- Here's a link to a poem that's a sort of eulogy for the late novelist Alfred Kern, one one of my writing teachers: "Mentor" in Streetlight Magazine.
- Recently reviewed two excellent poetry collections, by Ken Fifer and Marcia LeBeau, for The Main Street Rag and Pedestal Magazine, respectively.
- Does It Have Pockets has cool graphics, and in the September 1 issue, two of my poems:
- "Shortfall (Family Edition)" was selected as a finalist in Broad River Review's 2024 Ron Rash Awards for Poetry. The poem will appear in a future issue.
- My review of Richard Blanco's lastest collection, Homeland of My Body,is in The Main Street Rag, spring 2024.
- "From Away" will be included in an upcoming issue of Main Street Rag. The poem is about adapting to life in a new place.
- "Elisabeth Thible" and "Sleuth at the Seance" are included in Power of the Feminine I, vol. II.
A video of my poem "The Color of It" that's in included in the anthology From Pandemic to Protest, released fall 2021 from The Poetry Box.
as the albatross borne on air
as the sequoia surrounded by fire
as the seed enveloped in frozen earth
as the turtle in the vault of deep water
—from"On Hold," in Does It Have Pockets
African Burying Ground Memorial, Portsmouth, NH. Sculpture by Jerome Meadows.
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Girl in Pink, Harpswell, Maine
Sunrise, Acadia National Park, Maine
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Pride Parade Flag Launch, Portland, Maine
Quotations for writers
“I embrace these takeovers, when a poem tells us what it wants rather than we over scripting our writing. The poem I wrote this morning does not just turn—it leaps, demands its due, laughs at my pre-writing plan. And this is the best of what poetry does: has its way, surprises us, shows us what we want to write toward even—and especially—when we had no idea that’s what the poem and we most needed to say. This is what pulls me to poetry—the space that opens us up to humility, to not knowing, to the pivot and the pirouette of discovery. May this disruption of the planned poem often surprise and challenge you all as well.”
—VA Smith
See more at
- Two of my poems are among over 80 works of photography, illustration, poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction in this new anthology edited by Rhonda Rosenheck.The watercolor cover art was painted by children’s book illustrator Anne Catharine Blake. Rhonda presents the work in six clusters: Noticing, Accepting, Wrestling, Opening, Entwining, and Exuberance. I joined Rhonda and other contributors for a book tour event at the new South Portland Barnes and Noble in August. Order from Exsolutas Press.
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Cormorants at Kettle Cove, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Jeanne Julian
Poetry. Photography.