The month of April brings promotional excitement and poetic expression, along with rain and a little sun and signs of spring. In fact, starting Saturday, you can find several hiking excursions planned around the state through Wisconsin’s DNR. But today, we’re talking #promos and #poetry: an anthology giveaway and links to poets, old & new, & good verse.
#Promos
By now, you may have heard that the anthology I co-edited with Lisa Rivero (Hidden Timber Books) has been released! Here are three ways you can snag a copy of Family Stories from the Attic:
You can purchase the anthology online through Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee (recently named the best bookstore in Wisconsin!).- Buy the book IRL (as they say) at the Book Launch on May 13th, 7pm, at Boswell, where you can also listen to contributors read from their stories, essays, and poems.
- Stop by Hidden Timber Books to enter a giveaway and–as a bonus–read Lisa Rivero’s beautiful introduction from the book. In an excerpt from the intro (below), she speaks to how the origins of the anthology began with her Great Aunt Hattie’s daily journal entries:
I began transcribing the entries to share with family members, and she became real to me through her words. Who was Hattie? She loved puzzles and games, especially solitaire, and she and her husband, William, played cards often with neighbors. She recorded scores of local baseball games. She looked forward to getting the mail and reading material. She enjoyed listening to the radio, especially news programs and serials. She butchered hogs on her kitchen table. She didn’t like to garden. She tended to be stout and then fat, helped along by her fondness for food and the difficulty she had in physical movement in later years. She was keenly interested in both local and national politics and remembered the anniversary of the death of FDR every year. She seems never to have lost her humor or her sense of wonder and engagement.
There will be more posts to come about the book and the contributors. For now, enjoy the introduction and drop your name in the hat to win a copy.
#Poetry
National Poetry Month is off and running with some cool ways to connect to your favorite poet or discover someone new.
- Click the picture to the right to pull up the official poster for National Poetry Month as a PDF, where each image links you to a poem.
- Stop by Literary Hub for 13 New Poetry Collections to check out during National Poetry Month.
- Head over to On Being’s Poetry Radio Project and listen to poets like Wendell Berry read “How to be a Poet” and Mary Oliver read “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac:”
There is so much to admire, to weep over. / And to write music or poems about. // Bless the feet that take you to and fro. / Bless the eyes and the listening ears. / Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. / Bless touching.
Several more poets are listed on the Poetry Radio Project page, providing excellent lunchtime listening (and reading, as many have transcripts attached). Hat tip to Yvonne Stephens for sharing the link.
How are you celebrating this week, poetry-wise or beyond?
I took a boxing class once. I learned the art of the jab, the uppercut, the hook. I even sparred with a guy, but he just played nice. It could have been the giddy grin on my face or the clumsy footwork, but I’m guessing he knew I didn’t pack much of a punch. If he’d really fought me, though, or knocked me out, would I have gotten back in the ring to face him again? Maybe. If I really loved boxing. But I’m a softy (and a sore loser), and I eventually quit.