Wonderful Experience with Twin Bird Review

I am so grateful to have a poem published in the latest issue of Twin Bird Review: the editor-in-chief, Amanda K. Horn was wonderful to work with and so encouraging, and the artwork chosen to accompany my piece beautiful. I hope to find more art by Xiao Faria da Cunha. If you have time, check out my poem “Why I Remain a Desperate Party Clown,” inspired by Taylor Mali’s Metaphor Dice prompt.

I enjoyed the poems chosen, particularly the three poems by Sirianna Helleloid. I hope you can check them out and the whole issue. Let me know which poems and stories are your favorite (I haven’t finished reading the fiction or the essay yet).

Have a great night!

Prompts and Encouragement Inspired by Adedayo Agarau and Publication Resources

I want to share this poem because it is so beautiful and because the poet said it had been his most rejected piece. Since I am awaiting rejections from some out-of-reach publications, I need this encouragement myself.

For the first prompt, create your own footnote poem in which the title explains the lines’ reference(s). A religious book or the name of a myth or famous movie, book, or even character would all work.

The second prompt is to use the opening line “At what point does silence become surrender?” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet.

For a third prompt, write a list poem on envy using the line “This is envy, this is my blood building a boat in your / raging voice” as either ghostline or title or epigraph. Do give credit regardless.

For the last prompt from this poem, write a poem using the following word list: “silence,” “whimper,” “storm,” “sacrifice,” “platform,” “knife,” “ram,” “voice,” “smeared,” and “speck.” Try to use the nouns in the poem as verbs and vice versa in yours.

Now for a change, rather than writing, let’s talk about where to submit poems. I ran across Angela T. Carr’s list of publication deadlines late so that many of the January submission periods have already closed, but there are still publications open until February.

If you have a full-length poetry collection ready, Emily Stoddard generously shared a list of 183 publishers, their deadlines (if set), and reading fees (if any) on her substack.

As always, I am grateful to the generosity of so many in the poetry community.

Bonus prompt: write an ekphrastic poem or short story based on this scene.

Good luck writing (and editing) and submitting!