March & Porkbelly

(Good news, happenings, publications, awards, and general good stuff by/with/for our poets & writers.)

The Girl by Donna Vorreyer (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road by Amorak Huey (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

Feeding the Dead by M. Brett Gaffney (cover art: Mary Chiaramonte)

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Dry Spell by Patrick Kindig (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Ghost Tongue by Nicole Rollender (Cover art: Susan Yount)

How to Leave a Farmhouse (Beth McDermott, cover: Nicci Mechler)

Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Sarah Ann Winn (cover: Angie Reed Garner)

Ghost Skin by Wren Hanks (cover: Alexandra Eldridge)

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Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by M. Brett Gaffney » blog

• Feeding the Dead was released just this month!

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The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Donna Vorreyer » donnavorreyer.com

• “Our Bodies Are More Than 50 Percent Water” is up in Waxwing.
• “In the Hand, In the Bush” appears in Whale Road Review.
• Published a review of Portrait of the Alcoholic (by Kaveh Akbar) in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
• The Girl is now available for pre-order & releases the first week of April!

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Amorak Huey » amorakhuey.net

• Three poems this month in Masque & Spectacle!

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen » @chenchenwrites » chenchenwrites.com

• “Self-Portrait As So Much Potential” appears in The New York Times Magazine.

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Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Patrick Kindig » pdkindig.wordpress.com

• Three poems in minor literature[s].
• Three poems up at Hobart!
• “What Will Survive of Us Is Love” appears in Hermeneutic Chaos Journal.

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

• “Even a Song” appears in Southern Women’s Review this month!
• “Flowers at Lunch” appears in Quaint Magazine issue 6.

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Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Sarah Ann Winn » @blueaisling » bluebirdwords.com

• work in Southern Women’s Review this month!
• “Evaluating an Elegy Based on a Rubric” appears in Tinderbox Poetry Journal. You can hear it as well as read it there.
• Sarah’s Exhibition Catalogue Pamphlet from the Grimm Forest Open Air Museum has been accepted by Yellow Flag Press! Congrats, Sarah! ❤

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Ghost Tongue (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Nicole Rollender » nicolerollender.com

• Congrats on a 2017 New Jersey Council on the Arts poetry fellowship!
• Nicole has joined the staff of Thrush as an associate editor.
• Hear Nicole read “Gift” published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
• (Essay) “The Obligation to Be Happy” reprinted, originally appearing in Ruminate Magazine‘s blog in 2014.

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How to Leave a Farmhouse (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Beth McDermott

• new work appears in Bayou issue 66!

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Apples or Pomegranates (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Anita Olivia Koester » www.anitaoliviakoester.com

• poem “Tapestry with White Columns” won the Sable Books Poetry of Protest contest judged by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

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Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Wren Hanks » wrenhanks.tumblr.com

• Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016) was nominated for an Elgin Award.

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Bettering American Poetry 2016 Nominations

Porkbelly Press’ Nominees from 2016

Shakeema Smalls for “rût.” First printed in Sugared Water #005, December 2016.

Michal Leibowitz for “In Sderot.” First printed in Persephone’s Daughters inaugural issue, reprinted in Sugared Water #005, December 2016.

James A. H. White for “Okaasan [Mother].” First printed in chapbook hiku [pull] (Porkbelly Press, 2016).

Congratulations & good luck to all nominees! It’s been our pleasure to nominate this work for such an outstanding project.

From Bettering American Poetry’s nominations page

We want work that is unafraid to look, to shake shit up, to speak. We are interested in poems that challenge patriarchal and white supremacist power structures. We love poems that burn misogynist, homophobic, ableist, transphobic, racist, xenophobic attitudes and behaviors at the core. Poems that critique the dominant culture and flummox the status quo, that speak with voices historically misrepresented, underrepresented, censored, and silenced make us sit up and listen hard. | more

Related Reading

» Bettering American Poetry‘s website
» An interview series with poets in Bettering American Poetry‘s 2015 anthology via VIDA

Feeding the Dead // M. Brett Gaffney

 

Feeding the Dead by M. Brett Gaffney (cover art: Mary Chiaramonte)

These poems are the knife edge, the hot blood, the wolf’s howl, and the fang of the girl who hunts him down. This book holds the haunted-house-horror and everything real underneath, the costume, the bruise after, the smoke curling in the heart of a hellhound. “After supper she pulls on boots, prepares her heart” and goes out to collect his “sharpest fang.” These poems are demons and strawberries and bones, and teeth, and agency, self, girl-power, woman-power—assertive figures preoccupied with agency, not beauty—not prettiness for the observer. This chapbook of poems is the bone-yard, the skeleton, the strength. “I am here to stay / … / I am just as real as anything else.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017) » more info & excerpt

about the poet

M. Brett Gaffney, originally from Houston, Texas, holds an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University and is the art editor for Gingerbread House. Her poems have appeared inExit 7, Rust+Moth, Permafrost, Devilfish Review, museum of americana, BlazeVOX, Rogue Agent, Apex Magazine,and Zone 3, among others. She currently works as a library associate in northern Kentucky and lives in Cincinnati with her partner and their dog, Ava.

Cover artist: Mary Chiaramonte »  www.merrysee.com
Cover art: “The Fables,” acrylic on wood, 24 x 36 inches.
Title typeface: Brain Flower by Denise Bentulan.