Karen Corinne Herceg reviews Seek the Holy Dark for North of Oxford Press. I am so grateful for her generosity.
“A Fierce Heart” Karen Corinne Herceg
Diane Moore reviews “Seek the Holy Dark”
Poet and author, Diane Moore, reviews Seek the Holy Dark, available from Yellow Flag Press. Thank you, Diane, for your deep reading and generosity of heart.
Seek the Holy Dark is the 2017 selection of the Louisiana Series of Cajun and Creole Poetry by Yellow Flag Press.
Seek the Holy Dark is now available. Trade paperback, 66 pages, only $10. To order click here.
For signed copies contact Clare. $10 plus $3 shipping and handling. Paypal accepted. paypal.me/clarelmartin Please note your mailing address for book shipment.
The Heart’s Progress
We’ve had a great trial to endure over the past eight weeks. I worried that there would be a cloud over Saturday night’s celebratory event for Seek the Holy Dark. There wasn’t. Everything went off without a hitch. We had a great crowd of friends who came to celebrate with us. Friends came from New Orleans, Lake Charles, and Houston, as well as Lafayette and Grand Coteau. I felt such enormous love and support. A young couple came who I didn’t know. They had heard the radio interview and didn’t want to miss the reading. That sent me swooning. They were so sweet.
*
I am so very fortunate to have the friends and family I do. While in many ways I have extraordinary strengths, I really am vulnerable to stress. I am blessed to have protectors. I am humbled by this. I have friends and family who see when I am fading out and give me the energy to help me come back to life. I am brought to tears with gratitude for Bessie Senette for being the woman she is and loving me so dearly. I was thrilled that my dear husband and beautiful daughter came to the book release event. My husband was injured last week and he was going to stay at home and rest. When I saw him come through the door I was ecstatic. At dinner afterward, Debra McDonald Bailey said she was ready for my third book. I need a minute to catch my breath!
*
All day Sunday, I felt hungover. It wasn’t because I drank. The anticipation of and the event itself took a lot out of me. Sunday morning, Bessie said she felt like she had been struck by lightning. That is how I felt, too. It was a great night, no doubt, but the buildup of excitement and then the culmination draws on your reserves. I slept off and on most of Sunday, thus I am awake at 1 am on Monday. I’m having coffee, too. I need some quiet hours to continue to recover and process all that is in my heart. Staying in the moment is the only way I can live with peace. Thank God!
*
I look forward to these wee hours in solitude. My heart is full and I am glad. Thank you to all who came to be with me in the special moment. I love you all.
A big THANK YOU to Rêve Coffee Roasters. We were so thrilled to be there Saturday.
Interview with Clare on KRVS Public Media
Listen to the podcast with Judith Meriwether interviewing me about Seek the Holy Dark by Clare L Martin. It’s the second one listed on this page. Thanks to KRVS! Always doing great things for our community.
Interview with Clare by Susan Tepper
Susan Tepper interviewed me about Seek the Holy Dark. I hope you will take a couple of minutes to read the interview and also check out the book if you are so inclined. Seek the Holy Dark is the 2017 selection for the Louisiana Series of Cajun and Creole Poets by Yellow Flag Press.
Hope to see you at AWP ’17
I will be signing both Eating the Heart First by Clare L. Martin and Seek the Holy Dark by Clare L Martin by at AWP 2017, There will be an off-site reading at George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum, too. Hope to see you in D.C.!
Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference
Reading:
Thursday, Feb. 9th -4:00 pm-6:00 pm
The George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum
701 21st Street NW
Washington, DC
Readers include…
Yellow Flag Press:
CLARE L. MARTIN
JANE V. BLUNSCHI
Gigantic Sequins:
JAMEKA WILLIAMS
P.E. GARCIA
MARíA ISABEL ALVAREZ
for UL Lafayette:
TBA
Clare L. Martin Book Signings:
Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mt Vernon Pl NW
Washington, DC
Thursday, Feb. 9th- 11:00 am-12:00 pm, Yellow Flag Press, Booth 739
Friday, Feb. 10th – 11 am-12:00 pm, Press 53, Booth 387
Clare L. Martin’s Seek the Holy Dark Now Available
Clare L. Martin’s Seek the Holy Dark Now Available
Officially launching at AWP17 at The George Washington University Art and Textile Museum Thursday, February 9th, at 4 PM!
701 21st St NW, Washington, District of Columbia 20052
BUY NOW: http://www.yellowflagpress.com/
PRESS RELEASE
Yellow Flag Press is pleased to announce the release of a new book of poetry by Lafayette poet Clare L. Martin.
The second book by poet Clare L. Martin, Seek the Holy Dark explores loss and rebirth and the nature of the spiritual. These poems are the quiet revelations of a poet who is questioning everything. This book is the third installment of The Louisiana Series of Cajun and Creole Poetry (La Série de Louisiane de Poésie des Acadiens et Créoles) and is published by Yellow Flag Press. The Louisiana Series of Cajun and Creole Poetry was founded to highlight work done by exceptional poets of Franco-American descent. Yellow Flag Press is proud to publish new work by poets of Cajun, Creole, or French heritage, writing in French, Cajun French, English, or works in translation.
“Any new book of poems worth its salt must reinvent the intelligences of poetry: trope, word, image, argument, sentence, strophe, music. The poems in Clare Martin’s Seek the Holy Dark will keep. They are salt.” —Darrell Bourque, Former Louisiana Poet Laureate, author of Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie and Where I Waited
The official book launch party will take place on February 8, 2017 at The George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum, 701 21st Street NW, Washington, DC at 4 pm.
Seek the Holy Dark is also available for purchase at www.yellowflagpress.com
Clare L. Martin’s debut collection of poetry, Eating the Heart First, was published in 2012 by Press 53. Martin’s poetry has appeared in Avatar Review, Blue Fifth Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Melusine, Poets and Artists, and Louisiana Literature, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web, Best New Poets, and Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net. Martin is Founding Publisher and Editor of MockingHeart Review. She is a lifelong resident of Louisiana.
For more information contact: J. Bruce Fuller, Editor, Yellow Flag Press yellowflagpress@gmail.com
“Writing Hope”
Two years ago, I was the artist contracted to work on a grant-funded project called “Transformations” which taught creative writing skills to women transitioning from homelessness and/or were in recovery who lived at a shelter-residence run by a local non-profit. I have been contracted again to do the project this year.
I begin the “Writing Hope” sessions Tuesday and continue once-a-week for seven weeks.* In the eighth week, I will host the women at their own poetry reading at a community center. I absolutely love this work. *Taking a one-week delay for AWP.
The focus of the first session will be on seeing the good in one’s self, recognizing growth, and focusing on the positive in life. Rather than delving into aspects of craft, this is a vocational effort to uplift these women, to give them hope in the new situations they will face with greater independence.
This project for non-writers is not to be dismissed as easy work. Writing is a transformative, healing art. It is my job, over the course of these many weeks, to help the women see that they can produce something beautiful because they are beautiful, creative souls.
Please send us good energy and uplifting thoughts.
~Clare
“The Hanging Woman” excerpt from “Seek the Holy Dark”
The Hanging Woman
breathes desert into her throat
Golgotha-naked
rapacious sun
spear opens rib
the most egregious of transgressions
lust inside/out
lungs vigilant flag
serpentine intestine
nailed-out muscles
Heaven’s jaw shuts
borne upon the cross
we cannot willfully die
the women tear at their smocks
sun goes
to terminal moonrise
burnt to bone
new meanings of the body impaled;
all sensation thrust
from pleasured skin
blade to stone
stone to bone
bone to blood night
incarnated, excarnated.
© 2017 Clare L. Martin
Collected in Seek the Holy Dark by Clare L. Martin, forthcoming from Yellow Flag Press, 2017 Pre-orders are now available. $10.
New Poems in Nixes Mate Review
Very happy to announce my first publications of 2017 in Issue 2 of Nixes Mate Review. I have two poems, “Harvest” and “Seduction” featured. I’m in great company with Howie Good, Pris Campbell, Gloria Mindock, Corey Mesler and other notable writers. Great thanks to editors Philip Borenstein, Annie Pluto, and Michael McInnis for their terrific work on this new and very fine publication and press.
Clare L. Martin 