Stephanie M. Wytovich's Blog, page 3

Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable 6: Identity

Hello Friends and Fiends--

Get ready for some more Writing Poetry in the Dark goodness! Today I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most groundbreaking of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates FJ Bergmann, Lucy A. Snyder, and Bryan Thao Worra. Each of these poets, to some degree, wrote about identity and like each of these artists, their takes are unique and powerful.

I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.

Best,
Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

FJB: Periodically revisit older work and make sure you save it in a format your present (and future) software can open.

LS: I think the hardest lesson is that you have absolutely no control over how a reader interprets a poem you have written.

You don’t have any control over whether the reader can tell a sonnet from a villanelle or if they even care that those forms exist. You don’t have any control over whether they can read at a college level or only a 3rd grade level. You don’t have any control over whether they’re expecting something that conforms to modern literary poetic conventions, or if they’re expecting something with end rhymes, or if they’re purely looking for a transformative sweep of emotion.

You don’t have any control over whether a reader will hit that line about the awful thing from your childhood and see it as boring and twee ... or if it will trigger a day-ruining traumatic flashback for them, and they swear off your writing forever.

The reader brings their own education, biases, and baggage to your poetry, and you have no control over how those things affect their reading experience. And if you think about that too hard, it can make you crazy. (It can also make workshopping your poetry a pretty frustrating experience if your group isn’t composed of people who fundamentally understand what you’re trying to accomplish with your writing.)

To make matters worse? People who read and write poetry are generally passionate about it. They have powerfully differing opinions that may or may not be rooted in consensual reality.

A literary writer once quipped a variant of Sayre’s Law: “The arguments in poetry are so vicious because the stakes are so low.”

So, what did I do with this difficult realization?

I focus first and foremost with satisfying myself with my poetry. Have I communicated what I intended to? Did I execute the craft aspects of the poem to my own satisfaction? Have I overall accomplished what I intended do, or am I just impatient to send the poem off and I really need to work on it more?

If I can honestly answer those questions to my own satisfaction, the next person I listen to is the editor.

Beyond that? The readers experience what they experience. I hope it’s a good experience. But I know that even if I do everything “right”, someone will hate it anyhow. But that’s just how things go.

And honestly ... getting anyone to read your poetry at all when they could be doing a hundred other things? That’s a win.

BTW: Poetry is often working with ambiguous and nebulous subjects, and true things are an important anchor you work within your verse But there comes a point where you have to lift the anchor, and a point where you have to set it down again. One of the hardest lessons I had to work with was encountering different situations where the truth I wanted to work with was undermined by new details coming to light, different versions of history I was addressing becoming more accepted, or one incident where a hypothetical lizard was actually discovered before I could get the poem published. So you have to find the courage to be prepared for your poems to be wrong if not immediately, perhaps years later. That's challenging. But more practically, there was also a time during the age of Myspace and early online magazines that I'd had this marvelous idea that I wanted several poems to appear exclusively in only that venue that had accepted them, and I hadn't printed out a hard copy thanks to an idealistic aesthetic at the time. Unfortunately, that now means thanks to various critical website glitches, laptops catching fire or journals just going offline, even with archive.org, many of my poems from certain years are completely lost. Even if you don't think much of a poem at the time, do yourself a favor and just keep a copy somewhere safe.

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

FJB: Oh, this is tough. So many collections I love! But I think it would be nice to recommend something obscure and weird, so … Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange by Kevin Griffith (Pearl Editions, 2007). And specifically [for] horror, In the Yaddith Time by Ann K. Schwader (Mythos Books, 2007). And the chapbook 25 Trumbulls Road by Christopher Locke (Black Lawrence Press, 2020).… I CANNOT STOP MYSELF.

LS: I’ve talked about this collection before, but Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart is absolutely brilliant. I think that aspiring horror poets in particular can learn much from it. This book absolutely should have won the Stoker award, but it wasn’t on anyone’s radar at the HWA.

The book focuses on the ominous shadows of small-town life in America’s heartlands in the mid-20th Century. The title poem speculates about what Amelia Earhart’s disappearance might have meant to her crew, husband, and to everyday people who simply saw her as a celebrity. Her Conners Prize-winning long poem “Circus Fire, 1944” explores the horror and tragedy of the July 6, 1944 fire that killed 168 people, mostly children, under the big tent at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance in Hartford, Connecticut. Other poems explore the economic, environmental, and social damage done to towns through mining and industrial exploitation. Calvocoressi’s poetry is dark, vivid, and starkly beautiful.

BTW: I've encouraged emerging poets to give Talking Dirty To The Gods by Yusef Komunyakaa a read. It includes selections ranging from the fantastic to the mundane, with most poems giving you ways to thoroughly reimagine the different topics he takes on. More impressively, the pieces are all presented as four quatrains each. Even if you struggle with form and meter, there's a lot of meat to learn from no matter what your skill level. "Ode To The Maggot" from that collection would be where I encourage many to start. Each year, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association produces an anthology of nominees for the year's best poems for the Rhysling Awards, and the variety of styles and topics examined give you a good opportunity to find pieces that speak to you. The Alchemy of Stars I & II showcase the winners from the last 40+ years and this may be helpful to get a sense of what's been capturing the attention of readers across the globe.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

FJB: It’s OK to imitate. If you give the same poem to a bunch of poets and ask them to write an imitation of it, you will get that many completely different resultant poems—and these are likely not only to be good but to expand the repertoire of those poets. Just remember to include “after ___” when you submit it for publication.

LS: Read lots of poetry to figure out what you think is good poetry. Read classic and modern poets. Read literary and genre poetry. Poets.org is a great resource for free-to-read poetry of all eras.

[And] learn about meter, scansion, etc., and how to write in standard poetic forms. It’s fine if you want to break the rules in your poetry, but to do that well, it helps to know what those rules are in the first place. Again, poets.org is a good resource, but I also recommend two books by poet Mary Oliver: A Poetry Handbook and Rules For The Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. There are many excellent good poetry books out there (such as Writing Poetry in the Dark!) but those are a great place to start.

BTW: Poetry will always be in flux between traditions and innovation, moments of solitude and community, the exciting and sadly, sometimes the grossly boring. Sometimes you'll be on the bleeding edge, other times, less so. I'd encourage you to find ways to keep centered (but rarely self-centered). Cultivate an internal compass to get you through the darkest shadows and uncertain brambles, appreciating what you're reaching for, but prepared to enjoy unique opportunities that might not come around again.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

October '11 Madhouse Recap: Haunted Cemeteries, Ghostbusters, and a Book Release!

 October‘22 Madhouse Recap

Hello Friends and Fiends—

October is always a fun-filled, crazy spooky month for me, and this year proved no different. We kicked the month off by traveling to go visit my brother and sister-in-law. It was Evie’s first road trip and she did such a great job. To no one’s surprise, she slept almost the entire five hours there; I can’t imagine where she got that from (*looks away*). While we were there, we watched lots of spooky movies and even went to Build-A-Bear, where Evie created a Werewolf friend named Walt. She licked his heart before it got sewn into his tummy, and then we also put a soundbox in there that plays the Oogie Boogie song when she hugs him. I think we all fell in love a bit more that day.

Because we’re all big fans of fall in general, we tried to take lots of long walks over the past couple of weeks to breathe that crisp, cool air and take in the colors of the leaves. On one of our adventures, Dennis stopped me on a bridge and gave me this beautiful BloodMilk snake ring for our 6-year anniversary and it felt like all the Halloween magic was just swirling around me. I also house-sat for my parents and watched the bulldogs one weekend, and we slept outside on a blanket together and cuddled close. Honestly, I live for these moments. I mean, some people like to tan in the summer; I like to lay out in the fall covered in blankets and sweatshirts and dogs. To each their own.

About halfway through the month, it was midterms for me. Luckily my psychology assignments consisted of a Freudian analysis of Coraline (which I think I’ve been waiting all my life to write), and then an analysis of the psy-complex in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I geeked out and had a blast, and I remain so happy that I chose to go back to school and do this for me. With that said, the teacher side of me also had midterms to grade in my one graduate course and finals to grade in another. I’ve been having a lot of fun with my students this semester, and I’m enjoying the discourse we’ve been having, especially about poetry, women and violence, and the mother trope in horror. I ended up rereading Bunny by Mona Award with my one mentee and my god, that book just gets better on the reread. I think I’m actually going to teach it again next semester with my undergraduate students because I’ll be teaching a Women Write Horror class at PPU as part of their Theoretical Approaches core. This class will offer an inclusive, diverse, and extensive history of female writers in speculative fiction. Students will study a chronological history of horror classics and then compare them against contemporary literature written in the last five years by some of the genre's most celebrated voices. From the gothic to the cosmic, to an unraveling of the final girl, there is something for everyone, and scares for all! 

Dennis and I also managed to steal away for a vacation and we went to a bucket list place for both of us: Savannah, Georgia. I’ve wanted to go to Savannah for years now, especially around Halloween, and it was the perfect getaway for us: quiet, spooky, relaxing, and romantic. I swear, I never tire of looking at those gorgeous Spanish moss trees, and taking a walk through the cemeteries every day was a big perk for me, too. Beyond that, lots of great food, drinks, plenty of walking (yay for exercise!), and some cool side trips as well. I plan on writing up two follow-up posts about the trip here soon, so hopefully, they’ll be up in November for everyone to see! In the meantime, I will say that Bonaventure Cemetery was one of the most beautiful places I’ve been in my entire life and yes, I did have a haunted experience on my travels (but the spirits really waited until the last minute to show up!). 

We ended our vacation week with vending at the Pittsburgh Comic Show. I also like attending these because I get to talk to fellow horror comic fans and then I also get to see Dennis in his element and learn more about the business. Out of the two of us, I’m the reader whereas Dennis is the collector and business blood, but I think we make a good team because we’re both picking up where the other lacks. Needless to say, if you’re a comic fan and haven’t checked out our shop yet, you can follow Dennis on Instagram @WanderingComics as well as on FB (Dennis Gallagher), eBay, and Whatnot. And if for some reason that doesn’t work, or you can’t find his sales, you can reach out directly to me and I can get you the hookup or have a pull list started for you.

And yes, the best for last! HALLOWEEN! We had so much fun this year and I really tried to go all out with it being Evie’s first. Dennis and I dressed as Ghostbusters and then Evie went as the Stay Puft Marshmallow lady. It was the cutest costume ever and we handed out candy to everyone while my dad dressed up and scared children, and my mom and I drank lots of sangria. Plus, we had a big homemade Polish feast, and then I backed a ton of cookies and appetizers. There was dancing, laughing, and lots of music…and okay, a little screaming, but what else would you expect? BOO!

On the writing/teaching front:

Probably the biggest news this October for me was the release of my speculative poetry craft book, Writing Poetry in the Dark. This whole book feels like such a dream and I’m so honored to share it with all of you in the hopes that it will help you create beautiful, wonderful, terrifying things. We also celebrated the release with the Writing Poetry in the Dark Conference, where a handful of contributors taught a variety of workshops and gave lectures on the topics they wrote about in the book. Truly, I can’t thank you all for helping make this release everything that it was. It means the world to me.I hosted a Halloween Open Mic Night at Point Park University this month and invited the HWA Pittsburgh Chapter members to help kick off the evening with some haunting tales. Big shout out to the Literary Department and the All Things Horror Club for helping me pull this off. We had a great evening of spooky stories, great company, and lots of Halloween treats, and the best part of the evening was when students asked if we could do this more often. Um, yes, please!My poem “Honey Jar” is in the first issue of Toil & Trouble Magazine. You can download the first issue here.My poem “As the Crow Flies” was reprinted in Skyway Journal. You can read it here.It was announced that Under Her Skin (Black Spot Books) won FIRST PLACE in the Bookfest Book Awards in Poetry Collections/Anthologies. I remain so honored to be involved in this anthology and a massive congrats go to Lindy Ryan and Toni Miller for all their hard work here. If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again–any time these ladies do a project, you want to submit to it. They are some of the most professional, kind, and wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with in this industry.My sonnet "The Witch Stained Red" --inspired by Macbeth and Shakespeare's treatment of witches--will be included in the Shakespeare Unleashed anthology. Have you preordered yet?The HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume IX is officially live! You can pick up your copy here. You folks know that this showcase has a special place in my heart, and I’m honored to be a featured poet in this volume. Thank you, Angela Yuriko Smith, for all your work and dedication to the genre. This is a smashing success! Oh! And did I mention that the showcase got some action for Book Fest in Times Square? How amazing is that?I’m so excited to be participating in Winter Haunts this year, thanks to the ever-kind Alex Davis. This is an online day of workshops, panels & talks on ghost stories, gothic and supernatural fiction, and I’ll be running a workshop on How to Write the Speculative Poem and then appearing on a Baba Yaga panel to talk about all things feral and witchy.I chatted with Steve Stred in his interview series here. I talked about my writing routine (spoiler alert: I don’t have one), creative burnout, and Shirley Jackson. Because obviously.I took part in a Pro-Choice Roundtable where a group of horror writers chatted about our experiences in a post-Roe v Wade world. Check it out here and be sure to read the first two installments as well. Thank you, Gwendolyn Kiste!The second Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview went live where I interviewed Linda Addison, Christina Sng, and Timons Esaias. You can check it out here.The third Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview went live where I interviewed Marge Simon, Sara Tantlinger, and Claire C. Holland about monstrous women. You can check it out here.The fourth Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview went live where I interviewed Michael A. Arnzen, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Cynthia Pelayo about writing across genres. You can check it out here.The fifth Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview went live where I interviewed Jessica McHugh and Albert Wendlanding about Building Worlds. You can check it out here.I chatted with Angela Yuriko Smith about Writing Poetry in the Dark over on the HWA Poetry Blog. You can check it out here.In honor of the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wrote an article for LitReactor titled: “When Fiction Sells, Why Write Speculative Poetry?” You can read it here.

This month, I read:

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfsher

Crime Scene by Cynthia Pelayo

Nightmare Before Christmas, Mirror Moon by Mallory Reaves

Bunny by Mona Awad (reread–and even better the second time around!)

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

Chilling Adventures of Salem, a one-shot from Archie Comics

Chilling Adventures in Sorcery, a one-shot from Archie Comics

Robyn Hood Baby Yaga, Issue #1 (I knew I’d regret it, but I had to. Baba, they did you dirty).

I’ve also been reading Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings edited by Gaby Triana. Some of my favorite stories that I’ve read so far are “Postcards From Evelyn” by Scott Cole, “When They Fall” by Steve Rasnic Tem, and “How to Unmake a Ghost” by Sara Tantlinger. I’m really enjoying this collection and it’s such a great seasonal read. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you can do so here.

On the media front:

New Watches: Hocus Pocus 2 (2022), Do Revenge (2022), My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022), Inheritance (2020), Hellraiser (2022), Mad to Be Normal (2017), Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022), One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest (1975–technically a rewatch, but it’s been a while) and Barbarian (2022).

I really wanted to finish Shudder’s 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time, but alas, I only made it to Episode 5. I’m still having a blast with this though and it’s fun to revisit all these moments (and find some new movies to check out).

American Horror Story: I watched the first two episodes. I wish someone would tell Ryan Murphy to leave AHS behind and focus on new projects. Then again, I’m the idiot who keeps watching so what do I know?

The Midnight Club: I absolutely loved this, and it makes me sad that I never read a single Christopher Pike book as a kid. Needless to say, I’ll be fixing that with Evie when the time comes, but yeah, this series was everything I love about horror. It was scary (Sweetheart, I’m so hungry!), and it commented on life and trauma in a way that made me think about my own mortality, morals, and ethics, and yet at the same time, it was also hopeful. Throw in a haunted house, medical horror, and a predominately female cult? Christ, could this have been better marketed to me? 10/10 would recommend it.

The Patient: Talk about a grim ending! There were parts I liked about the finale, and parts I didn’t like. I think, as much as I like to pretend I don’t, that I really like and appreciate a happy ending and this was just…heartbreaking. I do think it’s an interesting case study for anyone interested in psychopathology though–lots to discuss. I brought it up several times in my one class this semester.

The Watcher: I was a little skeptical when I first started this, but around episode 4 I had to admit that I was suckered in. I enjoyed the series overall, even if it was a mighty embellishment from the original story, but honestly, I’m 100% okay with that. I will say that the final scene with the stairway was perfect and I absolutely loved it. Also, can we all just applaud the absolute majesty of Jennifer Coolidge? What a queen!

Dahmer: Episode 6 “Silenced” broke my fucking heart. Jesus Christ. I have to be honest and say that I was kind of upset when I saw that there was another adaptation coming out about him (and yes, I know I’m part of the problem because I keep watching them) but I have to say that I was really surprised with how this turned out (no shade to Ryan Murphy). This series did a great job at showcasing systemic racism in action, issues with police cruelty and neglect, the lack of mental health resources available to a number of people, and most importantly, showcasing, naming, and exploring the lives of the families and those who lost their lives to this monstrous man. I had a really hard time watching this and I took it slowly but I’m impressed with what it did, even though I still think that this had to be retraumatizing for the victim’s families and that level of empathy is something we all need to take a step back and explore/meditate on further. 

She Hulk: Overall, I loved the series, but–and I know people will come for me for this–I really didn’t like the final episode. Like at all. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be watching if there’s a second season but I just creatively didn't like the choices they made in structure and deliverance. 

Podcasts:

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Space Horror with Sonja from Ghostly Reads

Books in the Freezer Podcast, My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022) with Kristen Anderson

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Comedic Horror

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Horror Novellas with Brandon Baker

Talking Scared Podcast,  92, Anne Heltzel and a Big Pile of Dead Baby Dolls

Talking Scared Podcast, 104, Michael J. Seidlinger and Strange Footsteps at Midnight

Talking Scared Podcast, 105, Agatha Andrews and Danger-Bangs in Haunted Houses

Talking Scared Podcast, 99, T. Kingfisher and the Fungus-Punk Episode

Best,

Stephanie

Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 5: Building Worlds

Hello Friends and Fiends--

To further celebrate the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most architectural of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Albert Wendland and Jessica McHugh. I decided to showcase these two poets together because, in a lot of ways, they both talk about the same thing in their respective essays: world-building. Wendland talks about it from a creation perspective, more akin to what we would see in fantastical fiction (but applied to the poem), whereas McHugh tackles it visually as she pulls images from various words and lines in books and not only creates a picture but a new piece of poetry as well. All hail the blackout poem!
I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.

Best,Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

AW: I once took a course in “The Augustan Age” (18th century British Literature), and though that sounds dry as hell, the course was quite interesting because the professor made us write, each week, in the style of whatever author we were reading. So we had to focus intensely on the voice and structure of each writer, and this included poets. You learn quite a lot when forced to write, for example, rhymed iambic-pentameter couplets in the style of Dryden or Pope. So I highly recommend the exercise: picking some of your most admired and respected poets and trying to write in their exact style. It’s challenging and rewarding, needing to pay very close attention to an author’s meter, emphasis, line length, etc. Poetry isn’t just prose where the typist hits “return” more often. It’s organized line-by-line auditory expression. So an exercise of close imitation can become a revelation of tools of the trade.

JM: That I belong here. Poetry was my first creative love, and reading it has always comforted me in a way prose has never quite matched; yet, I’ve spent most of my writing career focusing on novels and short stories. Even after having poetry published, I hesitated to call myself a poet. Maybe because I put it on a pedestal for so long and treated it so preciously. I will continue to do that, of course, but now I’m

embracing myself as part of the tribe. If this sounds like you, there’s a very good chance you’re a poet that’s been selling themselves short as well. And if so, cut it out and own your poetic radtacularity!

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

AW: Though it’s a collection of mainly white, male, ivy-league poets, and long out-of-print, an anthology called The Distinctive Voice impressed me immensely when I was an undergraduate. It made me want to write poetry.


Another work, a favorite among poetry instructors, students, and practicing poets—indeed, a classic—is How Does a Poem Mean, by John Ciardi. Note that it’s not “What” a poem means, but “How”—and that’s the whole point. The book is about how poems work, how they communicate in their own special fashion, and not just about what they say. Highly recommended.

Also, I get as much inspiration (and maybe even more) for writing speculative poetry from SF novelists who write with a poetic style. The science fiction prose of Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, Samuel Delany, and Dan Simmons have long influenced me. And more recent hybrid or fantasy novels like Radiance by Catherynne Valente and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern are almost long poems in themselves and thus very inspiring.

JM: It’s probably a cliché answer, but I don’t care. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman is everything to me. Whenever I feel like I need a recharge, I turn to Song of Myself and let it fill me with its musical truth.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

AW: Poetry requires a different mindset from telling a story. It’s more like sculpture, an attempt to capture—in a highly organized word “object”—a moment, an impression, a look, an idea, a thought. You thus make that moment or notion permanent so readers can always be reminded of it. A poem is a frozen slice of passing time. And the wonderful thing about speculative poetry is you don’t have to freeze just personal time (as so much poetry does), you also get to capture historical, social, interplanetary, galactic, and cosmic time. Now that’s a challenge!

JM: Guidelines matter, but technical precision means nothing without true emotion guiding each line.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 4: Across Genres

 Hello Friends and Fiends--

As we prepare for the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most creative of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Michael A. Arnzen, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Cynthia Pelayo. These contributors tackled genre in the book from different angles, whether that be by inserting humor, incorporating science fiction, or politicizing your work. 
I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.


Best,Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

MA: To put away the thesaurus. I used to enjoy the "game" or "puzzle" of working with rhymes and fancy words and trying to sound more eloquent than I am... in other words, FORCING things. And I didn't realize that it always sounded or read as forced -- to me, it sounded "fancy" or "literary" or just "sophisticated." It took me a while to quit playing and get serious. Now I strive to make the poetic voice authentically me, or authentic to the characters/narrators/scenario I'm writing about. There's still wordplay in my work, especially in the more humorous pieces, but what I "play" with more often is the tropes of the genre; the expectations and conventions of horror.

JG: Don’t be afraid to be weird! Many of my professors in my twenties, when I got my first Master’s Degree in English, wanted me to conform – be a formalist, write more like a white male, and keep pop culture out of my work because “poetry should be timeless.” Although I was young and lived in the very conventional and conformist midwest at the time, I ended up – despite pressure - cheerfully ignoring all their advice, and I think that’s what made my poetry unique back in the early 2000s – no one else was writing superhero poetry yet, or if they were, hardly anyone was publishing it. And then I found “my people” – that is, poetry who wrote horror and speculative poetry – because a few other older poets were kind enough to point me in their directions. What makes us weird also makes our work our own, and that’s what makes your poetry stand out from the crowd – and there’s almost always a group who will understand and support the kind of writing you do – it just may not always be your university professors.

CP: Learning that some people still do not consider what I do poetry. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m a free-form poet, or because I write speculative poetry. It has been an interesting critique I’ve seen, but I don't internalize that at all. If I say I’m a poet, I’m a poet. If I say this is a poem, it’s a poem. There’s nothing anyone can tell the poet or the poem otherwise. And as writers, as poets, we have that power to stand firm and tell the audience what our art is, and in this case, poetry.

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

MA: Collection means work by a single poet rather than an anthology, and there are too many books I adore and see value in, so this really is a tough one. But maybe everyone should read Strike Sparks by Sharon Olds. And maybe horror poets should read Death Poems by Thomas Ligotti. Of course, don't skip the classics and masters, like Poe.

JG: When I taught at a university’s MFA program, I just wanted to make sure that people had been exposed to poetry of all sorts – experimental, traditional, poetry in translation, poetry from different cultures, disabilities, etc. I stand by that – I could never suggest just one book, but if that person had never written or read much prose poetry, I would recommend picking up a book of prose poems. And I really hope people buy other poets' books of poetry – I know that there is, unfortunately, a tendency to read too little. Supporting your fellow writers will never be a waste of money.


(List of books I love to teach: Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands, Margaret Atwood’s Selected I &II, Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa, Jericho Brown’s Please, Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning, Matthea Harvey’s Modern Life, Karyna McGlynn’s I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill A Girl. There are many, many more: Dorianne Laux’s Smoke, Denise Duhamel’s Kinky, Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee, Kelli Russell Agodon’s Dialogues with Rising Tides, Lesley Wheeler’s The State She’s In, Oliver de la Paz’s Names Above Houses, Dana Levin’s Wedding Day…)

CP: All of them! I think it’s important to read a range of poets and poetry, and definitely, this includes areas outside of speculative poetry.

I still go back to the collected works of Emily Dickinson. I also go back to the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Rainer Maria Rilke, E.E. Cummings, Anne Sexton, Langston Hughes, and so on.

Yet, I’m very mindful of reading poetry by fellow speculative poets working in the genre today, Sara Tantlinger, Linda Addison, Donna Lynch, John Edward Lawson, Christina Sng, You! And so on.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

MA: If you want to really make sure the words are right before you finish your final draft, do the opposite of what your impulse might be: sing your free verse; and read your lyrical forms backwards so the line ends don't rhyme. Whichever you try, it likely will sound like jazz and it will liberate you to think differently about your meter and verse.

JG: Be yourself in your poetry! Your experiences, your voice, the cadences of speech, the books, movies, and music you refer to – all of that will make your work stand out. And read widely – as widely as possible – to get an idea of the great big world of poetry out there.

CP: Don’t be afraid to experiment with voice, structure, and form. It’s wonderful to know what others are doing, but you don’t have to do what someone else is doing. This is your opportunity to establish your own process, and don’t be afraid of setting yourself apart from what others are doing.
If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 3: Monstrous Women

Hello Friends and Fiends--
As we prepare for the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most sadistic and wonderful of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Sara Tantlinger (historical horror), Marge Simon (savage women), and Claire C. Holland (writing violence). These monstrously brilliant ladies tackled themes of violence and rage in their essays, both from contemporary and historical point-of-view.

I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.


Best,Stephanie M. Wytovich
SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

ST: When I started getting more poems and eventually collections published, I knew horror poetry would be a niche category, but it was still surprising how vehemently certain people were against the very idea of reading poetry. There’s a weird attitude some readers (and writers) have that poetry is beneath them, and it’s baffling and disappointing to encounter. We already have to fight to sell poetry for decent rates, so dealing with those attitudes where people dismiss the work we put into writing poetry was something I had to work on ignoring. It’s much more rewarding to focus on the people who love poetry and who are newer to it and willing to give it a try!

MS: I learned the hard way that in a free verse poem, it’s perfectly okay to have rhyming words in two lines of a stanza. Of course, interior rhyme enhances the reading experience even more so, IMO. Also. experimenting is encouraged; include lines of prose in as a stanza – italics can work here, for descriptive emphasis. I learned these tips the hard way, believing I was not allowed. That’s something you pick up in college English classes. Ridiculous rules are meant to be broken, in many instances.


SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

ST: William Blake is a personal favorite for me, and I recommend reading his completed works of poetry, especially Songs of Innocence and Experience. Even if someone doesn’t love classic poetry, I think Blake’s work can still reach through that wall and show writers a lot of different techniques. Beyond the literary merit of his work, there’s so much writers can take away from the images crafted within his verses. The prophetic books where Blake invented his own mythology through poetry are fascinating. He has a really rich world of poetry that I highly recommend exploring.

MS: Poetry collection for studying poetry? Bruce Boston’s Dark Matters. (Amazon). Actually, any one of Boston’s collections can provide a learning experience, if the reader applies it to that direction.

CH: “Glass, Irony and God” by Anne Carson. Her poem/lyric essay “The Glass Essay” is just brilliant, and worth studying.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

ST: Remember you can write poetry just for yourself. You don’t have to try and get every poem you write published. Sometimes we need to bleed our hearts into a poem for reasons other than seeking publication, but the great thing is that even those poems you keep to yourself are still helping you learn your craft and become a stronger writer.

MS: Challenge yourself with goals--writing excellence doesn’t come easy!--and read like a fiend. Read fiction as well as poetry, to perceive the joy of words and rhythms.

CH: Let yourself enjoy every little milestone! Your writing career will be full of ups and downs, but if you celebrate each step along the way (rather than just the huge moments you might be waiting for), you’ll be a much happier writer. Find goals that are meaningful to you and your personal journey as a writer, not just the ones that feel publicly validating.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 2: Playing with Form and POV

 Hello Friends and Fiends--

As we prepare for the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most wondrous of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Linda Addison (writing in various forms), Christina Sng (writing the speculative haiku), and Timons Esaias (approaching POV in poetry), who discuss form, shape, and POV in speculative poetry. Their essays in the book are masterclasses on how to approach the speculative poem, and they encourage both traditional and untraditional takes on how to write and build the poem from scratch.

I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.

Best,
Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

LA: Early in my career, I was publishing poems that were short (6-9 lines, mostly free form) and in my comfort zone. I took a workshop with Veronica Golos in New York and she challenged me with one of the first poems I turned in saying: “You can probably publish this, but I think you can do better. You could write a longer poem, create deeper imagery.” That comment stopped me in my tracks because up until then I was focused on just writing and getting published. I made the decision to expand my poetry beyond the initial writing, go deeper and try different forms.

CS: I used to repeat words in a poem and I never saw them. Now I do, thanks to Stephanie editing my first collection and pointing it out. Often, these blind spots never get spotted until someone else sees them because your brain has already registered them as relevant. So, have your work looked at by another set of eyes as often as you can. They will help you find these blind spots and fix them.

TE: My education had given me the strong impression that the purpose of poetry was to impress people, and that the more complex and obscure the work was, the better. I took one of those poems to an open mike (or mic, as we spell it now) and quickly discovered that no, when reading to the public one's purpose is to entertain. Be clear, be understandable, save the precious stuff for the print literary journals.

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

LA: Whew, my bookcase is full of collections that inspire me. I usually suggest the following two publications, published each year because they contain a mix of poets and forms: Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) Rhysling Anthology, and the Horror Writers Association (HWA) Poetry Showcase.

CS: I always recommend Sylvia Plath’s Ariel as a masterclass for all poets.

TE: For a practical study of current poetic practice, I would suggest one of the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetryeditions. There have been three that I know of, and any one of them will do. This will counteract the tendency of our education system to teach you how to be an Elizabethan poet, followed by maybe schooling you on how to be a Victorian poet. To write in this century, one ought to study poets of this century. Then go back into history.

I am also asked for the best manuals, and my answer is Ted Kooser's The Poetry Home Repair Manual, if you're writing today's poetry, and Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms, if you're writing form. If you want to immerse yourself in a varied set of opinions about things poetic, one still cannot beat Donald Hall's Claims for Poetry, 40 years old though it be.

But verily I say unto you, read Bashō's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, for it shows the Way.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

LA: Write down everything that comes to you, without deciding if it will turn into full poems. I’ve been journaling since 1970 and these thoughts, reactions, bits & pieces have become seeds for poems I’ve published and possible future work.

CS: Write for you, first and foremost. Everything else will follow.

TE: Be willing to tear a first draft into separate poems. We often try to do too many things at once in an early draft, and sometimes those things don't fit together. (Oh, it's great when they do, but...) Rather than assuming that parts of the poem must die, and forever be cast into darkness, gently pull the strands apart and assume that each might be an excellent poem on its own.

Note that there is nothing wrong with using the same line, or same image, in two poems. Your biographers will consider it clever.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

September '22 Madhouse Recap: Apple Cider, Speculative Poetry, and Fairytales

Hello Friends and Fiends—

September felt like a whirlwind, but that’s to be expected with the start of school. I’m teaching a handful of graduate classes this semester and I just finished up with a 4-week Witch Lit Class via LitReactor, and ah, what a blast! Teaching is exhausting and a ton of work, but it always invigorates and inspires me. I always try to push myself to read something new, too, whether that be a book of criticism, a new poetry collection I think might help in the future, an academic essay, etc. For my Witch Class this time around, I read Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women by Silvia Federici, which I really enjoyed. And talk about eye-opening!

Mostly, I’ve been living my life by my planner these days and making sure that I’m creating a balance of achieving my goals, going to work, and including lots of moments of self-care. The self-care bit mostly looks like me remembering to drink water and go to therapy, but hey, those things matter and I’m calling it a win. Outside of that though, I’ve been dedicating a lot of time to the psychology classes I’m taking at Point Park, and I’m really loving the challenge and energy, and knowledge I’m gaining from them. I’ve also been reading a lot of fairytales because I find them nostalgic and relaxing, and that’s something I need right now. Ironically, most of them have been about sleep–I’m sure Jung would have something to say about that…

Evie and I got to celebrate our first Mabon together, and I tried to make it special by putting up a little altar, burning my Mithras candle (which only gets lit 3, maybe 4 times a year), and taking her for a family trip to Trax Farms. We went on a hayride, walked through a 3-acre corn maze, and then picked some pumpkins and a ton of apples (to make a spiced apple loaf, of course!). I find myself so amazed by her each and every day, and I had no idea that being a mother could feel so enchanting. Sure, it’s hard and frustrating at times, but seeing the wonder in her eyes and watching her laugh at scarecrows, and pet goats, and just generally be so excited at everything is…healing. I can’t wait to spend Halloween with her, and while I consider it a cardinal sin, I’ve started Christmas/Yule shopping as well (but shhh). 

On the writing/teaching front:

We’re getting closer to the launch of Writing Poetry in the Dark this October! As such, I want to remind everyone that preorders are open and you can pick your copy of the book up here, plus we have the Writing Poetry in the Dark Event that you can sign up for as well! This three-day virtual event will feature poetry workshops, lectures,  networking opportunities, and more for writers of genre poetry. Guests are still being added and more info about the programming and schedule will be available soon. Featuring on-demand prerecorded content, live sessions, and for our Evergreen Lifetime Members recordings labeled (LT) from past events. 

I’m so excited to be participating in Winter Haunts this year, thanks to the ever-kind Alex Davis. This is an online day of workshops, panels & talks on ghost stories, gothic and supernatural fiction, and I’ll be running a workshop on How to Write the Speculative Poem and then appearing on a Baba Yaga panel to talk about all things feral and witchy.

My interview with Cynthia Pelayo went live on my blog. We talked about her upcoming poetry release, CRIME SCENE, and also had a wider discussion about the true crime genre in general. Give it a read here.

This month on LitReactor, I chatted with Donna Lynch about her latest poetry release: Girls From the County.

We kicked off the Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview Series this month, and for our first post, we tackled the mystical with Carina Bissett, Saba Razvi, and Leza Cantoral. You can read it here.

I chatted with the ever-lovely Desiree Duffy about the HWA Poetry Showcase and all things horror for her podcast Books That Make You. I’ll be sure to let you folks know when it airs, but in the meantime, please check out their podcast (and her Youtube channel!).

This month, I read:

The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

Goblin by Josh Malerman

We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric Larocca

Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women by Silvia Federici

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw

On the media front:

Watcher (2022), Kept Woman (2015), The Stepfather (1987), The Munsters (2022).

The Patient: I eagerly look forward to this show every Tuesday, and while I wish the episodes were longer, I’m enjoying it. We’ve even been talking about it in my psychology class about how it pulls from Jungian archetypes, and my god, I just love having those conversations and juxtaposing them along trope and genre criticism.

The Sandman: We’re still making our way through the show, but I have to say that Episode 4 (“A Hope in Hell”) was absolutely gorgeous and Episode 5 (“24/7) was just deliciously dark. 

Dahmer: Yes, I’m watching it (but very slowly; only on episode 3). Yes, I think it’s well done (so far) and that Evan Peters is doing an exceptional job. Yes, it’s super dark and very disturbing. I don't find myself rushing to finish this, honestly. Maybe I wont?

She Hulk: Madisynn and Wongers for life! I’m enjoying this show a lot, and I appreciate all the moments where she highlights how different it is to be a woman in professional field compared to a man, especially in certain fields (like law). I like that we’re seeing this focus on fashion and beauty and dating and intersecting it with feminist criticism about how it's hypocritical, humiliating, and one-sided. 

Only Murders in the Building (Season 2): This was so much fun, and that final killer reveal episode? JESUS. I always want to pretend like I’m really great at solving these types of murder mysteries, but I’m just not, which is why I love them so much. That reminds me…I’m probably due to read another Agatha Christie novel here soon… 

American Horror Stories:  I’ve just gone too far with this series not to watch at this point. I will say that I loved the episode “Necro” because of course I did. But overall, this season was pretty flat for me. It had some moments but overall, I’m just over it. It feels like an obligation at this point.

Devil in Ohio: I had to jump on the bandwagon and see what this show was about and while it was ridiculous and frustrating, I still binged the entire thing in two days. It was entertaining but I called the ending halfway through episode 2, and if anyone knows me, I am never right about these things, so the fact that I was should tell you all something. 

What We Do in the Shadows: I absolutely loved this season and continue to adore this show. Lazlo and Colin Robinson were my favorites this season–hands down–and I’m still laughing about the home makeover plotline. Definitely, one of my favorite series these days, and *spoiler* I love that Colin grew up to be boring again. I feel like this is going to just send Lazlo into an existential crisis.

Podcasts:

Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! Episode 2 "Perseus and the Crazy Things That Emerge When You Behead a Gorgon?”

Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! Episode 3 “Zeus, King of the Gods and Creepy Old Man Who Tricks Women”

Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! Mini Myth: Echo, echo, echo…&Narcissus 

Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! Theseus, Ruiner of Women & All Around Awful Person

Le’ts Talk About Myths, Baby! Mini Myth: Daphne, the Nymph Who Said, “Hell No, Apollo!” 

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Faustian Bargain Horror with David Demchuck

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Campy B-Horror with Nico Bell

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Bonus: Pride Month Recommendations 

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Asylum Horror

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Grief Horror with Clay McLeod Chapman

Best,

Stephanie

Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 1: The Mystical

Hello Friends and Fiends--

As we prepare for the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most magical of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Carina Bissett, Saba Syed Razvi, and Leza Cantoral. All of these contributors wrote about the fantastical in some way, whether it was fairy tales (Bissett), the importance of mythologizing our lives (Razvi), or how we can communicate with ghosts and channel them in our writing (Cantoral).

I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out. Also, please keep in mind that our Writing Poetry in the Dark event is being held October 8-10 and will include multiple live workshops and many fabulous presentations. Carina Bissett, folklorist extraordinaire, will be presenting a lecture titled "Fairy Tale Poetics: New Wine in Old Bottles," and I can speak from personal experience that Bissett is a phenomenal instructor so this is not something you want to miss!

Best,
Stephanie M. Wytovich
SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

CB: I’ve only had one opportunity for a formal study of poetry, and that was in the third semester of my MFA at Stonecoast (University of Southern Maine) with the award-winning poet Cate Marvin. In fact, I strongly suggest readers pick up Oracle: Poems (2015) and her most recent release Event Horizon (2022). At the time, my poetry tended towards the abstract, but Cate urged me to connect my imagery with the grittiness of real life. It took me a couple of years before I took that advice to heart, but I’ve since rewritten and placed the poems in that first submission. It has been the most influential lesson I’ve learned so far when it comes to crafting poetry.

LC: People don’t really get excited about poetry unless you have a strong brand or persona. The other route is to win awards or just become beloved in a niche scene. But yeah, it’s tough as hell to sell a poetry collection. I did not generate much interest in mine when I published it (Trash Panda, CLASH Books). I plan to do another one in the future & hope that by that time enough people will know about me to be curious enough to buy it.

SR: The poem will be ready on its own timeline; sometimes, that means years, sometimes a moment. The poem is sometimes an expression of what we understand, but at others, it is a way to make a journey toward knowing — and when you’re stuck in a poem, that journey may reveal more than you expected. The mythos of the moment.

An example: In one of my first grad poetry workshops, I was studying with a poet whose works I really love. I submitted a poem that came as close to saying what I wanted to say as it could, but I knew something was missing. I didn’t want to disappoint the poet and I didn’t want to do a disservice to my own poem. The poet’s critique at the time, though kindly expressed, felt crushing because the poem felt like a failure: even though the vision of the poem meant a great deal to me, I couldn’t express it beyond the way I had, and their advice would have changed the poem in ways that betrayed it. So I just set the poem aside, letting it go. About a decade later, I revisited the poem while working on a book because something in the book felt missing and I wondered if that one poem could yield some insight. The initial line of criticism of something to remove in that poem turned out to be just the thing I needed to lean into: the poem went from seven couplets to seven pages. It wasn’t that the changes suggested would have made the poem better but that the changes suggested highlighted something about the inner working of the poem that I didn’t yet have the craft to articulate, but that I could see later on. In the decade between when the poem first appeared and when it found itself finished, I had understood how to make space for my own voice, how to own it in the context of that vision, and how to allow it to be wholly mine rather than something that enacts someone else’s poetics or vision. The poem unfolded in its own time — and it was both the product of a moment’s inspiration and the space of a journey from dreams to dreaming. I had to learn to trust the instinct of that poetic impulse, even if it wasn’t yet fully developed. Sometimes, persistence means letting the poem come to you on its own terms. And sometimes, looking not directly but sideways at a poetic technique shows you what it can be.

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

CB: When it comes to speculative poetry, Anne Sexton’s Transformations (1971) is at the top of my list. However, my current favorite collection overall, when it comes to technique and style, is Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things (2015), which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

LC: Ariel by Sylvia Plath

SR: The temptation here for me is to suggest the best book of poems I know, or one that has had a big influence on me, but…that would just suggest that I recommend students of poetry take my path instead of their own — and paths tend to change, as we change. I think that those who are drawn to poetry already have a strong sense of what inspires them in the literature itself. Read anything and everything — and keep a record of what you love, what you hate, what turns of phrase delight you or annoy you, what things you want to change or replicate in your own voice. Have a conversation with yourself about it. But also, think about what writers have to say about writing. Build awareness.

What I’d suggest instead is Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” I think it’s a good choice mainly because it reminds us that poetry is part of a conversation with ourselves and others and with tradition and culture, that we are always changing as writers, and that seeking to understand the development of one’s art is a good thing, a thing which helps poets persevere and not feel like their genius inspiration has abandoned them on days when it isn’t easy.

Writers’ artistic statements, essays, and manifestos also sometimes give us an insight into our own engagements with the poetic process. A conversation with the self and an engagement with other voices — or vice versa, are what help writers transcend the immediate, personal, intimate need for self-expression that sparks a poem and help writers bring that poem into a larger sphere of being.

Of course, if you really want me to name some poets ai think people should read, I can oblige. Here is an incomplete list. Consider Rumi, Lorca, Baudelaire, Ghalib, HD, Mina Loy, Edna St Vincent Millay, Naomi Shihab Nye, Forugh Farrokhzad, Emily Dickinson.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

CB: I think it’s important for poets to continually challenge themselves by reading outside their selected genre(s). I also encourage poets to experiment with various poetic techniques and forms. Although I personally prefer free form, I’ve found that working with

LC: Do it for yourself & challenge yourself.

SR: Write for yourself, sell for the market, and don’t mix up those two domains when the going gets confusing. Poetry writing is not the same as the poetry publishing business. Writing for the market can be helpful in establishing your career, but if you also write for yourself, if you chase the big questions and curiosities that drive you, you’ll reach people you never expected to reach — and you’ll be satisfied more with your artistic journey than your CV. It’s important to get your work out there (so don’t ignore the market), but don’t forget that your art should also be a sanctuary inside of the chambers or your own heart. In a way, I suppose I mean that you should strive to believe in your vision — and create a space for that vision — that allows you to coexist alongside the highs and lows of publishing trends and realities. You’ve got to be able to love the poetry as much as seeing the poetry out there in the world, I believe.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Madhouse Author Interview: Crime Scene by Cynthia Pelayo

Hello friends and fiends--

Today in The Madhouse, we're talking true crime and crime fiction with one of my favorite people and authors, Cynthia Pelayo. I've had the pleasure of working with Pelayo on two poetry collections now through Raw Dog Screaming Press, and when I read this one, frankly, it just took my breath away. I read her collection Into the Forest and All the Way Through when it came out in 2020, and not only did I appreciate the heartbreaking beauty of those poems, but the grace that Pelayo handled those cases with was extraordinary. If you haven't read it yet, please consider picking it up (but make sure you're in the right head space when you sit down to read it).

True Crime, in general, is a difficult genre to work in, especially when you're dealing with unsolved, contemporary cases, yet Pelayo's writing isn't exploitative but rather a war cry, a protest. Her writing challenges readers to not only think and rethink their pull to the genre but to also politically question why these cases remain cold or without the marketing attention that others so easily get. I always feel like I learn so much when I read Pelayo's work--not only about the world, but myself, too--and Crime Scene is another great example of how her poetry speaks to issues of racial injustice, violence, political corruption, mental health, and the empathetic heaviness that exists in jobs that consistently deal with loss and grief.

NOTE: For readers of poetry, true crime, and crime fiction, this is one not to be missed. It's written as part epic poem/ part narrative verse, so its a structure that will speak to all readers. Preorders are available now.

With that said, please enjoy the following interview with Cynthia in celebration of her upcoming October release. 

Best, 

Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: Hi Cynthia! Welcome back to The Madhouse. I want to first draw everyone’s attention to a previous interview we did together for your crime collection Into the Forest And All the Way Through because we touched on a lot of great points about the true crime genre in general, not to mention violence in America. Can you talk a little bit about the emergence of true crime poetry we’ve been seeing lately? Why do you think this subgenre is finding its legs right now and has been over the past few years?

CP: I think the genre of true crime has morphed into something we can’t even contain anymore. The genre itself of true crime feels like it has multiple subgenres within it and varying ways to be consumed. It’s entertainment. We can’t deny that true crime is entertaining, and I almost liken it to those crowds of people that would go and stand at the gallows to watch someone be hanged or to watch a woman be burned at the stake. We’re still doing that in many ways. We’re still standing around and consuming people’s suffering. Why do we do that? [Why] do we sit back and watch a grueling Netflix documentary about the rape, torture, and killing of people?  Why are we consumed with the theories around what happened to a person that has gone missing?

I’m guilty as well. I used to consume hours and hours of true crime. I would listen to the podcasts and watch the documentaries and read the books, but honestly, after Into the Forest and All the Way Through, I haven’t been able to. I don’t want to consume someone’s pain anymore, and maybe Crime Scene is my way of saying goodbye to that genre for now, even though Crime Scene isn’t true crime. It’s more of a reflection of a crime that could have occurred anywhere really.

I think people consume true crime because it’s simply not them, it’s not them suffering. You could have had an awful day at your job, and are struggling to pay your bills, have a relationship that is falling apart, but who is doing worse off than you? Well, you can listen or watch a few hours of true crime, and maybe some part of your brain tells you…at least you’re not that murdered person, or that missing person, or that suffering family member. Subconsciously it’s there. It’s always going to be there, that your suffering is not as great as theirs.

SMW: My experience and “enjoyment” (and I use that word lightly because it’s not exactly that) with the true crime genre always comes in waves. I’ll do nothing but consume it for weeks, but then something inevitably happens or pops up in a case and I’m just done and need to take some distance and recalibrate my wellbeing and headspace. Most recently for me, this happened after reading The Last Victim by Jason Moss. With that said, I’m curious what your writing process was like during Crime Scene. When did the idea for the collection take shape and how did you protect yourself mentally from it while writing?

CP: It's funny, after Into the Forest and All the Way Through like I said, I went without consuming true crime for quite some time, and then at one point I told myself ‘Well, let me watch something.’ Well, I watched The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez and my reality collapsed once again. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the absolutely tragic and brutal account of a young boy’s torture and eventual murder by people that should have loved him. That really shook me for a very long time. Months went by and then I sat down and watched The Alcasser Murders on Netflix, and the only reason I watched The Alcasser Murders was because it really highlights this idea of media and spectacle and how true crime becomes a spectacle. That was months ago too, and I haven’t consumed any true crime since.

The idea for Crime Scene really came about because I just felt like I wasn’t finished. I felt like Into the Forest and All the Way Through was incomplete, in a sense. I wanted to speak to the overall tragedy of what a case actually is – this empty and lonely journey that really never ends. There will always be another body. There will always be another missing person. There will always be clues. There will always be suspects and misdirection, and there will always be law enforcement failure and eventually unsolved cases.

There are people [who] commit crimes, and we really have to unpack what we are talking about – we are talking about human beings [who] take other human beings and do vile things to them. There are people [who] will take people from their homes or off the street with the intention [to] inflict absolute pain on this person for their enjoyment. And there are those [who] do this without any fear. There are those [who] do it again and again. There are those [who] get away and live a long life and die with the [knowledge] that they have killed people and no one will ever know it was them. That is haunting. That is horror.

I wanted to speak to that emptiness, but do so without using an actual case and that’s where the idea for Crime Scene came in. I wanted to talk about a journey that never ends, a journey that is thankless and cruel.

SMW: Can you talk a little bit about your characterization of Agent K? I think so often with poetry, we talk about form, style, and voice, but characterization is such a big part of this collection that I’d love to hear more about how you explored that as a whole and then individually in each poem.

CP: I never mention this in the poem, but originally, I had interpreted the K in Agent K as “Kill.” And the M in Agent M stands for “Murder.” I wanted to make sure that the idea of killing and murder [was] always there somehow. But as I continued writing I discovered her name was Karma, and you hear her name mentioned twice in the poem.

When I started thinking about her it was hard to not make the connection between her and Detective Lauren Medina who I wrote about in Children of Chicago. Agent K is very different than Lauren Medina. Agent K is, or at least I wanted her to be, a sort of [fill-in] for every investigator guilted with not being able to fulfill justice. I thought about what it must be like for a human being with a conscious to wake up every morning knowing that their job is to solve murder, but yet they have a backlog of murders they have been unable to solve. So how do you really keep going through [those] motions? I imagine there are many investigators who just don’t care, but I want to believe there are people out there [who] want to help, [who] want to set things right, but know they are unable to.

It was important that she remained largely nameless and faceless. That the place where she was investigating a crime could be any place, any town, any city. She could be anyone. I also didn’t want her personality to overwhelm or to be too muted either. So, I had to find this balance between her and whatever aspect of the case I was specifically zooming in on for that particular poem I was writing about.

SMW: This collection is essentially a novelization told through poems. How is writing something like this different from writing a collection of individual standalone pieces? Did you find it harder or easier to tackle the collection this way?

CP: At first it was very hard. It took me a while to find the rhythm. I had to stop and delete poems, and it was a mess in the very beginning because I tackled it at first like I would any other poetry collection, and that was not going to work. I then had to step back and think of it as I would a novel. I had to outline. So, I created a general outline. I wanted a very basic three-act structure, and from there I was able to construct what would happen within each act. Once I plotted that out the poems came fairly quickly and I wrote them from [the] beginning straight through to the end, which was really exciting since I’ve never written poetry like that before.

I think my answer is, it was actually easier than writing a collection of standalone pieces in a way, and I think I enjoyed doing it this way more because there was no starting or stopping. There was only a story I needed to tell. So even when I would take a break, when I came back to the work I knew where I was going and what needed to be told.

I did want to however make sure that the poems weren’t too homogenous in design. I wanted to be sure I was playing with variation and style throughout and that also came naturally. I never wanted the pace or tone to feel consistent. It needed to have a certain unpredictable speed, just like with any investigation, things slow down, but there tends to be a flurry of activity during certain stages of the case. It still feels very my style, this collection, but there is something about it that does feel different than my other collections, more mature I suppose.

SMW: I feel like every time I turn on the TV, I see another documentary about Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. Over the past few years, we’ve seen things like Confessions of a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, the movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, My Friend Dahmer, and Ryan Murphy’s upcoming crime drama series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Personally, I’m a bit worn out with these stories and I’m curious what you think about why these same stories keep being told over and over again while other lesser-known cases remain in the dark. 

CP: Unfortunately, it’s all marketing. Serial killers have become a brand. Isn’t that awful to think of it that way? There’s name recognition and that will instantly generate interest and an audience. Movie studios know that if they package another program on Ted Bundy it will generate interest instantly. However, not many studios are willing to invest money in a missing person’s case or an unsolved murder from a low-income rural community, or a case from a city that is made up of mostly marginalized individuals.

There are many, many lesser-known cases that are just absolutely tragic and complex and do deserve some attention in order to get resources devoted to investigating the case, and it’s sad and frustrating that missing person’s cases or murder cases do not have an equal level of dedication from law enforcement to investigate through to prosecution. 

SMW: What nonfiction books would you recommend to someone who is interested in adding more true crime reads to their library? Any that you’re hoping to read soon yourself?

CP: For the paranoid, like myself: The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signs That Protect Us From Violence, by Gavin De Becker

Some people hate it, but I don’t care: Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas

Other: Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes

Overall, I’m trying to navigate away from formal true crime and prefer just to read pretty far away accounts, or anything based on the psychology of motivation, but not specific to any one person.

SMW: I feel like a lot of true crime buffs have that one story that hit them harder than others. What is the one case that has haunted you all these years?

CP: There are two, the kidnapping and the murder of John Walsh’s son, Adam Walsh. Adam Walsh was kidnapped outside of a Sears department store and his remains were found days later, and the murder of two-year-old James Patrick Bulger who was lured away from a store in England by two 10-year-old boys, who then tortured and killed him.

Adam Walsh was murdered by an adult.

James Patrick Bulger was murdered by other children.

I guess it’s hard for me to even write about why these cases have stuck with me for so long, but I’ll just say they’re both so tragic. To me, children are literal angels on Earth and for someone to hurt a child, another child, well, there’s just no coming back from that. Anyone who harms a child is not human.

SMW: Something that’s always made me uneasy about reading and watching true crime is that I feel like I’m promoting or reliving something horrible. For instance, I visited The Death Museum in Los Angeles a few years ago, and the experience was really quite weird and horrible for me because as I stood there and walked through exhibit after exhibit, and then later went through a gift shop filled with—what I thought at times was—tasteless merchandise; it felt like people were celebrating serial killers and I’ve lived in this weird space surrounding the genre ever since. So for poets who are interested in exploring true crime in their work, what advice would you give them? How do you find that balance between not glorifying the crime but still exploring it and giving genre fans what they want all while still being sympathetic to the victims and the victim’s families---admittedly, one of the harder dances to dance as a crime/horror writer?

CP: It's been admittedly hard for me. I’ve been struggling with writing true crime. I know that Into the Forest and All the Way Through made an impact on a lot of people. I’ve received the most emails of any of my works for that collection, from people telling me they knew of the victim, or a family member knew the victim, or that this happened in their small town, or people telling me they haven’t read poetry since high school, but were able to read this poetry, and so on. So I know I was able to do something. People were moved. People felt something.

My goal with Into the Forest and All the Way Through was to take the power away from the killers and to give it to the victims, in a way. I wanted you to experience what the victim experienced in those last few moments. I spent days, weeks, longer, thinking about those women and the absolute terror they felt in their last few hours. I thought too about what I would think about in my last few moments, and in those moments of pain and despair, I can only imagine they thought about the people they loved and how they would never see them again, and that has affected me tremendously. I can no longer consume true crime like I used to. I don’t know if I want to ever explore writing true crime again, because even if I’m writing it from a position where I’m trying to explore our motivations for consuming it, I’m still contributing to the body of entertainment that is true crime. I’m still the thing that I hate if I write about true crime – and that is a person [who] is benefiting from the tragedy of another. I no longer want to be that.

At least for me, I think the only way I can be truly sympathetic, and truly honor the victims is to step away from writing it and to allow the family to mourn their loved ones without me interfering or adding to their suffering.

Granted, Crime Scene isn’t true crime. It is horror and crime fiction, but it does explore a crime, so I suppose that’s why I was fine with returning to it. I am a horror writer and a crime writer and any other genre or non-genre I want to explore, but at least for now, I will no longer be exploring true crime, and I will try my best not to consume it.

That doesn’t mean I judge those that do. We’re all artists and we have to explore what is calling us. To those poets and other artists who want to work with true crime, my recommendation is to remember always that these are real people. If you are working with a contemporary case, then please be extra careful because there are still friends and family [who] are suffering. Lives are broken when someone goes missing or when someone is murdered. The tear in the fabric in those people’s realities never heals. Be kind. Be gentle. Be respectful.

SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?

CP: Some I’ve recently read, reread or will read:

We Are Possessed, Adrian Ernesto CepedaNorthwood, Maryse Meijer

An Exhalation of Dead Things, Savannah Slone

Felon, Regional Dwayne Betts

Internet Girlfriend , Stephanie Valente

Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell, Stephanie Parent

Choking Back the Devil (I’m rereading this) as I wait to read her newest collection Girls From the County, Donna Lynch

SMW: What’s next for your readers?

CP: I have a few things coming out over the next few months:

We Came From an Island, a limited-edition chapbook with Thunderstorm Books

Loteria, my short story collection, which was originally published in 2010. It’s being re-released in January by Polis/Agora Books with a new novella.

The Shoemaker’s Magician, book two in the Chicago saga

And tons of short stories!

Author Bio:

Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo is a three-time Bram Stoker Award® nominated poet and author. Her novel Children of Chicago won the International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery (2021). Her works of poetry include Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, and the upcoming Crime Scene.

Twitter: @cinapelayo
Instagram: @cinapelayoauthor
Website: cinapelayo.com
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August '22 Madhouse Recap: Tattoos, Psychology, and Covid

 August ‘22 Madhouse Recap

Hello Friends and Fiends—

Just like that, summer is over and the semester has begun and started off with a bang, or should I say a headache/chills/fever/sore throat/ congestion/ and body aches? Yep, you guessed it. Dennis, Evie, and I all got Covid a few days before the first day of classes, but thankfully we’re all pretty much back to normal these days, even if I have some lingering symptoms here and there. What a scary, horrible thing though. It was the first time Evie was sick, and the fact that it was with the illness we’d all been dreading and fighting against the past few years certainly didn’t help. Thankfully, I tend to be an over-preparer thanks to my OCD (which let me clear–I’m not actually thankful for because it’s crippling at times), so I had tons of medicine, herbal supplements, vitamins, cough drops, ginger ale, etc. on hand and ready to go in order to fight this. I was the last one to get it in the house, so I’m happy that I was at least able to care for everyone else when they went down, but damn. 

Outside of that, August remained a transformative month for me. I got a fantastic tattoo to symbolize postpartum rage and all the changes I’ve been going through since having Evie, and I commemorated that by having my Aries warrior wear a Capricorn necklace to symbolize my little girl always being close to my heart. Shout out to Unique Ink and Brian Corely for always being amazing and exceeding my expectations. I always feel so confident and empowered after getting new ink. It's already changed the way I see and

As a family, we finally made it to the Asian Lantern Festival at the Pittsburgh Zoo. Dennis has wanted to go to this for years, so I’m happy we could finally make this happen for lots of reasons, and Evie had a blast. It was her second time visiting the zoo, and she just loves being outside and looking at the animals. This is great for me because something I want to do with her in a few years is a volunteer at a farm sanctuary a few times a year. I think this will be great in teaching her empathy, responsibility, and community, not to mention help her foster a stronger relationship with nature and the earth. Fingers crossed!

I’ve made some personal decisions and choices for the upcoming months that I’m really looking forward to, and the added positive in all of this is that I’m feeling my seasonal depression start to lift, so my mood and sense of well-being already feel unbelievably better. I’m teaching a bunch of graduate courses this semester and will finish up Witch Lit (LitReactor) this month, but I’m also taking two classes myself this time around as well. This time, it’s two psychology courses (Theories of Personalities and Psychopathology: Critical Perspectives). I have declared formally that I’m a psychology major quite yet, and I’m not sure that I will (unless it becomes stupid not to), but I am following my interests (along with the degree requirement sheet) to see where I end up. At the very least though, I’m having a blast following this thread of interest–something I’ve always had, to be honest–and I look forward to seeing how it will better inform my teaching and writing. 

To piggyback on that a bit more, I also spent this past month getting back to my roots in creativity and asking some hard questions. My boss told me she was listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s podcast Magic Lessons, so I listened to the first season and had some hard and honest conversations with myself about where I am right now as a creator. I have some projects coming out (some you know about, some you don't!) and I’m looking for my next *spark* so while I continue on, I’m also focusing on learning more about mythology and witchcraft as well (I know, you’re surprised). Regardless though, it feels good to be connecting with things and nature and all sides of my craft again and I’m excited to see what’s coming next as the weather changes, the harvest comes, and my energy returns. 

On the writing/teaching front:

We’re getting closer to the launch of Writing Poetry in the Dark this October! As such, I want to remind everyone that preorders are open and you can pick your copy of the book up here, plus we have the Writing Poetry in the Dark Event that you can sign up for as well! This three-day virtual event will feature poetry workshops, lectures,  networking opportunities, and more for writers of genre poetry. Guests are still being added and more info about the programming and schedule will be available soon. Featuring on-demand prerecorded content, live sessions, and for our Evergreen Lifetime Members recordings labeled (LT) from past events. I’m currently halfway through another iteration of Witch Lit with Litreactor. I remain so grateful to be teaching this class because it’s easily one of my favorite topics to lecture on and push myself to continue learning about. Lately, I’ve been reading about Slavic magic to get a bit closer to my own ancestral threads and I’ve also been reading Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women by Silvia Federici.

I’m so excited to be participating in Winter Haunts this year, thanks to the ever-kind Alex Davis. This is an online day of workshops, panels & talks on ghost stories, gothic and supernatural fiction, and I’ll be running a workshop on How to Write the Speculative Poem and then appearing on a Baba Yaga panel to talk about all things feral and witchy.I got a beautiful piece of mail the other day from Carina Bissett, Hilary Dodge, and Joshua Viola letting me know that Shadow Atlas won the Colorado Book Award. I’m so incredibly proud of this book and I was honored to have my poem “Blood, Like Chocolate” included inside it!I recently had a guest published with TImber Ghost Press. I wrote about the speculative poetry community and a few organizations that support it. You can read it here.My essay “On Becoming Nightbitch” was published with LitReactor last month. This was an emotional essay for me to write. It's about the importance of books, unapologetic women, and embracing the dark goddess archetype within. At the same time, it's also a reflection on postpartum depression, therapy, and female rage. I hope you'll consider reading it.My interview with Stephanie Parent about her recent poetry collection, Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell debuted last month. you can check it out here, and trust me, fans of fantasy, fairy tales, and feminist retellings won’t want to miss this!I have an interview with Stacy Kingsleyon up on her blog. We chat about all things speculative poetry, horror, and writing. Check it out below, and be sure to preorder your copy of Writing Poetry in the Dark, coming soon from Raw Dog Screaming Press.

This month, I read:

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Every Poem a Potion, Every Song a Spell by Stephanie Parent

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Eve by Annie Finch

The Body Wars: Poems by Jan Beatty

Over My Dead Body by Sweeny Boo

House of Slaughter, Vol. 1 by James Tynion IV

Sheets by Brenna Thummler

Presto by Josh Malerman 

Soaking in Strange Hours: a Tristan Grieves Fragment by Erik Hoffstatter. My review can be found here.

On the media front:

Lake Bodom (2016), Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018), Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019), The Black Phone (2022), They/Them (2022), So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), X (2022), Hello, My Name is Dorris (2015), The Bob’s Burger Movie (2022).

American Horror Stories: Still watching this. I don’t know why, but I just am. The last episode “Facelift” just made me so mad. I’m so sick of this focus on aging as being horrible or grotesque in horror. It very much rubs me the wrong way and considering that the focus is almost always on women, it frustrates me even more.

What We Do in the Shadows: This show just keeps getting better and better. The episode with the house reveal was one of the best yet. So funny.

The Sandman: I’m thoroughly enjoying this show, even if we’re only slowly making our way through it (Dennis and I are watching it together). We’re currently on episode 4, and I seriously cannot wait to go to Hell. I’ve been waiting for this episode since I knew the series was in development. Onward!

She Hulk: I’m enjoying the show so far, and I’m also enjoying how mad it’s making people, specifically men. Sexism is certainly alive and well in comics! No getting around that. Nevertheless, I like the conversations happening in the show so far, and while I wish we were seeing new female characters that are unique and not female counterparts of an already existing male superhero, I keep telling myself that change isn’t going to happen overnight. Deep sigh.

I bought Girl A by Abigail Dean a little while ago and it appears to be loosely based on the 2018 case of The Turpin Family. Because I somehow missed that (?), I watched a 20/20 episode on it titled “Escape from a House of Horror.” I hope to find time to read the book soon. 

Dennis and I watched Uncoupled together and I loved it so much. I feel like when gay couple-focused shows or movies come out, it’s usually always a younger couple and in some ways, it becomes a coming-out story of sorts; I appreciated that this showcased an older, long-term couple and that it showed, quite honestly, that all relationships are the same and we all go through the same things. It was really beautiful and humbling and funny (at times) and I just adore Neil Patrick Harris.  More shows like this, please. 

We randomly watched Friends from College, and it was a quick two seasons, but I wasn’t really invested in any of the characters and they all felt like pretty horrible people, yet I couldn’t stop watching for some reason. I don’t care that there isn’t a third season, to be honest. 

Podcasts:

The Witch Wave, Episode 94, SARK, Succulent Wild Woman

The Witch Wave, Episode 89, Madame Pamita, Slavic Sorceress

Magic Lessons Se.1, Ep.1: “Do What Ignites Your Soul”

Magic Lessons Se.1, Ep. 2: Cheryl Strayed to Moms “Pursue Your Life Like a Mofo”

Magic Lessons Se. 1, Ep 3: “The Thing That You Are Seeking Is Also Seeking You”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 4: Rob Bell on how “The Action is Right Here”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 5: “Access Your Joy”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 6: “Anne Patchett’s Counter-Advice “Dive into That Well”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 7:  “Sexy, Dirty, Nasty, Wicked”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 8: “The Pure Pleasure of Making Stuff”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 9: “Dear Creativity and Fear”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 10: “John Hodgman on The Questions of What Comes Next”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1, Ep 11: “The Big Check-In”

Magic Lessons, Se. 1 Ep 12: Brene Brown on “Big Strong Magic”

Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! Episode 1 “Eatin’ Kids and Killin’ Dads, an Introduction to Greek Mythology

Best,

Stephanie