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We are so excited to share this cover reveal of THE NATURE OF OUR TIMES: Poems on America's Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and other Natural Wonders Edited by Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, and David Hassler; with a Foreword by Phil Levin Originally envisioned as a companion to the first National Nature Assessment (NNA1) and now to the work of United By Nature, The Nature of Our Times gathers 210 poets from North America giving witness to how nature shapes our lives and how we can shape the future. Forthcoming from Paloma Press on 18 September 2025 in collaboration with Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, United By Nature, and Poets for Science 
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Friends — I hope to see some of you at these 2 poetry events as part of the Chicago Reading and Launch of CAULBEARER (Black Lawrence Press / Immigrant Writing Prize) Friday 11 APR, 7:00 PM Women & Children First Bookstore (Free in-person event, but please register. Masks required.) Saturday 12 APR, 11:00 AM Chicago Authors Room, Harold Washington Library Center Co-sponsored by the Philippine Consulate General in Chicago Booksigning to follow each event. My excellent discussant at these programs is M.G. Bertulfo, who lives and writes at the intersection of nature, culture, and spirituality. She has written professionally for television and children’s education in such venues as CBS, Pearson Education Asia, and Schlessinger and for conservation magazines such as Sierra and Chicago Wilderness. Her award-winning fiction has appeared in Growing Up Filipino II, Our Own Voice, and The Oak Parker and her essays have appeared in various anthologies. She is a co-owner of Calypso Moon Studio, a working arts studio, in the Oak Park Arts District. Mary Grace is a member of the international N.V.M. and Narita Gonzalez Writers Group, the Historical Novel Society, New Moon Mondays, and the Acorn novelist workshop. She has served on the board of the Oak Park Arts District and was a local network rep for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. In 2017, she founded Banyan, an Asian American Writers Collective whose mission is to promote the visibility of Asian American Writers in Chicagoland and to uplift community spirit through the arts.
 I know I haven't been on here for a while, because like many people I know, I feel like I've just been trying to conserve my energy, trying to find spaces to breathe and recover from the onslaught of difficult things in the world.
But on the last day of March, I was invited to participate in a really fun conversation with Angela Dribben and Caren Stuart on their new collaborative effort, Great Goodness. It's a series of YouTube interviews they're doing with writers/artists/creatives of all sorts, to celebrate the idea of goodness in all its forms in the world— something we all need so much, Because Angela and Caren are also into astrology, they open the show with a tarot card- or oracle card-drawing; we get to talk about the images on the card a little, and then at the end of the program, they offer it as part of a writing prompt to viewers. Today the card they picked was "Fork in the Road," and it depicted a white reindeer standing in front of a crossroads, in winter. There were signs pointing in many different directions. It had a tether around its neck, but on closer inspection, the tether was not actually attached to anything. A little snowy owl was perched on the reindeer's back, and a string of bright pennants hung above them. In the distance, a glow came from beyond a forest. I'm also mulling over the images, and wondering whether they'll turn up in a poem... Speaking of poems, just like that, another April NaPoMo is upon us! As I've done for several years now, I offer writing prompts for the entire month of April. I'll put them here in weekly batches— so please come back to read. Happy Writing! * * * NaPoMo 2025 Writing Prompts April 1 - 7 - Poets often talk about trusting one’s intuition and taking that “leap” into the as yet undiscovered territory of the poem. This is the basis of all metaphor, from the Greek metapherein, which means to carry over. Write down a metaphor, and let your intuition lead you from there into a poem/poem draft. - It feels like the beginning of spring. In our back yard, our beloved fig tree which was just pruned three weeks ago, is pushing out small leaves that look like little green flames. Look for signs of spring in your own, immediate surroundings. Write about beginnings, or about starting over. - I am always so grateful when I come across a line of language— it can be poetry, it can be words from a song, from a letter, something overheard in a conversation or on the radio or something someone has said to me— that, when it "arrives," makes me sit up as if I was given an epiphany. Keep an eye or an ear out for something like this, and when you find it, take it and turn it into/make it part of a poem. - Write a poem in which you address a “you” in an unusual or unexpected time and/or location (interpret freely). You can address a familiar character or be inspired by someone who’s done something audacious or atrocious, or imagine a time and addressee in a future of your imagining. - Write a letter poem to someone who you've wanted to talk to for a while, but might have been unable to (perhaps because you've been separated by time or distance). Write a letter even without hope of a response. - I read about how in the UK, there is a shop called a Poetry Pharmacy— one can walk in and receive a poetry prescription for anything. I would love to visit that place! Anyway— write a poem as a prescriptino for some condition of your choosing/imagining. - Look through poems, essays, or stories, or even through news or feature articles— and find a question that calls to you. The question should be one that's not just answerable by a simple yes or no — it should have interpretive possibility. Write a poem in response to the question. April 8 - 14 - I just came across a thoughtful reminder: it may be true that we've inherited a host of trauma— personal, familial, historical— but it is also true that pain is not the only thing that has been passed down from our ancestors to us. We also have their wisdom, their grace, the beautiful, unique, and specific ways in which they viewed the world and learned to make or grow or fix things to ground and sustain themselves— and that we also have the ability to tap into, to help us keep moving forward. What are some of these things you've inherited? Write a poem about one or a few of these gifts, and how you use them in your daily life. - Once, at a poetry program, Richard Jones read a poem whose title was, he said, the name of his late mother's all-time favorite lip color: "Cherries in the Snow." And indeed, sometimes the interesting descriptions of color can be found in places like the drugstore cosmetics aisle (nail polish: "Half Past Nude," "Golden Hour"), or at a paint store (I've seen "36 Hours in Marrakesh," even "Dead Salmon"). Pick one such product name, and use it as the title of your poem (which doesn't have to be about that product at all). - Write a poem as a postcard to your future self, but use a specific date/season/time of the year. Where are you, and how are you? - What would you be, if you could be a plant? Write a poem exploring that, or creating a new plant identity. - Write a poem in which something that is conventionally viewed as small or meek, takes on a fierce and powerful persona. - I recently got and put together (with the help of my daughter) a corner bookcase which is already helping to reduce and organize the book "clutter" in our living room. Pull down two or three books at random from your own stash, turn the pages, and take down a sentence or a line from each. See if you can use one or all of them in a poem. Let the lines lead you. - What makes you giddy? Write an ode to giddiness. April 15 - 21 - Write a poem in the voice of a character from inside a myth/mythological world of your choosing, but make this character talk about contemporary realities. - Make a list of 50-100 words that appeal to you because they are vivid, textured, appeal to the senses, sparkle with some kind of energy (emotional, intellectual, physical - their shape or sound). Look through this list and write a poem using the words you are most drawn to. - Write an abecedarian but in the form of a prose poem. That is, your prose poem will be made up of 26 lines in total, with each line beginning with a letter of the alphabet (as you work down through it). - Write a poem modeled after Natasha Trethewey's "Myth," in which the lines of the second part of the poem repeat the lines in the first part, in reverse order. There will be a middle line that acts as a kind of hinge. - Write an erasure poem based on your choice of source document. (One example is Tracy K. Smith's "Declaration," whose source text is the U.S. Declaration of Independence.) - Write an ode to a part of your body that you usually take for granted. - Write a poem which incorporates a line from a poet you like (you'll put this line in italics, and refer to it in your title in some way); or, as a variation, write a poem in which you argue against a line written by another poet. April 22 - 30 - Write either an ode or an elegy for the weeds that you pulled out of the yard, or for the wasp you aimed bug spray at, or for the loaf of bread you forgot on the corner table and that grew mold (or for some other seemingly small or inconsequential thing). - Write a poem in which you build a Museum of ____. - Use these lines as a starter for a poem: The stones mouth words in a language I used to understand. - We talk about the craft of poetry, of craft in poetry— but how do we really come to know what we know? Write a poem about something you've learned/something you were taught, but in an organic and experiential way (that is, not out of books or "schooling"). - Use these lines in the middle of a poem: Historians say such cataclysms happen every eighty years. - Use these lines at the end of a poem: It sifted like fine flour, forming a mound at the bottom of the bowl - Write a prose poem that is just one, continuous sentence— you may use punctuation anywhere in it, though — as long as it's not a period or a hard stop (think commas, semicolons, colons, long dashes). - Write a poem from the point of view of a persona sometime in an unspecified future, looking at a fact or event from our time (this time)— what would be perplexing about this? or fascinating? or repugnant? or admirable? - Write a poem that is a recipe for a literary cocktail in tribute to a poet you admire.
 Today marks 14 years of my daily writing practice — I've written at least one poem a day since a snowed-in morning (rare in these parts on the eastern seaboard, probably even more rare now because of climate change) in 2010 when I drifted over to Dave Bonta's microblog The Morning Porch, and where I read his post that day morningporch.com/2010/11/159121245/ - and was moved to respond in the comments box in a poem. I did that for a few more days afterwards; though I'm not sure I posted all of them in this same way. Dave noticed, and invited me to post my poems on Via Negativa—and I've been doing that ever since. Out of my daily practice, I've learned some helpful things about myself and my process; and I've put together 4 books and 4 chapbooks from the running review (and the revisions) I do of my writing. At least, these are things that I've found to apply to myself-- - Writing is the best way to keep writing. - Before any thought of publication, there's the joy of meeting yourself on the page. - Doing this (above) reminds me every day that writing is an opportunity to play; to follow ideas down rabbit holes, discover things, pay attention in this space of writing, no matter how brief every day (I typically do 30-45 minutes). - Writing poems, I've found, is my preferred form for "processing" how I experience the world: in language, in images. - Despite what anyone will tell you about "published is published in whatever form," your writing is yours. Especially in the last 2 weeks, I feel even more intensely how poetry has the capacity to "save" me - from utter, unfocused distraction; from utter despair... I'm very grateful for my daily practice, and I'm very grateful for the additional writing community I've become connected to through the years, through Dave and Via Negativa. *** And here, below, are some snaps from my undergraduate+graduate Advanced Poetry Workshop yesterday, during which my daughter Gabriela came and helped lead a workshop on making poetry zines. It was a JOYFUL session!   
 Last week, on the first day of the Advanced Poetry Workshop I'm teaching this semester, we did the obligatory round of introductions of all class members. One student piped up, out of the blue: Let's also say what our favorite movie is! And so we did. Mine is always and ever Cinema Paradiso, perhaps because for me it captures so perfectly the nature and quality of nostalgia— for a place which formed you, but which in leaving, you find you can never fully return to even if you might physically come back to visit.
For me, this place that I can never stop writing about is Baguio, where I was raised and where I grew up. I sometimes wonder, do those who never leave ever experience a sense of loss or longing for the selves they might have become if they had gone somewhere else, instead of staying put? Some things feel like they never change, at the same time that of course you know they have. Deep inside, I've always felt close to my own particular sense of "me," though time and multiple experiences have also augmented that. I can't explain it well, but it seems it has to do with more than what words like "individuality" represent. This sense of my interiority is something I want to protect, because somehow I understand it can shrink, even become lost—and without it, nothing of the other identities I possess (daughter, mother, wife, teacher, writer, friend, and more) could make up for it. And I would be bereft. Sometimes it feels like a place of deepest solitude, and other times a place lined with windows out of which I can turn my face with bright curiosity and interest. But it is also changing with the years; I am older. The camera is panning outward, moving toward a distance i can't see clearly yet. Sometimes this makes me feel unbearably sad; other times, I try my best to learn to sit in stillness, before being claimed again by the world of unending care and obligation. . Thank you so much to everyone who came out for Marianne Chan‘s and Luisa A. Igloria's double book launch/reading/conversation at Prince Books Saturday afternoon 17 August — and to our beautiful discussant Courtney Tala McCaskey — our hearts are full! Thank you to the ODU Filipino American Alumni Association, Nestor Lunasin, Vicky Manugo Greco, and Max Frias for the amazing reception and all your preps… we are so lucky to be in community with you! 
 Friends, join us at 4:00 PM on Saturday 17 August 2024, at PRINCE BOOKS in downtown Norfolk, for the Book Launch and Reading/Conversation to celebrate the new books of Luisa A. Igloria (Caulbearer, Black Lawrence Press) and Marianne Chan (Leaving Biddle City, Sarabande Books). Poet and ODU MFA Alum Courtney Tala McCaskey will moderate. Light reception fare will be provided by the ODU Filipino American Alumni Association. Book sales and signing will follow.  Friends — please mark your calendars for Sunday, 30 June / 7:00 PM ET (6:00 PM CT) on Zoom. The event is free, but please register here: https://tinyurl.com/murhp48c  Happy National Poetry Month, everyone!
I'll be posting a month of poetry prompts (will do so in weekly batches) — ˆI hope you enjoy writing to them! Please check back often. 30 April Pick 5 words that are concrete images, from one of your favorite poets/favorite books (including words that may be in other languages). Think about how that writer uses these words. Do you use them differently? Similarly? Think of 5 concrete words that float to the top of your mind today and use them to build a poem. 29 April Sometimes the body knows before we do, or before the mind registers it. Intuition? Sixth sense? Luck? Write about the moment before and/or the moment after you experienced that kind of flash of knowledge. What happened? 28 April What did sunlight look like in the kitchen of your childhood? What did rain sound like on the roof of that place? 27 April Who is your favorite villain (in fairy tales, pop culture, literature at large)? Write a poem-letter to this character; what would you say? 26 April Write a poem in which you take something back. 25 April Find a fun or intriguing fact about something in the natural world. Do some more light research on it to find out other facts or contexts in which it appears. Make these paths lead to a poem. 24 April My trainer is always telling me to pin my shoulders back (I typically slouch), in order to free the muscles there for better movement. What is your poem muscle that sometimes slouches? Write about that. 23 April What are the words that stick to your mouth and will not be dislodged? What are the words that go to bed with you? Write a poem about these. 22 April What is your favorite number? Write a poem about it. 21 April In the new translation by Stephanie McCarter of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the opening lines are My spirit moves to tell of shapes transformed into new bodies. Gods, inspire my work (for you've transformed it too) and from creation to my own time spin out unceasing song. These speak of change as a process wrought not only on the forms or shapes transformed, but also on the one/s who are moved to create or effect such change. Write a poem about a change that has had this effect on you. 20 April Write a poem about the question/s that you still carry with you to this day. 19 April Jane Hirshfield wrote about Ono no Komachi, a legendary ninth-century Japanese poet who had lived in the busy capital but who in her old age "came to dwell at the periphery in a number of different ways—[but who carried] within her story a wisdom still essential to the writing life.” Write a poem about that kind of necessity, of inhabiting in-between, marginal, or nearly invisible spaces ; and what it might teach us as poets and as humans. 18 April Write a poem of prophecy. 17 April I first saw the "Infinite Zoom" technique at work in a children's picture book (but heck, I bought it for myself!) called Zoom, by Istvan Banyai https://youtu.be/Kgi-RCEjOLw - it's a delightful and magical exercise in zooming out and out (or in and out), to show how a single detail is related to much bigger universes, in turn. Write a poem that uses it as a technique for development and focus. 16 April Write a poem that is an extended definition of something, by developing it through related/extended metaphors (for example, Jane Hirshfield’s “Today, My Hope is Vertical” www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/08/today-my-hope-is-vertical-jane-hirshfield-poem ) 15 April Write a poem of instruction on how to do something that might seem harder than what it looks, or vice versa - that might seem easier than it looks 14 April Write a poem in which you consider the marvelous in the ordinary. 13 April Write a poem about your favorite underdog or dark horse. 12 April What goes on in the periphery of vision, on the edges of a scene? There are such moments in Breughel's famous painting that W.H. Auden captures in the poem "Musee des Beaux Arts"— while an important thing is happening, "the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse/ Scratches its innocent behind on a tree." Write a poem about a significant moment, by focusing on the "peripheral" things surrounding it. How could this perspective allow you to say more about your subject? 11 April A week ago, we pruned the branches of our fig tree. Regular, annual pruning is supposed to help encourage a concentration of growth, leading to more prolific fruiting. Use a pruning analogy or metaphor in a poem—it doesn't have to be about a fig tree, or any kind of tree. Rather, what is it that you want to shear away in order for something to grow better? 10 April In dreams, who comes to visit you? Write this visitation in a poem. 09 April Complex emotions are shaded in a multitude of ways, and they are best expressed not as abstractions but rather, when the writer is able to find a concrete embodiment (in image, metaphor, language) for them. For instance, we know sadness, misery, or envy because we know what their opposite states are, and vice versa. Write a poem that explores these kinds of connection in what we feel, through a specific instance or memory. 08 April Trivia is often a fun poem starter. What kind of poem could (or would) you write, after learning that a platypus sweats milk? or that the circulatory system is more than 60,000 feet long? or that in a lifetime, an average human produces enough saliva to fill two swimming pools? 07 April Today is the birthday of my first-born daughter. Do you know anyone whose birthday it is today? Write a gift poem. 06 April What's something (or things) whose absence makes it feel like everything would fall apart? Write a poem about that. 05 April Have you ever received a note or a letter (it doesn't matter how long ago) that you didn't know how to respond to at the time? or that you simply forgot? Write a poem which both recounts some of the occasion for previous correspondence, and which attempts to make that (re)connection now. 04 April Write a question poem—one in which you pose a question that interests and intrigues you, and that comes out of the attention you pay to some riveting detail you've (just) discovered, or a specific incident in contemporary life. You don't have to provide any answer/s. 03 April Sometimes, a poem is made of lines that read like quiet observations, even if the poem does not lead to any grand conclusion. In a way, this feels reassuring in a world which is full of cross-talk and chaos. I find that such poems allow me to just rest in what they say. What are some things you know at this moment? What are some things you don't know? Write a list poem about either of these (or write two poems). 02 April What is dissonance? It could be the sound or music of language that moves in ways we couldn't have expected in a poem. Or it could be an idea or event that might make its presence felt in that kind of way. Think of a "dissonant" sound, word, idea, or event. Write a poem that explores what it makes us feel more sharply attuned to. For instance—a ship hit a bridge pillar and the bridge collapsed. Imagine that sound, impossible to unhear, cleaving an otherwise ordinary, early morning. What does it make you think of and/or feel? Write a poem about that. 01 April Take a proverb, wise saying, or memorable quotation, and write a poem that makes it concrete and specific. Use any poetic approach, but make the poem a lived, vivid, credible experience in itself. Do not use the words of the proverb or quotation in the actual poem itself, though you could use some or part of it in the title or as an epigraph to the poem after you are done. |
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