National Poetry Month, my publisher did some promotion!

 

  I know it's more like National Isolation Month, but for National Poetry month, my long-time publisher, Big Table Publishing, produced this twenty-second video for my book Spreading Like Wild Flowers along with a Q/A and sample. They did this also for many of their other published poets. I am very grateful to Robin Stratton of Big Table for all the work she puts out for her authors

     The question and answer I was assigned can be found below,

What was the hardest thing about writing Spreading Like Wild Flowers, or took guts to expose something about yourself?

I always worry about reactions, whether it’s the craft part (am I good enough?), or if I’ve exposed others, opened up one of their personal triggers—I worry about that kind of. Writing it, and even putting it on a page is kind of chicken, at least that’s how I feel ---hiding behind the pages, or the wanting to be heard without investment, or to be comforted. For me, that’s not guts. Within my work, and if I find myself doing that, I’m self-serving. By the way, as a writer you must have characteristics of being self-serving, but to avoid that philosophical debate, all I can say is I become emotionally drained right after I read such material in front of a crowd, while presenting that difficult subject matter. I don’t have that same visceral feeling when I’m sitting at my writing space…not even close.

Also from Spreading Like Wild Flowers, they released one of the poems.  

Shame

As sunlight squawked once more,

a rooster conned the night

again, waking to repulsion

of head from pillow.

Your eyes open like linen curtains,

with ‘how-long’ dust on the ruffle.

This morning’s hair

looks like a million

which-a-way blades of grass,

needing to be mowed today;

green, growing, enriched, withdrawal.

It is my lushness, of recollection.