April J. Asbury, Writer

Tag: writing

New Poetry for October

October 29, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Before October 2022 gets away from us, let’s talk about new poetry by three of my favorite women writers, all of whom share ties with my home state of Virginia.

Poetry and Music in Auburn on an October Friday Night

New Releases from Annie Woodford . . .

Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come from Is Gone

Imagine my surprise when, my first week in Alabama, I’m lucky enough to hear a friend from “back home” read from her new poetry collection!

Annie Woodford celebrated the release of her latest volume, Where You Come from Is Gone, with a reading at the Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers. (Her earlier work, Bootleg, is still available from Groundhog Poetry Press.) Accompanied by her musical family, Woodford read from her visceral, devastating new work.

Where You Come from Is Gone, titled from a Flannery O’Connor quotation, explores different understandings of Kitezh, the legendary Russian city hidden underground to escape invasion: the four parts evoke Kitezh as Family, Country, Body, and even Henry County, Virginia.

Poet Maurice Manning writes, “The sacred act of remembering in this haunted and heart-breaking book is finely harnessed to artistic precision, articulating the history of the rural South. The result cloaks anguish with beauty, suffering with grace, ignominy with a dignity whose desire to redeem is wholly human.”

My own review is less eloquent: these poems hit me deep in the gut. Over and over, I found myself murmuring, “Damn . . . Damn . . . Oh, Annie, damn!”

. . . and Kim Ports Parsons!

Cover for The Mayapple Forest from Terrapin Books

October 31st marks the official release date for the The Mayapple Forest by Kim Ports Parsons. This collection from Terrapin Books has an appropriately gorgeous cover, mayapples painted by Frances Coates.

Parsons’ collection explores memory, sensuality, grief, and family relationships. Images from nature, including the wonderfully scientific, weave through these poems, which show a mastery of style and variety.

One of my favorite poems in The Mayapple Forest is “This is Not a Sestina about Quarks,” a playful exercise about the “charmed” language of quarks; others are haunting in their vulnerability and sensuality. In “Cool Glass of Water,” Parsons writes, “. . . if I could, I would drink that memory like a cool glass of water every day of my life.” Parsons gives us poem after poem, one cool glass of water after another, that leave the reader refreshed, reawakened, and inspired.

One last treat this Hallowe’en weekend . . .

Cathy Hailey Up for Preorder

Cover of I'd Rather Be a Hyacinth, with a butterfly and flowers against a sunset.
Cover and photo from Finishing Line Press

Another Virginian poet, Cathy Hailey, has a new book on the way from Finishing Line Press. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, is available for preorder now.

According to Finishing Line Press, Hailey’s work “features ekphrastic poems inspired by an episodic performance of the Moscow Festival Ballet interwoven with poems of refuge from grief, the comfort and healing found in nature, memory, and family.”

Remember that preorders boost the author’s royalty percentage from FLP, so your preorder will help the writer directly, both today and in the future.

Why Do You Write?

August 23, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This summer I’m cleaning out the house my parents shared for almost 40 years together. The dusty work is backbreaking (and heartbreaking), but I keep finding treasures along the way.

In one box, I found college work from both my parents. I found essays, notes, folklore projects . . . And random little assignments like this one, an essay my mother wrote for English 301 at Radford University.

While Mom didn’t always call herself a “Writer,” she loved writing . . . Except when she didn’t. (And I think that sounds familiar to a lot of us.)

“On Writing,” An Essay by Jo Ann Aust Asbury

Portrait of Jo Ann Asbury smiling
Jo Ann Aust Asbury, 1947-2013

The clean, white, unmarred surface sits there waiting. The first words are often the hardest; will it be easier this time? Will you paint a picture in your reader’s mind? Will the words have color and texture?

You will be putting yourself on display, exposing your thoughts and innermost feelings to an audience. Will they care? Will they criticize? Or will they enjoy and perhaps laugh a little?

Sometimes the words come out dull and muted—drab olive greens, muddy browns, and slate grays. Sometimes instead of gliding smoothly over the page, they come in bits and pieces. The jigsaw puzzle comes together bit by painful bit; one piece fitting here, another there, some pieces never fitting anywhere.

You plod along, adding a piece here, scratching out a word there, changing and substituting and revising. Again, and again, and yet again.

Some pieces are jagged with sharp angles and corners. Putting them together needs thought and sweat, even tears. Finally the pieces fit together, lifeless words transformed into a clear image in your mind—and your reader’s mind too.

Ah, but the other times! If the mood is right, the words flow like a silver stream, smooth and effortless. Words and images form a beloved child—perfect, needing only to grow. Words jump and jabber at you, demanding you let them out.

open book on brown and red leaves
Photo by lilartsy on Pexels.com

Quick! Write it all down fast before the miracle disappears in the whirl of new words and images bouncing and jouncing along behind it. Then everything falls into place. Words that tumbled like bright leaves in the wind settle in a colorful mosaic on the white paper.

All that is left is to rake them a little, neatening your piles. Some leaves are golden, full and gleaming and just right. Others are cinnamon-brown, crisp and crackling. Red leaves glow rich and lively. Some are still green.

And when you have smoothed and raked and painted again, you have a portrait in words. Your word child, your leaf pile, your sharp-edged puzzle has grown and developed into something that gives pleasure to your readers and yourself.

Writing Prompt: Why Do You Write Again?

This short essay “On Writing” responds to a professor’s assignment. But other writers recommend a similar starting point. Natalie Goldberg, famous for Writing Down the Bones, suggests answering that question: “Why do I write?”

Answer it. Answer it in detail. Answer it again. Answer it until your answers get silly and weird. Keep going. See what surprises you; discover what hurts; see what makes you laugh.

If you’re in a dry spell, flip the question on its head. “Why DON’T I write?” Again, answer as many times as you can. Push through and keep going. No corrections, no edits, just work.

Either way, you’re writing.

Author Spotlight: Jim Minick

August 16, 2021 / / 0 Comments

The phrase “triple threat” pops up in sports far more often than in creative writing. But if there is a “triple-threat author,” Jim Minick fits the bill, with his moving poetry, award-winning novel, and thought-provoking creative nonfiction. 

Head shot of author Jim Minick, smiling, against a background of green ivy
Author Jim Minick

The first work I encountered from Minick was his poetry, published in several local and regional journals. Some of those poems would evolve into Her Secret Song, a portrayal of the growing relationship between nephew and aunt.

Later, in 2008, Minick published another collection, Burning Heaven, which won the 2008 Book of the Year Award from the Virginia College Bookstores Association. (If you follow these links, scroll past the well-deserved high praise of these works, and you’ll find outstanding samples from each volume.)

A heap of fresh-picked blueberries
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

My family subscribed to The Roanoke Times with an almost religious dedication, and for some years we were treated to “Field Work,” Minick’s monthly column in its New River Current.

Those reflective columns hinted at his book-length creative nonfiction works, Finding a Clear Path and The Blueberry Years. The latter, inspired by his family’s creation of an organic, pick-your-own blueberry farm, entwines personal experiences with reflections on national issues . . . And, of course, blueberries, blueberries, blueberries.

In addition to his poetry and nonfiction, Minick had another type of story he wanted to share: the novel Fire Is Your Water. This fictional story marked a venture into magical realism, creating a work Lee Smith calls, “a love story wrapped in horror, fire, and faith.”

Now that Minick has retired from the classroom, he has three new projects in the works. That’s right—three new books on the way.

Told you . . . He’s a triple threat!

A Favorite Writing Exercise

Minick attributes this exercise to Bill Roorbach’s Writing Life Stories. He says he’s used it “often and with great success”; like all the best writing exercises, this one can surprise you.

Write a letter explaining yourself to someone you know. Don’t expect to send the letter. The recipient can be dead or alive.

“The exercise often gets to deep emotional struggles and truths,” Minick says, “and often it is a great way to really find or think about your voice.”

What will you discover through writing a letter? Try it, and listen for the music of your own voice.

Spotlight: Leatha Kendrick

August 10, 2021 / / 1 Comment
Author Leatha Kendrick in a bright scarf and oak-leaf earrings
Author Leatha Kendrick, photograph by Kevin Nance

In July, the Highland Summer Conference at Radford University hosted two powerhouse poets: Diane Gilliam and Leatha Kendrick. While this visit was Kendrick’s first to the HSC, she has a prolific creative career as a writer, teacher, presenter, and workshop leader.

Recently Kendrick released her fifth book of poetry, And Luckier, through Accents Publishing, which praises it as “her bravest, most mature work.” Additional praise from Molly Peacock, Kathleen Driskell, Pauletta Hansel, and Sherry Chandler follows, but perhaps George Ella Lyon describes And Luckier most aptly: this is “a mature poet’s reckoning.”

Cover of And Luckier, Kendrick's most recent book
Cover for And Luckier

In addition to And Luckier, Kendrick’s other publications include Almanac of the Invisible, Second Opinion, Science in Your Own Backyard, and Heart Cake, as well as a whole slew of journals and anthologies. The first time I encountered her work was in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia, an outstanding collection of modern regional authors.

Below is one of Kendrick’s favorite writing exercises, a prompt that brings together writing, drawing, and memory for potent results. (Note for teachers: this exercise works for poetry as well as essays; if you need a “starter” for a personal experience narrative, “Map the House” is gold!)

Here’s “Map the House,” as used by Leatha Kendrick, in her own words. Used with permission.

Writing Exercise: Map the House

In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard asserts “the houses that are lost forever continue to live on in us: . . . they insist in us in order to live again.”

I first did this exercise at the Appalachian Writers Workshop sometime in the late 1980’s. It may have been Jo Carson who gave us the assignment. Other writers of my acquaintance (George Ella Lyon, in particular) have used their own variations on this prompt to generate powerful and surprising writing.

Here it is: an exercise to help you write more vividly about the “housed” memories of your life.

  1. Sketch a floorplan of a house or room that is important to you.
  2. In each area of the map, place the objects that come to mind.
  3. Label each object or piece of furniture with sensory memories or events they bring to mind. “The kitchen smelled of bacon grease (or cardamom or coffee) . . .
  4. Note any actions or voices or phrases that come up.
  5. When you are ready, start writing. Try to write quickly, without too much thought. Don’t second-guess, even if you think you are going “off topic.” Trust whatever comes. If you don’t remember something, say, “I don’t remember . . .” or “I wonder why . . .” and keep writing.

Remember: Writing is an act of discovery.

We are likely to vividly remember moments, single instances, and often in a more sensory than verbal way. In other words, our most vivid memories are likely to be ones we have not yet narrated for ourselves, rather than the stories we’ve been told or the “facts” about our lives. Our bodies store memories in our skin, our noses, our nerves, our bones – and not only in our brains.

We know more than we think we remember.

The things we have forgotten are housed.
Our soul is an abode and by remembering houses and rooms,
we learn to abide within ourselves.

Gaston Bachelard

Spotlight: Marilou Awiakta

July 6, 2021 / / 1 Comment

This spotlight celebrates a long-time friend of writers, teachers, and students throughout the region. The work of Marilou Awiakta, an author of rich Cherokee and Appalachian heritage, remains relevant. Her messages of respect–for the environment, for others, and for oneself–are vital, necessary, and hopeful.

Awiakta’s 1978 book, Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet, includes themes she will explore throughout her life. As a child, Awiakta truly lived on “the atomic frontier”: Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town dedicated to developing the atomic bomb.

Pile of different editions of Abiding Appalachia and Selu
Copies of Selu and Abiding Appalachia

Abiding Appalachia illuminates a childhood full of science and secrets. These wonders are braided with reflections on heritage, Cherokee belief and history . . . From “Cemetery Folks” to “Star Vision,” from lucid prose to rhythmic poetry, Awiakta braids these elements into a cohesive whole.

This hybrid form appears again in Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom. Little Deer, the “small white chief of the deer,” fills Abiding Appalachia with his luminous energy. (He’s the deer leaping through the whirling atom on the cover,) In Selu appears the powerful figure of the Corn Mother, guide and provider. Both Little Deer and Selu teach, in their own ways, the importance of respect: respect for the providers, for the natural world, for family, and for the stories that teach and unite.

Awiakta frequently visits Virginia, presenting and reading at the Highlander Literary Festival and leading workshops for the Highland Summer Conference.

A woman in blue sits with Marilou Awiakta. Both share a single flowered shawl.
“Shawl sisters”: Jo Ann Aust Asbury with Marilou Awiakta in Radford

Her interviews and readings are online in the Radford University Digital Collection. (Hearing her–and reciting and even dancing with her–makes a special experience!)

Today Awiakta’s work is being introduced to new audiences. Her alma mater, the University of Tennessee, celebrated her work in a virtual event now accessible online. She donated her papers to the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, ensuring that future students and writers will experience her work in new ways.

Recently USA Today selected Awiakta for their Women of the Century list. Joining other Tennesseeans such as Maxine Smith and Dolly Parton, Awiakta is celebrated as an “award-winning writer” who draws “the curtain back on this turning point in U.S. and world history.”

Awiakta’s life is intimately connected with the birth of the atomic age, her recovery of her Cherokee heritage, and the immediate need for protecting the environment. She truly is a woman of the century, and her work points our way to the future.

Marilou Awiakta’s “Three-Times Vision”

Understanding rarely comes with the first quick glance. For deeper understanding, Awiakta says some Cherokee believe in looking at something three times:

Look once with the left eye,
then once with the right eye,
then once from the corner of your eye to discern the spirit.

The first glance and the second glance get “the actual, the tangible clearly in mind,” while the third look involves both sense and spirit. The deeper understanding, Awiakta says, requires patience and stillness, a readiness to see from multiple perspectives. 

The writing exercise below is one version of a favorite prompt Awiakta used at Radford University. Try filling in the blanks, and you will have three different perspectives of a vivid memory. Put yourself in that special memory, and then answer the following.

  • I hear . . .
  • I feel . . .
  • I remember . . .

Bonus: A Little Advice from Awiakta

Below are just a few notes from Awiakta’s writing workshops. While this advice was originally intended for poets, all writers can benefit, especially from #4. The theme of “respect” runs through all of Awiakta’s work, so respect your work, respect yourself, and respect your readers, too.

  1. Cut adverbs. Words that end with “-ly” can destroy the rhythm of a poem.
  2. Cut pronouns.  Join sentences together.
  3. Don’t explain as you go or preach at the end.
  4. Less is more.  Trust your readers!

Writing with Cats 2: Our Purrsonal Mewses

June 14, 2021 / / 0 Comments

In my family, we never set out to get a cat. Our cats find us, for whatever reason, and grace our lives with their presence. Living with cats means writing with cats (see Writing with Cats 1: Famous Purrsonages). As even medieval monks can tell you, writing with cats presents challenges of its own.

These days we have two feline deities in our home. The first, Shadow, was a tiny feral ball of fuzz when Jack rescued her from a car engine. As a kitten, she hid in an engine for warmth, and the car owner couldn’t coax her out with tuna, treats, or countless entreaties. Then Jack peered under the hood, gleaming eyes peered back.

“Here, kitty,” he said, and plucked her from the darkness as easily as Arthur pulled the sword from the stone. Skittish kitty had chosen her human; who were we mere mortals to argue?

Shadow, an elegant black cat, regards the viewer as if judging their inadequacies.
Shadow is judging you (JE Hambly)

Shadow grew into an elegant mini-panther with a sleek black coat and long legs. As a writing partner, she seems pretty mellow. Occasionally she rubs her cheek on the corner of a notebook, but that’s all.

Jack claims she’s more aggressive, yowling at him for food, attention, or admittance to the basement—which may or may not be “Shadow’s Torture Dungeon.” When we haven’t seen our neighbors in a while, Jack gets suspicious. I haven’t heard screaming lately, so I’m sure it’s fine.

Josie, meanwhile, is her own kind of kitten. This tiny tuxedo literally “knocked” on our door one night, sprang inside, and hasn’t left since. She weighs only four and a half pounds, several ounces of which are curly white whiskers and twitchy tail.

Extreme closeup of small tuxedo cat with pink nose and white curly whiskers.
I’m sorry; were you trying to sleep?

She also loves sitting on open laptops and keyboards. Jack swears she’s going to start her own website. Her derriere is dangerously dexterous, so he may be right.

Maybe she’s drawn by the warmth of the keyboard, but I suspect something more nefarious is afoot. Josie’s tiny butt has renamed files, added tags, sent chat messages on Facebook, and taken a screenshot of herself on Zoom. She can even open iTunes all by herself, hitting play on songs from ABBA and heavy metal tracks.

I guess her tastes are diverse . . . I didn’t even know those songs were on my hard drive, much less that Josie was such a “dancing queen.” At least she hasn’t figured out how to order “Fancy Feast” on Amazon, although she’s probably working on it.

You know, we never have this kind of trouble with the dogs.

Screenshot of a Zoom screen showing fuzzy cat ears and back
Josie’s screenshot of herself using Zoom. One step closer to world domination . . .

Writing with Cats: Famous Purrsonages

June 10, 2021 / / 1 Comment
Black and white tuxedo cat caught on dining room table
Josie Cat says hello

A history of writers is also a history of the creature companions, furry familiars, and meowing mewses. (I’d better get this out of the way: I adore alliteration and no pun is too punishing. I won’t even apologize.) Let’s consider, for a moment, the long tradition of writing with cats.

Whatever damage the 2019 film Cats did to his feline-friendly legacy, T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats remains a poetic testament to the personality and mysterious secret lives of cats. If you spend time with cats, Eliot’s description rings perfectly true:

 When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
     The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
 His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
     Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
         His ineffable effable
         Effanineffable
 Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Some cat non-fanciers may argue kitty is meditating on treats or murder, but let’s indulge Eliot this time. The poor guy’s grave is still spinning from that CGI nightmare in 2019.

Eliot isn’t the only contribution to the kitty literary canon. Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Cat in the Rain,” lingers in literature books like contagious loneliness.

Meanwhile, descendants of his famous six-toed cats still roam his former home in Key West. The Hemingway Home and Museum estimates the current population may be as high as 60, which means an extravagance of toe beans.

LitHub, among others, has featured great lists of cat-lit. I’m just thankful that Emily Temple, the LitHub author and editor, specified, “15 Great Cat Poems Not Written By Cats.” Thanks to Zoom and the pandemic, we know the lines between us can be a little . . . fuzzy. (I will not apologize for the puns, I will not apologize . . .)

Josie the tuxedo kitten stretches while standing on a laptop keyboard.
What? She’s helping!

Writing with cats isn’t all catnip and cuddles. Even medieval monks endured cats getting where cats shouldn’t be.

The next time a kitty settles on your laptop, renaming your files, sending cryptic “chat” messages with her butt? This story about inky prints on a manuscript may give you “paws” . . . And remember, it can always be worse.

No manuscript is safe from a curious kitten. Fortunately, no heart is safe, either.

Writing Craft: Gospel of the Flute Master

June 7, 2021 / / 1 Comment

During an overdue cleaning of the guest room, I discovered a folder of notes from my days as a high-school first-chair flute-player. Inside this folder, I found fingering charts, tiny pages meant for flip-folders, and handwritten notes.

Some of the notes were from a tutoring session with a professional musician. This experienced flautist spent a long Saturday teaching students about posture, alternate finger positions, and better embouchure. I also found notes labeled as the instructor’s “GOSPEL.” Decades later, those notes still stand out as powerful advice, not just for musicians, but for creative writers too.

Here’s the “Gospel” for flute players:

Silver flute with gold mouthpiece in blue velvet case
My beloved flute, terror of neighbors and housepets
  1. ALWAYS build or relieve tension. Play like you’re going somewhere.
  2. Less tight = less tense = faster runs
  3. Bring everything forward + breathing [is] easier. [Remember to take] 3 BREATHS—back, belly, chest

How much of our love of music comes from suspense? We love the building up and relieving of tension. (OK, that probably sounds like certain other activities, too.) The advice is good for more than just Bolero, however. His points are great advice for the writing craft—fiction, in particular, but other types of creative work too. Even actors, when they leave the stage, are told to exit as if they have somewhere to go!

If you want lovely fast runs on the flute, tightening up will not help. Gripping your Gemeinhardt like it’s a life rope won’t make your music faster, louder, or easier. Sometimes you need to loosen your grip, take a step back, and—this leads to # 3—breathe.

Breathing lets you play the long notes, the high notes, the eerie low notes. As writers, we’re often told to practice reading our work aloud.

When we read aloud, breath means everything. What is the pacing of my work? Where am I taking a breath–or a pause–in my poetry? If I race through a long passage breathlessly, is that a problem? Or does my breathlessness heighten what I want to convey—panic, rage, little-kid excitement?

Thanks, long-ago flute tutor. I don’t know what we paid for that Saturday instruction, but the lesson was priceless.

Handwritten notes in messy cursive
The handwritten “Gospel.” And I thought my handwriting was messy now . . .
A place to write: woman seated in chair by railing in Brown Hotel lobby.
A favorite place to write

Where Do You Write?

May 26, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Park benches, easy chairs, floors, classrooms, beds, teacher desks, hotel rooms, coffee shops, fast food benches, desks, bean bags, lobbies, cars, staircases, boats, trees, patios, big rocks–even, at one ill-advised point, the bleachers during a demolition derby. I’ve tried to write in all these places, sometimes with more luck than others.

For some of us, “place” is part of the ritual of writing. We can get very particular: do we need to write? Music, television, headphones? Ergonomic seating, or just a place where won’t fall off a mountain?

I’ve seen impassioned defenses of writing by computer or by hand, in absolute silence or during the breakfast rush at Hardee’s, on moleskin journals or spiral notebooks. . . And, if you care about pens, that discussion will last for a while.

Some places do have a kind of magic. One of my favorite places is the upper balcony in the lobby of the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. The Brown is home to residencies for Spalding University’s MFA program; during residency, you can’t toss a legal pad from the balcony without hitting writers of all genres, all experiences, all stages.

In my favorite nook, I can see everything–friends gathered at the bar, students encircling the grand piano, new guests dragging their luggage across the gleaming floor. I can write in my own space, but I’m part of things too, and I can feel my creative impulses fizzing like Pop Rocks.

Right now I’m at home, writing on a ten-year-old MacBook (which needs to work for a few more months–pray for me, y’all) with a small tuxedo cat under my elbow and two dogs at my feet. All the curtains are open, the trees are tossing outside in the wind, the room is quiet except for a couple of fans and my raging tinnitus.

That’s fine by me. Maybe this isn’t the lobby of the Brown Hotel; maybe I’m not relaxing at a beachside retreat. But, for the moment, I have time to work, and that’s more precious than a whole bundle of brand-new pens.

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