bripike@gmail.com
For National Poetry Month my friend and fellow writer, Karissa Knox Sorrell, is interviewing poets on her blog. I’m first up today, so if you’re inclined to hear me talk about my work and other poetry related stuff, check out the interview.
Many thanks to Karissa for including me in this project!
My sixth poem for 30/30, “To the Teenage Boy At Starbucks,” is live. For more information about Tupelo Press, 30/30 & donations and incentives, please see my previous post or visit the project blog.
Remember, if you’d like to see a poem over a certain subject or receive an original published poem in the mail, make a donation and let me know.
My fifth poem for 30/30, “To a Group of Teenage Girls at Subway,” is live. For more information about Tupelo Press, 30/30 & donations and incentives, please see my previous post or visit the project blog.
Remember, if you’d like to see a poem over a certain subject or receive an original published poem in the mail, make a donation and let me know.
My fourth poem for 30/30, “Clueless Obsession,” is live. For more information about Tupelo Press, 30/30, donations and incentives, please see my previous post or visit the project blog.
My third poem for 30/30, “Plea,” is live. For more information about Tupelo Press, 30/30, donations and incentives, please see my previous post or visit the project blog.
My second poem for 30/30, “Fix,” is live. For more information about Tupelo Press, 30/30, donations and incentives, please see my previous post or visit the project blog.
My first poem for 30/30, “Spring Landscape Featuring Purple Milkweed,” is live. For more information about Tupelo Press, 30/30, donations and incentives, please see my previous post or visit the project blog.
Today is also the kickoff of National Poetry Month, so take some time to celebrate and check out some new poems!
Friends,
April is National Poetry Month, and this year I have the good fortune of participating in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project during the month of April.
Each month Tupelo Press selects a group of poets for their 30/30 Project. I will be writing a poem each day of National Poetry Month, and these poems will be published on the 30/30 blog at https://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/. The purpose of this project is twofold: to support and raise awareness for poetry, and to fundraise for the small press that created this wonderful project. If you’re not familiar with Tupelo, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press, please check them out here: http://www.tupelopress.org/.
My fundraising goal is $350, and I am offering the following incentives for those of you would be interested in sponsoring me during the month of April:
If you decide to sponsor me during the month of April, please visit the 30/30 blog at https://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/ to make your donation. It is very important that you fill out the “In Honor Of” field with “Brianna Pike,” so Tupelo knows to credit the donation to me. If you are sponsoring me, please contact me via email, Facebook or Twitter to give me your subject and/or your contact info so I can send you your poem.
I’m very excited about this project, and even if you’re not inclined to sponsor me during the month of April I encourage you to check out the blog every day and take a look at the poems. I’ll be re-blogging, posting on Facebook and tweeting throughout the month, so you can follow the project that way as well.
Everyone needs a little poetry in their life, so I thank you in advance for your support.
Cheers,
Brianna
Email: bripike@gmail.com
Twitter: @bripike
Facebook: Brianna Pike
It is April 21 and we’re expecting light snow flurries today and temperatures in the 40s. Spring is a tease, especially here in Indiana. This weekend it was 70 and sunny, so who knows. I’m hoping in another week the nice weather will come to stay.
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The Luxury of Hesitation (excerpt from The Proof from Motion)
things
forgotten
I could
burn in hell forever
set the glass
down, our
emotion’s moment
eyes vs sunlight
how removed
here, from
here
towards the unfamiliar and
frankincense forests
against the discerning light
everybody
sudden
frightful indeed, the sound of
traffic and
no appetite
the crowd
I would like to be
beautiful when
written
Keith Waldrop
*Courtesy of the Academy of American Poetry for National Poetry Month.
The final two lines of this poem are why I decided to post it. Wonderful.
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This poem welcomed me when I walked into my office this morning (I have a poem a day calendar):
First Blush
A freak spring snowstorm makes us take old
toute along a creek that flushes, gushes, touches
off tremors of foaming water so cold
and bright we know we’ve come to a sources,
the beginning rush of water’s course
that later will slake the thirst of millions–
but now we are alone with it and know
its potential. Possibility plays before us.
It fizzes and spills through consciousness,
rolling its April of yeses through groves
it will melt by noon, forcing
a green through naked fields, through us.
Molly Peacock
The first line of this poem is eerily relevant, as this morning I awoke to snow flurries and the prediction that the temp would drop down to the low 30s this evening. I knew the mild weather, sunshine, and flowering trees were all a little too good to be true, but snow flurries in April? Get out of here winter. I’m over you.
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A friend of mine already posted this link via Facebook, but for those who are not slaves to the social networks (I am one of those slaves) here it is again:
A few years ago, I started learning poetry by heart on a daily basis. I’ve now memorized about a hundred poems, some of them quite long — more than 2,000 lines in all, not including limericks and Bob Dylan lyrics. I recite them to myself while jogging along the Hudson River, quite loudly if no other joggers are within earshot. I do the same, but more quietly, while walking around Manhattan on errands — just another guy on an invisible cellphone.
I plan on sharing this article with my creative writing class Thursday night. They are required to memorize a poem for their poetry presentations.
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I have not jumped on the write a poem a day bandwagon for National Poetry Month, but I have been thinking a lot lines of poetry lately or just images that pop into my head that could eventually turn into poems. Yesterday, while driving along a street lined with magnolias, I started thinking about trees shedding petals, silken petals, and how those petals take on a translucent quality, kind of like skin or paper. And how when we walk over these petals, we leave our footprints, much in the way people leave their mark of words on paper. I don’t if that will amount to anything, but it kept me occupied for about an hour.
Brianna Pike 