My poem, “My Wishing Star on a Long Ride,” which appeared in Eclectica’s July/August 2015 issue, will soon appear in one of their four forthcoming 20th anniversary anthologies! It’s nice to have a poem make several appearances, and not just one or two. Eclectica is running a Kickstarter campaign to sponsor the anthology, so if you feel inclined to make a contribution, follow the link — every donation helps! Here’s the poem — it makes…
Next Sunday, October 11, at 3 pm in picturesque Crockett, California, I’ll be a featured reader at the Valona Deli Second Sunday Poetry Series. Coordinator Connie Post kindly invited me. If you’re in the SF Bay Area and can make it, it would be wonderful to see you! There’s an open mic after the two featured readers, and a terrific jazz ensemble plays at 6 pm after the poetry. Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and…
Can writing poetry ever pay enough? And do we need it to? For those of us taking advantage of the fall season to submit work to recently opened journals, there’s a new way to see if any on your target list pay for poems. Most print journal do pay, but only in copies. For online published poems, my stipend is merely the exposure to readers. But why not get at least a monetary token of…
“Hope is the thing with feathers” led me in an interesting direction: a series of poems with birds in them. Inspired in part by Emily Dickinson’s interest in birds and her many bird poems–which I found collected in a book called A Spicing of Birds –I wrote a series to decipher the messages I hear in the silver clamor of morning and evening birdsong. One poem, “Year Year I First Heard Birdsong”, found its way…
The Poetry of Magical Where things just happen. The blue-beaked parrot lands on the hummingbird feeder that dangles from your ear and begins singing like Pharrell Williams— a voice that drops veils of gauze
I’m engaged with Dickinson through her letters and poems in a kind of long, late-night girls-sitting-up-and-braiding-each-other’s-hair kind of conversation. I can’t read anything she’s written without wanting to talk back. She inspires the opposite of passivity! She makes me think and feel so much, and she connects so well with what’s been going on inside me, those ineluctable currents of being that need closer and more passionate examination before they slip away into other currents.…
Here are some fresh ideas for National Poetry Month at Tweetspeak, the Best in Poetry & Poetic things. Including photographing your poet jeans in a creative way. I think if I do that, I will have to write about it. Also from Tweetspeak, some unusual poem prompts. How has your poetry month been going? Mine is rich with poetry everywhere I turn — for reading, listening, and writing. I didn’t go for the poem-a-day exercise,…
I’m celebrating the month in yet another way — giving a hefty discount on my recent book, Gods of Water and Air. From now through April 30, you can get a copy directly from me for only $11, including shipping. Email me if you’d like one: rachel@dacushome.com Poet and essayist Molly Fisk said : “In Gods of Water and Air, Rachel Dacus turns a painterly eye onto both the nooks and crannies of our world…
April, the month of showers, taxes, fools, and poetry, is upon us. Why does that combination seem just right? Fools and poetry, at least. In the Sufi tradition, a wise fool is a disguise for a Sufi holy man who might get his head separated from his shoulders if he were overtly who he is, so he plays the fool with poetry and jests that are really something deeper. Fun fact of April 1: Did…
Here’s the list of things I’d like to do for Poetry Month, but probably won’t, because — hello! — it’s also Tax Month and I’m writing a novel. But you never know…. 1. Join a Poem-A-Day group and write a poem every day in April. NaPoWriMo has a great portal to a number of prompts and sites with groups doing the challenge). I did this several years running in a small group on The Alsop…