April (2025) Update from MEH
My monthly (?) missive on all things MEH
Random Thoughts & Writing Prompts
Doing hard things is hard. Formal poeting does not come easy to me.
It’s easy for me to retreat into the new, the novel when it comes to forms. said the Frog to the scorpion exemplifies this, as it contains a multiple choice quiz, a bingo board, a chiasm, a bunch of Q&As poems and erasures, but when it came time to write a pantoum and some sonnets, I fudged. I say “fudged” because I didn’t completely “stick to the rules” of those forms. I took liberties and made them my own.
Some people (myself included) read that and think, “who says you need to stick to the rules some long dead white guy wrote?!” Which is valid, but I also would like to prove to myself that I can pull them off.
So I’m doing the hard thing.
Lately I’ve been attempting to learn the duplex and the golden shovel and the cento and the ghazal. My attempts have been met with abject failure, middling success, and a few things I don’t hate. I’m endeavoring to call each a win.
It’s National Poetry Month: what better time to try the hard stuff. We’ll see how it goes this month. Whose with me?
P.S. I will gut punch the next person who says, “but have you tried a villanelle?”
Poetry Collections I’ve Recently Finished/Currently Reading
Midlife Abecedarian ~ Melissa Fite Johnson
Nostos ~ Anastasia Vassos
On the Way to Putnam: New, Selected, & Early Poems ~ Brad Davis
Latest News and Publications
Recent Publications
My ekphrastic poem “Breach” is after the Alison Saar sculpture by the same name and was recently published in The Prose Poem.
Identity Theory recently published my creative nonfiction piece “White Woman Freedom.” And it’s a STRUGGLE not to send it to the person who inspired it, but my parents raised me better than that.
I have work forthcoming (including by the end of the month) Mom Egg Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Presence 2025, Stone Circle Review, Terrain.org,
and four poems in Kinsman Avenue Publishing’s anthology Black Butterfly: Voices of the African Diaspora
Recent Events
March was a busy month, wherein I was privileged to read alongside Ruth Chad, Tzynia Pinchback, and Aidan Parkinson at Athan's Bakery in Brookline, MA; with Sara Letourneau as a part of the Poetry: The Art of Words Series at Plymouth Center for the Arts; and with Kevin Gallagher and Anastasia Vassos as part of the Chapter and Verse Literary Reading Series at Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain, MA. Reading.
I was also a visiting lecturer and reader at Seattle Pacific University MFA Residency and participated in the AWP Panel “Though it May Look Like Disaster: Poetic Forms to Save Your Life” with Marianne Kunkel, Melissa Fite Johnson, Faisal Mohyuddin, and Ashley M. Jones.
Upcoming Readings and Events
For April (so far…)
Saturday, April 19 ~ The Meg and Greg Show during the 2025 Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival at the university of New Hampshire (1:15 - 2:15 PM)
Room 210, 230 Hamilton Smith Hall, University of New Hampshire
TBD ~ Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices launch of its Spring 2025 at Newtonville Books is being rescheduled.
[More information and any updates are posted on my website]