Tag: Denton Loving

Official Publication Day for Feller

Denton Loving6 Comments

Hello Friends,

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) Please rate 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

I feel incredibly blessed for Feller to receive some early attention, beginning with the exclusive cover reveal in Electric Literature! I gave my first official reading from Feller at the 48th Annual Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman, Kentucky. I spoke to Greg Lehman on his Moonbeams podcast. I answered some questions about poetry and shared a poem on Deborah Zenha-Adams’ wonderful blog. I spoke to Emily Mohn-Slate for one of her great Beginner’s Mind interviews. A poem from Feller was recently featured at Verse Daily. Two poems from the book were published this week at Salvation South.

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!

If you’re not already receiving these posts directly to your inbox, please subscribe. And in case you missed it… check out my recent conversation with Zackary Vernon about his YA novel, Our Bodies Electric.

Tamp Ranks #4 on Amazon’s New Releases in American Poetry

Denton Loving2 Comments

I can’t say thank you enough to all of you who have ordered a copy of Tamp, as well as for the number of other ways you’ve already shown your support for me and this book! There are hardly words to express how much this book means to me and what a gift it is to know so many of you are reading it.

Tamp’s first week out in the world has been a real whirlwind. It began last week when Marc Jolley, my editor at Mercer University Press, let me know that Tamp had gone into an immediate second printing just before our April 4th publication day.

On Friday, the Southern Review of Books published this thoughtful, generous review of Tamp by Matthew Duffus: https://southernreviewofbooks.com/2023/04/07/tamp-denton-loving-review/.

What was an even greater surprise was to see Tamp pop up in Amazon’s rankings. Over the weekend, the book went as high as #4 for new releases in American Poetry! It ranked as high as #27 in American Poetry overall! (See Tamp there at #27 just behind Maya Angelou and Amanda Gorman?)

If you’ve read or are reading Tamp, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a rating or review on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tamp-Poems-Denton-Loving/dp/0881468738/. Everything to do with algorithms is a mystery to me, but Amazon reviews make a huge difference and will help keep Tamp in the eyes of new readers.

You can also help raise awareness of Tamp by posting on social media and tagging me. Send me photos of Tamp with your dogs and cats, with your adorable children and beautiful landscapes in the background.

And if you’d like to hear me read some poems from the book, please come hang out with me this week from the comfort of your living rooms. I’ll be speaking with Damian Dressick and Christina Fisanick on WANA Live!, the reading series for the Writers Association of Northern Appalachia. You can watch live on YouTube or Facebook on Thursday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

Again, thank you for all of the ways you’ve already shown support for me and Tamp!

Countdown to Tamp, Arriving April 4th

Denton Loving6 Comments

I’m counting down the days until my new book of poems, Tamp, will be published by Mercer University Press. The magic date is Tuesday, April 4, 2023!

Here are some very generous, advanced words about Tamp from others.

“Denton Loving’s Tamp reminds us that to grieve is to love, a sacred act that aims for clarity, and yet, mourning, too, makes us acutely aware of the profound questions that agitate the living. Loving’s poems, deeply attuned to the richness of a rural sacred order, both honor and attempt to name that complexity with a music that feels movingly restorative.” —Major Jackson, author of The Absurd Man

“Each poem in Tamp is a world in its own right: each a timeless praise song to the earth, to solitude, loss, and love. With bucolic sensitivity shared by few, Loving has crafted the most convincing wake-up call–gentle, surefooted, hypnotic, and insistent. Tamp is a rare trove of honest, measured assurance, a blessed reminder of what matters most.” — Shawna Kay Rodenberg, author of Kin: A Memoir

“In Tamp, his radiant new collection of odes and elegies, Denton Loving represents the works and days of rural Appalachia, and far beyond, with deep knowledge and delicate authenticity. Loving’s poems occupy the ideal cross-section between two of poetry’s oldest poles, the lyric and the narrative. It matters little whether readers greet these poems as stories that sing or lyrics that bind us in their telling, because the scenes and voices we discover will travel with us deep as treasured memories. Galway Kinnell once said that another word for poetry could be ‘tenderness,’ and this is the quality Loving brings most acutely to the loved people and places he offers tribute in Tamp.” — Jesse Graves, author of Merciful Days

It took me years to write these poems and understand how they could work together as a collection. Now, I’m so excited to know the book is near at hand, arriving into the world and into the hands of readers like you.

The fact that you already read, follow and subscribe to this blog is a great support to my writing, and I’m so grateful. If you’re inclined to support me again, I’d be grateful for you to pre-order Tamp, and there are a lot of simple ways to do so.

You can order directly from Mercer University Press.  You can support your favorite indie book store by ordering from Bookshop.org.  If you don’t have a favorite indie book store, you can order from one of mine, City Lights in Sylva, North Carolina.  It’s also available for pre-order at the usual online sellers such as Amazon.

For Tamp to find its way to readers, there’s a ton of work for me still to do, and I’m sure I’ll be back here soon, begging for reviews and announcing readings, etc. Until then, thank you!