One of my poems appears in the recently released 2025 issue of I-70 Review. The release party was held last night, the night of September 26. My poem, "Nights of Less Darkness," is the title poem of my full-length collection that is currently seeking a publisher. Clicking on the image makes it much easier to read.
Even though I didn't have much time to devote to gardening over the summer, apart from cutting out the weeds and watering somewhat regularly, I was still happy to see how well my native flowers did. I need to make a point of planting more echinacea seeds next year. I would also like to grow wild sunflowers as well.
I loved stepping outside to see the black eyed Susans and to smell the phlox. I had transplanted the black-eyed Susans from another part of the yard a few years ago. When I am driving around and see wild flowers beside the road, I lament not having a shovel so that I could add the flowers I discovered to my yard.
I made my annual trip to a nearby sunflower field shortly after the labor day holiday. The blossoms opened a little later this year because the month of August was so dry. We were having a lot of rain up until the end of July.
Because of my teaching, I am less involved in the day-to-day operations of the press that my wife and I run--Choeofpleirn Press. Always busy in promoting the press, my wife has created videos for each one of the chapbooks that we published, in the hope of attracting attention during the Sealey Challenge.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we published Christine Andersen's chapbook To Maggie Wherever You've Gone, the winner of our annual chapbook contest, earlier this year. A video describing the chapbook and offering a sample poem can be found at the following link: https://youtube.com/shorts/aSUH0xJizKc?si=kRaIOIrKh9RQe3ik
