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.
Women
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.
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.
Poetry News
I have two poems coming out soon in the new Nixes Mate Review. My poem, “Eating the Heart First” is included in Eclectica’s “Best of” anthology which will be out soon.My poems “Seek the Holy Dark,” “Litany,” and “Woman in Prayer” will be translated into Italian by Alessandra Bava to appear in the magazine Patria Letteratura in the winter 2017 issue. My second full-length poetry collection, Seek the Holy Dark, will be released by Yellow Flag Press at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs in Washington DC on February 8th. I hope to see and meet many friends there to swap/buy books, hug, and talk in real life!
Gestation
“Gestation” by Clare L. Martin
(watercolor, color pencil, crayon, charcoal on paper, digitized, filtered).
Oval Meditation
“Oval Meditation” by Clare L. Martin
charcoal and crayon on paper. digitized. editied. filtered.
Clare L. Martin 