Hicks-Jenkins 60th-birthday retrospective

I've been working on a delicious project for Clive Hicks-Jenkins: pieces related to Clive's angels, annunciations, prophets, and saints, to be published in a volume honoring Clive's 60th birthday in 2011. The occasion will be not just his birthday but a major retrospective exhibition at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. I'm afraid that I have rioted through his pictures with much abandon and will probably be labeled as the writer who misbehaved--misbehaved, I hope, with love and style and suitable mystery.

One of the splendid things about the lives of people who are impelled to write or paint and do other forms of art that demand many hours of solitude is the finding of kindred spirits along the way. Clive is one of mine, and I am glad that he and Peter Wakelin asked me to participate. I imagine that Clive knew I would misbehave.

Painting: "The Virgin of the Goldfinches" (2009.) Acrylic on panel, 112 x 82 cm.

Chocolate-covered grasshopper

Playwright Lynn Siefert has given me the most quirky assessment of my poetry and fiction that I have ever received: "I like your writing so much because it's a mix of delicacy and and darkness. Like a chocolate covered grasshopper. Once you get to the dark part it's too late because you've been seduced by the delectable part."

Grasshopper courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/ and Thomas Pate of Florida.

Poems in Mezzo Cammin

In the flurry of summer events, I forgot to mention my latest Mezzo Cammin poems--remiss of me, since the magazine has been good to me. And I love being asked for work because most of the time I am entirely too lazy (the charitable make call it "too busy") to send out poems. It is something that I've always disliked doing, and one great thing about the internet is the abolition of business envelopes and stamps and copies to carry on submissions.

So the newish poems are "The Buried Girl" and "The Bottle Tree." I also have a good many poems in the archives, if you're inclined toward digging.

Editor and poet Kim Bridgford has a new job--she has moved from her teaching position at Fairfield University and now directs the West Chester Poetry Center.