While this site is still undergoing construction, I've started a new blog: http://theliterarymidwife.blogspot.com/ where I'll be posting news and updates and other miscellany...including poems from my new collection, Watermarks, which will be released in October by Wild Sage Press.

For information on the book, see http://www.wildsagepress.biz/books/watermarks

This seven-week email workshop will be of interest to anyone who wants to explore the creative process through writing. It will benefit both beginning and established writers in all genres from fiction and poetry to technical writing to memoir. Participants will: 

Stick that stone in the ditch and we’ll walk across the water that flows like the River

Jordan beside the road

the road that passes through fields of barking dogs and thirsty horses.  Stone that stick

until it splinters into lies

lies and blasphemies and spreads like fear-based religion into pus-pockets of cult

worshippers. Clear the field and plant

plant bananas. Bring in a poet to bless the fruit in rap and reggae. Hold open the stone

doors with sticks

In Both Languages

Here on earth we translate eyes

into ears and hearts into words.

We run needles through streams,

thread thoughts together like leaves

on barren trees. Today the dogs

next door bark unceasing, and my cat

hasn’t returned from his morning walk.

His breakfast waits like a new hat

for a headless giant. Perhaps the animals

have all gone up the mountain, or would

if they weren’t tied here by rope or loyalty.

Mynah birds wait until almost too late, give

I was just talking to an acquaintance who is on a life quest for the perfect diet. There are lots of gurus out there with suggestions. More than suggestions, actually - more like definitive answers and shangri-la fountain of youth perpetual good health solutions. The low carb diet, the high fat diet, the glucose diet, the you name it and someone has come up with it diet. They blog, then they write books based on their "research" which is usually anecdotal and based on very small sample size, with no longitudinal epidemiological data. So I decided, what the heck, I can be a lunatic blogger.

I was away for most of July (at Sage Hill Writing Experience) in Saskatchewan. A great opportunity. Highly recommend it. I worked on my murder mystery with Giles Blunt and a cohort of talented, hard-working and high-spirited writers. As usual, Arika travelled very well and made more new best friends. Kate arrived shortly after I returned home, and we took A-Dog swimming at Mahukona. She's a pro at getting out of the water. Check this out: http://youtu.be/y7-_MrS7-FI

The exercise was to move a character from one physical place to another, and include two specific items. Here it is:

Thunderstorm

Crumpled. Yesterday’s news. Aging whore who hides

varicose veins under support hose. Crack of thunder,

flash, then sheets of lightning break the sky, release

wind-blown waves of water to chase each other down

the street. He checks the time: 9:15; picks up the paper

shield against the storm, umbrella for his bowler hat.

He steps into the street to hail a cab. Ozone replaces

In 1985 I saw the movie, Silkwood, in the mountain town of Esteli in Nicaragua. The copy of the film was so old the English sound track was incomprehensible and I read the Spanish subtitles to follow the story line. On my way home that night I encountered a cow in the middle of the city street, one of the more disorienting juxtapositions of my time there. Here's a product of today's writers group:

Another One

I've been travelling a lot lately, without computer and access to email. This has been so liberating I might make a regular habit of it. One of my stops was North Carolina, in the Smokey Mountains near Asheville. One of the most beautiful places on the planet. With some of the friendliest people I've ever met.

Hotel Room

Two oranges on the counter

empty ice bucket, a pair

of clean glasses on the table. In

the corner daytime television

beckons, shows that leave me

feeling drunk by nine o’clock

the time I used to start my

day job or had planted a few

good hours in the garden. Now

I slump in a wicker chair, lean my

elbows on this glass-topped table

imagine what it would be like to call

this one bedroom home. I know

a man who said his dream was