Loose Leaf Notes

We put on a good show. Maybe we should take it on the road, or at least do a couple of more local readings.  Chelsea Adams and I were featured poets on Sunday at the New River Community College in Dublin, a presentation of the NRCC Library.

In was a coffee house setting.  After our bio-introductions, we read and told background stories to an attentive crowd of about 25+. Chelsea’s husband Bill accompanied her on guitar, adding a foot tapping flair to match the rhythm of her poems.  I showed a slide show of some of my photography, many from stories I’ve covered for The Floyd Press.

We alternated two sets each.  I read from my book, recently published by Finishing Line Press, Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, …Each mark is a dream / that tells more than one truth / And believes in the existence / of the next page …  And a poem about my grandmother’s brogue from my 2004 publication Muses Like Moonlight, done in part with an Irish accent  …How well we hide our wounds / constrict our throats / to muffle grief / in every language …

Chelsea, a past creative writing teacher at Radford University, read from her 2012 Finishing Line Press book, At Last Light, from her 2000 Sow’s Ear Press chapbook Looking for a Landing, and from her chapbook Java Poems, which speaks poetically to her love of coffee and jazz.

One of my favorite poems that Chelsea read is not included in a book (yet) but has been published in a 2013 publication of Floyd County Moonshine, a local literary art journal, in which Chelsea was featured … I want to go gently into that good night / want my breath to be stilled / as a woman whispers the candles out / after a dinner party …

Two of the poems I read from Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife were previously published in Floyd County Moonshine … On a lazy Sunday / made for folk singers / and people who read Carl Sagan / I’m fishing for lines / in Pandora’s Box / A pink smart phone / set on Cupid’s station … Another was previously published in Artemis Journal, another stand-out local publication.

The latest issue of Floyd County Moonshine (available HERE) includes two of my poems, my photography (including the cover shot) and a review of my book Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife by poet and creative writing teacher at Emory and Henry College, Felicia Mitchell.  Mitchell writes, “The poems, rich with imagery and introspection, resonate with an original voice grounded in a range of experiences. Intelligent and compassionate, they promise to draw in readers with their layering of dream and day, of past and present, of insight and story…”  – Colleen Redman

Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife is available for purchase in Floyd at noteBooks and The Harvest Moon and at Amazon.com. Both it and Chelsea’s At Last Light can be purchased at Finishing Line Press.  Look for more area readings/book signings on the horizon.