Two prose poems from my new "seed coat" series are in the current issue of Bramble. Fun fact: the author photo was taken by my young son! These poems are inspired in part by my struggle with trying to protect myself from situations that make me anxious while also recognizing that it is necessary for us all to step out of our comfort zones in order to grow. The poems also take inspiration from some recent attempts to plant and grow lavender. The titles may or may not come from real and imagined coats.  

I'm grateful to have several of my {anxiety monster} poems in Hummingbird Magazine of the Short Poem (Volume XXVIII, Number 1). These poems came about in the summer of 2016 during a time when I experienced quite a bit of anxiety. Sometimes it helped to weed the flower gardens. I savored the bleeding heart's vibrant pink blossoms and inhaled the scent of lilacs. The rusty but trusty Hamilton Hauler was by my side as I tended to fuchsia roses. 

I'll be reading poems from sections of mother-mailbox that engage with Karen Laudon's artwork. Does the painting below look familiar, by the way? Laudon's Fireflies, Between Here and There is the cover art for mother-mailbox. The poetry reading will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018 at Gallery 211 in Madison, WI. The opening for Laudon's Transmutations will be held from 4-6 p.m. on Feb. 1. (Scroll down for gallery info.)

I'm thrilled to have my poem "Pathways" included in Issue 6 of Firefly Magazine. This feels like an appropriate venue for the poem--it's inspired by Karen Laudon's painting, Fireflies.

Another poem is in the new issue of The Novice.

My first full-length collection, mother-mailbox, is forthcoming later this year from Misty Publications. It's such an honor to be chosen for the Arsenic Lobster Poetry Prize! With this exciting news I'm reflecting on all the friends, family, and teachers who have encouraged me over the years. 
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More details to come, friends! I'm looking forward to sharing more about the collection soon.

"Collaboration is a calling to work with and for others, in the service of something that transcends individual artistic ego and, as such, has to do with love, survival, generosity, and a conversation in which the terms of language are multidimensional."
--Anne Waldman, "Going on Our Nerve: Collaborations Between Poets and Visual Artists"

The lights are dim at the Brick Lot Pub in Sturgeon Bay. It's a Saturday night in early June and the place is packed for Steel Bridge Songfest. We're about to start our set. Although she considers herself more of a bassist than a drummer, Jena G. sits behind our ratty drum kit, brushes and sticks in hand. Bethany Lindemann, normally a vocalist and guitarist, has Jena's reddish-brown beauty of a bass. She's already in the zone, letting a few chords ring out. Though I'm not a singer, I awkwardly hold the microphone. "Let's get weird," I blurt. "Yeah," a few guys in a booth say, lifting their mugs of beer.

When my sister Bethany suggested that I turn some poems from Small Adult Trees/Small Adulteries into songs for Villainess--our art rock side project, I was up for it. I was up for getting strange.

I'm not a songwriter. Or a singer. At best, I'm a mediocre violinist. But I sang through three of the poems from my quirky tree people project, testing out melodies. Right away I realized how much condensing I would have to do to transform the poems into songs. My prose poems were wordy, too much of a mouthful for songs. I realized I'd have to add in some repetition. 

"Deciduous leaves, deciduous leaves, deciduous leaves on the small adult tree," I sang in the comfort of my living room. Bethany's driving bass part and vocal harmonies urged me on. Jena cautiously rattled the cymbals, then tapped intuitive, experimental rhythms on the floor tom. The result is a trio of shortish songs that we recorded in Bethany's basement. And then Stephen Spalding added in some eerie electric guitar and worked his magic with mixing. I don't think I have the musical vocabulary to describe how his mix affected the project, but let's just say the effects he applied to the tracks made the composition weirder, stranger, more Small Adult Trees-ish.

Anne Waldman writes of collaboration and strangeness: "Something new, or 'other,' emerges from the combination that would not have come about with a solo act."

And "something new or 'other'" did emerge when Bethany, Jena, and Stephen added their layers. Something strange and other emerged once again after visual artist Erin LaBonte responded with video.

Erin had spent some time with the poem series. After she listened to the audio, she came back with a pocket-sized spiral notebook full of images and concepts scrawled in signature black Sharpie. Erin's experimental video asks viewers to enter a world of giant dandelion puffs, a curious new world where tree-people (or tree-dwellers?) are pregnant, are weaving streamers into branches. A world where leaves are plucked from trees and clenched palms open up to reveal ethereal blossoms. Rather than illustrate the songs, the experimental video responds to both the images and the music, creating a dream-like landscape.

Collaboration allows for strength in numbers. How else could Bethany, Jena, and I have performed odd little tree songs in public? Collaboration also encourages the peculiar; it pushes us to move beyond our artistic comfort zones as we challenge one another to respond to images, phrases, melodies, and mixes. It encourages surprises. 

In "Going on Our Nerve," poet Anne Waldman writes, "The genre of collaboration is a social activity...You are not thinking about the concept, the finished product, or making money. So you surprise each other" (132). When collaborating, you have a built-in audience, so sometimes you create to flabbergast, to mystify, to delight your collaborator(s).

We'll be sharing this collaboration during a poetry reading at LaDeDa Books & Beans in Manitowoc, WI on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. Or watch for the video on Vimeo or YouTube soon! Small Adult Trees/Small Adulteries (the poetry chapbook) is available through Dancing Girl Press. 
                                                                                 
Work Cited
Waldman, Anne. "Going on Our Nerve: Collaborations Between Poets and Visual Artists." Third Mind: Creative Writing                        through Visual Art. Ed. Tanya Foster & Kristin Prevallet. New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2002. Print.