A December (2023) Update from MEH

Dec 11, 2023

I gave my honors class a quiz on a short story they read for homework. I then asked them to write an 8 word story. I asked which was harder: the quiz or writing the story. Responses were mixed. After they shared we discussed how interesting it was that a room from of people who said “they can’t write stories” were complaining about how many stories they came up with on the fly, all the stories they thought about writing, but they ‘ran out of words.’ Of course that as part of the point of the activity. We all have so many stories to tell. We often just need someone to ask us about them.
Poetry Collections I’ve Recently Read
- Loom ~ Kevin Gallagher
- Now Before and Ever ~ Holly Guran
- The Observable Universe ~ Hannah Larrabee
- Secret Histories ~ Michael McInnis

Pushcart Prize Nominations have come out and (somehow) I have three:
- “on the morning I as cancelled by the CRT karens” in The Elevation Review
- “curriculum development” in The Worcester Review
- “being present” [CNF] in Porcupine Literary

"when asked what might finally lead me to drink or abuse schedule 1 narcotics" and "white History Month" were both published in Terrain.org’s Letter to America series. There are recordings of me… ‘performing’ both.
“dispatches from the desk of Danel: the self-designated disciple and messianic anger-management translator,” was published in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts. Think of Key &Peele’s Luthor, Obama’s anger translator skits.
I have a poem accepted in New Verse News to ‘commemorate’ the 200th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. And my new full-length collection (said the Frog to the scorpion )should be dropping this month.

November 9th – 10th ~ Reading and classroom visit at Springfield College as a part of the William Simpson Fine Arts Series
November 13th ~ Reading at Merrimack College
November 28th ~ Pensive Journal Issue 7 launch reading at Northeastern University.
November 29th ~ Fare Forward: The Still Point Virtual reading and discussion of The Third Renunciation.
December 7th ~ Reading at Grolier Poetry Book Shop

Matthew E. Henry (MEH)'s Substack