Melissa Eleftherion's Blog, page 7
November 4, 2019
Poet Spotlight with Rob McLennan
Three poems from my “sutures” series are featured in Rob McLennan’s Spotlight series today, along with a poetics re: erasures and trauma. Here’s an excerpt:
“Erasures can be a useful form for processing trauma because it can helps the writer externalize any traumatic events that come up, while also building towards a catharsis. They can help one excavate and uplight these traumatic experiences; they can help us shine a light on the dark. Erasures can also be less labor-intensive because the author is not singularly responsible for the poem that’s created. It is a collaboration between the author and the existing text. The creation of an erasure poem can happen organically, through a series of associations and connections that develop between the author and the page.”
View at Medium.com
https://medium.com/@robmclennan/spotlight-series-43-melissa-eleftherion-2d80d5615e24
View at Medium.com
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October 14, 2019
September 16, 2019
new Ethel!
What a lovely home for a poem!
Call for Submissions!
June 17, 2019
Interview with Mariel Fechik at Queen Mob’s Teahouse
I interviewed Mariel Fechik about her gorgeous new chapbook, Millicent, out now from Ghost City Press. Read it over at Queen Mob’s: https://queenmobs.com/2019/06/interview-mariel-fechik/
January 22, 2019
November 14, 2018
Citizen: A Community Conversation
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to present at the California Library Association (CLA) on the #BooktoAction panel about the grant we received at the Ukiah Library last spring. I discussed ways our library used the grant from the CA State Library & the CA Center for the Book to have community conversations around the book Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.
Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric is an innovative work of poetry, prose, and visual images that addresses racism in America. Rankine introduces the concept of micro-aggressions, or small instances of racism in everyday encounters. Some of these are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in public and private life, in sports, online, on TV, everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive, and Rankine’s work puts you into this space. The book has won many awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the Forward Prize for Best Collection (UK), the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, and the PEN Open Book Award. It has sold over 180,000 copies since its October 2014 publication.
Citizen was a multi-part program around engaging our community in meaningful conversations about race, racism, racial micro-aggressions, white privilege, and structural inequality. This series was the beginning of ongoing programs we will have at the Ukiah Library to promote racial equity and transformative justice.
Embedded below are the slides.
September 10, 2018
little ditch
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My chapbook about a teenage girl who excavates her agency from internalized misogyny, rape culture, & sexual abuse is now available from Rob McLennan’s above/ground press.
from ammonite sonnet
the ammonite an index of sutures
i got tired of cataloging them
hermetically sealing little traumas
afraid they’d get to know one another go boom
little mother catastrophes instead
i smashed little rocks to bits in a ditch
each shard a memory released pressure
from stomach the common burial ground
the cavity of accumulation
each little box coated in dust and feelings
each glass stone chamber not really secret
i get ready to shatter the discretions
i open my palms no explosions no pain
coalesce little traumas wrap your wounds
around each other a chrysalis blood
a becoming of feathers of air a fire
May 29, 2018
her story is my story is your story
[image error]My poem, her story is your story is my story, was featured today on SWWIM
“…when criminal justice is criminal warfare and we are all under this rock heaving against it with our might intact…”
May 17, 2018
Invasive Species
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Four of my Anne Rice erasures were published in FIVE 2 ONE: An Art and Literary Journal’s #thesideshow yesterday. There’s audio too if you want to hear my weirdo voice. Thanks for listening…
