I'll be honest: I am not sure the tipping point between someone who is having fun experimenting with poetry and an actual poet, but given the amount of good poetry news I've had in the last year or so, I... Continue Reading →
I wanted to share with you a project I have been working on and published over at Substack. It's called "For Immediate Release: Essays and Lessons From 30 Years in Politics and Government."
I hope you'll visit Half and One, "a space for cartoons and comics, journalism and narrative non-fiction, poetry and fiction." There, you will find some amazing stories and original work. You will also find my poem, Alight. It is accompanied... Continue Reading →
I had nearly forgotten about the picture, had come so terribly close to letting it slip away from my memory forever. Weeks would go by before the amber-red flames would dance and roil in my mind’s eye once again.
One of the marketing tools used by publishers to promote books are book trailers. It's almost exactly what you think it is -- like a movie trailer, a minute or two, with maybe a voice-over, some graphics. I watched a few and decided that I'd like to make my own for Canebrake.
On Friday and then again on Saturday evening, I drove south to the Sarasota Contemporary Dance studio for the first installment of what turned out to be a fantastic collaboration. My friend and world-class cellist Natalie Helm came up with the idea: Bach Immersion Concerts, a one-of-a-kind exploration of Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello. The idea is to present "a multi-sensory interactive live performance," and that's exactly what happened.
“Whatever it is,” Jim says. “It can’t be bad enough for you to want to get it through who knows what the hell past the Black Line.”
Look, it's a John D. MacDonald book, you don't need me to recommend it to you. But just in case: go on, get a copy and read this damn book. The premise of The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything is fairly simple. There's a sort... Continue Reading →
Don't get me wrong: Blackbirds is wildly violent, wickedly chaotic, like those old wooden roller-coasters that rip you this way and that, make you call a chiropractor when you wobble off.
benjamin j kirby 