“After The Reception,” 1887, by Douglas Volk (1856-1935)
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Women Writers
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.
2017 Events
March
Seek the Holy Dark Book Release Party/Poetry Reading
March 18th ~ 6-8 pm
Rêve Coffee Roasters
200 Jefferson Street, Lafayette, Louisiana
Free and open to the public. Complimentary wine to guests 21 and over. Food and beverages available for purchase.
Lyrically Inclined
Tuesday, March 21st 6:30 pm
Workshop and Poetry Reading with Clare L. Martin
Black Cafe
518 S Pierce St #100, Lafayette, LA 70501
Your Life, Your Stories: Life-Writing Workshops with Clare L. Martin
Saturday, March 25 at 2 PM – 4 PM
@ The Alleyway House,
122 E Bridge St Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
April
Maple Lear Bar- Everette C. Maddox Commemorative Reading Series
Sunday, April 2nd, 3:00 pm
Maple Leaf Bar
8316 Oak St
New Orleans, LA 70118
Louisiana Series of Cajun and Creole Poetry / La Série de Louisiane de Poésie des Acadiens et Créoles (reading with Darrell Bourque and Jack Bedell)
Saturday, April 15th, 2-4 pm
Hilliard University Art Museum
710 East St. Mary Boulevard
Lafayette, LA 70503
Your Life, Your Stories: Life-Writing Workshops with Clare L. Martin
Saturday, April 22 at 2 – 4 pm
@ The Alleyway House,
122 E Bridge St Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
June
Featured Poet at The Poetry Buffet
Saturday, June 3rd, 2 pm
Latter Branch Public Library, 5120 St Charles Ave
New Orleans, LA
September
Artwalk Reading with Jane V. Blunschi:
Saturday, September 9th – 6-8 pm
James Devin Moncus Theater
Acadiana Center for the Arts
http://acadianacenterforthearts.org/
101 W. Vermilion St.
Lafayette, LA 70501
337.233.7060
October
Louisiana Book Festival
More dates are being arranged.
To book Clare for a workshop, poetry reading or book-signing:
martin.clarel@gmail.com
or (337) 962-5886
Pre-order “Seek the Holy Dark”
Seek the Holy Dark is now available for pre-order. Trade paperback, 66 pages, only $10. Pre-orders will ship in early February. To order click here.
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
From the holy dark of horror storms and freedom in the hand, to starving wolves and old women who live in woods, Clare Martin’s poetic imagery seeks in myth to locate depth of soul. She incants salvation “bone by bone” up from the shadows. Her writing has a beautiful fury, a hard questing and secret exultation that keep the reader poised and intoxicated. “Do you seek the heart too” the opening poem asks, and of course, we answer Yes and read breathlessly on. These poems “drop through this world/into dark awakening.” The strong-hearted will understand.
~Rachel Dacus, author of Gods of Water and Air
Seek the Holy Dark is a book of revelations in poems. Clare L. Martin sees the richness and the poverty that are bedmates, proffers them as gifts, lays them at our feet. Her poems suggest we join in the quest to be both humbled and exalted. Martin, who never looks away, fully understands the duality of nature, its light and darkness, exploring both in this lush and lyrical new collection.
~Susan Tepper, author of dear Petrov and The Merrill Diaries
Seek the Holy Dark is the 2017 selection of the Louisiana Series of Cajun and Creole Poetry by Yellow Flag Press.
Nameless City
“Nameless City,” mixed media, Clare L. Martin, 2016
Trial
©2016 Clare L. Martin
Oh, tender stranger
©2016 Clare L. Martin
Blackbird
a memory: leaves in piles
a kiss
hazel eyes
a rotten picnic table
soft hands
the hands of a philosopher
the hands of a seeker, a poet
children of the Universe
lover
kisses the curves
under a soft blouse
undoes buttons
the chill of autumn
his sweater / her shoulders
blackbird spins the ochre leaves
(itself a leaf), the blackbird—
a burnt leaf at nightfall
spun from the soot of dreams
This memory evokes tears
This memory
a ruin across a ruined landscape
salts the earth of her life
sets fire to her harvest
The blackbird rises
and scrawls
a brutal truth skyward.
©2016 Clare L. Martin
Rose
She bathes in rose, an old scent. Cold water at the base of her neck. She shivers, cold, rose on her skin, pink, rose, again. Rose to her mouth, her cheeks. Rose in her hair. She breathes and is transported. Her body: a garden. Her breasts suckled by bees. Her eyes alit with butterflies. Night falls and she is a dark rose spread open. Rain spreads her more open, more vulnerable, more succulent. Her most-willing heart exposed. Her scent lusts the air. All night she is laid upon, until dawn, when she glistens—wanton with completion, the expected restiveness of near obliteration.
©2016 Clare L. Martin
“Marsh Song I”
“Marsh Song I*” Mixed media, Clare L. Martin ©2016
Inspiration—
We drive westward along the Louisiana coast on a crumbling highway with my parents. The sky purples with becoming light. Our bellies are full of boudin and cracklins. Hot coffee is handed carefully from the front seat to my husband and I seated in the back.
We sing “J’ai Passe Devant Ta Porte” or “Bon Vieux Mari,” called by my mother and responded to by my father. Always my father embellishes his responses. My mother rolls down her window and points to the Roseate Spoonbills lifting from their roosts. My father stops singing and praises God.
A prayer is said for loved ones, wherever they are. More of the morning sky erupts over the marsh. I think of painters, how I wish to be one, how I have tried with my words. This day we are traveling to see Sandhill Cranes that have been spotted in Creole, a few miles from here. We always take the scenic route and happily travel from dawn to dusk.
How many times have we come to this slipping away land and been blessed by our forgetfulness of the world’s problems and our own? Countless. How much do I miss these two people who gave and saved my life? My longing cannot be measured.
To treasure the dead is our inheritance.
*I dedicate this artwork and these words to my beloved family, especially to my deceased loved ones, wherever they are.
Clare L. Martin
