the types of writers I loved closer to me, and it repelled writers who were not a good fit. My client stream shifted dramatically from 100% referral to 50% referral and 50% social media.
I came to teaching through the sexual health education world. So, teaching sex is really what qualifies me to be a teacher. Being a writer myself is probably my greatest qualification for teaching writing specifically. I do have a good, natural editor’s eye, but I really see myself as being an equal to my clients in terms of writing skill, not an authority, necessarily. I think being a writer who sometimes succeeds and sometimes struggles makes me a very good collaborator and teacher for other writers.
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What’s the best thing about being a writing coach? What’s the hardest thing about being a writing coach?
Linda González: The best thing is seeing people shift from a scarcity mentality to one of abundance – seeing their writing life as a long-term process with small steps each day to achieve their goals. I also love to see writers embrace their authenticity and stop – or at least minimize – comparing themselves to others.
When I look out into the writing world and see my writers being published and following their unique paths, that reminds me our work changes individual lives that make a greater impact in the world. The hardest thing is to see how deep some of our limiting beliefs are about our ability to speak out truth in a world that still does not value the arts and even less values women and people of color.
It is also hard to see people decide to spend money on items or experiences that will not support them as much as coaching. It is a powerful choice to be coached and requires a solid belief that you can make your goals a reality.
Minal Hajratwala
What kinds of questions should a writer ask when considering a coach?
Linda González: Having been a coach for over 15 years and having had 4 coaches myself (3 focused on moving my writing forward), I suggest a writer get clear on pricing, working agreements (e.g. payment, session options in terms of time and spacing, cancellations, expectations), and coaching philosophy. My own philosophy, for example, is based on client-driven goals, multiculturalism, spiritual principles, and life experiences.
More than asking questions, I would suggest a writer ask for a sample coaching consultation to get a feel for how that coach works and if their style will help them resolve the issues they have been unable to solve with their other resources. These sessions are typically offered by coaches and range from 15 minutes to an hour.
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Do you offer any freebies for writers to get to know you?
Minal Hajratwala: Yes, I offer a free 30-minute initial consultation, and I have a free PDF of writing prompts to help people get started.
Kristy Lin Billuni: I offer every writer I meet a free 1-hour session. This has turned out to be an amazing marketing tool. I find I get close to 100% of writers who show up for the free session to agree to more paid sessions with me. It feels good to know that if I can get a writer to see and experience what I do, I can get that writer’s business.
I also just launched a free ebook on my site. And really, my site is full of free content for writers too.
It’s important to have good boundaries as an entrepreneur starting out, to not give away too much of your value for free. By having a few things that I clearly give away for free, I always have an answer to requests for discounts or freebies, and that makes it easier to draw a boundary. I’m currently using the free ebook to teach myself some best practices for selling ebooks, and I am learning a lot with that process.
Linda González
What is your pricing structure? Has it changed? What works/ doesn’t work about it?
Kristy Lin Billuni: I charge $150 for a 1-hour session, and I’ll read up to 10 pages of content to prepare for that session if the client wants that. I mostly work in series packages of 4-12 sessions, with the price-per-session getting lower the more sessions the writer commits to. At the 12-session level, the cost goes as low at $108/session. All you have to do to get the package discounts is sign a contract, make a deposit of any size, and pay the balance by the last session. I have no requirements on time lapse, so some clients will race through 12 sessions in a quarter, and others will savor a 4-session package for an entire year. I have no cancellation or rescheduling fees.
My clients love this structure. It feels flexible and generous to them. It does make it difficult for me to predict cash flow.
I’ve recently received feedback from a trusted business coach that I should totally upend this structure and create something more strict, more like a gym model. I’m putting a lot of thought into this idea.
Minal Hajratwala: Pricing is always a work in progress, I think. My structure is similar for 1:1 coaching, partly because Kristy was my role model! I do try to give myself a $5 an hour raise every year or two on my birthday.
I also have “Manuscript Massage” (developmental editing) rates as well as several online courses for writers that I offer at different price points, from $66 to $615. I started teaching my own courses online several years ago, when I moved out of the U.S. The classes have been a fantastic way to work with writers at a lot of different financial access levels and across geographies.
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What advice would you give to a writer who’s ready to start coaching other writers?
Minal Hajratwala: If you want to be a coach, take the plunge! What do you have to lose?
But first, a caution: Make sure you’re doing it because you love working with writers on their writing. Maybe you’re adjuncting and your favorite part is the one-on-one conferences that you’re spending too much time on for too little money? Maybe you’ve been frustrated by peer groups and workshops because you’re always the one with the best advice? Maybe you’re getting requests to “pick your brain,” and you’d love to help, but not for free? Or maybe you feel passionate about the need to help a certain kind of writer or story get out in the world?
Those are all good reasons to try your hand at coaching.
The one bad reason: “I need to make money fast.”
Coaching is not the fast track to money. There is money in it, but money must not be the only reason you’re in it — or you’ll be a terrible coach, do more harm to writers than good, and burn out fast.
Ok, here’s what I’d suggest if you want to dip your toe in:
1. Write up a simple sales page on your website (if you don’t have one, set up an easy free one) that really sells your approach, background, credentials, testimonials if you have them, etc. If you have a particular expertise or niche, mention that; it’s not mandatory, though.
2. Do your research, look at what coaches with comparable experience are charging, and come up with an hourly rate that seems competitive. I personally am a fan of posting rates on my website, because it saves me time in answering queries and recalculating estimates every time, but people vary on that.
3. Set a launch date and create a launch offer. Make the intro deal really juicy and irresistible, like 2- sessions-for-the-price-of-1. (This, by the way, is better than 50% off. You want to work with folks who CAN afford your rate but need a chance to get to know you.)
4. Then turn your sales page into a short email that goes to every! single! person! you know. It doesn’t need to be fancy; you’re a word person, not a graphic designer. Tell them you’re starting up as a coach and they get a discount if they book their editing time by X date, and they can use those hours anytime in the next X months. Include your Paypal info and (sweetly) make it clear that booking a session = paying in advance. In this email, also encourage them to forward / gift / share the deal.
5. During your launch period, spend time in relevant groups being genuinely helpful to writers, without being salesy. Post links to your sales page all over your social media profiles. Bonus if you figure out how to add a cute kitten, cartoon, or meme that will make people share your info.
6. Then see what happens. If you get even one or two clients from this process, you’re in business. Study your success, learn from your failures, take a small business class to learn as much as you can about the path you’re on, and keep going!
Linda González is on the roster of coaches used by LeaderSpring’s Executive Coaching Project and Windcall Residency Program. She has been a featured writer at literary events and fundraisers, has published essays in numerous journals and in three anthologies, and is an active member of Las Comadres para las Americas and Toastmasters. She received her MFA from Goddard College, her BA from Stanford University, and her MSW from the University of Southern California. Her purpose is to work with multicultural wisdom and inspire people of color to embark on a creative journey of balance and healing for this and future generations. www.lindagonzalez.net
Minal Hajratwala is a writing coach, author of the award-winning nonfiction epic Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (2009), and editor of the groundbreaking anthology Out! Stories from the New Queer India (2013). Her latest book is Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment (2014), published by the (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship model press of which she is a co-founder. She graduated from Stanford University, was a fellow at Columbia University, and was a 2011 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar. She is passionate about helping writers unpack internalized oppression and give voice to untold stories. minalhajratwala.com
Kristy Lin Billuni, AKA The Sexy Grammarian is a teacher and a writer. Since 2003, she has coached, tutored, supported, and collaborated with hundreds of writers. Before she edited her first novel, she hustled several very sexy jobs. As her editing business grew, she sensed parallels in her teaching work and her sexy roots. She embraced the idea and called it Sexy Grammar. Cleis Press just published a chapter of her novel, Turning Out, as a short in the collection Bondage Bites. Cosmo recently profiled her story in their “Sex Work” column.
The exhibit is a lightning storm. You walk into it thinking you will die or learn
something. Behind each curtain is a word that feels wrong on the tongue. On this body,
see how the false tongue protrudes. No one knows why. Here is the dry cornsilk hair,
here is the nasal walnut half. Underneath the scapula, a curled child. He didn’t mean what he said. Underneath her hair, the skull is a generous orange. Words unripen. Another
child on the chest; lengthy forms of punishment. Underneath the blue shawl, her hands
fold. Underneath those, no one has seen. Here is the release and the temporal hold,
signified by clay beads, a comb, braids of fiber. Blackened skin shines underneath the
glass but does not reflect. You assign meaning to texture. At the end of the storm you fit
the words together and they wash out in the rain.
This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!
Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
The exhibit is pointing in a direction only you can see. There are arrows on every wall
and the arrows point to hands. It is suggested you consider including the names that have
cut deeper. You don’t. Instead, stand before the mirror as the cotton is tucked and the
light is revealed. Here is the body, its codes. Here is the flat belly parenthesized in the
pelvis. Here are the numbers descending the steps. Some water you ache to drink and the
wrong thing to say, always the wrong thing. The exhibit asks you to make a decision;
each direction waits. The moon grows teeth. On this side is the miniature cathedral with
the spine below the arch, and the molar roof. On this side, the dark room and the eyelet in
the door. On still another side is the cat in the silver jar. This is the exhibit’s pain; you
cannot see every side at once.
This selection comes from Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s chapbook The Exhibit, available from Hyacinth Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!
Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press 2013) and Rungs, collaboratively written with Margaret Bashaar (Grey Book Press 2015). Her writing has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salon, The Millions, L.A. Review of Books, Interrupture, and Springgun, among others. She has an MFA from the University of Arizona and lives in Los Angeles. Find her at laureneggertcrowe.com or follow her on twitter @laureggertcrowe.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Donna-Marie Riley reads “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair” by Pablo Neruda.
We generally start by acquiring some background information on the poet or writer chosen; however, Neruda is one of those rare poets loved by poets and non-poets alike and needs little introduction. Instead, why don’t you share some of your favorite facts about Neruda and, if you can remember it, your first encounter with his work?
Donna-Marie Riley: My favourite fact about Neruda is that he was so politically involved. I think writers, and poets especially, are often perceived as these one-dimensional characters with little interest in anything outside of their craft. Or else that we are hermits who do not wish to engage with the world. But Neruda was actually a well-known diplomat and even served as Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. Neruda seems to be globally most well known for his love sonnets (I’ll admit that’s true for me), but he often wrote political poems as well. I think this is important because I think art should be political. And to use art as a means of addressing societal issues impresses me. It’s not something for which I have the skills myself.
My first encounter with Neruda’s work came via a lover. She directed me to read his poem Sonnet XLV (better known as “Don’t Go Far Off”) and it was a poem that we returned to and exchanged between one another countless times over the duration of our relationship. “Will you come back? Will you leave me here dying?”
It took me a long time to decide upon a piece to read for this because I kept trying to think of which poets had made a poet of me and I couldn’t identify who that had been, if anyone at all. I can’t say I have been deeply influenced by Neruda’s writing style. Neruda was never about improving myself as a poet, but about discovering myself as a lover. Perhaps it was circumstantial, but Neruda’s poetry had a profound effect on the way I love and the way I communicate love. Colourful and rhythmic, always half-sad. He grew me into a lover that, above all, promises tenderness, even in moments where great harm has been done, even in moments of panic.
Sundress: I didn’t grow up in a household with poetry, but I remember my mother’s copy of The Captain’s Verses on her bedside table. Neruda’s love poems have grand appeal, and seem to be relatable in so many different ways. You told me the story behind “Don’t Go Far Off”—what made you choose “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair”?
Donna-Marie Riley: “Don’t Go Far Off” is during the love, “I Crave Your Mouth” is the aftermath, or possible even the before. A poem of hunger. I love the restlessness of the poem, the movement of it. “I prowl through the streets… I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps… I pace around hungry… like a puma.” I feel akin to that nervous agitation, the inability to stay still. I like poems that disrupt me and this one’s very good at it.
Sundress: Although it’s a pretty straight-forward poem, taken in context with the rest of his love poems, this one could be labeled as “less tender” than others. What particular truth about love do you think Neruda was getting at in “I Crave Your Mouth”?
Donna-Marie Riley: I think the truth that “I crave your mouth…” addresses is exactly the one you mentioned in your answer – love is not always tender. Love is not all passive pining. It’s a heavy yearning. An overwhelming need. Having said that, I don’t know that “I crave your mouth…” is necessarily a love poem. It doesn’t read love to me. It reads hunger. Closer to lust than love, maybe. And closer to loss than lust. A blind fumbling for something that’s long been gone, or was never yours to begin with, never will be.
Sundress: You mentioned earlier that you’re also a fan of Neruda’s political poetry. You gave us a love/lust poem which ‘disrupts’ you; can you tell us a political poem of Neruda’s which similarly ‘disrupts’ you?
Donna-Marie Riley: I’ve tried since your last question to find a specifically political poem of Neruda’s that resonates with me, but I’m afraid to say I’ve failed. I don’t know that I claimed to be a fan of Neruda’s political poetry. More that I find it impressive and intriguing that he was able to bring his work to a political platform even as an artist, as a creative type, and as a poet most renowned for his “love poems”. I even admitted it was true for me that I am most familiar with his love poems. And yet, is it cheating to say I think the two are not mutually exclusive? That his love poems are also political poems and vice versa. I think love is a political act. Even moreso when made public.
There is a man called Tim Freke, who is an authority on world spirituality, who decreed that, “Love is the answer.” He pointed out that, “For millennia saints and sages, poets and pop stars have been telling us that harnessing the transformative power of love is the secret to creating the world we want to live in. Is this just well-meaning naiveté or could it actually be true? Love can be seen as simply fluffy and sweet, but it is also deep and strong. Love is not only a wonderful feeling of connection; it is a powerful force for social transformation.”
And so while I respect Neruda’s involvement in what people might consider more conventional “politics”, it doesn’t stop me viewing his love poems as any less socially active. In fact, I also said that Neruda had a direct effect on the ways in which I choose to love and display love, and I think that speaks to this as well. People perhaps tire of love, how it tinges everything, especially the arts. It’s every poem, story, photograph, film. But there’s a reason for that. It takes precedence over everything. It is the singular emotion from which all other emotions stem. And when not from love, from the lack of it. And so again, maybe his political poems were separate from his love poems, but this does not mean his love poems were not also political.
Donna-Marie Riley is a young poet currently residing in the South West of England. She is author of the poetry collection Love and Other Small Wars, published by Words Dance, and her work was also featured in Red Paint Hill’s Between Sentiment and Sensation: Women’s Writing Project, Vol. I. She acts as a contributor and social media assistant for Words Dance Publishing and as Senior Poetry Editor for the lit magazine Persephone’s Daughters. When she is not writing, you can find her watching cartoons, adding to her rapidly expanding postcard collection, or quietly wringing her hands. You can find her work on her personal Tumblr: five–a–day.tumblr.com.
I am looking for God. I am looking for God. I am looking looking longing looking longing for death for purity I am looking longing for purity. Sullied I am looking longing yearning for God. I am looking. Longing yearning for True. Looking for Real. Yearning longing for beautiful I am I am I am looking searching seeking yearning. I am seeking essence center germ place to create all other places. I am looking longing longing looking longing for God. Looking for extreme phenomena extreme phenomena the extreme experience the river water. Seeking river water seeping I am looking looking looking looking seeking broken ice on the river looking longing seeking sinking car doors and river water seeping inside looking longing seeking something true looking longing for God. I am looking looking longing for shattered ice shattered glass. Seeking peeling dissection tables yearning looking for classical models of knowledge. Longing atonement this flabby body classified by bile by fluids I am looking looking looking for something seeking meaning something more looking looking looking longing yearning for God.
This selection comes from Clare Louise Harmon’s book The Thingbody, available now from Instar Books. Purchase your copy here!
Clare Louise Harmon is a musician and poet. She is the author of The Thingbody (Instar Books, 2015) and If Wishes Were Horses the Poor Would Ride (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including Sixth Finch, PANK, Tammy, Lockjaw, and The Feminist Wire. An advocate for rape survivors and persons in recovery from eating disorders, she regularly volunteers for The Emily Program as a guest speaker and blogger.
She currently teaches violin, viola, and piano at the Louisiana Academy of the Performing Arts and lives in New Orleans with her rescue dog, Tink.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
Memory recollection: Pressured rigid pounding sound from
violin pound sound as if the bow might break as if the strings
might snap snap. In the face snap make brutal lacerations
brought on by brutal pressure no more they would say no more
no more the strings would snap scream no more this far no
farther they’d say. The sound powerful expansive taking time
space time taking space time tangible. Taking the room the air
suffocating taking the listener listless feckless restless listener
reposed on sinking sofa beside silks fine silks fine silks framed
frozen for posterity.
This selection comes from Clare Louise Harmon’s book The Thingbody, available now from Instar Books. Purchase your copy here!
Clare Louise Harmon is a musician and poet. She is the author of The Thingbody (Instar Books, 2015) and If Wishes Were Horses the Poor Would Ride (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including Sixth Finch, PANK, Tammy, Lockjaw, and The Feminist Wire. An advocate for rape survivors and persons in recovery from eating disorders, she regularly volunteers for The Emily Program as a guest speaker and blogger.
She currently teaches violin, viola, and piano at the Louisiana Academy of the Performing Arts and lives in New Orleans with her rescue dog, Tink.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
Thingbody compulsively anxious compulsively continuously
compulsively anxious thought you could thought you could
terminate existence. In total irrationality you thought you could
terminate existence. Attempts with the implement pressed and
pushed and pressed and pushed presspushed pulsations pushed
through flesh. Technique perfected to presspush pulse through
flesh like fruit like sinewy fibrous stalk. Thingbody lets loose a
guttural whimper fretting lets loose a guttural whimper: catalyze
the biochemical basrelief.
Suicide is a sin an affront to
God the manipulation of
duration.
This selection comes from Clare Louise Harmon’s book The Thingbody, available now from Instar Books. Purchase your copy here!
Clare Louise Harmon is a musician and poet. She is the author of The Thingbody (Instar Books, 2015) and If Wishes Were Horses the Poor Would Ride (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including Sixth Finch, PANK, Tammy, Lockjaw, and The Feminist Wire. An advocate for rape survivors and persons in recovery from eating disorders, she regularly volunteers for The Emily Program as a guest speaker and blogger.
She currently teaches violin, viola, and piano at the Louisiana Academy of the Performing Arts and lives in New Orleans with her rescue dog, Tink.
Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.
Donna-Marie Riley is a young poet currently residing in the South West of England. She is author of the poetry collection Love and Other Small Wars, published by Words Dance, and her work was also featured in Red Paint Hill’s Between Sentiment and Sensation: Women’s Writing Project, Vol. I. She acts as a contributor and social media assistant for Words Dance Publishing and as Senior Poetry Editor for the lit magazine Persephone’s Daughters. When she is not writing, you can find her watching cartoons, adding to her rapidly expanding postcard collection, or quietly wringing her hands. You can find her work on her personal Tumblr: 