In about 31 minutes, I’ll be one of the readers at Unsolicited Press’s Literary Nights series.

Tune in here!

Volume 8 of my newsletter: incoming!

My book, Vessels, will not come out until right before the southern Summer solstice.

But today, just after the northern Summer solstice, it is now available for preorder.

And will you look at that cover.

Tonight at 7:30 (in about 6 hours), I’m one of the readers at Literary Nights, hosted by my publisher, Unsolicited Press.

I’ll be reading from Vessels, and I promise to be as inarticulate, bristly, & stand-offish as you’ve come to expect. It should be an extremely awkward trainwreck of an evening!

I wrote the last poems for Vessels in June of 2021.

But I feel like I finally finished the book this week when, after reviewing the galley proof, I submitted the last edits and my final About the Author and Acknowledgements drafts.

It’s all extravagant press junkets and groupies from here on out.

A poem of mine, “Four Lessons” has just appeared in the fabulous Guesthouse. Many thanks to Jane Huffman for including it among such excellent company.

“Four Lessons” is from my book, Vessels, which will be published next year by Unsolicited Press.

Something just happened and, honestly, it’s taken me a few days for the reality of it to sink in. It’s of no consequence to almost anyone else, of course, but it’s rather a big deal to me.

Last week, I signed a contract with Unsolicited Press, which will be publishing my debut book of poetry.

More details soon, but first I need to attend to my chapbook, which will be coming out early next year.

Well. Isn’t that just some of the best news I can’t tell anyone yet.

I’ve just finished writing two books. They’re very weird, and probably gibberish, but I suspect there’s perhaps — at most — fifteen people who might, briefly, find them curious or even somewhat bemusing. In other words: typical poetry manuscripts. Let’s see what happens next.

I’m appalled to discover I have a book-length manuscript of poetry written in 2020. How is this possible? I swear I spent the year hiding in bed or crushed in a chair staring blankly at the pages of one unread book or another. Frankly, I feel a little queasy that this shitshow year has been so productive for me.

Now that shoures soote the droghte of March hath perced to the roote, it’s time once again to breed lilacs out of the dead land, mix memory and desire, and generally stir dull roots with spring rain.

Yes, that’s right: it’s NaPoWriMo.

This year I’m returning to an old practice I did in 2004, ’05, and ’06. Each day this month, I’m doing an exercise from Rita Dove called the 10-Minute Spill, which I found in the delightful Practice of Poetry.

Here’s how it goes: With ten minutes on the clock, write a ten-line poem using five words from a predetermined list, and an adage or idiomatic phrase (e.g. a stitch in time— don’t count your chickens— that sort of thing).

And that’s it. Don’t try anything fancy: no rhymes or meters of any sort. Just spend ten minutes figuring out how to pepper the words and the folksy saying over the course of ten lines. How long is each line? Doesn’t matter! Is it even a poem? Who cares!

For my list of words, I’m using the Swadesh List. There are a hundred words, and so I roll 2d10 five times. And for my “adage,” I’m throwing the I Ching and choosing something meaty from the trigrams' names and the resulting hexagram’s image and judgment.

I’ve done three “poems” so far and they may be kinda crappy but none of them are about Covid-fucking-19, so I’m calling it a win.