Poetry Month Roundup

It’s the end of April, the month we celebrate poetry and the real arrival of spring. Already the forsythia are starting to leaf out green amidst the yellow blossoms that always cheer me to the core come April. I’m trying to notice the yellow each day before it’s gone again, but what follows is so beautiful that it’s hard to mind how fast spring catapults through the calendar.

It’s been a minute since I posted last, which often happens when the semester heats up. I had a lovely reading for the Gallery of Readers series with one of my writing groups in late February. Check out the video recording featuring host Carol Edelstein (also a Perugia poet), me, Libby Maxey, Adin Thayer, and Sharon Tracey. I also read for Instagram Live with Ruth Awad and Vi Khi Nau hosted by Taylor Swift as Books.

May readings coming up:

It was thrilling to have Uncertain Acrobats featured in Poetry + Fungus, a beautiful Instagram project curated by Dayna Patterson, matching book covers with gorgeous mushroom pix! I was also really honored to be nominated for a Pushcart Prize in a new way this year. Check this out:

And my work for Perugia has been fruitful and exciting. I was featured in the “Member Spotlight” for CLMP and traveled to Philadelphia for AWP where I hosted an off-site reading, a bookfair table, author signings, and a panel for Perugia poets and signed my own first book at the CavanKerry table.

Closing Poetry Month with a Poetry Carnival:

Perugia Press will be at the Florence Poetry Carnival at the Florence Civic Center with a table of books and poetry prompt activities from 1-5 Saturday, April 30, and I look forward to celebrating at Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity at 7:00 on 4/30 for a “Poetry & Pie” reading featuring Northampton Poet Laureate Karen Skolfield, Martín Espada, the new Youth Poet Laureate of Northampton, Rio Santos, and Pie Bar treats. As a prelude to those delights, Perugia is hosting a “Carnival of Poets” night at the Institute for the Musical Arts TONIGHT, Friday, April 29, from 7-9, featuring 14 performers, readings, music, wine, treats, a poetry book sale, and, if you are nearby, YOU! Listen in (at minute 43) to “Art Beat” hosted by Donnabelle Casis on Bill Newman’s radio show, in which Rachel Cyrene Blackman and I talk about the weekend’s activities and I read a poem which celebrates the Mohegan language written by Rebecca Pelky, author of Perugia’s latest book Through a Red Place and one of tonight’s readers.