Review of Sea Trails, my book from Lummox Press, by Sue Jackson!

Sue just wrote me that she had posted this. What a wonderful surprise! Thank you, Sue. A wonderful review.

Please read it at her blog HERE

Sea Trails is available through Lummox Press and Amazon. Would love if you read it, too!!

The Poetry Bomb Tour is in North Carolina. Go, S.A. Griffin!

S.A. on the go with THE BOMB
(Click to enlarge)


Helen Losse, editor of the Dead Mule, will be reading one of her poems and adding it to the bomb this Saturday night. She graciously offered to read one of mine. The following is the poem I sent her. Thank you, Helen. Thank you, S.A.

The Trombone Angels


The trombone angels have no teeth.
No ears.
Lips like a frozen kiss.
Their last dance was in the air,
ghost band hovering over the flames
at Auschwitz, Cambodia, Iraq.
Dressed in black raincoats,
they shuffle to fresh graveyards
and bone laden ditches,
feet cut and dirty.

What did they think
when they once flew,
ground rushing beneath them so fast?
Did they see gods reach
out to snatch soul from body
before flesh died?
Is that too much to believe?
Too much to hope for?

They blow a sweet tune
for those who no longer buy lies
from bible-rumped matrons
about lesser gods
for those not washed by Christ's blood
or chained to a catholic sainthood.
Those matrons claim we're all sinners.
They cast the first stones to prove it.

The wail of the trombones rises
as night tosses its net of stars.
A cock cries three times.
The silence from the graves is deafening.




(This was published in The Cliffs: Soundings)




Shot taken while the bomb was still being created.

Book Recommendation -Passenger Flight by Brian Campbell

Brian Campbell is a talented Canadian poet whose poetry I've had the pleasure of reading numerous times. He also is a songwriter, editor, translator, and teacher. I really enjoyed reading his latest collection out and would highly recommend Passenger Flight, a book of prose poems. Order it here at at AMAZON . This LINK gives you more detailed information about the book, including a review. Please take time to read it. The link opens in a separate window.

Below are two poems I especially like from the book.

(note: there is no line break in the first poem, but blogger.com insists on putting it there despite several efforts deleting, then recopying and pasting, to make it merge into one whole poem)



CLAIRE OBSCURE



All this shadow, shifting in nebulous darkness. I speak of you, pursing your lips to
kiss, making me step down into my body to experience the surprising pleasure. There is something in me that resists your affections. Something else that wants to blend, annihilate me, so that I urges into verb. Curious, this back and forth within my skin’s parenthesis. And now I see you there, the gentle slope of your shoulders, the scoop of your breasts. I will inevitably enter your softnesses, snuggle. Within me also, this describing self, this circumscribing self that stabs with a compass, etches circles, half-moons. Shouldn’t moon have an irregular plural, like mooni? Odd that one is an odd number. Even is so complacent in its evenness, it’s odd. But rounding again to a sensual knowing: there is something very conversational about blankets, the way they rumple and bunch and collapse, form hills and valleys with each toss and turn. And when you get up, the blanket slips away unveiling you, a statue, smooth, alabaster, yet soft in the lamplight. Your body eclipses the lamplight: penumbras slide about the room. All this play of light and shadow. Now. And thousands of years ago, in a cave.





FISHY

The poetry editor of a magazine to which I had recently submitted sent me an e-mail asking permission not to print my poems, but to kindly let him grind them up into fish food. "In our aquarium," he explained, "we have several exotic fish, and we are of the opinion that your poems, ground up, would make an ideal nutrient for them." "Will you eventually publish them?" I wrote back. "No, we're afraid your poems, however worthy they may be, do not meet our editorial needs at this time." "Will I be able to publish them elsewhere?" was my next question. "Only," he replied, "if the publisher agrees to print them with this credit underneath: —Originally ground up as fish food for The Barracuda Review. However," he added, "we also think that your poems, grated, might serve as an excellent condiment for Italian food. If you agree, we'll try them on our Fettuccini Alfredo tonight." Reflecting on this, I realized it's true: poems don't have to be read to be appreciated. So I accepted his offer, although not without feelings of regret and chagrin.


See Brian's blog at briancampbell.blogspot.com

(Brian and I share the same last names, but we're not related)

Featured in Blogging Along Tobacco Road....Thanks, Curtis Dunlap!

Curtis Dunlap is posting an interesting series right now. He asks the poets he featured to send a photo of themselves either where they usually write or in a place that inspires them to write, then adds one poem by that poet. I'm working my way through the series and am enjoying seeing poets I know and don't know in their favorite spots and am reading very good poetry in the process. Your can see my feature at http://tobaccoroadpoet.blogspot.com/2010/04/poets-and-poems-pris-campbell.html.

Now, before you look, try to guess where you might find me:-)

Curtis, you're doing a great job!

(I'm sure Curtis would appreciate comments on his blog on any of the poets he's featured. Feedback lets us know what's working)

New Book by Pris Campbell and Scott Owens is now released.

My collaboration with Scott Owens, "The Nature of Attraction," poems focusing on a relationship featuring a repressed Norman and wild-childe Sara, is now available for the unbelievable pre-publication discount of only $3.50. Orders will be accepted at that price until July 12. The book will be released and mailed on July 26. This book will be a one print run, ie once Main Street Rag Publications sells all pre-publication copies plus extra copies it prints and Scott and I sell all of the copies we order to sell on our own, there will be no more. The price after the pre-order period will be 7 dollars.

Collaborating with Scott on this collection of poems was truly fun.

Below is a link to Scott's and my page which includes our photos, BIOs, ordering link and sample poems:

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/Campbell_Owens.html

To view the entire series of Main Street Rag's Coming Soon page of chapbooks, go to this link (orders can be made from this page, as well).
http://www.mainstreetrag.com/store/ComingSoon.php"

Collaborations with Mary Hillier in 2008

Mary's art is so amazing! She and I have collaborated several times now and have two more publications coming up.

I'd love it if you take a look at this In The Fray Issue containing four of our collaborations. While you're there, take a look around the journal. It's diverse and interesting. They also pay, which is unusual for a zine.

Here's one of the images as a teaser. Nude Maiden On The Cross. Click to enlarge.



This went with my City of Forgiven Whores:

In this city
where birds fly upside
down, and sadness is a welt
made by a raindrop, he comes to me.

He speaks of sleep-talking dreamers,
whores dunked by blind preachers,
then kisses me like when we were young.

I tug him inside
and we soar till our wings melt —
two candles, burnt to the nub
of a universe rebuilding.

We fall past old gods
converted to new ways of seeing
into the clear cleansing river of Eros
that finally Huck Finns us away.

Pageland, S.C., my hometown, as training area in World War II

Click HERE for the link about when Hospital Training Grounds were established in Pageland during World War II.

Scroll down for photos from the link and later.

An excerpt from the link:
It was expected that the 8th Evacuation Hospital would be activated on September 1, 1942. To provide field experience during July and August, the members of the University unit applied for active duty. While awaiting orders, the individuals closed medical practices, transferred patients and their records, sold or stored equipment, and made wills. By the end of June members of the unit received a red-bordered “IMMEDIATE ACTION” order to active duty.

The unit was assigned to the 3d Evacuation Hospital which it joined in Pageland, South Carolina. The new officers spent the first two weeks in basic training. Four or five hours each day were devoted to lectures on military courtesy, medical records, military administration, field sanitation, camouflage, and the use of gas masks. Both officers and enlisted men went on road marches and learned to roll packs and pitch tents. After general training they set up an evacuation hospital to serve the troops during maneuvers. Tents for the medical and surgical wards, operating room, dispensary, kitchen, x-ray, and messes were pitched in a field. The members of the unit were also responsible for unpacking the hospital equipment and drugs for the pharmacy. They discovered that most items had been wrapped in November 1918 newspapers. The equipment was incomplete in modern operating room equipment, lacking in essential laboratory and X-ray equipment, and stocked with obsolete items.

end of excerpt.

Click photos to see larger. The captions are UNDER each photo.

The gym shown in the website photo was across the street from my house, where I lived after this happened, and was part of the high school. The big two story house was two doors down from where I later lived. It's an interesting slice of war time I'd not seen until someone from Pageland posted this link.



The house two doors down. This was used as nurses quarters.




This is the same house, taken when I was in seventh grade. My female friends flocked to play touch football in the neighbor's front yard in hopes that the 'new boy in town' would come out. His family had recently moved into the big white house. The neighbor in the house whose yard we were in is now in her nineties and going strong.





Sandbox behind the white house. Me with neighborhood kids. I'm wearing the glasses.The shed behind us was where the 'new kid's' older twin brothers hung me by my shirt laughing to get even for my punching HIM in the stomach after he tackled me playing touch football to show off to my friends. The house behind that belonged to one of the poorer families in town.



A younger shot, playing in the middle neighbor's yard:-)




Pageland High School Gym, where I later attended many basketball games and the junior senior prom. The gym still stands, but the High School was torn down and a Middle School built in its place. My father was school superintendent, so we lived in the house designated for that position across from the school (yes, we paid rent)



Our house. My bedroom overlooked the side porch and had front dormer windows. When I practiced my clarinet too late at night, Mrs. Tucker called up from their bedroom window below...'Priscilla , can you stop for the night?'. Oh dear. I always did.



Playing with little next door neighbor outside my side porch.




Headed for the prom junior year in that gym. Ohhh, those glasses.

Meatloaf For Crying Out Loud

I don't think there's a bad cut on his Bat Out of Hell album , made in the late seventies, his only hit album to my knowledge.

Dreams At Stake (Living with ME/CFS)

Please take the time to read this powerful interview on the blog, Dreams at Stake, to get a feeling for what it's like to have a severe case of ME/CFS. Go to Dreams At Stake post.

This is the illness that has tied me mostly to my own home since September 23, 1990. Not fun at all.

Are blogs beginning to lose their readership to communities such as Facebook?

I remember when personal blogs were read by a large number of people and many comments made to posts. I admit to not reading other blog posts the way I used to , just as readership of mine has dropped to about half of what it was not long after I first started. Maybe the blog, with the exception of those 'star' blogs that everyone reads, is going the way of the website now. I started with a website and still have it . I know people read it . My web-tracker shows more visitors there than to my blog, but no-one except spammers has signed the guest book in years. I'm thinking about removing the guest book. I mainly use the website as a place I enjoy playing with and storing the last version of poems I've written or haiga I've created. There's no interaction on a website which I know I've come to like and enjoy.

With as many problems as facebook has, if you stay away from all the applications and have it work for you, it's a good site to use. I can post poetry there without the search engines picking it up, like on blogger, making it ineligible for publication in many journals (and I don't post poems even there if I'm going to submit to a journal that's very strict about that rule). I can message people without giving out my email to a lot of people, connect with new poets, get announcements when a journal is taking new submissions and, just recently, a group was started about my old hometown of 2500 people. That group has been a real bonus. I've reconnected to people who were friends but no longer live there, some who do, and met people related to people I was close to. I feel like my hometown had been lost when my parents died but has been returned to me, even if only on the internet. Some of these connections have led to phone calls and a lot of catching up. So special.

So what about this blog? Do I keep on pounding out notes when I see my visitors now are more often coming from a google search that won't interest them in my blog or do I let it slide and post once a month?

I just don't know. My energy is limited by ME/CFS, so I'm trying to choose wisely.

Annie Lennox Every Time We Say Goodbye HIV Tribute

William Michaelian fascinates me!

Read his blog Recently Banned Literature and you'll see why. If I didn't have this snarky cold back again I'd tell you but if you check out his blog you'll find out for yourself.

Steve Vai Tender Surrender

Wonderful guitar work in a haunting, mellow song.

Featured on Poetic Asides. Thank you Robert Brewer!

Go to Poetic Asides to read an interview Robert did with me about Sea Trails and my writing. I really appreciate this, Robert!