Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 72

Daily Prompt Love <3 Small Acts

23 November 2016

Dreamt I was working with a couple of other people in some kind of disaster distribution center, coordinating and handing out goods to people in need, blankets, socks, water bottles, cloth diapers for babies. People moved through the barn-like building, their steps stuttering softly against the dirt floor. The line seemed as if it would never end. It didn’t feel like I was doing enough. But then, a young woman with two small children, a baby on her hip, and a four or five year old girl holding her hand, stopped in front of me for a blanket. The young mother’s face was drawn and exhausted, and the kids too seemed scared and weighted with whatever disaster it was we were all dealing with out there in the world.

The little girl said, “Blue.”

I smiled, not sure for a second what she meant, but then I looked down. The stacked blankets were mostly green and gray, but tucked into the pile halfway down or so, one blue blanket.

Her mama shushed her, and smiled sadly at me. but the little girl looked up at me, smiling a little around the fingers she had in her mouth, and said again, “Blue?” 

Her mama hushed her again, saying, “Missy, we can’t–“

“Sure we can,” I said. I pulled the one blue blanket out of the others and offered it across the table to the little girl. She let go of her mama, and reached out with both her little girl hands to take the blue blanket, wrapping her arms around it like a hug and smiling. 

We all smiled. 

Make art about small acts of taking care of each other. 

 

Sometimes the Day is the Poem <3 And that is all I see

Music as prayer today. 

Some Timely Call for Submissions Love <3 Justice

J JOURNAL: NEW WRITING on Justice seeks submissions for its 19th issue.

J Journal seeks new writing – fiction, creative nonfiction (1st person narrative, personal essay, memoir) and poetry – that examines questions of justice.  Although we find that our most powerful pieces relate tangentially to the justice theme, we also welcome work that speaks directly of crime, criminal justice, law and law enforcement.  As a literary project, however, J Journal is less likely to publish straightforward genre fiction.  We encourage writers to approach the justice issue from any angle.

Email up to three poems or up to 6000 words of fiction/nonfiction to: submissionsjjournal@gmail.com

Or send  your submission to:

Editors, J Journal

Department of English

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

524 West 59th Street, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10019

Website:  www.jjournal.org

http://jjournal2.jjay.cuny.edu/jjournal/

 

Daily Prompt Love <3 Leadership

22 November 2016

Make art about leadership, about the qualities of leadership, about the responsibilities of a leader. 

Daily Prompt Love <3 Facing the Darkness

21 November 2016

Make art about facing the darkness, even, especially our own. 

 

Monday Must Read! Naomi Ayala: Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations

The beautiful Naomi Ayala was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States in her teens, eventually earning an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Writing in both Spanish and English, she is author of the poetry collections Wild Animals on the Moon, chosen by the New York City Public Library as a 1999 Book for the Teen Age, This Side of Early, and this week’s recommended read, Calling Home:Praise Songs and Incantations. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Boriquén to Diasporican: Puerto Rican Poetry from Aboriginal Times to the New Millennium (2007), Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature (2006), and First Flight: 24 Latino Poets (2006).

An educator and arts administrator interested in environmental causes, Ayala has received numerous awards, including the Connecticut Latinas in Leadership Award, the 2000 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy of Environmental Justice Award, and the 2001 Larry Neal Writers Award for Poetry from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Ayala has been a visiting humanities scholar for Hermana a Hermana/Sister to Sister and was co-chair of the board of directors for the organization Change: Building Social Justice, Starting in the Classroom; she co-founded the New Haven Alliance for Arts and Cultures. A former resident of Washington, DC, she currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and works as a freelance writer, educational consultant, and teaching artist.

 

Buy Naomi’s beautiful books!

Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations

http://bilingualpress.clas.asu.edu/book/calling-home

This Side of Early

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/side-early

Wild Animals on the Moon

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/wild-animals-moon-and-other-poems

 

Read More from Naomi Online

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/53007

http://washingtonart.com/beltway/ayala.html

http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/nayala.html

http://washingtonart.com/beltway/ayala4.html

http://www.nathanielturner.com/naomiayalabio.htm

http://www.anomalouspress.org/current/25.ayala.winter.php

http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/2010/11/poem-of-week-naomi-ayala.html

 

Interviews

http://www.eethelbertmiller.com/muse/ayala.html

http://letraslatinasblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/pablo-miguel-martinez-interviews-naomi.html

Interview for the Oral History Program at the Institute for Latino Studies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPdLwaN2ez8

 

Hear Naomi Read!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isocCGT-hFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJZKJpqAIAw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUPkGvwHjFo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5zfe-f9kc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84jhZutUlWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABMXD7mY3uc

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Daily Prompt Love <3 One Body, Many Parts

12 There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body…13 We were all baptized by one Holy Spirit. And so we are formed into one body. It didn’t matter whether we were Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free people. We were all given the same Spirit to drink. 14 So the body is not made up of just one part. It has many parts.

15 Suppose the foot says, “I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. 16 And suppose the ear says, “I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? 18 God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. 19 If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body?20 As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body.

21 The eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 In fact, it is just the opposite. The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are the ones we can’t do without. 23 The parts that we think are less important we treat with special honor.–1 Corinthians 12:12-23 New International Reader’s Version (NIRV)

Make art about Connectedness, the inescapability of how we are all connected.

 

 

Daily Prompt Love <3 Janus at the Gate

11/19/2016

Dreamt a conversation with a friend last night about the ancient Roman god Janus. In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. 

Janus presided over the beginning and ending of conflict, and hence war and peace. The doors of his temple were open in time of war, and closed to mark the peace. As a god of transitions, he had functions pertaining to birth and to journeys and exchange, and is associated with progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, and of one universe to another.

Make art about Janus, or about gateways, doorways, transitions from past to future, from one world to another. 

Daily Prompt Love <3 No Irish Need Apply

11/18/2016

Thinking on how it wasn’t all that long ago that it was my Irish ancestors that many people wanted out of the country, saw as less than human, thought they were taking their jobs, hated for their faith and their culture. 

Make art about fear and exclusion. 

Click to view slideshow.

Some MidWeek Call for Submissions: Unleash It, Y’all <3

Submit Your Personal Essays to The Artist Unleashed

Deadline: Rolling

 

Website: http://www.theartistunleashed.com/

Earn $0.015 per word to be published on our blog, The Artist Unleashed. We want articles based on your personal experience as a writer or artist to help fellow creatives. Articles for this website must be about an aspect of writing and/or art and must also inspire and/or motivate, encourage discussion, offer advice or argue an opinion, and be rich with informative/engaging content. We will tweet and Facebook your post to get it as much exposure as possible. Unique views on a single post have reached 1500+ within 24 hours. Please visit our website for guidelines: theartistunleashed.com/write-for-us.