Gender Issue: The Movie

I've been back in the movie-making business. Several months ago, precisely on October 8, 2010, Nic Sebastian recorded a poem of mine for Whale Sound. This is an audio journal or library of Nic recording poems by a wide variety of poets. The common denominator is that they are all what Nic has named "web active poets," meaning that they have a substantial presence on the internet via blogs, websites, and social networks. That limitation is intended to increase the audience for Whale Sound.

Due to the success of the venture, Nic has now added an audio chapbook component and a blog, Voice Alpha. Voice Alpha is a companion to Whale Sound. There Nic and others discuss the art of reading poetry aloud. Guest bloggers are invited to contribute. Those wishing a critique of their reading skills may contribute a recording. It's all very positive. Nobody gets annihilated. It's also very instructive.

Whale Sound includes an index of all poets recorded, bios, links to the poems, and, of course, the recordings. My poem is Gender Issue, which first appeared in Margie and then in my second book, What Feeds Us, and then online in Poemeleon. I loved Nic's reading and began mulling over how I might get more mileage out of it. I decided I'd use it as the soundtrack in a movie. Nic kindly sent me the mp3 and I went about gathering appropriate images. Here's the result.

Spilling the Beans

Two interviews have recently been posted in which I blab on endlessly. Well, not really. The first appears in The Patch, a fairly new online newspaper that is spreading across the country. Go to the base site and see if your state has one. Click on the State and then see if your town has one. They're great for up-to-the-minute local news—like is school open today. Also great for restaurant listings and local events. My Patch has an arts feature and that's where I come in.

Feature columnist Joanne Van Zuidam interviewed me recently for her column on local artists. She asked me about my background, my sources of inspiration, how I go about putting a book together, my current resolutions and future plans, how I stay motivated, and what a typical day of working at poetry consists of. Read all about it HERE.

The second interview appears in The Habitual Poet series at Poemeleon, a very nice online poetry journal hosted by Catie Porter. With each issue, Porter posts an interview template. Then she invites anyone who has work in the current issue to respond to the questions. I did that back in September. The interview was just posted.

In this slightly zany interview, I discuss my book buying and reading practices (you will learn whether or not I read in bed), how I practice my craft, how I go about revising and publishing, how swamped I am with fan mail, which vowel I'd most want to be, and my piece of advice. Read all about it HERE.