'Water Babies' - an original piano piece written for World Piano Day a few years ago. Never shared here before.
Also an excuse to dwell in this beautiful ocean again. A refuge from all the dis-order. 🎹
I hope it takes you where you need to be ❤️
#poetrycommunity #piano #ocean #blackandwhitefilm
HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY to Five Different Stories About One Thing by @elizabethbaines.bsky.social, with images by Laura Scott – the 7th in our series of collaborations between writers & artists. Available from our online shop for the special price of £7 (+ p&p) till midnight: www.confingopublishing.uk
Congratulations to our 2026 Rattle Chapbook Prize winners! Their books will be included for subscribers starting with the fall issue. It was an honor to read all of this year's entries, and we can't wait to share these three with you.
Certain numbers accompany us through our lives, connected to our memories of people and places, of significant events. What numbers remain with you decades later? And why?
This poem is taken from Whatever You Do, Just Don't (HappenStance Press, 2023), my second full collection...
The Spring 2026 Black River Chapbook Competition is officially open for submissions! ✨ The contest is open to new, emerging, and established writers with an unpublished manuscript of poetry or prose between 16-36 pages in length.
Submit your manuscript at buff.ly/Ic1JAxH
You and I We loved each other, you and I. This, it seems, is how it ends: Years of silence. Then we die. There is nothing left to try. We can't make peace. We can't be friends. We loved each other, you and I. Nothing left to do but cry As the barrier descends. We loved each other. Love, goodbye.
Wendy Cope, keeping it light
Theodore Roethke
Heading for the post office tomorrow to send out copies of Whatever You Do, Just Don't. Anyone up for making my trip even more worthwhile...?!
Derek Walcott passed away nine years ago today. Here's one of my favourites, from White Egrets (2010).
#poetry
#derekwalcott
Wrote a post today sharing the blurbs for IF YOU LOVE THAT LADY for the first time.
Profoundly grateful to anyone who pre-orders (wrote a whole post about why pre-orders matter to the literary ecosystem, too!). 🤍
Philly Chapbook Review is calling for #submissions of original #poetry between February 1 and March 15 for our Spring 2026 issue and beyond. Submissions welcome from #poets everywhere. Full details can be found at the link: phillychapbookreview.org/call-for-spr...
#callforsubmissions
t was fun to be interviewed by Water~Stone Review about my poem "Li Po took a driving test." Check it out:
A little more time for the story you haven’t finished yet.
The Hayden’s Ferry Review Fiction & Poetry Contest deadline has been extended to March 14.
Winners receive publication and cash prizes from a $2,500 pool.
Send us your fiction and poetry.
I recently learned that this was published in Poetry, which surprised me.
Happy to be able to share that my 2nd poetry collection will be available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk for pre-order from tomorrow. The Paperback edition will be available. xx #newwriting #kindlebooks #printpublication #esotericpoetry #selfpublishingjourney
And we’re LIVE! @ballastpoetryjournal issue 4.1 OUT NOW!
We are reading now for issue 4.2: OUR SUBMISSIONS ARE STILL ALWAYS FREE AND ALWAYS OPEN.
www.ballastjournal.com/issue-41-tab...
Thanks, Tom. Here’s one from my chapbook, “At Night and Other Poems.”
View of a Distant River
Between two mountains,
A glinting worm of water:
Nature’s patient knife.
Love is very everything, like fire: Many things burning. But only one combustion.
happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜
feel free to post small poems you wrote, or ones you like by other poets :)
here’s a little one I love by Laura Riding~
Our 5th annual fiction contest is open. Grand prize is $1,000 and publication in the Spring 2027 print edition.
Submit by end of day on 2/15, and we’ll respond to your submission within 2 weeks (no extra charge for expedited response).
Details:
buff.ly/bloycFP
#writingcommunity
Congratulations again, Jane!👏👏👏
Respiratory virus notwithstanding, I'm so grateful that it's my first collection's official birthday. Thank you to Orison Books & this book's many, many midwives. 🤍
Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best, poems by Jane Zwart | Orison Books share.google/fkmw3vWIohLJ...
FREE GIVEAWAY ALERT!! 🚨
I'm giving away TWO copies of Circulaire, my collection of love poems, this Valentine's Day! 💘
Please like and comment your favourite love poem below and I'll enter your name into the draw 💕
Submissions for our annual Editor’s Prizes are open from now until April 15, 2026!
Each winner receives publication in The Florida Review and $1,000 upon publication.
You can find further guidelines and submit your work on our Submittable page.
#flreview
Our fifth annual poetry contest is now open. The grand prize is $1,000 and publication in the Spring 2027 print edition.
Submit by end of day on 2/8, and we’ll respond to your submission within 2 weeks (no extra charge for expedited response).
See the link below:
buff.ly/UD7NDOi
#writingcommunity
The current submission window for 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐩𝐨𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐲, and 𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 will close February 12th.
✍
Happy Wednesday! The Dodge's poetry and fiction submissions are open until the end of the month! Check our submittable to submit.
Submissions for our annual Editor’s Prizes are open from now until April 15, 2026!
Each winner receives publication in The Florida Review and $1,000 upon publication.
You can find further guidelines and submit your work on our Submittable page.
#flreview
Issues 21 & 22 are at the printer!!
If you want to help keep a lit mag that pays & prints & prices fairly & ships quickly going strong (or at least, going) your pre-orders of one or both of these music-themed issues would be rad. They're fantastic.
Stanchionzine.com/shop
NOW THAT MY MOTHER HAS APOLOGIZED SUSAN L. LEARY In the bathroom mirror, the soft configuration of her face. Toweling off my hair or brushing my teeth, it knows to startle, offering itself nightly in the surest flashes through mine. Eye through eye, light through light, is this mercy or a muddle of stars? A flicker of my girl-life's apocalypse. I want to say I don't care what my mother thinks of me now nor ever, but how could this be true when our mothers are the only real gods? Even now at the sink, she resists my every attempt to steady her, yet there she is looking back at me, warped to impossible perfection like one of Dali's ticking clocks. What is it I have been waiting for from this part ghost of a woman who insists on tangling the th-reads? Until, in turning from the mirror, I see my mother, seeing me as I have so badly wanted to be seen.
ORA CHE MIA MADRE HA CHIESTO SCUSA SUSAN L. LEARY (trad. it di Matteo Fais) Nello specchio del bagno, i delicati lineamenti del suo volto. Asciugandomi i capelli o lavandomi i denti, sa come sorprendermi, offrendosi ogni sera in apparizioni troppo forti perché io le possa rifiutare. Occhio nell'occhio, luce nella luce: questa è misericordia o un groviglio di stelle? Uno sfarfallio dell'apocalisse della mia vita di ragazza.Vorrei dire che non mi importa di ciò che mia madre pensa di me, né ora né mai, ma come potrebbe essere vero, quando le nostre madri sono gli unici dei reali? Anche adesso, al lavandino, lei resiste a ogni mio tentativo di metterla a fuoco, eppure eccola lì che mi guarda, deformata fino a un'impossibile perfezione come uno degli orologi molli di Dalí. Che cosa stavo aspettando da questa donna, in parte fantasma, che insiste nell'aggrovigliare i fili? Finché, voltandomi dallo specchio, vedo mia madre che mi guarda, come ho desiderato così disperatamente di essere vista.
Biggest thanks ever to Matteo Fais for translating my poem, “Now That My Mother Has Apologized," into Italian as part of an American poetry feature in Il Detonatore Magazine! This poem also appears in MORE FLOWERS, out NOW with @triohousepress.org! Check it out, friends! 💙♥️
From François Bereaud, acclaimed writer of San Diego Stories, comes a debut novel told in stories spanning eras, a story of family, of heartbreak & of grace.
A Question of Family is available now from StanchionZine.com or wherever you order books.
www.stanchionzine.com/product-page...
