Choeofpleirn Press is calling for submissions to our annual chapbook contest. More details appear below and at our website.
with a menu of photography, books, jazz, poetry, and other items occasionally
Choeofpleirn Press is calling for submissions to our annual chapbook contest. More details appear below and at our website.
A recent poem of mine appears in Stone Poetry Journal. Use the following link to read my poem, which is titled "Forgetting Everything But Regrets." It took a little while before this poem of mine found a home.
The act of making peanut butter, which is something that appears in the poem, is described in an earlier blog post of mine.
Poems can be found in everyday activities. That discovery is something that I wish I knew when I was much younger. It would have been so much easier to come up with poems for those poetry workshops that I enrolled in as an undergraduate and graduate student if I had examined my everyday activities more closely.
One of my poems appears in the recently released edition of Flint Hills Review. Normally, the annual issue is released during the summer; the recent issue was delayed because of moving the offices at Emporia State University, among other things.
"A Seam of Coal," my poem, references Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, where my mother was born and raised, and where my family often returned for visits when I was younger. The Short Strand is a working class section of Belfast. USDB, by the way, is an abbreviation for the United States Disciplinary Barracks, aka military prison, located at Fort Leavenworth. I taught a writing class there one semester ten or more years ago.
Because the picture is hard to read, I am adding another copy of the poem.
My jazz recommendations for 2023 appear below in no particular order.
Jan Harbeck Quartet, Balanced. One jazz recording that I overlooked in 2022 is Jan Harbeck Quartet’s Balanced, which wasn’t released until late November of that year. Unlike previous recordings by Harbeck, where he plays standards like “Harlem Nocturne” or “I Love Paris,” this new album contains original music written by Harbeck and, with the exception of the opening track, “Balanced,” the album creates a dominant mood that conjures late nights in an urban jazz club. A fan of his music since 2011, I look forward to hearing upcoming albums by the Jan Harbeck Quartet.