Marly Youmans's Blog, page 104

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I'm posting from beautiful Cullowhee, North Carolina, where the clouds have bedded down on the mountains, and those in turn have gone a lovely fawn color while the eldest trees (clothed in lichen) are a luminous pale green in the rain. Everything is soft and waiting, with little birds flying to and from the feeders. It has a lovely Advent sort of feeling.

CLIVE

Clive Hicks-Jenkins has

Mercer Frolics in Atlanta

I'm back in Cullowhee, North Carolina after two days in Atlanta with the 23rd annual Mercer Authors Luncheon. You might think that a luncheon would be a luncheon, but in this case it is a reception and dinner for 65 dear friends of Mercer University Press and some authors, and then some more events the next day, primarily book signings and a fancy luncheon for a much large number. It was quite

Idle thoughts on the road--

On the road... Zipping from western North Carolina to Atlanta today. If you are insanely curious, you may go to the Events page and see why. Otherwise, I shall report tomorrow night.

Last night I was watching Stephen Colbert and laughing heartily (though still  not regretting my longtime lack of television--and after all, I can see him with Peter Jackson or the late Maurice Sendak on the web),

Tumbleweed

I have abandoned the family in New York and gone rambling down South--last night I was in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and tonight I will be in Cullowhee, NC. On the 7th I'll be going to a dinner with Mercer University Press and their supporters in Atlanta, and the next day I'll be doing a book-signing for my 2012 novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, and The Throne of Psyche (2011 poetry

Sweet collaborations--

Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins and poet and Aberystwyth University professor (now department head and Rendel Professor) Damian Walford Davies talk about poetry, painting, collaboration, and more here. Various poets come in for a mention, sometimes obliquely, and Damian reads some of his poems inspired by Clive's paintings. I'm glad Clive also read a poem by his dear friend Catriona Urquhart, who

To the poets--

Thoughts after reading some contemporary poetry... They might be in place of a few reviews, or maybe they're reminders to me about things I knew but felt like jotting down. 


* * *

If you are [insert sex or color], please love the world's people in your poetry. All. No matter what color and sex. To put it another way: give the people in your poems your full and fair attention, even if their

Small horn toot for Catherwood--

Trala, Catherwood is coming! (The novel was originally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1996, and afterward by the Bard imprint and in French, Spanish, and German translation. And Braille...) I was just writing some materials and packaging up review clips and so on for Mercer. I am so glad. It's always a good sign when publishers want to bring one's out-of-print books back into print. I've

Thaliad, etc.

Marly-mama
After nine hours to and fro and in Bug Tussle, New York for a wrestling meet, I slept briefly and rose to roust the youngest for another day of it. As I must go sing some Benjamin Britten and Handel, I escaped my wrestling-mom duties...

Thaliad thank you
I want to thank everybody who ordered Thaliad on launch day. Much appreciated! It's not your average Jill and Joe who are up for an

O happy day! THALIAD is born.

Thalia, as conceived by the masterful
Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales.


Today is the launch day for Thaliad (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing), with a post-apocalyptic epic narrative in blank verse (what a mouthful!) poem by me, profuse art by major artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and lovely, immaculate design by Elizabeth Adams of Phoenicia. For excerpts, clips of the first reviews, comments by poets

P. S.

And here's a first peep at finished copies of Thaliad. The first fifty buyers get an extra-special present, courtesy of Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Phoenicia Publishing... 2 days left on hardcover pre-orders.