I’m not going to lie, times are tough. Anyone who says everything is fine right now is a Pollyanna… or on some really good drugs. I spoke with several people today that are feeling crushed under the weight of it all. There’s a lot of negative stuff happening, but the last thing we need to do is doubt ourselves. Who else is going to believe in us better than us?
This video by Imagine Dragons came across my feed this evening, and I wanted to share. I love what Dan Reynolds does at the end with the chorus. That’s what we need to do: flip the script, think outside of the lines, “be the one to turn this car around.”
Poetry, Cake and Hyperbull “is on the way” with my vivacious co-hostess Amy Zoellers and this will be the six-month anniversary of doing this show. We’ve been getting together once a month doing poetry on Instagram for much longer… almost two years! Thank you to everyone who has humored us with our meandering, off-beat conversations about mostly poetry.
And here’s 5 reasons you don’t want to miss this one:
I’m giving away a signed copy of Tortured Willows. To win, enter the words “Poetry is on the way” in the chat ON YOUTUBE. The comment must be left on the YouTube chat for the contest bot to pick it up. Just go here to enter while we are live: https://tinyurl.com/ye26j7cj
I’ll be announcing the Pushcart Prize nominations from Space & Time magazine and Yuriko Publishing. One nomination is our own Pete Kelly!
I’ll be showing off my shisa project and taking suggestions on how to find homes for all of them. Don’t worry, they feed off kind deeds.
As I write this, I haven’t written my poem yet and I can’t remember what form we chose… so there is the potential for high drama. Can Angela pull a poem out of thin air? Stay tuned and find out…
It all started in 2020 when Amy Zoellers asked me to do a poetry event with her live on Instagram. I was a little terrified, but we survived it and it turned out to be fun. So we kept at it.
After about a year of those I said I wanted to branch off and do a similar event, but stream to YouTube. Thus Poetry, Cake & Hyperbull began. The shows have been spread across three YouTube channels, mostly because I didn’t know what I was doing. FYI: I still don’t, but we’re having fun.
At some point I was talking to Maxwell I. Gold about his book launch for Oblivion in Flux and the lack of open venues. How do you do a book launch party when everything is closed due to the pandemic? I offered to do a launch show and that began a whole series of author interviews, launch panels, readings, a convention and a literary news show.
Up until now these things shows have been spread across an old channel I didn’t know I had, Space & Time’s channel and the channel I was supposed to be sharing to. Now that I have a minute, I’m downloading and consolidating all the videos on to one channel.
Coming up this Saturday will be a Lit Up interview with Alicia Hilton, an author, law professor, arbitrator, actor, and former FBI Special Agent. I’ll be doing two readings next week from recent anthologies I have work in, and the next PC&H will be Saturday, Dec. 4 at noon. We still do the poetry live on Instagram every 3rd Sunday on Amy’s hipness_&_outrage channel.
If you want to catch some of this or see what I’ve been up to, consider subscribing to the channel so you get updates whenever I post a new video. Here’s how to find it:
I’ve been busy this month curating the Halloween Poetry Page for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. This is an annual event where SFPA members submit audio of themselves reading Halloween/Samhain themed poetry and art if you have it. While this is a privilege for members, membership to the SFPA starts at just $15 a year and comes with a lot of benefits. Details on membership here.
Celebrate the season with some delicious, dark poetry here and if you haven’t submitted, consider joining us next year. We had 31 poets share their work. Sit back, dim your lights and listen in here.
“How The Chupacabra Saved Halloween” by Juan Manuel Pérez
“The Walls Opened Up” by Jean-Paul L. Garnier
“Were-Books” by Wendy S. Delmater
“The Witch Reconsiders Her Powers” by Beatriz Fernandez
“Samhain” by LindaAnn LoSchiavo
“The Catty Hours” by Adele Gardner
“The Banquet at the Center of the Maze” by Katherine Quevedo
“Halloween Treats” by David Davies
“Toward Samhain” by Ann K. Schwader (reading)
“Hungry Ghosts” by Angela Yuriko Smith (art by Lee Murray)
“462 First Avenue” by John C. Mannone
“Whitestone Grove Hotel” by Robert Payne Cabeen
“what they left behind” by Richard Magahiz
“Crematorium of the Undead” by Sumiko Saulson
“Cemetery Justice” by Miguel O. Mitchell
“Forever Mates” by Lee Murray
“The Blue Shroud,” by Meg Smith
“The Rusk” by Louis B. Rosenberg
“A Spell for the Living” by Brian Hugenbruch
“The Prisoner” by FJ Bergmann
“I Keep Going Back to the Weekend” by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
“Monstrous Meetings” by Frank Coffman
“Mary” by Kyla Lee Ward
“Mountain Tic” by Cindy O’Quinn
“Witching Hour in the Suburbs” by Clarabelle Miray Fields
Being people is weird. One day I’m weeping into an ebook layout positive that I and everything around me is doomed. The neighbor’s death was the last straw of the week. The next day I start out the Third Sunday Live event with Amy by telling her I hoped I wouldn’t be too much of a downer for the event. About a half hour later I’m crying on Instagram Live because I’m laughing so hard.
Among the topics: a not-sexual vibrator game I used to play with my neighbors and what happened when my church came to help me move and found it under my mattress. I also shared how I was once a Women of the Chapel president and also somehow had a porn site in my name. Neither was mine, the vibrator or porn site.
I don’t know how long this show lasted. It was the craziest, most off topic one we’ve ever done. And it was just what I needed. Uncontrollable, insane laughter with a friend while telling my embarrassing stories live puts everything into perspective again.
I stand by my opening statement. Being people is weird.
If you read my post yesterday, you will see the news item there about how to control your creative hot streaks with periods of exploration alternating with times of implementation (or exploitation, as the article puts it). I do this all the time, but I never connected the two. In case you want to go to the news item directly, you can find it here.
After reading this, I recognize I’m going back into a period of exploration. I’ve been obsessed with TikTok and how it works, Okinawan culture and the Stylophone. Such an odd combination… I can’t wait to see if all that congeals into some sort of artsy aspic. I’m hoping to learn a song on the Stylophone good enough to play it on Cake & Hyperbull this weekend.
We also challenged each other last show to write a canzonet that had to include the line “my beret is full of questions.” Of course I haven’t started mine yet. I see one of two things happening. I will learn to play a song on the Stylophone and wow Amy so much she will forget about the canzonet, or I will put a canzonet to music I play on the Stylophone. I guess the third option is a don’t do either and just apologize for my failure.
The first song I learned… Spooky, Spooky Skeletons of course! Okay, so I’m not a virtuoso… yet.
The page is open for everyone to enjoy, but only SFPA members may submit. There are a lot of great benefits to joining. Find out how to be a member here.
In my quest to find daily joy I found this video of musicians in the Catalonian city of Sabadell treating an unsuspecting but delighted crowd to orchestral Ode to Joy. There is a lot of crap going on right now… but there’s also this. That’s worth something.
Competitors from our the Iron Writer competition for June 2021 read their flash fiction pieces next Wednesday, July 14 at 1 p.m. CST. Fly Me to the Moon by K.R. Segriff won with the most reader votes. Also reading will be Alina Maciuca, Barbara Krasnoff, Jay Wilburn, Briant Laslo and Naching Kassa.
Who will be Iron Writer JULY 2021? Submissions are open at ironwriters.com.
After much hyperbull (& cake!), Amy Zoellers and myself are finally ready to present the long promised poetry madness event often referred to as Cake & Hyperbull. Everything you’ve come to love about the IG Poetry Live events+ Our first guests will be Amy Langevin and Rina Inae followed by the First Saturday Poetry Reads. It’s a poetry Double Feature!
Links to share! To watch live, it will be broadcast on:
