Vikki C.

Ty Lynne Lampe for her pre-writing on IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS, collaborative-hybrid work by myself (art) & Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social (poetry).
"an intricate piece of lace tatted from a single thread" - LJLampe.
Available @icefloepress.bsky.social
#books #collaboration #vispo @poetry

In The Blueprint of Her Iris – A Collaboration. Vikki C. (Poems) Robert Frede Kenter (Images) Now Available ! In The Blueprint of Her Iris is a collaboration between Vikki C. (Poems) and Robert Frede Kenter (Images). It is 69 pages, full colour, 6″ x 9″ dimensions. Purchase it h…

icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

@icefloepress.bsky.social

“From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings. This collaboration by Vikki C. (words) and Robert Frede Kenter (images) reminds me of an intricate piece of lace tatted from a single thread—necessarily connected, the collection loops and swirls. Individually and as a whole, the pairings captivate with repeating words, colors, textures, and themes. Each time I reached the end, I started over, looking for more connections and sonic play. I read Vikki’s words first silently then aloud, I basked in Robert’s vivid visuals. I felt upended in the best way, a “galaxy mouthing a name / it has not learnt to pronounce.” In the Blueprint of Her Iris won’t let me go.” —Lynne Jensen Lampe, author of Talk Smack to a Hurricane

"From start to finish, In the Blueprint of Her Iris thrilled me with the mystery and electricity of its text-image pairings.."

Grateful to @ljensenlampe.bsky.social for her praise of In the Blueprint of Her Iris. 

Available from @icefloepress.bsky.social. Link below🔥

@rfredekenter.bsky.social

'Aubade as Fuel' from LOVE PRODIGAL by Traci Brimhall (Copper Canyon Press)

"You know / I always need to save something, to control it."

'Aubade as Fuel' from LOVE PRODIGAL by Traci Brimhall (Copper Canyon Press) @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

Sheer brilliance 🤍

#poetry #poetrybooks #poetrycollections

Art, as I said earlier, affects a person's emotions, not his reason. Its
function is, as it were, to turn and loosen the human soul, making it
receptive to good.

-- Andrei Tarkovsky

On occasion, the poet leaves the isolation of her room, her literary duties, her various wild and broody selves...and heads to the city.

Tonight, celebrating the blessing of being “caught between cultures” — the way she’s always been. Joy, reflection, heritage.

#Midautumnfest 🏮🌕✨️ #eastmeetswest

Jenny George—

Full story and sequence on IG ✨️

On occasion, the poet leaves the isolation of her room, her literary duties, her various wild and broody selves...and heads to the city.

Tonight, celebrating the blessing of being “caught between cultures” — the way she’s always been. Joy, reflection, heritage.

#Midautumnfest 🏮🌕✨️ #eastmeetswest

Clean By: Susan L. Leary I often worried when I got the call, I'd be unprepared. But the morning my brother dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean. So I tell myself to get on with it. x later, standing over my brother, I think whoever prepared his body must love what they do. Because he looks so clean. Cleaner, even, than when he'd doze on the couch midafternoons to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. The fatigue of living wiped from his cheeks. & today, as then, the same stillness stretched across his eyes. The same tiny shovels for thumbs. & when I find the strength to rest a hand atop his, I shake him a little to tell him I wore his favorite dress: summery & sand-colored with splotches of blue. & while it seems so symbolic, it's all rather simple. I wear a blue-patterned dress because my brother loved the ocean. & because my brother was lonely & broken, he couldn't kick drugs. But I love my brother & the morning he dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean. So I tell him: Clean.

This poem is stunning. If you haven't read Dressing The Bear, it's a must-read.
Clean
~ Susan L. Leary
-I often worried when I got the call, I'd be unprepared. But the morning my brother dies ——💙

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are. Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family. Then back to the world, polished by soft whips. We dream; we don’t remember. Louise Glück

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.

Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.

We dream; we don’t remember.
Louise Glück
#poetry #writer

Roses for Susan @susanlleary.bsky.social, I hope you are doing well, Susan—this is probably the last bloom of the year, and therefore the most precious.

Saraswati Nagpal's 'Drench Me in Silver' (Black Bough Poetry, 2025)

A review of Drench Me in Silver by Saraswati Nagpal (Black Bough Poetry, 2025) By Vikki C. Saraswati Nagpal’s Drench Me in Silver (Black Bough Poetry, 2025) demonstrates through precise, breathtaking language, that rapture resides in tender reverence for the rich fabric of heritage and familial legacy. A vivid and moving tribute to the complex nuances of culture and codex that influence and transcend the female experience, the poet evokes the sacred through place and seasonal migrations that mark the fluid nature of identity, juxtaposed with the duties and footholds of tradition. Nagpal conjures the fragrance and soul-song of a multitextured terrain where a singular voice cascades into an intergenerational chorale in honour of the divine feminine. From nascent wellspring to oneiric cameos of kinship, domesticities and ritual, we are held in mutual adoration for the transformative beauty of the natural world and the devotion of mythical female figures: “These women abound, adorned in ichor, blood and blossoms.” Meditations where for Nagpal, time is both vignette and luminous ancient light: “Year’s lived grow distant, city lights fading / to tarnished tinsel. Youth’s amber demands / have been savoured and sold.” I was enlightened by her elegant vernacular of loss—a liminality that rains, pools, evaporates in all its forms— yet, what endures, elides cinematically from both origin and otherness: “In a river, you pirouette at last: / a wild bird in love with the wind.” Distilling grace, intellect, defiance and empathy, this is poetry that incarnates the ardent love of forebearers with the alchemy of the sublime self, both in the moment, and the ages to come..

"...the poet evokes the sacred through place and seasonal migrations that mark the fluid nature of identity, juxtaposed with the duties and footholds of tradition."

My review of the luminous 'Drench Me in Silver' by @saraswatinagpal.bsky.social (@blackboughpoetry.bsky.social).

#poetry #reviews

Here's a list of journals that folks recommended: Long Poem Magazine (UK), The Broken Spine (UK), Last Syllable, Missouri Review, Literary Imagination, Blackbird, Ploughshares (for Fall reading period), Adroit, Cincinnati Review, Lothorian Poetry Journal (1/2)

Today’s poem is selected by Tomás Q. Morín as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“Meditations in an Emergency” appeared in Dispatch by Cameron Awkward-Rich, published by Persea Books, 2019. Shared here with deep gratitude.

Photo by Robert Frede Kenter (2023) Los Angeles. A white low rise industrial-loft building/ storefront/ mural of red leaves, a fish, flowers. Caption red ink, "When you're queer, you're family"

L.A (2023) (c) Robert Frede Kenter #photo #photoart #image #LosAngeles #photographsofbluesky #street #queer #lgbtqia
@icefloepress.bsky.social @mjseyesopened.bsky.social

In The Blueprint of Her Iris – A Collaboration. Vikki C. (Poems) Robert Frede Kenter (Images) Now Available ! In The Blueprint of Her Iris is a collaboration between Vikki C. (Poems) and Robert Frede Kenter (Images). It is 69 pages, full colour, 6″ x 9″ dimensions. Purchase it h…

Link to order page @icefloepress.bsky.social 🔥 icefloepress.net/in-the-bluep...

"The fictive ones, the far gold
of a rain-blessed prison,
where people play to live,
and sentences seem gentle
and so on."

Here, researching, reimagining, invoking spirits for a special project – one woman, one room, and the mind's potential...

#nationalpoetryday #goldenhour
#poetrycommunity

Thank you, Carmella, for sharing about this book 🤍

"The fictive ones, the far gold
of a rain-blessed prison,
where people play to live,
and sentences seem gentle
and so on."

Here, researching, reimagining, invoking spirits for a special project – one woman, one room, and the mind's potential...

#nationalpoetryday #goldenhour
#poetrycommunity

Thank you, Paul!

Delighted and honoured to receive an acceptance from @upthestaircase.bsky.social , a beautiful journal with a high calibre of work.

Thank you to EIC @aprilmbratten.bsky.social for selecting my poem "Childhood" for inclusion in the next issue, due out Nov 1st ✨️

#poetrycommunity
#WritingCommunity

I've got 3 new poems in this sparkling issue ✨️

Thanks so much to the editors for including my work 😊 You are a bright spot in a dark world.

A more accessible version can be found here: https://cah.ucf.edu/floridareview/article/two-poems-16/

A ridiculous little run of luck on the poetry front this week.
Thank you, Jamie Poissant, for several benisons: giving this poem a spot in Aquifer & for nominating it for the Best of Net anthology.
And thank you, Dean Ward, for letting me borrow this sweet corn & pet moth.

NEW POEM #270: "Euphoria" by Janis Greve

"How could you, I want to say,
deprive me of this thing I never
asked for, but that gave me a strange
euphoria, a flood I could always count on
rising, silent, from the depths of me,"

stonecirclereview.com/euphoria/

#Poem #Poetry #NewPoem #PoetryCommunity

Thrilled to have a new little prose poem floating around over at @astrolabe.ooo (and they *happen* to be open for submissions)!

Today’s poem is selected by Ayokunle Falomo as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

"won’t you celebrate with me" appeared in Book of Light by Lucille Clifton, published by Copper Canyon Press, 1993. Shared here with deep gratitude.

Thanks R. Indeed, shimmering birches... 💐

Honored for a BOTN nomination (& for a poem dear to me).Ty @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social for opportunity to be Silver Branches feature (poems & images) lovingly curated @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social & now this Unexpected & delighted. 💐 To other nominees, all formidable incl. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social

I was reading your poem again. So atmospheric. When production feels ironically empty. A place of chimeras and white static. And those last lines are utterly beautiful. Congratulations, Robert.