#offering this up for the hockey poetry editors

[croszukis]

arber xhekaj holding david savard's lost blade 03.12.24

[creatingnikki]

Dearest Nura,

You play multiple musical instruments? Do you know how utterly magical that is! About two years ago when my baby cousin – aged 8 – was discarding his guitar I asked him to give it to me because I was convinced that watching YouTube videos and powered by my immense fascination of the instrument I would be able to learn it. And it might be true for other people but lol not me. But I never threw it away. It’s still kept in a corner in my room and sometimes I just pick it up and even simply strumming the strings and the sounds that it creates soothes my soul like nothing else. And so I know I’m not discarding it anytime soon.

People like you, who can play musical instruments, have the power of creating magical memories. You really do. Today a friend of mine is leaving the city. I met her at work last year when I joined and she left soon after. And I know work friends aren’t friends friends but some people defy that rule. And she was one of them. Every time I went to her home, she removed a musical instrument, as if some magician. First, it was the ukulele. And she played La Vie En Rose – which being a How I Met Your Mother fan – captured my heart. The next time, she got her harmonica out. And the last time, a fascinating instrument, the name of which I don’t remember.

And each time she said she doesn’t quite know how to play any but perhaps one song. And in those moments she seemed like this young, beautiful, peculiar and brilliant girl – which she absolutely is – but in these moments she seemed like a female protagonist out of a YA book. Someone who collects different instruments and only learns how to play her favourite songs on them. I told her this and then she told me, that you too, with your blog and your poetry, your vivid observations of people and your intriguing disposition seem like a female protagonist out of a YA novel. She proceeded to explain how most people could seem like such if viewed from a certain angle. And reading your answers, I have to say, she was absolutely right.  

Not just because you write fiction (which btw is awesome! Any tips?) and play multiple musical instruments but because of all your answers. The way you feel about love…I have to say I can’t disagree one bit. It is definitely why we are living right now – the only thing that makes all the other pain and suffering worth it. Because if we didn’t have love, what would really be the point of this frustrating and confusing life? Love adds another dimension and adjective to that definition of life. Life is frustrating and confusing and yet magical.

And haha I am far from a sports person but the fact that, aside from your parents, you have said ‘I love you’ the most to your favourite hockey team (Pittsburgh Penguins) is so striking and endearing. See, another beautiful and peculiar YA protagonist trait! We are, aren’t we, the protagonists of our life, as cliché as that sounds. And side characters of so many other books. I also believe while we may not be the writers of our life – because the universe, god, forces we can’t recognise, chain reactions, other people and so much more – determine so much of how our life plays out. But we are the editors, no? We can choose to cut some parts out, to draw the focus onto some other parts. And I think, I agree with Stephen King, when he says – to write is human, to edit is divine.

About stress and life – you know what I am doing today, on a Wednesday in the morning? Writing you this letter. Why am I not at work? Because I took a pass. I am down with the flu and my overwhelming emotions and thoughts. People and obligations exhaust me and I get  worried about my personality (lyrics from TMI by Gray). But it’s true and hence I took a day off. A pass. A mental health day. A pause. Whatever you want to call it but every so often it’s so important for all of us to do this. Students. People working full time. Full time homemakers and parents. Literally everyone. On days like these it’s also so important to:

Keep your phone and social media time to a minimum

Keep social interactions to a minimum

Not push yourself to do anything you don’t want to do

Do silly little things that bring you joy

Unwind in ways that suit you the best

Yell out loud – stop – if you have to for your brain to stop thinking or planning about the future or the past

Knowing that you deserve days like these

You’re also the second person I’ve ever come across who speaks so highly and warmly of your co-workers. And it truly makes me so happy because if the people you spend a majority of your day with can make you feel accepted/loved/understood, that’s another way life truly becomes more magical. When I started work last year, my desk partner and my first friend, made me feel that way. On the surface, we were as different as we could be, and initially we also gave into the human flaw of judging each other, but eventually we really saw the other person for who they were and came to develop a pure and genuine bond. We didn’t communicate much through typical conversations, especially not when one of us was mad or sad. But during such times, she would always leave me my favourite chocolates in my desk. Or doodle something on a sticky note and leave it on my laptop.  I did the same. And these tiny things made those days bearable. And so then it made life bearable.

Love, Nura, as you rightly said is everywhere. I always knew that but The Love Project it has given me hard facts for the same. The people around the world who harbour so much hate and discrimination for other people, I wish I could show them the answers people have given for The Love Project. People all around the world – we love the same way and we hurt the same way. And if that similarity of our truth and existence doesn’t matter then I don’t know what does.

So, Nura, as you live your last teen year, I hope you can look and accept all the love this life has to offer you. Your twenties are going to be as frustrating as exciting. But I do have a feeling that the exciting and magical bits are going to overpower the frustrating ones. So, now and in the future, live well, and edit even better.

All my love, Nikki

Guys, February is 29 days of love letters. I’m writing love letters, as part of The Love Project, and if you’d like me to write one to you, drop me an email at creating.nikki@gmail.com

There are 2 more spots left, and you can still be a part of it if you’d like :D 

I wrote this letter for Nura basis some questions they answered. You can read the questions and their answers here. 

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Michael H. Brownstein

has had his work appear in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011). His book, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else: A Poet’s Journey To The Borderlands Of Dementia, is published by Cholla Needles Press (2018). He presently resides in Jefferson City, Missouri where he lives with enough animals to open a shelter.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

In elementary school, I began writing silly rhymes for no reason at all—mostly around the holidays, but in high school a Ms. Perkins—my history teacher—encouraged me to write because she liked the way I experimented with the essay form. At one point every sentence in any essay I handed in could not be more than five words. She thought it would be interesting to see if I could write poetry. I did, thought my stuff was OK—it really wasn’t—but I found I actually liked writing—so I kept on and on and now it’s many years later and I’m still writing.

Who introduced you to poetry?

I don’t remember, but I do remember Ms. Perkins and Archie Lieberman who thought I was creative enough with my short stories—in retrospect were not very creative or very good—to write poetry—and he liked my work enough to take them around with him when he was doing high profile photojournalism stories for magazines such as Look, Life, and Playboy. Of course, those editors knew my work was not that good, but I kept on writing mostly for myself until I fell playing hockey in my thirties, found myself in traction and then in bed rest bored out of my mind. That’s when I became serious, started writing better and began sending stuff out. FactSheet 5, (a magazine that listed hundreds and hundreds of zines, journals, and books with simple one to two paragraph reviews) was around back then and I used it as my go to reference to submit work.

How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

I always liked Mary Oliver. Read everything she wrote. Rita Dove is another poet I admire very much. Carolyn Forche because, well, because she’s Carolyn Forche. I always admired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Robert Louis Stevenson.

What is your daily writing routine?

I write every day for about an hour, usually in the morning, and then come back to poems I wrote earlier in the day, months, even years, and make revisions in the evening.

What motivates you to write?

I feel I have something to offer. Sometimes I write just to write, other times I have a particular audience in mind, other times I feel I have something important to say and so I say it with poetry. I have a series coming out, for example, on the blog of Moristotle (https://moristotle.blogspot.com/), for example on reparations. I wrote it for African-American history month. Here’s a sample stanza:

If we go another thirty miles over, we arrive in Columbia, a lynching–there were more in Missouri, many more– and this one was no different–James Scott was lynched as more than a thousand white bystanders looked on– and he was innocent–the real rapist discovered after the fact– too late again–and no whites paid for the crime– Do we not owe Scott’s family reparations? A sincere apology?

What is your work ethic?

I submit to a publication every other day throughout the year. I never miss a day. I go to two poetry programs to workshop my poetry—and I am the co-host of the local library’s poetry program.

I spend every day with some writing exercise. No exceptions. I also carry around a notebook if an image hits my fancy.

Here’s an image that came to me when I saw the sunlight come out behind gray clouds and light up a field along the highway: We knew each other by the spotlight on wild flowers,

the bath of prairie sage and the colors blue and green,

Later, I turned it into a longer poem utilizing the first line at the beginning of each stanza.

How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I don’t rhyme too often, but when I do I look back to the work of Longfellow. He is still stuck in my mind. I even have one of his volumes in one of my boxes in the attic to this day—along with more than a hundred other poets—but he’s the one I remember.

Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Safia Elhillo. She writes with a power that is incredible. Her poem “Girls That Never Die” is so brilliant, when I reread it—and I do reread it—I have to take deep breaths because this poem, for example, is that deep.

Martin Espada is another contemporary poet. When he wrote about the hurricane that took out Puerto Rico, you were there. You felt the pain of the people. You became one of them. He has a way with line and image that is just magnificent.

Then there’s June Jordan whose political poetry is made of magic.

Then there’s Carolyn Forche who’s book, Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, inspired me to write an e-book, Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (http://booksonblog35.blogspot.com/).

And, of course, Mary Oliver who recently passed away and Rita Dove.

Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I write because it makes me happy; it’s the most satisfying thing I do now. I used to teach in the inner city of Chicago. That was the most satisfying thing I did. I’m retired now. Writing has taken its place as most satisfying.

What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write. Write what you know. Write what you want to know. Just write.

Put it in a drawer. Take it out days, weeks, even months later and read it again.

Revise. Revise. Revise.

I tell individuals who want to become writers to worry about audience and publication after you have what you feel is a completed work. Even then I invite them to workshop it with one of the groups I am in.

I also tell them it doesn’t hurt to read a lot of poetry.

Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I’m working on a book of prose poems and poems, The Tattoo Garden of Capella. So far I’ve revised it twenty times or more, but I keep coming back to it. It’s about a place that is magical and safe, a place full of color and love. At one point, dangerous people enter the garden only to have poetry destroy their weapons.

I’m also hard at work on a prose poem that’s rather long. In it, a poet with writer’s block gets help from a very eccentric man who sounds more like as tuba than a human being:

The odd looking man looked at him as if he had never seen him before—and perhaps he had not—and answered with soft moans, climatic yelps, silence, the sound of a tuba, and then an oomph. Ahh, he said, and then ohh. He paused. The rent is paid up, you know, but a long time ago I lost my way in…

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Michael H. Brownstein Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.