June Gratitude

Many, many, MANY blessings already in June, and I’ve been slow to post them here due to a computer crash. (I’m slowly transitioning to the new machine and recovering files.) But I’m far enough along to be back into WordPress, so here goes:

I’m deeply honored to be listed as one of the International Merit Award winners in the Atlanta Review’s 2015 International Poetry Competition. It’s humbling and a bit of a shock to find my name on this list alongside such poets as Luisa A Igloria and Joan Colby. Thank you, Atlanta Review editor Dan Veach, for the opportunity to participate in this competition.

Praxis Magazine Online published a Hausa poem with English translation in their Indigenous Languages section, Ta Je, Ta Dawo (Incubation). This is my first publication in a Nigerian magazine, and I am overwhelmed and delighted by the sense of homecoming. Thank you, editor Tee Jay Dan, and to Saddiq M Dzokogi and David Ishaya Osu for creating the space for this poem to happen.

Whispers has published my poem “Labeled Fragile” — written as a birthday gift for my cousin Jennifer. Thanks to editor Karen O’Leary and the Whispers community.

Editor John Murphy at The Lake encouraged me to write a book review of Mike Dockins’ most recent poetry collection, LETTER TO SO-AND-SO FROM WHEREVER. (Scroll down; it’s the second review in the June 2015 issue.) This is my first formally published review of a book of poetry, and I’m grateful for both the opportunity and the experience.

Dave Bonta has posted my poem “Rosetta” at Via Negativa — this is another poem inspired by entries at The Morning Porch.

MOVING POEMS MAGAZINE has featured Eduardo Yague’s English- and Spanish-language films of my poem “Considering Luminescence.” I’d already posted the individual films here, but here’s the link to the post at MOVING POEMS.

And finally, Right Hand Pointing has released Right Hand Pointing #87. I remain ever grateful to Dale Wisely for letting me serve as Associate Editor for this journal, and to all our contributors for sending such fine work.

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March News and Gratitude

Once again I’m running late posting my thank-you notes to editors who have published my writing recently. Here are seven poems and a book review published during the past three weeks:

The Lake: “Witness”

Synchronized Chaos: “Fables Six – Ten/The End” (second half of a ten-poem sequence reprinted from my collection last penny the sun, 1-5 were reprinted in February)

Synchronized Chaos: My first book review, of Elsie Augustave’s The Roving Tree

DM du Jour (daily online journal of Danse Macabre): “Superstition” (a birthday poem written last year for a friend, and published in time for her birthday this year)

Closing out 2014 with a basket of blessings:

Happy New Year to each and every one of you, my friends — thank you for being such generous readers and wonderful people.

Here are the final thank-you notes for 2014; I seem to be closing out 2014 with an overflowing basket of blessings:

The Stare’s Nest has kindly published my New Year’s Eve poem, “Breaking Bread” — today, on New Year’s Eve yet! Thank you and Happy New Year to editor Judi Sutherland!

Both The Lake (editor John Murphy) and Verse-Virtual (editor Firestone Feinberg) have released their January issues a day early — thank you, John Murphy, for including my new poem “Remembrance” at The Lake, and Firestone Feinberg for reprinting “It’s a PIRATE!” in the January issue of Verse-Virtual. (“It’s a PIRATE!” is from last penny the sun, Balkan Press, 2014).

I’d like to thank Russell Streur, editor of The Camel Saloon (AGAIN) for selecting “Elusive Alchemist” as one of the two December poems from The Camel Saloon to be reprinted in The Second Hump — I’m deeply grateful to have the “Elusive Alchemist” honored in this way.

 

 

Thank you notes: The Lake and One Sentence Poems

I’d like to thank John Murphy, editor at The Lake, for publishing another of my Nigerian childhood poems “Sands of Home” in the December 2014 issue.

I’d also like to thank Dale Wisely and Robert Scotellaro, editors of One Sentence Poems, for giving my poem “Diagnostic” a home.

 

More August & September thank-you notes:

I’d like to thank Dale Wisely, editor of Right Hand Pointing, for allowing me to guest-edit Right Hand Pointing Issue 78: Variations on Absence, and each of the contributors in this issue for entrusting me with their words.

I’d also like to thank John Murphy, editor at The Lake, for publishing two more of my Nigerian childhood poems “Polishing” and “Influence”) in the September 2014 issue.