Melissa Eleftherion's Blog, page 4

Tiny Talk

Wednesday Night Poetry

G U E S T

Transformation is the great life integer. As discomfiting and tenuous as it sounds, we move through phases & changes as we become & become again. During this unique life cycle where we are being invited/forced to stretch & grow more than usual, I wondered how/if poets were getting through, & what it might look like to cohere these visions.

I reached out to various poets & writers to submit work on the theme of transformation, some of whom I did not know at all, and in doing so, developed & deepened a few relationships with poets I had long admired. This too became an opportunity for stretching outside my own comfort zones.   

Each of these works takes as its fulcrum the concept of transformation. In each of these poems, there is a turning; a decisive pivot of the will to consider or become something other than human; some process by which we might transmogrify into a greater understanding; by which we might at once be immersed and immerse our cells & light into a great organism. Might this be a homecoming, might this signal at last a belonging?

So, gentle reader – transform with us, eat “serviceberries fresh from the shrub”, visit “white skulls resting on the sage-covered desert”, “learn to communicate those languages. Breathe this all in. Hrim: seed mantra.”, “the songs of abolitionists & those bold enough to dream”, “to make wings out of no thing but air and steel”, “here is a wish and the wish is love”, “…to admit that I just wanted to go somewhere and be if not normal then in context”, “We will wear the agates Their inscriptions Cracked from Wildfire”, “may we fall into mouths that devour us.”

G U E S T starring in a litmag

Transformation is the great life integer. As discomfiting and tenuous as it sounds, we move through phases & changes as we become & become again. During this unique life cycle where we are being invited/forced to stretch & grow more than usual, I wondered how/if poets were getting through, & what it might look like to cohere these visions.

I reached out to various poets & writers to submit work on the theme of transformation, some of whom I did not know at all, and in doing so, developed & deepened a few relationships with poets I had long admired. This too became an opportunity for stretching outside my own comfort zones.   

Each of these works takes as its fulcrum the concept of transformation. In each of these poems, there is a turning; a decisive pivot of the will to consider or become something other than human; some process by which we might transmogrify into a greater understanding; by which we might at once be immersed and immerse our cells & light into a great organism. Might this be a homecoming, might this signal at last a belonging?

So, gentle reader – transform with us, eat “serviceberries fresh from the shrub”, visit “white skulls resting on the sage-covered desert”, “learn to communicate those languages. Breathe this all in. Hrim: seed mantra.”, “the songs of abolitionists & those bold enough to dream”, “to make wings out of no thing but air and steel”, “here is a wish and the wish is love”, “…to admit that I just wanted to go somewhere and be if not normal then in context”, “We will wear the agates Their inscriptions Cracked from Wildfire”, “may we fall into mouths that devour us.”

Salt of Body over Body & Cartwheels on the Sky

i have two new poems about mycelia & transformation in the new issue of TAB Journal. There are also audio recordings within & so many great poems! Blake More was kind enough to interview me for KGUA’s Cartwheels on the Sky, where I talk about poetics & process & how going for Taco Bell catalyzed a major life decision at a Greyhound bus station.

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weird world ouija

So – I somehow just discovered that a poem of mine was published in Earth’s Daughters 15 years ago. What a weird world.

I also have a new erasure poem featured this week at Pink Plastic House in the Ouija room thanks to Kristin Garth

Dispatches from Quarantine reading at SFPL

Wonderful group reading of many poets including Georgina Marie, Alexandra Kostoulas, Dena Rod, Paul Corman-Roberts, and Tongo Eisen-Martin. My reading of “Gratitudes during a Pandemic” occurs around the 1:39 mark.

Tell Tell Reading

Hydra in her own Dust

To jumpstart my poetry brain/heart, I recorded a poem for the WNP Virtual Open Mic, Poetry Through the Pandemic, curated by the fabulous Kai Coggin, on the theme of survival & resilience. This poem first appeared in the Berkeley Poetry Review. So grateful to Kai for this wonderful series.

Gratitudes during a Pandemic

I’ve begun to practice writing gratitudes each night as both a reflexive means of taking stock of those daily moments of grace and joy, as well as to trick my brain out of an inherited tendency towards depression and anxiety. My poem, Pandemic Gratitudes, is up at Dispatches from Quarantine today, & comprises gratitudes written during the first six months of the SIP order while working FT, raising a teenager, and trying to stay sane.