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Ephemera

Miniatures

from A Book of Poems on Beauty

by Anne Lesley Selcer

We Can't Read This

by Meg Day

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Feminist Interview Series: Fox Frazier-Foley author of "Like Ash in the Air After Something Has

Feminist Interview Series: Fox Frazier-Foley author of "Like Ash in the Air After Something Has

Sarah Marcus-Donnelly: This book is a beautiful meditation on gender expression as deception, threat, protection, absolution, violence, and condemnation. Please tell us about the process of researching and choosing these specific stories to tell. Why was it important for you to tell these stories? Fox Frazier-Foley: Thank you so much for your kind words about my work, Sarah. I’m honored to be having a conversation with you—about my work, and about feminism, theology, and myth

A Conversation with Nicole Tong

A Conversation with Nicole Tong

Sarah Marcus-Donnelly: Your gorgeous new book, How to Prove a Theory, was the 2017 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize Winner. It is a meditation on grief and memory and human resilience. I have had the pleasure of listening to you read some of these poems, which made them even more tender and devastating for me. Can you tell us about the process of writing about grief? How long did it take you to write the collection? Can you share some background for this book? Nicole Tong: Sarah, th

A Conversation with Rion Amilcar Scott

A Conversation with Rion Amilcar Scott

Jamie Klingensmith: Many of your stories, such as “Checkmates” and “Good Times,” which appear in your collection Insurrections, explore the question of masculinity. Since Gazing Grain Press is an inclusive feminist press, how do you think this question of masculinity, or what it means to be a man, a son, or a father, relates to inclusive feminism? Rion Amilcar Scott: So many of the men in Insurrections suffer from their own mistaken assumptions about what masculinity is. For

Camille Rankine Talks Poems, Feminism, & VIDA

Camille Rankine Talks Poems, Feminism, & VIDA

Sarah Marcus: Your captivating poetry collection, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, is filled with beautiful, haunting closures, metacognition, powerful imagery, and questions of authenticity. In "Symptoms of Prophecy" you write: "I called to say we have two lives / and only one of them is real." I can't stop reading this poem and thinking about which life is the "real life" in such a scenario. Can you talk to us about the process of writing this poem and arriving at this moment o

Form, Desire, Closure & the "Love Poem" with Sandra Beasley

Form, Desire, Closure & the "Love Poem" with Sandra Beasley

Sarah Marcus: In the poem, "The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, Line #7671: 'It Is No Secret Here,'" from your third collection of poetry, Count the Waves, you write: "You want to kiss my mouth, but not / the teeth inside my mouth. You want / to hold my hand, but not the blood / within that hand." I love this poem, and I'm so interested in the connection between rejection and desire within this book. How does the idea of acceptance or lack thereof play into your writing? This collecti

Metta Sáma on Activism, Writing, Teaching, and Blogging

Metta Sáma on Activism, Writing, Teaching, and Blogging

Sarah Marcus: You serve on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. How and why did you get involved with VIDA? From the perspective of being both a teacher and a writer, what relevance do you think VIDA holds for our current literary landscape? What do you think people who identify as inclusive feminists can do to further the cause? Metta Sáma: When Cate Marvin, Ann Townsend & Erin Belieu founded VIDA (née WILA), I was deeply interested in being part of a

Arisa White Talks Emotional Mapping, Comprehending Trauma, Inclusivity, Intersectionality, & Mor

Arisa White Talks Emotional Mapping, Comprehending Trauma, Inclusivity, Intersectionality, & Mor

Sarah Marcus: You are one of the founding editors for HER KIND, an online literary community powered by VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. The New York Times has said that “since it began several years ago, the VIDA count has been a reliable conversation-starter about gender disparity in the literary world.” How did you get involved with VIDA, and how did this initial blog come to be? Is there overlap in purpose and message with your work as a Kore Biters columnist at Kore Pre

Lynn Melnick Talks Feminism, VIDA, Please Excuse This Poem, & If I Should Say I Have Hope

Lynn Melnick Talks Feminism, VIDA, Please Excuse This Poem, & If I Should Say I Have Hope

Sarah Marcus: You do incredible work on the executive board at VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, and you focus specifically on Social Media and Outreach. After my year as a VIDA Counter and two years as a Count Coordinator, I think our current literary landscape needs VIDA now more than ever! Can you tell us about how VIDA is changing the way they count? Why is counting so crucial, and how can writers help keep this conversation moving forward? Lynn Melnick: Thank you so much

Poet Barton Smock on Trauma, Feminism, & Self Publishing

Poet Barton Smock on Trauma, Feminism, & Self Publishing

Sarah Marcus: You are one of my unsung poet heroes! The first time we read together in Cleveland, Ohio I felt like I was being punched in the face (in a good way) by your subtle yet incredibly direct address of violence in your work. One of my favorite collections of yours is The Blood You Don't See Is Fake. On many levels this work and many of your other books seem to be a chronicle of abuse, especially the ways in which we process or don't process these memories and our exp

An Interview with Melissa Studdard

Sarah Marcus: Cate Marvin wrote of your stunning debut poetry collection, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (Saint Julian Press), “In so many ways the poems in this book read like paintings, touching and absorbing the light of the known world while fingering the soul until it lifts, trembling.” Which is exactly how these poems made me feel, but I also had the sense that the “known world” was also somehow secret. The poem “In Another Dimension, We Are Making Love” ends with: “Eve

"Ungentle and In-between": An Interview with TC Tolbert on Gephyromania

"Ungentle and In-between": An Interview with TC Tolbert on Gephyromania

With his poetry collection, Gephyromania, recently chosen for Entropy’s Best of 2014 Poetry list, TC Tolbert is on fire. But he doesn’t use that fire to burn any bridges. He uses it to create them. According to TC Tolbert’s website, Tolbert “is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. S/he believes in working across communities—building bridges wherever possible” (http://www.tctolbert.com/about.html). Gephyromania (which is defined as an addiction

Feminist Resource Feature: Belladonna* featuring HR Hegnauer

Belladonna* is a feminist avant-garde collective, founded in 1999 by Rachel Levitsky. This week, Gazing Grain editor Kathy Goodkin spoke with Belladonna* member HR Hegnauer about the collective's work, and the role of radical conversation. Kathy Goodkin: For you, what is the most important part of Belladonna’s mission? HR Hegnauer: I love the Belladonna* mission! Below is our mission statement, and while it is all important, that first line jumps out for me. It’s about promot

An Interview with Sivan Butler-Rotholz

An Interview with Sivan Butler-Rotholz

Sarah Marcus: You are the Contributing Editor of the Saturday Poetry Series on As It Ought To Be. I am a huge fan of this series and of the poets you choose to feature. What is your process for choosing featured work? What value do you see in giving voice to feminist work? Sivan Butler-Rotholz: Thank you, Sarah. I am so happy to have you among my readers! There are a variety of ways I select features for this series, but they all boil down to one thing: I read and engage with

Interview with GGP Miniature Author Kevin McLellan

Kate Partridge: What role does poetry have in feminist dialogue? How do you see your work as a writer participating in feminist dialogue? Kevin McLellan: Considering the history—the demographics of publishers and the demographics of published poets — and considering that poems are artifacts, underrepresented populations have a responsibility to not only themselves, but also to future generations and generations past, to publish representative work. Considering this, poetry ca

Interview with GGP 2014 Contest Winner Anne Lesley Selcer

Interview with GGP 2014 Contest Winner Anne Lesley Selcer

Sarah Marcus: What roles does feminism and the idea of inclusive feminism play in your life and in your writing? Anne Lesley Selcer: Feminism is one tool thru which I understand the constant misidentification of my power. Its theories then help me understand the cumulative effects of those constant misidentifications (or obstructions, oppositions) and the structures which support, enforce and dictate them. I am interested deciphering the material relations which enclose my bo

What "Inclusive Feminism" Means to Me (Pt. 2)

Part 2 of 2: Inclusive Feminist Publishing Feminist writers and publishers have to do double duty in a lot of ways: first off, they promote the feminist message to the world at large—to readers who pick up a book of poetry and get to hear messages of equality, discussions of gender, etc. But the second duty is the one that’s a bit fuzzier. The second responsibility of the feminist publisher is to enact feminism within the literary world—to promote feminist writing, advocate

What “Inclusive Feminism” Means to Me (Pt. 1)

Part 1 of 2: The Secret Feminist Club At the So to Speak AWP panel in Chicago last March, which focused on the “feminist” label in publishing, the Q&A session, led by Arielle Greenberg, quickly became flooded with voices asking: “Can I be a ‘feminist?’ Do I count? Where is there a place for my kind of feminism? Why do I feel like I’m not allowed to use this label?” Writer-mothers, transgender writers, and male feminist writers especially all opined the lack of—or perceived l

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