Okay....I couldn't resist. It's the child in me!

The other singers are two of my longest time friends. Bet they'll be thrilled to see this!:-)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Didi Menendez, publisher, is interviewing the poets she's published over the years.

Thank you Didi. Go HERE to read her interview with me.

And....the second stop on my Virtual Tour of Sea Trails is now at CFSWarrior

Thank you, Terri, for hosting the second leg of our Virtual Tour.

Go to CFS Warrior blog to read more.

Thank you, Terri, for doing this. Lummox and I both deeply appreciate the effort it took you to participate.

Once again, ordering information. Sea Trails is sold by the publisher, Lummox Press, at www.lummoxpress.com. If you want a signed copy, say so in the special instructions box on paypal. The paypal button is found when you click on my cover at Lummox. The book is also available at Amazon, but there's no way to offer signed copies from there.

Pris

By the way, we're looking for a blog that would like to host the next stop. Just let me know. Ed Nudelman hosted stop number one and did a great job, too!

The Bomb...a great poetry project by S.A. Griffin!

I just submitted. Love the idea. If you're a friend on facebook, you'll find The Bomb among my fan pages. Submit ONE sheet of paper, front and back if you wish, printed out and mailed in with your name, location, and SASE. Watch the video!

Here, in S.A.'s words on the submission site:

Currently seeking international submissions of poetry to place inside the converted bomb. One submission per person, please! Subs must be flat and NO BIGGER than 8.5x11 inches. That means that your sub can be smaller than 8.5x11, but no bigger. Text/image on one or both sides.

If you are writing in any language that is not english, it would be nice if your native language were on one side of the piece and a possible english translation were on the other. I do plan on reading some of submissions at each and every stop along the tour.

If you expect to get anything back, please send with s.a.s.e. to:

S.A. Griffin
P.O. Box 29171
Los Angeles, Ca. 90029-0171

I will not accept any submissions that advocate or are violent in statement or purpose.

If your submission is kept for inclusion inside the belly of the bomb, obviously you will not be getting it back. I will have one time rights to publish your work in hardcopy form. Upon publication, all rights will revert to the authors. If you do not wish to see your work published and only wish for it to exist inside the bomb, please let me know.

In regards to the s.a.s.e, I would like to send something back to everyone who submits, but only if you send an s.a.s.e (stamped self addressed envelope) along with your submission.

I am not accepting electronic submissions, only hard copy. I want to know that you took the time to create it, and that you have actually handled the piece yourself. That it is something personal. I also do not have the time or the money to be reproducing things on my end, ink is expensive. I'm already spending time and money converting the bomb and documenting the entire thing. So please, no electronic submissions.

Spells

We see them from our boat,
these men and women dressed up
in Pilgrim clothes, as if Plymouth
is the new Brigadoon reincarnated
daily around a fake rock.
Had I been a real Pilgrim
I would've run off with a handsome
Medicine Man, slept on rabbit fur.
I would've warned my Medicine man
husband about the carnage already
brewing on the easterly winds.
I would’ve asked him to cast spells
upon all the birds in the forest
so their songs would bring peace
to land-greedy white men with guns
and Indians painting themselves
black and orange beside rising war fires.
Village and woods would be filled
with children of all colors,
beads clattering around their necks,
bellies filled with porridge.
I try to smoke the peace pipe with my lover,
one quarter Indian, himself,
but I never ran off with the Medicine Man
and the birds never sang their magic.
He slashes my throat with a word
and I bleed onto the deck until our boat
is drenched with the color of sunset.



from my book, Sea Trails(www.lummoxpress.com)
(this posting grew out of a discussion with an online friend about fake rocks and the Blarney Stone. Plymouth was our first stop on the '77 trip from Hull to Florida)

Posted by the CFIDS Association....what would you do if you were well today?

I took part in this survey. Seeing it put together in the video brings tears. We suppress longing for things we can no longer have or do and do our best to take joy from what we still can do. But ohhhh, if well tomorrow...the world waits.

The Virtual Tour of my book begins with Thirteen Blackbirds blog (Ed Nudelman)

An exciting new way to share a book has entered the blogging world. So many times an author can't do readings for time, financial or health reasons An author also usually can't tour far out of his or her geographical area.

This concept is called a Virtual Tour. How exciting! The idea is for a basic 'chunk' of information to go to each blog hosting the tour along the way, but with something new and unique added at each stop. Ed Nudelman has certainly taken this tour and made it his own. Thank you, Ed, for doing such a good job.

To read the first stop in the tour go to Thirteen Blackbirds. Please leave a comment on his blog. If you have any questions I'll be checking his blog and this one to answer them. When new things are featured, the tour will still be easily found in the top right column by clicking the 'Poet Series' link.

I'm also asking that any readers of my blog who both have a good readership and would be willing to host this tour for a week or perhaps longer volunteer a leg. I'll post links to all stops along the way. You don't have to have a poetry blog to volunteer. Lummox Press and I will send the basic package to you.

Now let's see if this is an effective way to sell more books! Thanks, all of you for participating via your readership!

Pris

Two bits of very nice news at one time!

I just checked my mail to find that one of my poems, Original Sin, from Sea Trails, that was published in The Wild Goose Poetry review, was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2010, my second nomination this year. Look in the spring issue to read the poem. Thank you very much, Wild Goose!

My next email was from Pedestal Magazine telling me how much they enjoyed my book and will be running a review of it in their next issue.

I'm very pleased! Now, if a bunch more of my readers buy a copy of the book, that would totally make my day:-)

Pris

(Lummox Press, for signed and dedicated copy. Also available on Amazon)

I'm a cover girl:-)

Go to Red Headed Stepchild to see my cover graphic for the issue just out. This journal takes only submissions that have been rejected somewhere else and the issue is packed with fantastic poetry that other editors were unlucky enough to miss. Headed up by an excellent poet, this journal sings.

Scott Owens' review of my book, Sea Trails

Scott Owens is co-editor of The Wild Goose Poetry Review where this review appears this month. He reposted his reviews on his blog. Since the Wild Goose review page is in PDF, this link is easier to get to. Thank you, Scott. I'm glad you liked the book!


Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes, by Pris Campbell
Lummox Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781929878024

If you like poetry, you’ll love Pris Campbell’s new book Sea Trails (Lummox, 2009). If you don’t like poetry, even if you don’t understand poetry, even if you resent poetry and poets, you’ll love this book. If you like a story, if you like the sea, if you like memoirs, confessions, and reality shows, you’ll love this book.

It’s easy to be impressed with the creativity on display in Pris Campbell’s decision to juxtapose log notes from a sailing journey down the East Coast with highly personal and evocative poetry written about that journey. The complementation of prose and poetry, art and memoir creates a unique example of mimesis in action, a wonderful opportunity to speculate on the relationship between art and life, and the most enjoyable means of facilitating the comprehension of a poem that I’ve ever encountered. All that’s missing is the movie.

Read the rest of the review atScott Owens Musings Blogspot.

If accepted...

I'm going to participate in a research study on one aspect of ME/CFS by Dr. Nancy Klimas at the U of Miami Medical Center. I just filled in the paperwork they'll use to decide whether to accept me or not. This study involves 4 trips to Miami over a two year period, a thorough evaluation first visit (physical and cognitive), wearing a bracelet for two weeks after each visit to measure activity level and keeping a short online journal, provided by them online, of how I feel each day. This test is for genotype research that they're doing but they save your blood and when they gear up for a study on the retrovirus, my blood, with my permission will be used. They pay 20 dollars traveling expenses so gas will be paid for, which is nice.

Traveling is difficult for me, even though this is tops an hour and a half down there and my husband will drive while I stretch out in the back seat, but I want to do this since Dr. Klimas does outstanding research. It also will give me a feel of what they do down there since she does treat individual patients, too, but with a very long wait list. Just to be able to see her for a consult off in the future would be really helpful.

Dr Robert Keller, the immunologist who treated me for 10 years down in Hollywood, FL, before his untimely death this year, was friends with Dr Klimas and her fellow researchers, so that already validates my diagnosis for them.

Now to wait...

Pris

It wasn't the modem, by the way...

It was the DSl line. I'm glad it was that simple.

The discussions continue about the retrovirus found in the blood of those of us with CFIDS (ME/CFS). As expected, the research will have to be replicated many times over and then, if it holds up even for a subgroup, what antiviral will help is still another big question. Right now private labs are charging between 450 to 650 dollars for the testing. That's not paid for by insurance or Medicare. I'm sitting tight until more research comes in and prices go down.

The hardest part is the bouncing around of hope. When the work first was announced by the Whittemore-Peterson lab, The National Institute of Cancer, and the Cleveland Clinic, the first feeling of course was hope. As the days have gone by, the questions come in...is this a piggyback virus and not the cause...is this a correlation but not a causation...so many more. I'd held my hope to modest goals all of these years. This time, briefly, I allowed thoughts to soar that I might have my life back again, a life I'd convinced myself that I could survive without. I'd blunted all of my feelings in that direction.

Now I feel as if I'm on a seesaw. My emotions are all over the place and it's difficult.

I so hope this research takes us somewhere. At least for the first time, since signs of blood transmission have been seen in the labwork, the CDC and NIH are taking the illness more seriously than ever before. Research is gearing up in other places. This is a biggie, a first. I'm happy about that.

My husband drove me over to the ocean yesterday. That's always a centering place for me. It was late afternoon, still full light, but a white moon had already risen on the horizon. An east wind brought the scent of brine with it. It was lovely.

Modem Problems

My modem is dying. I unplugged it all night after it dialed ceaselessly for four hours late yesterday with me doing all of the 'reset' things to no avail, and it connected this morning but I don't know for how long. Since I still have no voice with this cold, my husband will have to make the call to Bellsouth, my server, and he may not until it starts dialing endlessly again. They have a way of testing them on their end. That's how I ended up getting this one when the old one died. Bottom line...if I disappear, I could be a few days missing while the thing ships.

Promise

The betrayed women sit
on my street corner.
Nails ragged.
Lipstick smeared.
Eyes puffed.
Labels jut out from their collars
like flags, marking them
untouchable.

The sky turns scarlet
and you kiss me.
Your words become as wee birds.
They sing promises to the rising moon.
My legs lift up to greet you
and I'm lost in the great web
of want.

I hope those birds still perch
on my bedpost come morn.



Pris Campbell
©2009



Published in Durable Goods Two, a mini-print.
Aleathia Drehmer, Editor

To see this with art on my website, go HERE.