I’m thrilled that Editor Juan Re Crivello has interviewed me for LatinosUSA-English Edition’s. Hope you like it! Here’s a link:
https://latinosenglishedition.wordpress.com/2025/06/27/the-internet-has-given-new-life-to-poetry-luanne-castle/
Tag Archives: Poet
Interviewed by LatinosUSA about Poetry and Our Wolves
Filed under #AmWriting, #bloggingcommunity, #poetrycommunity, #writerlife, Interview
Exploring the Ekphrastic Poetry of Hedy Habra
I love the work of Hedy Habra, a fabulous ekphrastic poet and painter. She is originally from Egypt and Lebanon and ended up where I grew up–in Kalamazoo, Michigan–, but I think of Hedy as a citizen of the world. She knows several languages perfectly, including but probably not limited to French, Spanish, English, and Arabic. You can find her bio at the end of this post.
Before I move into her poetry, I’d like to share a couple of her gorgeous paintings: “Dancing Egret” and “Woman & Leopard.”
Hedy and I were in the same MFA program at Western Michigan University, but we don’t think we were ever in the same classes. Part of that is because I didn’t strictly focus on poetry as my MFA coursework was divided between fiction and poetry. But the fun thing is that at the end of the program, we gave our final MFA reading together.
You couldn’t ask for a better example of ekphrastic poetry than Hedy’s new book, Or Did You Ever See the Other Side. It became apparent to me in reading this collection that Hedy and I have something else in common: an obsession with the art of Remedios Varo!
I was blessed to offer a blurb for the back of the book. Here is what I wrote:
In this extraordinary new collection, Hedy Habra weaves a marvelous life tapestry through dreams and the language of memory— “the right words thrown / pell-mell in the folds of memory.” These ekphrastic poems are not content to interpret painting and music but transcend the border between poet and art. Habra explores each piece from multiple angles to discover its locked heart: “See how colors arise from heartbeats.” Then she searches for a key, but there is never only one key. Each poem asks a question that invites the reader to see another perspective, then another. This collection is kaleidoscopic, stunning, and wrings a haunting beauty from every brushstroke and musical note. Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? “soars without wings,” taking the reader on a journey into its breathtaking dreamscape.
You can pick up a copy of the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Did-You-Ever-Other-Side/dp/1950413691
I asked Hedy to write about her work for this blog post:
Trajectory and influences.
I have a passion for art and I’m a visual artist, so art has always been an inherent part of my writing whether it is criticism, fiction, or poetry. I love prose poems but enjoy experimenting with forms, such as haikus, anaphoric poems, abecedarians, found sonnets, haibuns, pantoums, and most recently ghazals. The restrictions of a form call for concision and enable me to discard redundancies when I struggle with drafts.
The stories in Flying Carpets and the poems in Tea in Heliopolis and The Taste of the Earth, focus on my countries of origin, Egypt and Lebanon, weaving linguistic, historical, and mythical components with personal memories. I have also lived in Greece and Belgium and developed a sense of belonging encompassing cultural influences.
Even my ‘memoirs in verse’ are instilled with art. My mother was an artist and I grew up surrounded by her artworks. As a child, I imagined stories about the characters in her paintings and lived vicariously within this alternate world. Oftentimes, some elements from a painting would trigger deep emotions and revive memories or lead me to recreate imaginary worlds. For the past fifteen years, I studied Chinese Ink brush painting on rice paper, which enabled me to paint the covers of my poetry collections.
My first ekphrastic poetry collection, Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015) was inspired by artists of different genders, styles, and periods, whereas my most recent ekphrastic collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023) is mainly inspired by contemporary and surrealist women artists. Spanish-Mexican surrealist, Remedios Varo is a primary influence, but I draw inspiration from other surrealists, such as Juanita Guccione, Leonor Fini, Deborah Tanning, and Leonora Carrington. I love surrealism because of its connection with the world of dreams and the unconscious.
When I write ekphrastic poetry, I don’t aim at depicting a work of art, but rather my response to it. I love to engage in a dialogue with the artwork itself, with one of the characters in the paintings, or at times with the artist. Often verbal images provide a sequel to the scene portrayed or another version of the original, adding a new dynamic life to the artwork. Even when verbal images coincide synchronously with the artwork, words stand on their own, creating a new world. As a result, after having written or read an ekphrastic poem, we can’t look back at the source of inspiration in the same way because the artwork will retain traces of the verbal images projected onto it in an inter-artistic dialogue.
Here are two poems from Or Did You Ever See the Other Side?
Or Can’t You See How We’re Weaving Ourselves Tight?
After Three Women and Three Owls by Juanita Guccione
Didn’t you think you’d soar high up when you wore a miniskirt?
I lowered my hemline, surrendering to ghost owls’ hoots
Following the rhythm of my elder’s everlasting refrains
When she visited the Louvre she wanted to wear her skin bare
I lowered my hemline, surrendering to ghost owls’ hoots
Wore a key chain around my wrist that didn’t open any doors
When she visited the Louvre she wanted to wear her skin bare
Chest open to the drifts of wind as she’d march with Delacroix’s banner
Wore a key chain around my wrist that didn’t open any doors
Afraid to face the black sun of Melancholy sung by Gerard de Nerval
Chest open to the drifts of wind as she’d march with Delacroix’s banner
She enters the triple dance, a sarong loosely wrapped around her hips
Afraid to face the black sun of Melancholy sung by Gerard de Nerval
I conjure my younger self’s steps eager to unlock the darkness
She enters the triple dance, a sarong loosely wrapped around her hips
The three of us dive into the emerald waters under the blackened sun
I conjure my younger self’s steps eager to unlock the darkness
You didn’t soar high up still unable to satisfy your hunger
The three of us dive into the emerald waters under the blackened sun
United at last in our quest for meaning, weaving ourselves tight
First published by SLANT
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)
The inspiring art for this poem:
Note for the following poem: WordPress does not allow the longer lines to be all on one line, but the idea is each line gets longer than the one before.
Or How Do You Keep Track of All the Keys You Once Owned?
After Chiharu Shiota’s The Locked Room
keys to unlock one’s buried memories
keys to the family cottage you had to sell
keys that once opened different-sized locks
keys that had to be changed after an effraction
keys that yearn for the doors they used to open
keys thrown into a deep well, still oozing blood
keys to the palaces King Farouk owned in Egypt
keys to learning how to deal with oneself and others
keys to the meaning of feelings that you kept losing
keys to the safes holding papers that ruled your lives
keys kept in a jewelry box that must have mattered once
keys, lost, forgotten or treasured as a possible come back
keys to the wrought-iron patio gate half-covered with jasmine
keys that opened the car door that led you straight to the beach
keys to dream’s horned and ivory gates that keep getting mixed up
keys meant to reach the heart of a man before he’d change the locks
keys you hold in your palm and run your fingers over and over again
keys to an old friend’s house who once relied upon you to water her plants
keys passed on from generation to generation to reclaim the ancestral home
keys that you had to return to the hotel where you wished you’d spend a lifetime
keys to all the cars you’ve ever owned and led you through long-forgotten crossroads
keys to the office you left carrying a cardboard box filled with what seemed important
keys to the wooden-carved secretary your mother handed down to you that held no secret to her
keys to the homes you kept leaving, from country to country, from one neighborhood to the next
First published by MockingHeart Review
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)
This is the inspiring art:
Bio
Hedy Habra’s fourth poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023), won the 2024 International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award; The Taste of the Earth won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention. Her book of criticism, Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa, focuses on the visual aspects of the Peruvian Nobel Laureate’s narrative. She holds a BS in Pharmacy from the French St Joseph University. Habra earned an MA in English, an MFA, and an MA and PhD in Spanish from Western Michigan University where she taught for over three decades. She is a twenty-two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/
Meet Dame Edith Sitwell
The gardener and I went to a lovely Halloween costume party. I wanted to go as Edgar Allen Poe with a raven on my shoulder. That would have been soooo cool. The gardener would have been my editor, which would have fit him just fine hahaha. But after looking at all the photos of Poe with that high tight collar I knew this hot-blooded person could not wear an outfit like that in Arizona.
I wanted another poet, but it needed to be somebody who lived to be as old as me, so Sylvia Plath was out. A friend suggested Edith Sitwell because she dressed eccentrically in turbans and caftans. She was a well-known British poet active in the 1910s to 1960s. She was an aristocrat and her two brothers were also poets. So I put together a costume as Dame Edith Sitwell, and the gardener dressed as Sir Osbert Sitwell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Sitwell
Of course, the gardener won’t let me post his photo on here ;). But here is an image of the vintage purse I carried (that belonged to his aunt) and the calling cards I had made! Just so you know how color-coordinated I was, the pattern of my caftan has lots of yellow from the waist down.
On the back side of the calling card it says: I will be working on my American accent this evening. [I don’t do accents.]
Here is a Sitwell poem from 1919:
At the Fair
I. Springing Jack
Green wooden leaves clap light away,
Severely practical, as they
Shelter the children candy-pale,
The chestnut-candles flicker, fail . . .
The showman’s face is cubed clear as
The shapes reflected in a glass
Of water—(glog, glut, a ghost’s speech
Fumbling for space from each to each).
The fusty showman fumbles, must
Fit in a particle of dust
The universe, for fear it gain
Its freedom from my cube of brain.
Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace
Behind my crude-striped wooden face
As I, a puppet tinsel-pink
Leap on my springs, learn how to think—
Till like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk
Through the dark heavens, and the dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.
II. The Ape Watches “Aunt Sally”
The apples are an angel’s meat;
The shining dark leaves make clear sweet
The juice; green wooden fruits alway
Fall on these flowers as white as day—
(Clear angel-face on hairy stalk:
Soul grown from flesh, an ape’s young talk!)
And in this green and lovely ground
The Fair, world-like, turns round and round
And bumpkins throw their pence to shed
Aunt Sally’s wooden clear-striped head.—
I do not care if men should throw
Round sun and moon to make me go—
As bright as gold and silver pence . . .
They cannot drive their black shade hence!
Filed under Inspiration, Poetry, Writing
Season 5 Episode 14: Luanne Castle on A Poet’s Voice
“Note how the red rose,velvet worn by early frost,clings confidentlyto its own treacherous stem,never accursed by mirrors.” Luanne Castle Welcome to …
Season 5 Episode 14: Luanne Castle on A Poet’s Voice
Some Art Fun for Rooted and Winged
Artist Kelsey Montague has painted art wings all over the country (and elsewhere). One of her murals is at the Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona. When my daughter and I had lunch at the mall, she took my pic with the wings to celebrate the 2022 publication of my poetry collection Rooted and Winged.
You can purchase a copy of my book here: https://www.amazon.com/Rooted-Winged-Luanne-Castle/dp/1646628632/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RCAIJJKAUOVE&keywords=rooted+and+winged&qid=1670344522&sprefix=rooted+and+wi%2Caps%2C394&sr=8-1
Book description:
The poems of Rooted and Winged explore the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. They are of the earth, the place of fertile origins, and of the dream world we observe and imagine when we look upward. Golems and ghosts that emerge from the ground, as well as the birds and angels that live above us, inhabit the collection. We will always be striving for flight, even as we feel most comfortable closest to the earth.
There are poems about Arizona, California, and the lakes of Michigan. My maternal grandparents are the characters that most inhabit this book.
The poems of Luanne Castle’s Rooted and Winged are embedded in land and weather. “Bluegills snap up larvae in slivers of illusory light,” she writes early in the collection, hinting at the sensibilities of the companionable speaker who will usher us through the book.
—Diane Seuss (2022, Pulitzer for poetry)
Cover art: Leonard Cowgill
Announcing the Winner and Finalists of The Rooted and Winged Writing Contest
Judging for Writer Site’s Rooted and Winged Writing Contest is completed. The winner of the contest and of the $250 award is Merril D. Smith for her poem “How I Learned”!
How I Learned
recurring patterns, star shapes
and spirals, leaves and shells are echoes,
the vibrations and reverberations of before-time
the ineffable radiance, the glimmering streams
whose crystalline traces created
seas and a world
where we swim before we can fly—
fractals that connect past and future.
Birds sing the harmonies of stars,
trees and seas bear primeval secrets,
tremulous whispers flow underground and
across continents, waves of knowledge
break on fallow shores,
snippets coast on spindrift,
we feel the droplets, taste the salt, hear only susurration--
perhaps we understood once,
the whispers, the songs, the patterns,
like puzzle pieces, fragments
I have glimpsed,
in a dream,
a tightrope journey over a dark, uncharted crevasse
my arms outstretched for balance,
and then
free-
falling
upside-down and in-between
the visible and the unknown--
but my ancestors spread wings
that covered centuries
to catch me, guide me,
You can, they said
as they showed me that I have my own wings—
unfold them, fly. This, too, is part of the pattern.
The finalists, in no particular order, are:
*Jess L. Parker
*Serena Agusto-Cox
*Stephanie L. Harper
The finalists will be receiving a Rooted and Winged tote bag. Congratulations to all three because the scores were very close.
A HUGE THANK YOU TO THE CONTEST JUDGES!
K.E. Ogden is a two-time judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize and a two-time winner of the Academy of American Poets Henri Coulette Memorial Prize from Cal State Los Angeles. Her debut collection of poems, What the Body Already Knows, is winner of the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices poetry prize and is in presale now [[https://tinyurl.com/keogdenFLP]]to be released September 2022. Her poems, essays, and fiction have been published in Kenyon Review Online, Brevity, anderbo, Claudius Speaks, Louisiana Literature and elsewhere, and her plays have been staged at several university theaters. A typewriter lover and avid book artist, her digital quilt piece “My President: A Politics of Hope” was published by writer Gretchen Henderson as part of the “Unstitched States” project [[https://unstitchedstates.com/]] . Ogden lives in Los Angeles where she teaches at Pasadena City College and in the Young Writers at Kenyon program each summer in Gambier, Ohio. Visit her on the web at kirstenogden.com [[https://www.kirstenogden.com]]
Suanne Schafer was born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War. Her world travels and pioneer ancestors fuel her writing. A genetic distrust of happily-ever-afters gives rise to strong female protagonists who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them. A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE depicts an early 20th century artist in West Texas while HUNTING THE DEVIL explores the plight of an American physician during the Rwandan genocide. BIRDIE looks at women’s rights in the 19th century through the eyes of a teenage girl committed to an insane asylum. Suanne has served as an editor for a mainstream/romance publishing house and fiction editor for a literary magazine as well as freelance editing. Follow her on https://twitter.com/SuanneSchafer, https://www.instagram.com/suanneschafer/ and https://sanneschaferauthor.com.
Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. Recent fiction publications include Woven Tale Press, Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her debut novel, Telling Sonny, was published in 2018. Her debut poetry collection, “Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance,” was published by Paul Stream Press in September 2021. Learn more about her work at https://lizgauffreau.com.
Only a Few Days Left to Submit to The Rooted and Winged Writing Contest
Writer Site’s Rooted and Winged Writing Contest closes on July 27!
Read the guidelines below to find out more about the chance to win $250!
Eligibility to enter: Preorder Luanne’s forthcoming poetry collection Rooted and Winged, cost $19.99, link below (if you already preordered the book, you are exempt from this requirement) by July 15. You may enter as many times as you wish, but a preorder is necessary for each submission.
Award: $250 to contest winner. Finalists will receive Rooted and Winged swag.
Dates: Preorder book by July 15. Submit through July 27.
Prompt:
Rooted and Winged explores the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. The human imagination will always strive for flight, even as we feel most comfortable close to the earth. Brainstorm images of flight and falling, earth and sky, then write a poem or flash prose inspired by this activity.
Guidelines: Must respond to the prompt; flash prose (fiction and nonfiction) or poem up to 800 words, no name on the piece itself, identify genre in upper case at the top left of the first page (POETRY, NONFICTION, FICTION), identify word count underneath genre.
How to submit: Email doc, docx, or pdf submission to writersite.wordpress@gmail.com. Do not include any identifying information on your prose or poem. In the body of the email please include your full name (same as used to preorder Rooted and Winged), as well as your email address. If you wish your writer name to be different from your preorder name, please include that as well. Submissions will be passed on to judges anonymously.
CONTEST JUDGES
K.E. Ogden is a two-time judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize and a two-time winner of the Academy of American Poets Henri Coulette Memorial Prize from Cal State Los Angeles. Her debut collection of poems, What the Body Already Knows, is winner of the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices poetry prize and is in presale now [[https://tinyurl.com/keogdenFLP]]to be released September 2022. Her poems, essays, and fiction have been published in Kenyon Review Online, Brevity, anderbo, Claudius Speaks, Louisiana Literature and elsewhere, and her plays have been staged at several university theaters. A typewriter lover and avid book artist, her digital quilt piece “My President: A Politics of Hope” was published by writer Gretchen Henderson as part of the “Unstitched States” project [[https://unstitchedstates.com/]] . Ogden lives in Los Angeles where she teaches at Pasadena City College and in the Young Writers at Kenyon program each summer in Gambier, Ohio. Visit her on the web at kirstenogden.com [[https://www.kirstenogden.com]]
Suanne Schafer was born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War. Her world travels and pioneer ancestors fuel her writing. A genetic distrust of happily-ever-afters gives rise to strong female protagonists who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them. A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE depicts an early 20th century artist in West Texas while HUNTING THE DEVIL explores the plight of an American physician during the Rwandan genocide. BIRDIE looks at women’s rights in the 19th century through the eyes of a teenage girl committed to an insane asylum. Suanne has served as an editor for a mainstream/romance publishing house and fiction editor for a literary magazine as well as freelance editing. Follow her on https://twitter.com/SuanneSchafer, https://www.instagram.com/suanneschafer/ and https://sanneschaferauthor.com.
Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. Recent fiction publications include Woven Tale Press, Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her debut novel, Telling Sonny, was published in 2018. Her debut poetry collection, “Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance,” was published by Paul Stream Press in September 2021. Learn more about her work at https://lizgauffreau.com.
What’s Going On?
I’m so annoyed that WordPress took away my ability to draft a post in “classic” instead of “block.” I hate block. Any writer would hate block. And you know what? Even my website guy who is a techie instead of a writer hates block editing. If WordPress would pay attention, they would see that blogging via WP is down since they started that ridiculousness.
Things have been tough this past year without WP screwing around with me. Four kitties since July that I’ve had to watch get sick and then help over the rainbow bridge. Family troubles causing me to end up with two more senior cats that I need to integrate into the household (not to mention the family troubles themselves).
I wrote a chapbook of poems, and I submitted it to a contest that I found through a reputable writing website. My chapbook didn’t take one of the top three spots, but it was one of nine finalists. I thought that was great until I got an email from them saying that as one of their “top finalists” my book deserves to be published. I can do that if I cough up $600 for the publisher. What???? So I read more about the press. They say they operate on a cooperative publishing model and are not a vanity press. To clarify: a vanity press is when you want to publish your book and you pay a publisher to do so. There is no possible rejection involved. This “cooperative” press assures first that they want to put their name on your book. Then you pay $600! When is this ever a good idea? Let’s say you have had a book rejected by many publishers and you don’t want to self-publish and you can afford to spend the money. Maybe then? Back to me submitting to their contest. I guess I’m a little ticked off that a legit writing website would let them advertise that contest without explaining about the “hit you up for $600 bit.”
Remember that the writing contest I’m holding right now is LEGIT. 🙂
Remember my tiny books for Doll God and Kin Types? I got them for Rooted and Winged!
You have through Friday to preorder a copy of the actual book if you have not already. I’m still pledging to donate $5 per preordered copy to Liberty Wildlife. Also, if you would like to enter my writing contest (for prose or poetry) which closes on July 27, you must preorder a copy by July 15 to be eligible. Guidelines at the end of this post.
GUIDELINES AFTER ELIGIBILITY (PREORDER ROOTED AND WINGED) MET:
Award: $250 to contest winner. Finalists will receive Rooted and Winged swag.
Prompt:
Rooted and Winged explores the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. The human imagination will always strive for flight, even as we feel most comfortable close to the earth. Brainstorm images of flight and falling, earth and sky, then write a poem or flash prose inspired by this activity.
Guidelines: Must respond to the prompt; flash prose (fiction and nonfiction) or poem up to 800 words, don’t put your name on the piece itself, identify genre in upper case at the top left of the first page (POETRY, NONFICTION, FICTION), identify word count underneath genre.
How to submit: Email doc, docx, or pdf submission to writersite.wordpress@gmail.com. Do not include any identifying information on your prose or poem. In the body of the email please include your full name (same as used to preorder Rooted and Winged), as well as your email address. If you wish your writer name to be different from your preorder name, please include that as well. Submissions will be passed on to judges anonymously.
CONTEST JUDGES
K.E. Ogden is a two-time judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize and a two-time winner of the Academy of American Poets Henri Coulette Memorial Prize from Cal State Los Angeles. Her debut collection of poems, What the Body Already Knows, is winner of the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices poetry prize and is in presale now [[https://tinyurl.com/keogdenFLP]]to be released September 2022. Her poems, essays, and fiction have been published in Kenyon Review Online, Brevity, anderbo, Claudius Speaks, Louisiana Literature and elsewhere, and her plays have been staged at several university theaters. A typewriter lover and avid book artist, her digital quilt piece “My President: A Politics of Hope” was published by writer Gretchen Henderson as part of the “Unstitched States” project [[https://unstitchedstates.com/]] . Ogden lives in Los Angeles where she teaches at Pasadena City College and in the Young Writers at Kenyon program each summer in Gambier, Ohio. Visit her on the web at kirstenogden.com [[https://www.kirstenogden.com]]
Suanne Schafer was born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War. Her world travels and pioneer ancestors fuel her writing. A genetic distrust of happily-ever-afters gives rise to strong female protagonists who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them. A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE depicts an early 20th century artist in West Texas while HUNTING THE DEVIL explores the plight of an American physician during the Rwandan genocide. BIRDIE looks at women’s rights in the 19th century through the eyes of a teenage girl committed to an insane asylum. Suanne has served as an editor for a mainstream/romance publishing house and fiction editor for a literary magazine as well as freelance editing. Follow her on https://twitter.com/SuanneSchafer, https://www.instagram.com/suanneschafer/ and https://sanneschaferauthor.com.
Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. Recent fiction publications include Woven Tale Press, Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her debut novel, Telling Sonny, was published in 2018. Her debut poetry collection, “Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance,” was published by Paul Stream Press in September 2021. Learn more about her work at https://lizgauffreau.com.
Guidelines for The Rooted and Winged Writing Contest
Writer Site’s Rooted and Winged Writing Contest closes on July 27! Read the guidelines below to find out more about the chance to win $250!
Eligibility to enter: Preorder Luanne’s forthcoming poetry collection Rooted and Winged, cost $19.99, link below (if you already preordered the book, you are exempt from this requirement) by July 15. You may enter as many times as you wish, but a preorder is necessary for each submission.
Award: $250 to contest winner. Finalists will receive Rooted and Winged swag.
Dates: Preorder book by July 15. Submit through July 27.
Prompt:
Rooted and Winged explores the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. The human imagination will always strive for flight, even as we feel most comfortable close to the earth. Brainstorm images of flight and falling, earth and sky, then write a poem or flash prose inspired by this activity.
Guidelines: Must respond to the prompt; flash prose (fiction and nonfiction) or poem up to 800 words, no name on the piece itself, identify genre in upper case at the top left of the first page (POETRY, NONFICTION, FICTION), identify word count underneath genre.
How to submit: Email doc, docx, or pdf submission to writersite.wordpress@gmail.com. Do not include any identifying information on your prose or poem. In the body of the email please include your full name (same as used to preorder Rooted and Winged), as well as your email address. If you wish your writer name to be different from your preorder name, please include that as well. Submissions will be passed on to judges anonymously.
CONTEST JUDGES
K.E. Ogden is a two-time judge for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize and a two-time winner of the Academy of American Poets Henri Coulette Memorial Prize from Cal State Los Angeles. Her debut collection of poems, What the Body Already Knows, is winner of the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices poetry prize and is in presale now [[https://tinyurl.com/keogdenFLP]]to be released September 2022. Her poems, essays, and fiction have been published in Kenyon Review Online, Brevity, anderbo, Claudius Speaks, Louisiana Literature and elsewhere, and her plays have been staged at several university theaters. A typewriter lover and avid book artist, her digital quilt piece “My President: A Politics of Hope” was published by writer Gretchen Henderson as part of the “Unstitched States” project [[https://unstitchedstates.com/]] . Ogden lives in Los Angeles where she teaches at Pasadena City College and in the Young Writers at Kenyon program each summer in Gambier, Ohio. Visit her on the web at kirstenogden.com [[https://www.kirstenogden.com]]
Suanne Schafer was born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War. Her world travels and pioneer ancestors fuel her writing. A genetic distrust of happily-ever-afters gives rise to strong female protagonists who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them. A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE depicts an early 20th century artist in West Texas while HUNTING THE DEVIL explores the plight of an American physician during the Rwandan genocide. BIRDIE looks at women’s rights in the 19th century through the eyes of a teenage girl committed to an insane asylum. Suanne has served as an editor for a mainstream/romance publishing house and fiction editor for a literary magazine as well as freelance editing. Follow her on https://twitter.com/SuanneSchafer, https://www.instagram.com/suanneschafer/ and https://sanneschaferauthor.com.
Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. Recent fiction publications include Woven Tale Press, Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her debut novel, Telling Sonny, was published in 2018. Her debut poetry collection, “Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance,” was published by Paul Stream Press in September 2021. Learn more about her work at https://lizgauffreau.com.
Presales Now for Rooted and Winged
My full-length collection Rooted and Winged needs your help. (Please forgive the drama!)
PRE-ORDER HERE
Release date: September 9
Book description:
The poems of Rooted and Winged explore the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. They are of the earth, the place of fertile origins, and of the dream world we observe and imagine when we look upward. Golems and ghosts that emerge from the ground, as well as the birds and angels that live above us, inhabit the collection. We will always be striving for flight, even as we feel most comfortable closest to the earth.
There are poems about Arizona, California, and the lakes of Michigan. My maternal grandparents are the characters that most inhabit this book.
The poems of Luanne Castle’s Rooted and Winged are embedded in land and weather. “Bluegills snap up larvae in slivers of illusory light,” she writes early in the collection, hinting at the sensibilities of the companionable speaker who will usher us through the book.
—Diane Seuss (2022, Pulitzer for poetry)
Cover art: Leonard Cowgill
If you pre-order . . .
How the book gets distributed is contingent on pre-order sales! SO for the pre-order period, I am donating $5 in the name of each person who pre-orders the book to Liberty Wildlife, a wildlife rehabilitation center. Two months into the pandemic, we had a red-tailed hawk in our yard. She was unable to fly, and a volunteer from Liberty Wildlife came out to rescue her. I wrote a poem about the incident, which was published in The Orchards Poetry Journal and is in Rooted and Winged. The gardener and I have brought many smaller injured and orphaned birds to Liberty Wildlife over the years. Some of the poems in the book are about the wildlife in our area.
If you place an order for the book, please let me know with your name and email address. That way I can keep track of the pre-orders to make sure my list matches that of the publisher. When the pre-order period is over, I will give the list of names and emails to Liberty. You will then receive an acknowledgement by email of your donation for the birds and bunnies.
As always, I am available for blog interviews and guest posts and would particularly love to set things up for fall when the book is in our hands!
If you already ordered a copy Thank You!!!!!
all my ghosts and angels become each
other and then me with a hinted outline of wings.
from “The Shape of Me”
