The January 2012 issue of Thrush Poetry Journal has just been released and I have a poem in it, “What Winter Told Me” alongside works by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Lisa Marie Basile, Kat Dixon, Dennis Mahagin, M. G. Martin, Joseph A. W. Quintela, Jacob Rakovan, Richard Schiffman, Theresa Williams and Bill Yarrow.
Jacob Rakovan and I used to be in a writing group together years ago, I know him personally and think of him fondly, so this is a real kick to be in the same publication with him. He keeps a place on the web here.
Thanks to Editor-In-Chief, Helen Vitoria, for selecting my work and for bringing these beautiful works to the world.
THE ROAD BEFORE US
Let us travel the road before us
and enter into the mystery of trees.
Let us find the sleeping doe
attentive and aware
of the ever-wolf. I will go
and find kindling. I will set
the fire that will engage us
and carry our heaviest thoughts
upward. Clouds dwindle.
Smoke trails us like a wraith.
I am caught in it. I rise
to the web of bleak branches,
to the very tops of trees.
Tonight leafless trees
are smothered with blackbirds.
This night-smoke
becomes the blackbird
rising to its highest—
Drifting embers smite the moon.
©2011 Clare L. Martin
”A Good Fire“
Blessings for all who are in need, and gratitude for the comforts we have and the life given to us.
~Clare
Happy holidays to you, your family and loved ones. Best wishes for a great new year!
In January, I will have exciting news to share. I can hardly keep it to myself now but I must. You will cheer with me, I hope, when you hear it.
I predict 2012 will be a momentous and thrilling year! Please stay tuned!
~Clare
I have made something.
(Although it is small and nearly imperceptible.)
It signifies my existence. It signifies
love I have given and received.
It signifies the things I have accepted
and that which I reject.
This lifework took years
and it has worn me.
I rise from bed dark mornings
because the desire to become
more real hunts me and haunts me—
even in sleep—that dark dance.
The desire to create is the desire
to become more real. It is the desire
to deepen understanding
of Self and Other.
I am ready again, again, again
to succumb; to give myself
over to the art engendered
within and without.
This is me. Please enjoy.
Thanks to Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories and to Cite des Arts.
The Writing Life Year 2011
Thanks to all of the editors, hosts, friends who have supported me this year and for many years through our literary endeavors.
Nominee, Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net 2011, nonfiction category, for “The White Crane,” by Referential Magazine
Nominee, Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2011 for “Winter Brought Out All the Knives,” by Melusine: Woman in the 21st Century
Readings
Cite des Arts, Lafayette, LA November 4th
10th Annual New Orleans Book Fair, New Orleans, LA November 5th
The Maple Leaf, Everette C. Maddox Memorial Reading, November 6th
2012 DAF Grant Recipients Celebration
Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, LA, October 24th
100 Thousand Poets for Change
Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, LA September 24th
Open Mic Series at Casa Azul
Featured Poet with Lana Wiggins, Grand Coteau, LA April 21st
Publications
“Note to Self” The Centrifugal Eye, April 2011
“Haunted” Referential Magazine, Spring 2011
“Lost” Redheaded Stepchild, Spring 2011
“The Bird in My Ribcage” Redheaded Stepchild, Spring 2011
“How it Comes” A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Vol. 1, Issue 1
“Meditation on Intimations of Winter II” A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Vol. 1, Issue 1
“Poem at Red Moon (Full August Moon)” Unlikely Stories, September 2011
“Secrets Alluded to But Never Told” Unlikely Stories, September 2011
Press 53’s 2011 Spotlight anthology
“Eating the Heart First” first appeared in Eclectica Magazine
“Poem Composed After Reading Plath’s Ariel at a Junkyard”
“4-Way Stop at Dusk” first appeared in Farmhouse Magazine
“Tattoo” “first appeared in Press 1
“Life Expectancy” first appeared in Blood Lotus
“I Have Learned To Hold My Tongue”
“To His Disquiet We Owe Recompense” first appeared in the Dead Mule
“Punishment”
“Starving Horses” first appeared in the Dead Mule
“The Gift” first appeared in the Dead Mule
In addition, I signed on as a Teaching Artist with the Acadiana Center for the Arts. I have high hopes that this will be a rewarding opportunity.
Looking Ahead:
2012
“What Winter Told Me” THRUSH, forthcoming January 2012
“Seeing Through” blue five notebook, forthcoming April 2012
“Ink on a Mirror” Louisiana Literature, forthcoming 2012
“Convergence” Louisiana Literature, forthcoming 2012
I was a bit anxious before we set out–I had not been to New Orleans since August 2005–a couple of weeks before The Storm. It was so good to be in the city again and to experience needed psychic healing by seeing a vibrant, energized city. Maybe it was the great weather but the peeps seemed joyful all around. We didn’t have any negative experiences. Everything was cool.
My first visit to New Orleans was when I was 13 years old. I went with my parents and we stayed on St. Charles. I fell in love with the city–it wasn’t just a teenage crush–I rode the streetcars up and down the line over and over again and longed to live there when I grew up. Something caught my eye in a small NOLA newspaper I picked up on that trip back in 1981. A notice for a poetry reading at The Maple Leaf Bar. Wow. Poetry. Cool! I was just beginning to write pimpled and hormone-soaked lines. I BEGGED my parents to take me or let me go on my own. I had never ever been to a poetry reading before. I had never ever been to a bar either but that didn’t factor into my comprehension of the potentially incredible, once in a lifetime possibility. A poetry reading sounded chic and exotic compared to my just up from the country-boudin and cracklin upbringing. I was really messed up when my parents wouldn’t let me go and I considered sneaking to Oak St. because I wanted to be there so badly. (Same thing happened when the Stones played the Superdome in 1981. It killed me that I couldn’t go.)
My old, fuddy-duddy folks were so lame! So I didn’t go and wouldn’t go for another 30 years.
Today was my first time ever at The Maple Leaf. Today I was actually a featured artist there thanks to Jonathan Penton of www.unlikelystories.org The Everette C. Maddox Memorial Prose & Poetry Reading held every Sunday at 3 PM in the courtyard of the Maple Leaf Bar is the longest running reading series in North America. It was a great high for me to read there and be a part of the Louisiana tradition.
We arrived during the third quarter of a home Saints game and the bar crowd was wild to put it mildly. The Saints won and the Unlikely Saints did too. Our readings were sublime in my humble opinion. I hated leaving at the start of the open mic but tonight’s a school night and we had a long drive home.
This weekend in New Orleans, among many things, I experienced the Good that poetry is and the Good it can do. There was “good” poetry (and prose) for certain but I think our group the Unlikely Saints (Jonathan Penton, Michael Harold, Frankie Metro, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, and Kristina Marshall) and our audiences experienced the Good Vibrations that can occur in optimum circumstances when lovers and makers of art gather to expeience creative work. Thanks to everyone who came out to listen, read, laugh with us. Most especially thanks to Jonathan for the invitation and all of his hard work.
Tuesday will be my birthday. 30 years from age 13, I have two completed manuscripts with good prospects, poems published in the double digits, a strong writing practice and lots of love and good energy surrounding me. This weekend was a circle completing and I hope to widen an (unbroken) circle in the future.
And I leave you with these humble words as a gift:
Bless you, you who create art. Believe in your craft; give to it as much as you can. Let it awaken you and be the matter of your dreams—
Your voice is both vulnerable and strong. Care for it. Bring the words which fly madly through you into the world through the discipline to which you adhere. Share it. Give it another life in someone’s mind and heart.
And follow this creed—
“Each success, no matter how small, in the practice of what I love is a lightning strike against the dark.”
Clare
Me.
