For those who missed my March 16, 2021, reading with The Inner Loop, watch the recording. I’m at about 14:15, but don’t miss some of these phenomenal writers.
Reading: The Inner Loop Presents This Is What America Looks Like
March 16, 2021 by
The Inner Loop is hosting a reading from This Is What America Looks Like, featuring Elizabeth Kadetsky.
Poets include:
Serena Agusto-Cox
Hayes Davis
Kristin Ferragut
Matthew Hohner
Courtney Sexton
Fiction writers include:
Amy Freeman
Melanie Hatter
Len Kruger
Kirsten Porter
I hope you’ll join us at 7:30 p.m. on March 16.
Giveaway & Interview with Jona Colson, poetry editor of This Is What America Looks Like
February 10, 2021 by
Full disclosure: I have a poem in this anthology.
Today, we’re talking with poetry editor Jona Colson about the new anthology from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
It is their first anthology in a number of decades, and the fiction and poetry included in this collection runs the gamut in terms of what America looks like. Many of these poems and stories were written during the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and so many other traumatic and pivotal events in recent history.
Please give Jona a warm welcome.
Stay to the end of the interview for a special giveaway.
Savvy Verse & Wit: Congratulations on the new anthology, This Is What America Looks Like, published by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
This is the second time you’ve worked with them, since they published your first poetry collection, Said Through Glass. How would you describe the publishing process for a debut poetry collection and was that similar or different from working on the anthology?
Jona Colson: It was similar and different. With your own work and developing a manuscript, you see how the poems speak to each other, and I did the same for the anthology. However, the writers were placed reverse alphabetical (Z-A), so I did not have to consider the order of the poems. I still had to create a balance with the poems—the themes, topics, and forms. This was the first time I put on an editor’s hat, and I learned a lot about working with other writers. I also was able to read so many wonderful poems!
SVW: As the poetry editor for the anthology, how much coordination was there with fiction editor Caroline Bock? Did you both have a game plan in mind before submissions started rolling in or were their themes that emerged on their own as submissions were being read?
JC: The submission’s call offered a prompt in many ways, so I was ready to read submissions in response to that. We didn’t share the specific poems and texts that we were reading, but we did discuss the topics and themes we were getting. The majority of submissions came in during the height of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movements. So, many of the topics changed in response to these events, and we had to balance the narratives of the work we accepted.
SVW: How did you view your role as an editor of the anthology? Let us in on what your process was when selecting poems and whether you asked any artists for edits.
JC: I was so pleased with all the submissions we received. Unfortunately, we had a very limited space with the book, so I had to choose what fit the best. There were many poems that I couldn’t take because of space. I asked poets for revisions when I felt that it would improve their poem. I had a few edits—some minor and some major. I found that writers were really responsive to revising their work, and that was wonderful. I love reading poetry, and I have such respect for any artist who attempts to shape experiences into language.
SVW: This Is What America Looks Like provides a very broad landscape in how writers could approach the topic, but how would you describe what America looks like? Does America’s description merely entail its mountains and landscapes or is it about the people within it?
JC: I would say it is all of that. Emotional and physical landscapes. Dreams and visions. The poems in this anthology offer a reflection of America in many different ways. There are many poems that do not directly respond what America looks like, but discuss belonging, childhood, adulthood, expectations. These are all American experiences.
SVW: Thinking about the writers in the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region, how would you describe their writing styles and overall view as presented in their poems? Is there something that readers could immediately recognize as poetry from this region?
JC: There are many references to locality. Many poems showcase towns in the DMV, or specific streets and locations—Dumbarton Oaks, The Library of Congress, battlefields. In this way, you are immediately placed into a particular part of our country. Some poems are more abstract but suggest places in the area. The poems—and the fiction—solidify the DMV as a literary powerhouse.
SVW: What has been your fondest memory of your poetic journey so far? And what’s next for you?
JC: Getting to know other poets and writers, and being welcomed into the literary community. I got my MFA from American University, and I got to know many writers. However, since I published my book and started working on this anthology, I have met so many more people and the thriving literary community that we have here in the DMV. Discovering more writers and hearing their stories have been the best part of this journey.
Right now, I’m working on poems and some translation projects. Another book may take a while, but as long as I can keep writing, I’m happy.
Giveaway: Leave a comment about what you think America looks like by Feb. 17, 2021.
I will send the winner (age 18+) a copy of Jona’s book, Said Through Glass, and the anthology This Is What America Looks Like.
Please leave a way for me to contact you.
Publication News 2021
February 4, 2021 by
Hello everyone!
I have some wonderful publication news to share. It’s been a while since I’ve shared some news on the poetry writing front. I have been updating my Publication Credits page (it’s in the menu), so feel free to check that out, too.
First, three of my poems now are available in The Magnolia Review, Volume 6, Issue 2. The theme for the issue was “A Defining Moment.” You’ll need to download the PDF, but the magazine is worth the download.
My poems appear on pgs. 68, 80, and 115. I hope you check them out, but they are on dark topics regarding gun violence, so be aware.
Secondly, I’m happy to announce that the anthology from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, This Is What America Looks Like, is available for purchase.
I have 1 poem included in this collection, but I hope you’ll buy a copy because I know many of these writers (fiction and poetry) and their work is AMAZING.
You can purchase the anthology through Amazon or directly from the publisher.
I’ll also have an interview with the poetry editor Jona Colson very soon on the blog. You may recall my review of his collection, Said Through Glass.
Perseverance pays off. I just want to remind you that art is hard work and pleasure in the making, but getting it published is even harder work. If you want it, pursue it.
Said Through Glass by Jona Colson
April 30, 2020 by
Source: Purchased
Paperback, 84 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate
Said Through Glass by Jona Colson is a keen observance of ordinary life and how we deal with not only grief, but our feelings of “otherness” even among family. There are several poems in an interview style throughout the collection, which I felt disconnected from.The one “interview” style poem I did enjoy and did feel connected to was “House for Sale,” where readers get a sense of a distracted home buyer who has lost his father and is trying to navigate life after.
However, I really loved Colson’s use of language to demonstrate ailments like arthritis and so much more. In “My Mother’s Hands,” the narrator speaks about his mother’s arthritic hands in a way that makes them beautiful: “Now, her fingers turn and twist against themselves,/like stems of wild roses–reaching out/into delicate air.” And in “Retina,” the narrator talks about the darkness of an eye out of sorts and the joy of being able to finally see again: “And the next day: surgery,/to fasten the retina, like wallpaper, back to the frazzled/optic nerve and satisfy its hunger for impulse/and clear astonishment of light.//” There is so much beauty in this collection.
Honey It pours from a jar, amber and combed too thick to understand. It softens the parched skin rubbed in small fingerfuls. It soothes the throat when we stir it into tea. At breakfast, it sweetens the morning toast while we talk of summer -- hopeful as a bee toward a tulip promising pollen.
In part three, we switch gears in a way with a series of ekphrastic poems after a painting from Diego Velazquez called Las Meninas. When I saw this, I wanted a QR Code, like in Jessica Piazza’s latest collection, This Is Not a Sky, but it’s not necessary as this painting was easy to find online. These poems carry a heaviness that makes it easy to visualize the kids/women in this painting, including the Spanish Infanta Margaret Theresa. In the first poem, Theresa is the central figure and her “hoop skirt” is heavy like her heart later in the poem, signifying the weight of obligation she carries. “Heart-heavy, she rises, oiled and/drowsy, surging on, with no anchor,/only a painting of her, here and there./” Colson breathes new life into the Infanta, and the journey is intriguing as it touches on the royal life lightly.
Said Through Glass by Jona Colson speaks and readers must listen, but more than that they must interact with the lines and stanzas on the page — becoming a second observer. Readers will see through this window unique ways to look at the ordinary — from honey to an orange — and examine loss, grief, and change in a way that is not only sad, but beautiful. This beauty ties the collection to its grief to create an arc of healing.
RATING: QUATRAIN
About the Poet:
Mailbox Monday #569
March 2, 2020 by
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.
It now has it’s own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.
Leslie, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.
Here’s what I received:
Said Through Glass by Jona Colson, which I purchased as he’ll be at the upcoming Gaithersburg Book Festival in May.
Jona Colson’s debut poetry collection asks the reader to reconsider ordinary life as something curious, even fantastic. A poet of astonishing and apparently limitless range, he is sometimes whimsical, sometimes terrifying, but always contemplative, tender and wise.
The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, which I purchased for the first Gaithersburg Reads event in March.
Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling . . . unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father.
Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home.
A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande, which I purchased for the first Gaithersburg Reads event in March.
As an immigrant in an unfamiliar country, with an indifferent mother and abusive father, Reyna had few resources at her disposal. Taking refuge in words, Reyna’s love of reading and writing propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Although her acceptance is a triumph, the actual experience of American college life is intimidating and unfamiliar for someone like Reyna, who is now estranged from her family and support system. Again, she finds solace in words, holding fast to her vision of becoming a writer, only to discover she knows nothing about what it takes to make a career out of a dream.
Through it all, Reyna is determined to make the impossible possible, going from undocumented immigrant of little means to “a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild); a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist whose “power is growing with every book” (Luis Alberto Urrea, Pultizer Prize finalist); and a proud mother of two beautiful children who will never have to know the pain of poverty and neglect.
Told in Reyna’s exquisite, heartfelt prose, A Dream Called Home demonstrates how, by daring to pursue her dreams, Reyna was able to build the one thing she had always longed for: a home that would endure.
i shimmer sometimes, too by Porsha Olayiwola, which I purchased after listening to this interview.
Porsha Olayiwola’s debut poetry collection soars with the power and presence of live performance.
These poems dip their hands into the fabric of black womanhood and revel in it. Shimmer establishes Olayiwola firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, celebrating the work done by generations of poets from Audre Lorde to Danez Smith.
Each poem is a gentle breaking and an inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self and community-care―in pursuit of building a world that will not only keep you alive but will keep you joyful.
What did you receive?
