Summer: when we have lovely long days with sunshine until 9pm but the heat and the humidity also hang around. I won’t complain though, I love the long days and I’m able to get my pups on the trails for at least an hour most days after work. Everyone’s mental health is improved by this which is especially needed as our country crumbles…
July brings a three poetry events. Join me for one - or all three!
Tuesday, 9 July, 7-9pm: Poetry Coven
Thursday, 11 July, 7-8:30pm: How to Submit Your Work (Zoom Workshop)
Monday, 15 July, 7-9pm: Marketing Your Poetry (Zoom Workshop)
And on Thursday, 1 August at 9am, I’ll be participating, as Arlington’s Poet Laureate, in an event at Dark Star Park.
What I’m Baking / Cooking / Eating
I’m obsessed with peanut butter and eat it every day. I make my own peanut butter granola and eat it each morning in my yogurt, I’ll make a PB&J sandwich to take to work for lunch. And recently I discovered No Bake Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies which require no baking (as evidenced by their name!) which make them the perfect treat during the height of summer. I may have made these every single week since finding the recipe…
What I’m Reading
I absolutely loved This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz. This memoir takes a hard look at the patriarchy and its impact on modern marriages. I found myself nodding in agreement to much of it. I read The Titanic Survivors’ Book Club by Timothy Schaffert and while the ending fell a little flat for me, I really enjoyed this novel. And the prose is beautiful! I looked up the author to see if he’s a poet (he’s not) because his writing is so lyrical. While in New York for the weekend I made a trip to Books are Magic in Brooklyn and showed great restraint by only buying one book: Good Monster by Diannely Antigua. I started reading it that night and found myself underlining damn near every poem. It even inspired some poems, and I love when a book does that. Seriously, RUN and get this book.
What I’m Writing
I’ve been writing poems each month in Poetry Coven, the generative poetry workshop I run, I wrote poems inspired by Good Monster, and I wrote a couple of poems while in Brooklyn. I finished edits on my manuscript and received the blurbs for it (which were wonderful and magical and totally made me tear up). No new publications this month but a few are forthcoming and will hopefully be included in my next newsletter!
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If you’re participating in The Sealey Challenge, where you read a book of poetry each day for the month of August, consider including one of my books in your lineup or one of the books from Riot in Your Throat, the independent poetry press I run.
Stay hydrated, wear sunscreen, and read poetry.
Courtney
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I’m open for manuscript consults, I’d love to work with you!
Timothy Schaffert was my prof at UNL! He’s one of the sweetest people in the entire world.