Tom Holmes and Crab Creek Review featured on Verse Daily

.
Tom Holmes' poem, "A Corpse of Vortices" —Sophie's Last Coherent Journal Entry to Henri from the County Mental Hospital, Barnwood Rural District, Gloucester, from Crab Creek Review's new issue (Fall/Winter 2009) is featured today (April 12th) on Verse Daily:
http://www.versedaily.org/2009/acorpseofvortices.shtml

Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. He is the author of After Malaguena (FootHills Publishing, 2005), Negative Time (Pudding House , 2007), Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, 2009).

About the background of his poem, Tom told Crab Creek Review, "Henri is Henri Gaudier-Brzeska--Modern French Vorticist Sculptor who died in WWI at the age of 23. Sophie is his lover."

Congratulations, Tom!

And thank you, Verse Daily, for featuring Crab Creek Review.

Annie Lighthart and Crab Creek Review featured on Verse Daily

.
Annie Lighthart's poem, There Were Horses, from the new issue of Crab Creek Review (Fall/Winter 2009) is featured today (April 11th) on Verse Daily: http://www.versedaily.org/2009/therewerehorses.shtml

Annie's poem won the Crab Creek Review 2008 Poetry Contest, judged by Kathleen Flenniken.

A mother and environmental writer, Annie lives in Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, CALYX, Good Foot, and So To Speak, among others.

Annie told Crab Creek Review about the inspiration for There Were Horses: "Writing this poem was like sensing a storm coming on. By degrees, I felt a change in the air, remembered being a small creature among the magic ones in the fields, felt the encroaching world."

Congratulations, Annie!

Article on Crab Creek Review in the North Kitsap Herald

.
Crab Creek Review awoke to a lovely surprise this morning--an article in the North Kitsap Herald, which not only talks about our journal, but also discusses National Poetry Month here in Kitsap County and the numerous writers hidden in our forests.

The article is entitled, "National Poetry Month Shines Light On The Recluse" and can be read online: http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/nkh/entertainment/42758647.html

An excerpt:
A pair of North Kitsap residents, and poets, Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy have taken the volunteer editorial reins from former editor Natasha Moni, effectively “placing” the longtime Seattle-area journal’s operation in Kingston. Which, given the wealth of writers scattered throughout the woods of North Kitsap, isn’t all too surprising.

We have moved a portion of our literary operations to Kingston, but Crab Creek Review is still partly housed in Seattle. Look for us on both sides of the Sound!

(Special thanks to Bill Mickelson for the great interview at the coffee house)

Elizabeth Austen and Crab Creek Review featured on Verse Daily

.
Elizabeth Austen's poem, Humans, from our new issue of Crab Creek Review is featured today (April 9th) on Verse Daily, http://www.versedaily.org/2009/humans.shtml

Elizabeth is a Seattle poet and is the literary producer for KUOW, 94.9, public radio. Her audio CD, "skin prayers," is available on her website, http://www.elizabethausten.org./

Elizabeth told Crab Creek Review about the inspiration for her poem: "Humans came together while I was in residence at the Whiteley Center on San Juan Island. I spent many hours watching birds and wondering if they found human behavior as interesting as I found theirs."

Congratulations, Elizabeth!

The Writer's Notebook featuring Jenifer Browne Lawrence

We are delighted to feature Seattle area poet, Jenifer Browne Lawrence, in our Writer's Notebook series. Jenifer is the author of One Hundred Steps from Shore (Blue Begonia Press, 2006) and her work has appeared in Court Green, North American Review, and Potomac Review, among others. She is also the recipient of a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant.
Jenifer's poem From Involution appears in Crab Creek Review's Fall/Winter '09 issue, and here the poet talks about her writing process:

Last weekend, the wind blew hard enough to knock out the internet connection for a few hours. At loose ends, my partner and I opened our (paper) notebooks and wrote together. We gave each other writing prompts as the sky turned black and freezing rain pelted the glass. The storm blew in and out overnight, and brought a few pages of words written in the dark. Sunrise brought a clear sky and a bald eagle to the battered Douglas fir outside our window.

I don't know how the rest of the world writes, but I have a confession: At the top of the page, I have no idea where I am going. In fact, I seldom begin with an idea at all. Writing, for me, begins with words—a phrase from a novel or poem I've been reading, a newspaper headline, or a fragment of speech I've overheard somewhere. Waiting for the ferry the other night, I eavesdropped on a cell phone conversation, and stole this line: "If you eat red mango three times…" The line is waiting for me somewhere, just outside the margin.

I am a vivid dreamer. Occasionally, I dream in words. Printed or spoken, a word may be the only image I recall upon waking. I like the idea of word as image, and perhaps this is why, when I open my notebook in the morning, the first word I write is outside the margin, prompting me from the top of the page.

This morning my dream contained the word Star. It was the name of somebody's dying grandmother. Perhaps a poem will come from that image. Written in snow that was stuck to a car window, a previous dream contained the words Mr. Soft. Nothing has come of that, other than a raised eyebrow from my partner when I shared the dream with him.

A word from a dream prompted a series of poems using various definitions of the word, coupled with personal or world events. In that dream, (I'll spare you the embarrassing details) a list of songs on the back of a CD included the title Involution. When I woke, I looked up the word's definition to see if it held any significance for me. I was surprised to find nearly a dozen entries in the dictionary. The poem Involution (7) began as a response to one of the definitions combined with details from a brochure about a behavioral therapy treatment method. If I were writing the piece today, however, I'd have to rethink item 4a: because look who's running the country.

I have never been the type to wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the image of the nation's latest heartthrob. Maybe that's because, even at seventeen, I knew that Mick Jagger's face did not belong on any woman's chest. Although if Hugh Jackman could sing Satisfaction as well as he plays Wolverine … lately, though, I have been sleeping with the image of another man. I've been wearing one of my partner's t-shirts as a nightgown. Printed on the shirt is a pixilated image of Barack Obama and the date 01-20-09. But it's not the shirt influencing my dreams these days. Even as spring resists entry into the northwest—yes, we did have snow in the Seattle area in April—I believe we are heading toward a warmer world, a more compassionate world, that is. After all, if Queen Elizabeth and Michelle Obama are hugging in public, can world peace be far behind?

I love how writing begins with a sense of not knowing (That's not an original thought—who was the writer that first talked about "not knowing"?). By the time a poem or story makes a path into the world, however, the words should be measured and deliberate. Sometimes meaning takes a long time to discover. My writing progresses in small steps—a word at a time, some days. After a longhand draft, I type up what's there and print it out. I fiddle with the poem a little while, then slip the draft into a manila folder, where the words sit, sometimes for months. What I find in the folder often surprises me. For me, coming across that unexpectedly perfect line is one of the great pleasures of writing. It doesn't always happen like that, of course. There's a lot of revision, editing and thumb-biting involved in the process. And sometimes there is no path. Sometimes I slip the page into the recycle bin and pick up my notebook. Maybe I catch the Seattle ferry, hike to Pike Place Market, where I wander among the stalls, on the lookout for red mangoes.

From Involution

Involution (7) the process of raising a quantity to some assigned power [syn: exponentiation]

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is often a result of childhood experience in the family of origin. A family skilled at secrets fosters the ability to cope by learning to covertly control most situations. When the control is threatened, anxiety emerges. Psychologist Albert Ellis in 1955 developed a type of therapy designed to help an individual reshape his or her thinking to a more positive, rational pattern, thereby relieving emotional distress.

He named his work Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). It is not pronounced "rebbet" and is not a frog. That is, if you kiss this therapy goodbye, no prince will magically appear to rescue you.

Ten Irrational Ideas:

1. It is critical for a person to be loved and approved of by everyone for everything.
   
   1. Because you were always/never daddy's favorite.
      
   2. Because you were always always/never.
      
2. A person must be competent, adequate, and successful in every aspect.
   
   1. See irrational idea 1a.
      
   2. See irrational idea 5b.
      
3. Certain people are bad, evil or villainous and should be punished for their sins.
   
   1. Because Cain slew Abel.
      
   2. Because Santa Claus keeps a list.
      
   3. Those heathens next door.
      
4. Human unhappiness is externally caused. People have little control over their sorrows and are unable to rid themselves of negative feelings.
   
   1. Because look who's running the country.
      
   2. Because in sorrow shall you bring forth.
      
5. It is justifiable to be completely preoccupied with and upset about something scary and/or possibly dangerous.
   
   1. Because why are we supposed to be boyscout-ready?
      
   2. 
      
6. I said that's enough, young lady.
   

Our New Issue (Fall/Wtr 2009) is Available! (and other Crab Creek Review news)

Visit our website http://www.crabcreekreview.org/ to purchase a copy!

We are so happy to tell you our new issue of Crab Creek Review (Fall/Wtr 2009) is available with new work from: Denise Duhamel, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Peter Pereira, Susan Rich, Martha Silano, Peggy Shumaker, Nancy Pagh, Jenifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Austen, Barbara Crooker, Susan Elbe, Michelle Bitting, Jim Daniels, Kevin Miller, Bethany Reid, and others.

You can purchase your copy or subscribe here.

For a little peek of what's inside, here's the opening from Denise Duhamel's incredible poem, "Kiss Me You Fool," When we were first datingI bought you a pair of wind-up lips...

Or sample Nancy Pagh's poem "At the Erotic Bakery" where There are no cameras allowed.

Or discover with Peter Pereira as he reads the newspaper who had three wives, a lover/never married, lived alone, in his poem, "Reading the Obits."

We have a feeling this issue is going to sell out, so order your copies soon: www.crabcreekreview.org/subscrb.htm

***

Also, we've begun our 2009 Poetry Contest and our judge this year will be Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of At the Drive-In Volcano (2007) and Miracle Fruit (2003). The Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize is $150 and publication in Crab Creek Review. All entries are considered for publication. For complete guidelines, please go to: www.crabcreekreview.org/contest.htm

***

We are now on Facebook! Join our Crab Creek Review group and receive the latest news and updates.

***

Thank you all for your support of our literary journal! We are glad to have you as readers and hope to bring you the best poems and short stories. And now we are accepting creative non-fiction essays for our next issue!For more details on our journal or how to submit your poems, stories, or creative non-fiction, please visit our website at: http://www.crabcreekreview.org/

Kelli Russell Agodon
Annette Spaulding-Convy
Editors

Winner of the Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize Announced --

The editors of Crab Creek Review would like to congratulate--

Shann Ray, winner of the Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize for his short story, Rodin's the Hand of God...

Other finalists: Jim Bainbridge, Zan Agzigian, Laura Gibson, Richard Fellinger, Debra Brenegan, and Gary Parks.


Thank you all for the fine work and our thanks also to all the other writers who participated. We greatly appreciate your support of our journal. Thank you!

Mark Your Calendars for April 19th!

Save The Date for Crab Creek Review's April Reading at Eagle Harbor Bookstore
Sunday, April 19, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Eagle Harbor Book Company
Bainbridge Island, WA

Join us for an afternoon of poetry, featuring writers from our Fall/Winter '09 Issue with

Nancy Pagh
Peter Pereira
Susan Rich
Jenifer Lawrence

Kingston artist, Marilyn Liden Bode, will also be at the reading with her beautiful linocut, We Are The Reason Our Ancestors Existed, which is featured on our cover.

Join us for National Poetry Month to celebrate these poets and our new issue!

See you there!

Pushcart Prize Nominations from Crab Creek Review--

Crab Creek Review would like to congratulate the following writers for their good work and nomination for the Pushcart Prize--


Kathleen Alcala, The Accidental Zoo
Patricia Fargnoli, Lovers
Sidney Hall, Jr., What the Loon Must Have Known
Marjorie Manwaring, You Ask About the Letting Go
Kay Mullen, The Tent
Peter Munro, The Fatman Can’t Get a Country and Western Tune Out of His Head: ‘Mamas, Don’t Let Your Sons Grow Up (To Be Intertidal Ecologists)’

Thanks for being part of our publication!

Congratulations!

*

Crab Creek Review Reading in Seattle

We had a great reading in Seattle on October 22 for Crab Creek Review. You can view the photos from the event here.

It was an incredible night! I want to personally thank Nin Andrews, Barbara Crooker, Tom C. Hunley & Steel Toe Books (Jeannine Hall Gailey & Mary Biddinger's press!), Jenifer Lawrence, Holly Hughes, and novelist Jennie Shortridge, along with all the editors (Annette Spaulding-Convy, Lana Ayers, Jeannine Gailey,& Ronda Broatch) all who donated books to help with our raffle. People were thrilled to get their books and we enjoyed being able to showcase such incredible writers.

Just so you know, our fiction contest is still open for a couple more weeks and we haven't received a lot of submissions. There's still time for you to enter if you're interested. Check out the guidelines here. The deadline is Nov 30, 2008.


--Kelli

The Writer's Notebook featuring Marjorie Manwaring

Thank you, Crab Creek Review editors, for asking me to participate in the Writer’s Notebook.

I wrote the first draft of the poem “You Ask About the Letting Go” over six years ago, worked on revisions for about a year, and then, in frustration, let it lie fallow for about 3-1/2 years. I wasn’t sure it was ever going to go anywhere. Then I started working on it again last year while at a residency at the Whiteley Center. I think the long period of time away from the piece was helpful; it provided me with a certain detachment I hadn’t had before and allowed me to go in and make some “surgical” changes that were needed.

I hadn’t looked at old versions of the poem in some time. But because I’m a pack rat—computer-wise and otherwise (though I’m trying to change my ways!) I had copies of every draft on my hard disk, the earlier ones transferred over from a long since departed computer, and with a few mouse clicks I had the history of the poem before me. (I save a poem with a new version number each time I make substantial changes to it. I find that makes it easier for me to take risks in revisions, because I can “always go back to the way it was.”)

It surprised me that the first line of the poem as it stands now was unchanged from the 2002 version. Early first lines are often “throw-aways” for me—just placeholders that allow me get to where I really want to be. I suspect the line in this poem might have been one of those rare ones that floats into my head unexpectedly and becomes a kind of obsession.

I was in graduate school in 2002 and had been immersing myself in the work of H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). I had originally been attracted to her because of her early poems like “Sea Rose” and “Garden.” I soon realized that while her Imagist work was what she was most known for (“Oread” is her most anthologized poem), her life’s work went way beyond the “no excesses” mantra of Imagism and was informed by her fascination with, among other things, alchemy, mythology, psychoanalysis (she was actually a patient of Sigmund Freud!), and the “re-visioning” of myths and religious stories (“Helen” and the long poem Trilogy are two examples). Friends described H.D. as intense and prone to trances, and she details some of these experiences in Notes on Thoughts and Vision. H.D. was able to access liminal states, what I’ve also seen referred to as “borderlines,” “the wild zone, and “the marginal world.” She once wrote in a letter, “I seem a very between-worlds person.” (Friedman, Penelope’s Web)

I think it’s likely that this notion of “in-between states” influenced “You Ask About the Letting Go.” I like to think that maybe some of the “re-visioning” I’d seen in the writings of H.D. and other poets like Adrienne Rich, Hélène Cixous, and Anne Carson may have influenced how I went about tackling the subject matter of the poem—I knew the scene I wanted to set the poem in, but I didn’t want the voice to be the expected voice.

In terms of the poem’s form, my comfort zone was narrative poetry, but I was reading poets who were writing in fragments, whose words carried mystery and gained cumulative associations when used in circular and repetitive ways. My hope is that some of what was intriguing and pleasurable to me in reading those works managed to find its way into this poem.


Sources:
Friedman, Susan Stanford. Penelope’s Web: Gender, Modernity, H.D.’s Fiction. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990.


**********
Web sites:
www.mmanwaring.com (includes information on how to get a copy of Marjorie’s chapbook Magic Word)

www.dmqreview.com (the DMQ Review, an online poetry and art journal)




*

With Thanks to Natasha Moni

Annette & I are thrilled to be editing Crab Creek Review. Since coming on, we have been busy trying to continue the upward swing of the magazine and reach out to new readers and writers, but we want to take a moment to say thank you. We feel so lucky to have joined into such a strong team. And we hope our expanding team of people will help make things easier for all and help make our journal stronger for our readers. Thank you all for your help and support.

We also wanted to take some time to thank the last editor, Natasha Moni, who did so much for Crab Creek Review to keep it going and active in the literary arts world. We are so thankful for all that she did and also for her continuing ongoing support and friendship.

So this week, we'd like to share with you a lovely thank you post our incredible poetry editor, Lana Hechtman Ayers wrote for Natasha to let us all say thank you more formally and share a little more about her and what she did. We wish Natasha well in her travels, her writing, and her life. Good luck to you, Natasha! We will miss you!

--Kelli & Annette


* * *


As Natasha Kochicheril Moni, Crab Creek Review's former editor-in-chief, heads to sunny California for her next big adventure in life we wish her a thrilling journey.

Natasha came aboard as a staff editor for Crab Creek a few years back, just as all the long-time editors were about to part ways. She soon found herself one of two remaining staff, the other, Emily Bedard, pregnant and about to exit for her adventure into new motherhood. Natasha had two options—let the journal die a quiet death or try to recruit a whole new staff to keep it going. Crab Creek Review is an independent, nonprofit and all its staff members have always been volunteers. Finding folks who have the skill, time, and energy to donate to nonprofits is a daunting task. Add to that the fact that the coffers were pretty near dry, so in addition to finding qualified staff, she'd need to raise a lot of funds just to get out an issue or two. Crab Creek had been around for over twenty years and was always one of Natasha's favorite journals. She understood that one less literary journal meant much less beauty and goodness in the world, the potential silencing of necessary voices.

So Natasha rose to the occasion like the true hero she is. She consulted friends, former editors, advertised on Craigslist, did whatever it took to find a staff that would be willing to go the distance with her. Then she undertook the intimidating fundraising campaign. She wrote letters, applied for grants, hit up family and friends. In a short time, her tireless efforts were rewarded with enough funds to publish for nearly two years. Managing a literary journal is a full time job she had to cram in with gainful employment, relationships, and her own writing life. Natasha gave of herself no matter the sacrifice to see to it that Crab Creek not only stayed in business, but also surpassed its reputation as one the finest literary journals in the country.

As poetry editor for the last two issues it has been a privilege to work with Natasha. Her dedication and integrity have been inspiring. She is both grounded and innovative—a rare combination. Our staff meetings were not only productive, but also great fun. It's been the best working environment I've ever experienced. And most of all, I am proud and honored to have gained in Natasha a true friend.

Her final act as editor-in-chief was to find a way to fill her shoes. In doing so, she recruited Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy as co-editors, thus ensuring the journal's brilliant future. Natasha, you will be greatly missed, but your legacy of excellence at Crab Creek will continue on.


--Lana Hechtman Ayers

The Writer's Notebook featuring Barbara Crooker

Dear Readers,

Today for our series, The Writer's Notebook, I'd like to introduce Barbara Crooker, a wonderful poet whose new book Line Dance came out from Word Press this year. We'd also like to thank Barbara for donating her books and a broadside to help support Crab Creek Review at our upcoming reading; we so appreciate the great support from writers we've received recently.

Below you'll find a couple poems from Barbara and something interesting thoughts on the topic "poetry as therapy."




Thanks for inviting me to join this conversation. I've been thinking lately about poetry as therapy, partly because of an email conversation with a new friend who's a former therapist, and partly because my own dear mother passed away recently, and this weekend, we brought her ashes to Cape Cod, to be scattered on the beach where my father's ashes lie. Mom had been ill with emphysema for over ten years, so I both witnessed and chronicled her slow decline.

Here are two poems from our previous trips:

EATING MELTAWAYS IN HARWICHPORT


It's been four years since my father died,
and it seems like I'm becoming him,
driving my mother to this sandy spit
where we vacation with their friends
of thirty years, go to thrift shops
and lobster roll lunches at the white
Congregational church, admire the blue
hydrangeas bobbing along the picket fence.
This year, death's been busy as a surfcaster
on a moon-filled night, blues and stripers
running wild, reeling them in one after another:
Dottie talking on the phone, Merrick dozing
in his recliner, cancer's heavy weather
taking Jean and Clare, and only Mom and I remain.

We're sitting at our favorite restaurant, stirring
sugar in iced tea, hearing the little cubes tinkle
like wind chimes. I want to skip the next chapter,
stay here like this, life rolling on predictable
as morning fog, or thick milky chowder, the sun,
a pat of butter, melting through. Our waitress,
in a white apron and pink uniform, her name scrolled
on her left breast, waits with a pad of paper:
"The meltaways just came out of the oven," she says,
"Can you smell them? I can put them in a box
if you don't have room for now."

previously published in Nimrod


THE WINDS OF NOVEMBER


strip the leaves off the sycamores; they scuttle down
the street like an army of fiddler crabs crazed for the sea.
In the hospital, my mother's breathing grows more
and more labored, difficult without the silver ribbon
of oxygen in her nose- This year, we didn't get to see
the ocean off Cape Cod, hear the gulls call, watch the waves
hurl themselves on the sand, or feel the fog turn the night air
milky as chowder. Though she's still here, already she's starting
to fade, a clipping yellowing in a drawer, a snapshot
in a black album. The tide goes out, erasing our footprints;
the wind knocks the last leaves from the tree.

Previously published in The South Carolina Review


So, did writing these poems (and many others) prepare me for the great waves of grief I experienced at her passing? Of course not. And yet. Because the other side of me thinks that emotions not expressed fester inside us, creating worse scars, and other problems. Since she passed in early August, I've been writing and writing and writing. I need more time to see if any of them turn out to be any good, but my heart, at least, is lighter than I think it would be.

Some years ago, a close friend was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. I think we thought if we talked about it, the worst wouldn't happen, but of course, it did. I hadn't intended to write anything, but the poems came and kept on coming during those three years, and they ended up as a chapbook, The White Poems. (Barnwood Press)(http://www.bsu.edu/classes/koontz/barnwood/indbks/bc.htm)


Here's one of the last poems in the book:


REQUIEM
for Judy

It is early March, each day a little bit greener,
crocus and snowdrops already in bloom, daffodils
sending up the tips of their spears.
When summer comes, we will take you to the river,
trickle your ashes through our fingers.
You will return to us in rain and snow,
season after season, roses, daisies, asters,
chrysanthemums. Wait for us on the other side.
The maple trees let go their red-gold leaves in fall;
in spring, apple blossoms blow to the ground
in the slightest breeze, a dusting of snow.
Let our prayers lift you, small and fine as they are,
like the breath of a sleeping baby. There is never
enough time. It runs through our fingers like water
in a stream. How many springs are enough,
peepers calling in the swamps? How many firefly-spangled
summers? Your father is waiting on the river bank,
he has two fishing poles and is baiting your hook.
Cross over, fish are rising to the surface,
a great blue heron stalks in the cattails,
the morning mist is rising, and the sun is breaking
through. Go, and let our hearts be broken.
We will not forget you.

previously published in Vol No

It could have been written for my mother. Maybe it could have been written for you?

What's very strange is that the poem was written about three years before her husband and I took her ashes to the river; it's amazing to me how sometimes poems possess knowledge and lives of their own. It didn't stop the pain, but surely it stitched the wound, put a clean patch on it.

So while I don't think poetry is therapy; ie, I'm not writing to heal myself, but rather, to craft an object, the best way that I can, I think that many times it ends up functioning as therapy, in spite of itself. And surely, there's nothing wrong with that.

~Barbara Crooker

*

Our thanks to Barbara Crooker for her words.

To learn more about Barbara Crooker & learn more about her work please visit these links--

www.barbaracrooker.com
books: Line Dance: http://www.word-press.com/crooker_linedance.html
Radiance: http://www.word-press.com/crooker.html

Richard Hugo House Reading and a Special Thanks to Writers--

We are excited about our upcoming reading at Seattle's Richard Hugo House on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 7 pm for a few reasons.

The first is that we have an outstanding group of readers who will be their work:

Kathleen Alcala
Jim Bertolino
Ronda Broatch
Kathleen Flenniken
Marjorie Manwaring
Kay Mullen
Monica Schley

Monica Schley is also a harpist who will be playing a few selections during the evening as well.

The second is the generosity of these writers:

Nin Andrews
Barbara Crooker
Holly Hughes
Tom Hunley & his press Steel Toe Books
Jennifer Lawrence
Jennie Shortridge

who have all donated books and literary items to be part of a drawing at the reading. We want to give them our deepest thanks for supporting our journal.

So not only does the reading have a spectular group of poets, but we are also having drawings throughout the event for some wonderful literary items below--


Signed novels by Jennie Shortridge including Riding with the Queen, Eating Heaven, Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe

Signed books from Tom Hunley of Steel Toe Books

Jenifer Lawrence's signed copy of first edition One Hundred Steps From Shore

Holly Hughes' broadside & signed chapbook, Boxing the Compass, winner of the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award

Signed book of poems from Barbara Crooker

Signed books from Nin Andrews

Editors' Bundle featuring signed copies of In the Convent We Become Clouds by Annette Spaulding-Convy, Small Knots by Kelli Russell Agodon, Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Love is a Weed by Lana Hechtman Ayers, and Shedding Our Skins by Ronda Broatch.


And of course, with Hugo House there is always wine and coffee available, so please mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 22nd so you can join in the literary festivities with us.

So please join us--

Crab Creek Review Reading: Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Contributors from the Spring/Summer '08 Issue
read their work Oct. 22, 2008 at 7 pm
Richard Hugo House
1634 11th Avenue
Seattle, WA

Notes on Writing “Stuck Inside”

Dear Readers,

We are beginning a series here at our Crab Creek Review blog that will feature some of the poets we have published in previous issues talking about their work, the writing life, and other creative and literary topics.

I'm pleased to announce our first poet-blogger in this series will be Julene Tripp Weaver whose poem "Stuck Inside" was featured in our current issue.

Below you will find her poem and her thoughts about writing and how her poem came to be.

We hope you enjoy this new series!


Kelli Russell Agodon

__________________________________


Stuck Inside


A little man bucking and barking fights with a ceiling built over his head but, one inch shorter than he is. His neck bent he paces complaining of the short wall and the people who built it.
He doesn’t have enough money to redo the wall. It should have been built right to start with.
He sits and can only think of his too low ceiling.
He goes outside and stretches, but outside he is not inside and it is cold, so he goes back into
his house where he feels trapped.
He cries, empties his pockets, takes off his shoes, crawls on his knees but nothing will help, nothing.
His girlfriend really doesn’t understand, she’s fine in his space, but she’s five inches shorter than him.
She says, “Oh Honey, lets lie down in bed and stretch out, I’ll bring you some relaxing tea.”
He continues to fume about the wall height.
They hardly have fun any longer because he is preoccupied with the ceiling.
“Perhaps you could move,” she says. She’s said it before.
“I can’t move, I can’t afford to move,” he says, his gritted teeth in his tilted head look like fangs of a wolf.
She shivers and says, “We could go to my place,” wondering if he’d be happier living with her at her apartment. But inside she doesn’t want him there. He’s grumpy and she wonders what he would find to rail against.
“Your place? Fine, if I want to roast my body like a cashew over a fire,” he says, his voice a growl.
“Honey, I think I’ll go now, I need to stop by my mother’s with some cabbage,” she says gathering her coat.
He hardly notices when she leaves.


by Julene Tripp Weaver
from Crab Creek Review, Spring/Summer 2008

* * *

Notes on Writing “Stuck Inside”


When the editors at Crab Creek Review asked me how I came to write “Stuck Inside” I answered, “Sometimes the little people sit in my head and tell me stories—this is one of them.” This poem captures a mindset of someone unable to see outside their own story. In my work with people living with AIDS I watch people spin the same stories repeatedly; I am continually confronted with the confirmation of how tightly each of us are wrapped in our own belief systems. Our thinking moves in set groves to what we tell ourselves, and the more we repeat it without change, or at a faster speed the more set it becomes. AIDS now has a new story, yet many are unable to change their story of what AIDS means.

One way of changing a story is by slowing it down, interrupting the pattern by changing it ever so slightly. Gertrude Stein was a master at this repetition that is always changing. In her view each repetition has a different insistence with subtle changes, like a birdcall.

I’ve been obsessed. As an adolescent one of the books that changed my life was Jane Roberts’ The Nature of Personal Reality. It opened my mind to the understanding that our lives are what we make them by what we believe is possible. There is a mirror-like paradox in how we see ourselves when we are locked inside a reality we do not know can change. The quandary of self-perpetuating beliefs, how we only see what we can see, has hounded me for decades as I’ve lived my life experimenting with how I make change.

Since reading this channeled book, I’ve explored many realities and played with edges—intentionally wondering how deeply I could tip the balance of one worldview into the next. I’ve wondered about getting stuck in the mundane, and the repetitive mass of cultural norms. I slip in and out of the roles of observer, listener, describer, in my work, my writing, and my life. I love William Stafford’s writings on writing—his idea of picking a strand, a thought wave, or a sensory impulse in the moment, and letting it lead.

Emilie Conrad[1] is one of my personal icons. In the many intensive workshops I’ve taken with her since 1988, she has been a guide in my quest to identity and how we create change; an example is her process of founding Continuum Movement. Emilie and Rebecca Mark[2] create a container and lead an experiential process for hand-to-page exploration at yearly workshops combining Continuum Movement and language. This involves a slowed down process using sound, movement, and pauses to create interruption and perturbation of the senses. These intensives have helped me come to a place in my writing where I write fluidly. Rebecca has taught me there is no such thing as writers block, and there is no separation between movement and writing. Now when a voice, or a sensation, rings through me I write easily. This poem came in the particular voice of a young woman with a boyfriend who felt trapped. He is like so many obsessed in whatever life trauma they are living out.

In The Triggering Town Richard Hugo says, “Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it you will.” My poem “Stuck Inside” found me after many attempts to write about people stuck in their own stories. I was in a conversation with a friend about a topic we’d discussed many times, and the voice started; my friend suddenly was a man in a house too small. I grabbed my pen and started writing. Like William Stafford, one line led to the next as I attended to the story this new voice gave to me. All my earlier failed poems around this topic are now superseded.


Julene Tripp Weaver
http://www.drizzle.com/~newroots

__________________________________

[1] Emily Conrad is author of Life on Land, in which she talks about founding Continuum.[1] Rebecca Mark is a tenured professor at Tulane University and author of The Dragon’s Blood: Feminist Intertextuality in Eudora Welty’s Fiction.

* * *


Read more work from Julene and learn about her projects at her website: http://www.drizzle.com/~newroots