Earlier this month at the Kentucky Book Festival, I met Manny Grimaldi, who gifted me with a beautiful copy of Yearling: A Poetry Journal for Working Writers. Yearling is an annual publication that operates under the umbrella of Workhorse of Lexington, which in itself is a cool, wide-ranging operation that supports publishing and building community for writers. Manny is Yearling’s managing editor, and he agreed to answer a few questions about the journal that will be interesting and helpful for those of you looking for good publications where you can submit your writing.
DL: It was great to meet you at the Kentucky Book Festival, and to find out about Yearling. How long has Yearling been publishing? How long have you served as managing editor?
MG: It was a pleasure conversing with you, Denton. Yearling: A Poetry Journal for Working Writers is an offshoot of a poetry feedback program through Workhorse of Lexington. I approached our editor-in-chief for work, and he instructed I take helm of the feedback program where folks sent in work only for response. Soon after in 2021, we launched Yearling with that ethos.
DL: The fact that Yearling provides feedback to submitters really sets the journal apart from so many others. As an editor, I know that requires a lot of work, but it’s also such a benefit to submitters. As managing editor, do you still provide that feedback yourself?
MG: I do provide the feedback, and a resounding yes to what you are stating, this is difficult work. But I do this with the helpful impressions of team readers. Never in the community of artists, whether actors, poets, editors, musicians, or novelists do I claim to do and develop in a vacuum. We help each other. In the end, I re-read each poem, draw together our conversations, solidify my impressions, and compose meaningful feedback. I read much gratitude for the deep reads from our authors, and some encounters with poets create avenues to their outstanding revisions.
DL: Yearling is a journal dedicated strictly for poetry. Are there any specific forms or styles that you’re especially looking to publishing in Yearling?
MG: As managing editor, I focus upon this principle: Does the work move me to forget I am reading a poem? A sonnet can do that. A villanelle can transcend form. I also hold anyone can do that, Denton. Provided they are telling the truth, and telling it well! Short answer: any style, any length, any form, we can print—we enjoy a book format now. We take everything from single poem submissions, up to six poem. Currently, in this issue, I hope to cull the heart of Kentucky writers and our surrounds as much as possible. That said, everything is read, considered, and published if it sings.
DL: If I understand correctly, then Yearling publishes in December of every year, and acceptances for that issue are sent out by October 1st. Is Yearling currently accepting submissions for the 2026 issue?
MG: We process submissions all year. Yes. Yearling prints December of every year, once a year. In practice, we have closed a year’s volume with the requisite number of poets, which is 40, as soon as April. We respond generally, schedules permitting, as promptly as possible.
DL: In addition to being an editor, you have also published multiple books of your own writing. Where can readers find your work, and how can they connect with you?
Mothman and Finding are full length. ex libris is a satirical chapbook released by anonymus scriptus.Mothman connects people with a window into family and personal demons. Finding is about romance, reveling in poetic forms, from the historical persona poem, to the broken sonnet, to tanka.
Many readers of this blog will be familiar with Kendra Winchester’s name from her work as the host of the popular Read Appalachia podcast, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Kendra is also a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. Kendra and I had a chance to spend some time together in person this past summer during the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. One day while we were having lunch, Kendra started to tell me about her new project to compile and edit an anthology of work by disabled writers from Appalachia. The dining hall that day was so loud with conversation and laughter that we struggled to hear each other. So Kendra agreed to answer some questions over email about this anthology, which is actively accepting submissions.
DL: I was excited to learn that you will be editing an anthology of work by Appalachians writing about disability. How did the idea of this anthology form?
KW: Far too often, disabled people are treated like we’re invisible. When we are mentioned, we’re featured as inspirations, side characters, or burdens for the nondisabled people around us. Sometimes the very existence of our disability makes other people uncomfortable.
When I first read Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong, I didn’t realize how rarely I saw my disabled self in books. Reading stories about people like me was something I never knew I needed. This led me to seeking out as many books by disabled authors as I could get my hands on. Little did I know that there was a whole disability community waiting for me. We have our own culture and history. People just have to realize that it’s there.
In the vein of Disability Visibility, I wanted to bring together Appalachian writers to tell their own stories of what it’s like being disabled in Appalachia. With poetry being such a vibrant tradition in the region, I also wanted to include poets, and my goodness, so many Appalachian poets have shown up in such a big way. My hope is that this anthology will be the first of many anthologies of disabled writers from the region sharing their work with the world. The more voices, the better.
Sometimes people ask me if their disability “counts,” but we’re using the big umbrella for disability. So anyone who is disabled, chronically ill, deaf, or neurodivergent is most welcome to submit.
DL: Do people with disabilities in our region face challenges that are unusual or different from other regions?
KW: Appalachia has higher rates of disability than the national average. Some disabled people have had to completely leave the region to seek treatment. Some disabled people can still live in the region but have to travel back and forth to urban centers to see specialists. And others are disabled because they worked in major Appalachian industries, such as coal mines and paper mills. Whatever our experience, we all have stories to tell.
DL: What genres are you seeking for this anthology, and how long should submissions be?
KW: I’m looking for creative nonfiction essays—around 2,500 – 3,000 words—that center the writer’s experience with living with disability in Appalachia. I’m also looking for poetry—3-5 poems—informed by personal experiences with disability in the region. I also welcome previously published work.
DL: Are you only looking for work from published, experienced writers?
KW: I’m looking for writers of all experience levels! The anthology includes experienced, prize-winning writers and people who have never had a published piece before.
DL: How can writers submit to your anthology, or reach out to you if they have questions?
KW: To submit their work or if anyone has questions, they can reach me at Kendra (at) readappalachia.com. I’m happy to answer any questions that they may have.
DL: When we were at the Appalachian Writers Workshop this past summer, you read a wonderful piece about growing up with a disability. Where can readers find that essay or any of your other recent work?
KW: Owning It: Our Disabled Childhoods in Our Own Words just came out in the U.S. this past August. It includes dozens of essays by disabled adults who were also disabled as kids. I was so honored to be included with writers like Ilya Kaminsky, Imani Barbarin, Ashley Harris Whaley, Rebekah Taussig, and Carly Findlay. I also write for Book Riot and have an occasional newsletter called.
Many thanks to Kendra Winchester for this important work and for answering my questions. You can find out more about Kendra and all of her projects by following her on Instagram or Twitter, or by subscribing to her occasional newsletter called Winchester Ave.
Today, August 5th, is the official publication day for Feller, my new book of poems from Mercer University Press that explores themes of connection, longing, and the pursuit of a fully lived life. I’ve been writing these poems for about 12 years, so I’m really excited to finally be able to send this book out into the world, and to share it with you.
There’s a short window of time surrounding a book’s release where every action is amplified. If you’re inclined to help me help Feller reach more readers, here are a few things you can do.
1) Please buy the book. You can order Feller directly from Mercer University Press or from online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org. Tertulia is offering a 25% discount if you order through their site by August 7th. You don’t even have to create an account. Just enter the code FELLER at checkout.
Feller is also available at great independent bookstores, such as City Lights, Parnassus Books, Novel Memphis, and others. If your local bookstore doesn’t already have copies of Feller in stock, please ask them to order it.
2) Pleaserate and review Feller or add it to your “Want to Read” shelf on Goodreads or any similar platforms such as StoryGraph, BookWyrm, or LibraryThing.
Remember that you don’t have to purchase a book from Amazon in order to rate and review it there. There are legitimate reasons not to support Amazon, but reviews there do make a difference. Reviews don’t need to be lengthy. Any short, simple message to recommend the book is appreciated.
3) Post about the book on social media and tag me. Photos of the book (with your pet or your baby, on a beach or a park bench, etc.) are especially great to share! You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
4) Come to events and invite me to read. I’ll be traveling a lot this fall. Check out my calendar of events to see if I’ll be near you. More dates are in the works and will be added soon. But I’m also still looking for opportunities to connect with more readers. If you host a book club or reading series, I’d love the opportunity to come talk about Feller. Let’s talk about getting something scheduled.
5) Teach it: If you’re a teacher and would like to teach from Feller, let me know. I’d love to connect with you and your students by visiting your classroom either in person or virtually.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KARI GUNTER-SEYMOUR.
In the days leading to publication, Feller has ranked as high as #9 on Amazon’s new releases chart for poetry, which feels remarkable! And look at these excepts from longer blurbs from three writers I deeply admire.
“Loving makes lyric sense of complex issues in poem after poem in Feller, with his special blend of eco-poetics and earthly reason.” — Elaine Sexton, Site Specific “At once timely and timeless, Feller is a superbly striking and essential book.” — Matt W. Miller, Tender the River “Reading Feller is a transformative, joyful, loneliness-alleviating experience.” — Annie Woodford, Where You Come From Is Gone
And my friend Davin Malasarn—who is a one of the most artistic and imaginative people I know—created one of his famous book-and-donut pairings to celebrate the launch.
One of the most exciting things about publishing a book is to see it interpreted and reflected through the eyes of readers. The other exciting thing is to connect with all of you. I can’t wait. Thanks for all you’ve done and what you still might do!
Friends, I’ve been really excited for today to come! After what feels like a long wait, I can finally share the cover for my new collection of poems, Feller. But first, here’s one last teaser:
To view the entire image, head over to Electric Literature who very graciously is hosting the official cover reveal. I’m incredibly grateful for Electric Lit’s support and help in launching this new book.
I’m also grateful to Mary-Frances and Jim Burt of Burt & Burt who designed this cover image. It’s really striking and hits the exact right emotional key. I’m always grateful to Mercer University Press, especially my editor Marc Jolley, for believing in my work in general and Feller in particular. And huge thanks to Kelly March for coordinating this cover reveal in the first place. She’s amazing!
Feller is a book that has been a long time in the making. Some of these pieces took over ten years to transform from first draft to finished poem. There will be more opportunities later to talk about the individual poems and what the collection is about. And as always, I’m more excited to hear what the poems and the book mean to you. So I hope you’ll read Feller. The official pub date is August 5th, 2025, but if you want to hear a few of the new poems, you can listen to this episode of The Beat, a poetry podcast hosted by Alan May.
Last week, I was invited to be part of the launch of Claudia Stanek’s poetry chapbook, Beneath Occluded Shine. This is a short collection of 16 powerful poems all written in response to poems from Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions. Neruda’s questions are essentially unanswerable. Claudia doesn’t attempt to answer Neruda although responding to a question with a question is sometimes its own answer. But I prefer to read these poems as wrestling with all of the deepest parts of our shared humanity.
The book launch took place virtually as part of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse, hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche, who are based out of New Mexico. In one of the most unique reading events I’ve ever been part of, Claudia invited Jules and John, as well as poets Catherine Faurot, Gail Hosking and me to alternate reading all of the poems in Beneath Occluded Shine. The result was something that felt meditative if not downright spiritual.
I don’t ever remember a past April where I could visibly see poetry celebrated so often and in so many ways. Maybe one of the things we couldn’t predict about living in a dystopian world is how people would turn to poetry. Regardless, it was beautiful.
For my part, I had the privilege of reading poems to the monthly book discussion group, All Over the Page, at Lawson McGhee Library in Knoxville, Tennessee. I read poems from Tamp, as well as some new poems from a new book that will coming out in August.
Yeah, I sort of just buried the lede there, didn’t I? But that’s right. I have a new collection of poems coming out in August from Mercer University Press. It’s called Feller. I just saw the cover for the first time this week, and I love it so much. I can’t wait to share it with you all very soon.
Last week, I had the privilege to be part of the book launch for Darnell Arnoult’s new collection of poems, Incantations. This collection is a mesmerizing group of poems that celebrates language in unique but powerful ways. Many of the poems came out of a period of grief, but the poems are also celebratory and full of hope. They speak simultaneously to the personal and the political, addressing some of the most significant challenges of our times.
The launch took place in Hillsborough, North Carolina, at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church as part of their Faith and Arts Series. Darnell gave a beautiful reading of her new work. The church was filled, and Purple Crow Books sold all of their copies after the reading. Alison Weiner accompanied her on the piano. And I had double duty that night, first introducing Darnell and then following up with an on-stage discussion about her work. The on-stage discussion was especially fun, and I hope an audio recording of it will be available at a later time. Until then, I want to share my introduction. It was such an honor to be part of welcoming this new book into the world, as well as to celebrate my good friend. I may have also added a little good-natured ribbing.
Welcome, and thank you all for coming out tonight to celebrate our friend Darnell Arnoult and her newest collection of poems, Incantations!
If you are here tonight, there is a good chance that you already know Darnell. Before I get too personal, allow me to properly impress you with a few of Darnell’s professional accomplishments.
Darnell is the author of the novel Sufficient Grace, and two previous collections of poems: Galaxie Wagon and What Travels With Us, and she has published stories, poems and essays in a variety of journals and anthologies.
She is the recipient of the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance Poetry Book of the Year Award, the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Literature, the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, and the Mary Frances Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters. In 2007 she was named Tennessee Writer of the Year by the Tennessee Writers Alliance. She holds degrees from The University of Memphis, North Carolina State University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
If you know Darnell, it’s likely because you have studied with Darnell, perhaps at the Table Rock Writers Workshop, the John C. Campbell Folk School, the Appalachian Writers Workshop, the Tennessee Mountain Writers annual conference, through Learning Events, the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, or perhaps even as an undergraduate student from Lincoln Memorial University where Darnell served as Writer-in-Residence from 2010 to 2020.
Lincoln Memorial University is the place where Darnell’s and my lives began to intertwine. We co-directed the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. And we also created and shared editing responsibilities for the literary journal drafthorse, a journal dedicated to writing about labor and occupation. Darnell and I worked together, often getting each other in and out of trouble, and we became wonderful friends in the process.
I cannot list all of the pieces of good fortune that have come to me because of Darnell, mostly because Darnell told me to do something—often something I didn’t want to do or didn’t have faith that I could do. There are too many of these instances to list, but I will tell you that when I decided to apply to MFA programs, Darnell decided I would go to Bennington College’s low residency program in Vermont. I, on the other hand, lacked the ability to imagine being accepted in that program. I didn’t even have any intention of trying. But if you know Darnell, you know that once she’s made up her mind, you might as well agree or get out of the way. It is no exaggeration to tell you that the only reason I applied to Bennington was to shut Darnell up. As she seemed to know in advance, my life changed in innumerable ways because of that program, all for the better.
Darnell is the person who has encouraged me the most as a writer and certainly as a poet. Darnell probably knows my poetry better than anyone, and she has probably influenced my poetry more than anyone. A lot of my early poems originated in workshops Darnell taught. She was the first person who thought I had enough poetry to form my first book, and she largely arranged the order of that book, which in itself was another incredible lesson in learning how to shape individual pieces into a larger narrative. She has seen so many first and early drafts that it’s a wonder she still opens my emails.
In the 10 years that Darnell taught at LMU and lived in Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, my life was richer, and a lot more exciting. In her absence, there are fewer people asking me if I have seen Darnell, if I have any idea where Darnell is, if I can find her, please, help, she’s not answering her phone, she never answers her phone! Why doesn’t she ever answer her phone? There are fewer reasons to rush to the emergency room. There are fewer visits from the fire department. In short, there is much less excitement, and my life is poorer for her absence.
To answer the question as to why Darnell rarely ever answers her phone, I can report that she may have turned the ringer off two days earlier and can’t find the phone, she may have left her phone at home or at someone else’s home, or any number of other places along the way, the battery may be dead, or more likely, she is just already on the other line with someone else who needs to talk to her just as badly as you may need to talk to her. The number of people who rely on Darnell is uncountable. The number of people whose lives have been enriched by Darnell is legion.
I would be remiss to not acknowledge that the 10 years in which Darnell lived in Cumberland Gap were not completely happy. For Darnell, I know that time period is framed by her husband William’s recurring illnesses, his battle with cancer, and his passing in 2020. The poems in Incantations were born from that grief. The deepest kinds of grief. Grief that comes, as she would describe, from worlds burning, from death that dances and glides, from widowhood with its slaughtered and emptied heart.
And yet, within these poems, Darnell also rejoices in the curative properties of language, how it can bewitch and rescue us from despair. When you look at the beautiful cover of Darnell’s new book, you will see an image of fire and light bursting into the darkness. As that image suggests, these poems tell us that there is salvation in the darkness. There is salvation in these poems that are also charms for remembrance, charms for protection and rebirth, and always charms for love, no matter how it may shift its shape.
Join me in welcoming Darnell to the stage as we celebrate her new collection of poems, Incantations.
If you’re in the greater Knoxville area on Thursday, September 7th, I hope you’ll join me at the monthly meeting of the Knoxville Writers Guild at Addison’s Bookstore, located at 126 S. Gay St., in Knoxville. The meeting begins at 7:00 p.m.
I’ll be talking about ekphrastic writing or ekphrasis. The word “ekphrasis” comes to us from the Greek where it means “description.” If you still aren’t sure what ekphrastic writing is, then I’ll briefly define it as writing that vividly describes a pre-existing work of art. I’ll share some of my favorite examples of ekphrasis, and we’ll even generate new work using some of the fantastic art on display at Addison’s.
Here are some of the images I’ll be talking about in this session.
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If you live too far away to be in Knoxville on Thursday, I hope you’ll use one of these images or an image of your own in your writing practice this week. If you come up with something you especially like, please send it to me. If you need more guidance, check out my conversation with Julia Wendell about her ekphrastic poem “Horse in the Landscape.”
In 2021, founding editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner Chuck Reece and his wife Stacy Reece began publishing Salvation South. In the publication’s opening salvo, Reece famously said, “I’m not bitter anymore. What I am is hopeful.” According to Salvation South’s guidelines, they accept stories, in all mediums, including journalism, essays, fiction, photography, filmmaking, and poetry. I saved poetry for the end of that list because Andy Fogle is Salvation South’s new poetry editor, and he’s looking to publish work by established, emerging and new poets. Andy agreed to share some insight into exactly what he’s looking for in terms of submissions. If you’re reading this, Andy (and I) hope you will consider sending Salvation South some of your own work.
DL: Congrats on your new role as poetry editor at Salvation South. I love the magazine’s origin story, and how Chuck and Stacy Reece have said to “think of Salvation South as a big old house party—filled with people who want to celebrate Southern culture and people who are searching for new reasons to be hopeful about the South.” Can you talk about how that ethos pertains to the kind of poetry you hope to curate for the magazine?
AF: Thank you much. I’ve been wanting to get back into doing something like this for a long time, and, among my various professional duties in this world, it’s really one of my favorite things to do.
To the house party metaphor and poetry: I want to cast as wide a net as I possibly can, so just come on in, at least for a cup of coffee. Ever since 10th grade when I realized I wanted to devote my life to the arts, I’ve found things to like all over the artistic map, both across and within genres, and they all swap around. In college and grad school, I ran kind of a punk literary zine called 5th Gear, and while I definitely made some mistakes, I also think I got an underground reputation for being seriously eclectic. You could read all kinds of crazy-different and interesting stuff in 5th Gear. I’m still proud of that, I still believe in that, and I still aim to act like that. I have an MFA; I’ve participated in (and won 2) poetry slams; I’ve taught in all kinds of schools; I’ve been into way-out experimental stuff, formal stuff, middle-of-the-road stuff, street stuff, uncategorizable stuff…I believe that the best poetry has an aesthetic energy and a social function. I believe in the beauty of both, the magic of many, the awe of all. If I can help present a consistent mosaic of diverse voices, I’m a happy dude.
DL: The first time that I became familiar with your work and your involvement at Salvation South was when I read your wonderful interview with the poet Annie Woodford. I loved this interview for a lot of reasons but in part because Woodford’s poetry and your interview with her takes a hard and honest look at her corner of the South. It shows that while Salvation South’s point of view is hopeful, it’s also very focused on narratives that seek to accurately depict the places where we live.
AF: Annie is my newest living poetry hero, for a bunch of reasons I tried to articulate in that piece. Part of it is what look you mention, which is hard, honest, and hopeful too, I think. Salvation South’s general guidelines say we’re looking for “stories, in all mediums, that reckon with the history and celebrate the culture of the American South.” We publish pieces that do one of those things, but I savor those that do both. Celebration should not be blind, and reckoning is kin to rapture. I think being able to face the hard things is a reason for hope, and I think we can even look for hope in the gut-wrenching stuff, not just despite it. Maybe struggling with history is a form of celebration; maybe celebration is predicated on some form of struggle. When we shine a light on what’s been tucked away in the corners of our consciousness, it’s uncomfortable, it’s uncertain, and it’s unpredictable—but remember it’s still light that is the tool.
DL: Let’s talk about the mechanics of the submission process. Are you looking for individual poems or groups of poems? Do you have preferences for style, length, etc.?
AF: First of all, it’s free to submit. I like to see 3-5 poems rather than a single poem. It gives me a broader idea of a poet’s style(s), concerns, and abilities, and it also gives me more stuff to try to build a fire with. Obviously with a single poem, that’s your only shot, and I’m getting a very restricted view of your work; with at least a trio, there’s a higher probability of me finding something to encourage, which is what I want to do. Here’s something unusual and, I hope, useful: I write individualized comments in my responses with some regularity, I guess because I’m a teacher and I’m glad to strike up conversations and correspondence with poets.
Any length and any style, but I should say that I think branches and roots are related. It’s only a good thing when people have an idea of what’s been going on in the last few decades of poetry. But aside from that, if you love language, you’re probably a poet, at some level. And if you also have something…not necessarily to “say,” but if you have something intellectual, emotional, and/or sensual for readers to witness through that love of language—if you’ve got something to wrestle with in the joy of language—then send it on. I read pretty much all the time, year-round, and often respond to folks within a week.
DL: Should submitted work speak explicitly about the South?
AF: We generally do need to see its relevance to the South, be that addressing its past (which is still present), celebrating its culture, or something else. There have been a couple of poems I’ve almost accepted, but then realized that at least geographically, culturally, or thematically, it could’ve been written by anyone from anywhere, and any kind of Southern relevance just wasn’t any part of the equation. Good poems, but not quite a good fit (I try to let people know that too, just to be clear).
I’ll also say that it feels like Salvation South has become sort of a refuge for Southern storytellers of all types, whether their stories come out as prose or verse. We still love reported journalism, but we also love beautifully written personal essays that address all things Southern—identity, politics, history, culture, whatever. It would be nice to see more fiction submissions—we don’t get very many short stories.
DL: Although you’re originally from Virginia, you now live in upstate New York. Has living outside of the region allowed you to view the South in a new light?
AF: If anything, it’s made me defensive. From what I’ve experienced in 18 years of upstate New York, there is, at best, a slowly-fading ignorance about the South. Too many people just blindly lean right into the stereotypes, some of which, to an extent, we’ve unfortunately earned. Living in the North has probably deepened some of my distaste for the stubborn isolationism that persists—although neither region is clean in that regard. Sometimes I do read news about something in the South and think, “What the hell is wrong with y’all?” And then the next day I’ll be calling out some of my high school students, asking why they snicker at the word “Alabama” when I mention my aunt lives there. Ignorance doesn’t use a map.
But look, then again, I recently came home—which is a complicated word for me—to visit my dad, and we took some stuff to the dump, and I very quickly wound up having a brief but detailed and familiar-feeling conversation with the attendant guy—about my compression sock, and how I’d pulled a calf muscle, and then they found two blood clots in there—and he’s friendly as can be, asking follow-up questions and everything. Guess what happens a few days later when my dad and I go to the dump with another load of stuff? Same thing with the same guy. We’re just talking. And it’s not at all weird. I love that. I feel like I’m home—at the dump, talking with the attendant about compression socks. My chest just swelled with love for that little convergence. I think I appreciate that kind of thing more at this point in my life, since I see that it happens way less often up where I live now.
DL: You’re a poet in your own right. Can you talk about some of your current or upcoming projects?
AF: I have my second full-length book of poems coming out in November with Main Street Rag Publishing out of Charlotte. It’s called Mother Countries. It’s mostly about my mom, divorce, death, Virginia, race, and a little grace. It’s not always pretty. A hard book for me, one I don’t expect to get comfortable with anytime soon. It took me way too long to address that particular knot of issues in my work, but I needed to. And I’m about 2/3 done with a long, multi-dimensional book of poems related to abolitionist John Brown, tentatively called Cutting Light. With a little luck, I’ll start sending that around sometime in the fall. I also, when time permits, co-translate an Egyptian poet named Farouk Goweda with my friend Walid Abdallah. We have a chapbook out last summer called Arc and Seam from Finishing Line in Georgetown, Kentucky, but we’re hoping to eventually develop a full-length of his work.
Many thanks to Salvation South and particularly to Andy Fogle for answering my questions.
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If you missed it, I had the opportunity last week to read some poems about place alongside P. Scott Cunningham and J.D. Isip in Emerge Journal’s Be Well Reading Series. It was such a fund reading. You can watch it here. Check back next week when I plan to post a new list of summer submission opportunities.
If you’ve read almost any of my writing, you won’t be surprised that place is a central element in both my prose and poetry. So I couldn’t be more excited to be part of tonight’s Celebration of Place Poems, part of the Be Well Reading Series from ELJ Editions & Redacted Books. I’ll be reading alongside J.D. Isip and P. Scott Cunningham.
If you’re in western North Carolina, please come out to the fantastic City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina, on Saturday, July 8th at 3:00 p.m. EDT. I feel so lucky to be able to return to City Lights, one of my favorite book stores and one of my favorite places to read. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s more. I’ll be there with my friend Patti Frye Meredith who will be reading from her novel South of Heaven, a great book about a familiarly-dysfunctional family in a small Southern town. (You can read my past conversation with Patti about her book.) South of Heaven was so much fun to read, and it’s always a joy to be in Patti’s company. We both would love the chance to see you in person at City Lights!
Tamp in Chapter 16 & Change Seven
Finally, I want to say how grateful I am for the writers who give their time to reviewing other writers’ books. And especially those who review my book! It was great to see Tamp receive some love in the past few weeks, and I truly appreciate the generous views they’ve taken to my work.
Emily Choate at Chapter 16 said, “…each poem stretches taut between our perception of the material world around us and the ineffable, inescapable pull of a deeper world.”
And Ace Boggess at Change Seven said, “Tamp is not a book to be entered lightly. The poems have been crafted with the grave digger’s precision.”
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Thanks also to all of you who subscribe to this newsletter, and for all of the ways you’ve already shown support for me and Tamp! Stay tuned for new posts in the coming weeks as I share a new list of summer submission opportunities, as well as my recent conversation with Salvation South‘s new poetry editor.
Denton Loving 