For Poets, Divers and Revisers

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Mary Lee at A Year of Reading for a special First Friday of National Poetry Month Roundup.

I kind of can't believe it's April! Which means next month it's May... and Writer's Loft is hosting me for a webinar entitled Diving into the Wreck: How to Revise Poetry. 

(In case you can't read that small print, here's what it says: Most of us have draft-y poems that we're certain contain some bit of treasure, but it's still at least partly buried in the muck. This interactive poetry revision webinar with award-winning author/editor Irene Latham provides a perfect opportunity to plunder what's there, shine it up, and showcase the hidden jewels. The first part of the webinar will provide general revision tactics that teach you how to dig deeper into your poems and bring beauty to the surface. The second half will be modeled after a "first pages" session for fiction writers; participants will submit one page of their poems in advance and Irene will choose a few to critique during the webinar.)

Please sign up to learn revision strategies that I use every day... and I'll also be using attendees' poems to demonstrate on-the-spot how to use these techniques! It's going to be invigorating, as any rescue dive should be. :) Here's a Facebook event link, too.

And... because it's National Poetry Month, and I live in a small house already stacked with books, I'll be giving away poetry books each Friday! Today's offering: the beautiful verse novel LAND OF THE CRANES by Aida Salazar.

Simply leave a comment, and our cat Maggie will choose a winner on Sunday. Good luck!

This week's ArtSpeak: FOUR SEASONS continues our romp into spring... and it's a piece from Portland Art Museum. Thank you for reading!

Spring Forward

If you bend with the river
between stands of bamboo

if you let yourself trickle
          flow

meander
                        move—

you'll land in a cradle
of mountains and sky,

where clouds
billow a bracing lullaby.

Awake!
Let your thoughts quiver!

Dreams will unfurl
if you bend with the river.

- Irene Latham