Catherine Pierce

Thank you so much, Joyce!

Thank you so much, Joyce! 🎡🎠🎢

Aw, I love that this name is out there!

Text reading: Creative Burst Sessions, Mondays 9-10 AM / 7-8 PM Eastern (alternating weeks) A short, intensely focused session designed for anyone who needs a brief but protected block of time to get some words on the page. An optional prompt will be provided, or writers can choose to use the time for their own work in progress. Open to writers of all genres and experience levels! Session will open 15 minutes early for anyone who’d like to chat and be in community with others; prompt will be given at the start time, followed by a writing hour. Registration open now at studioandcraft.com!

This summer through Studio & Craft: Creative Burst sessions! These are low-stakes-but-high-focus sessions to kickstart new work or move the needle on work in progress. An optional prompt will be provided at each session.

Open to writers of all genres and experience levels!

studioandcraft.com

Text reads: Four-Week Workshop: The Alongside Everything Poem, June Wednesdays, 6:30-8:30 PM Eastern. How do we write about wonder during a time of crisis? How do we acknowledge suffering while honoring joy? And how can we write coherently about a world that seems to be pulling our attention in a million directions at any given moment? In this four-week workshop, we’ll work on writing poems that lean into, rather than away from, these questions and contradictions. Workshop-style discussion, weekly readings, line-level and conceptual feedback from instructor on one poem per week, and optional poem prompts. Caps at 10 participants. Registration now open at studioandcraft.com!

This June I'll be offering a virtual 4-week workshop through Studio & Craft--if you're looking for community, feedback, prompts, and a balance of structure and flexibility, please join us! Workshop caps at 10 participants.

Questions? Please reach out!

studioandcraft.com

Thank you so much, Adam!

Studio & Craft Studio & Craft is a poetry community offering generative sessions, workshops, and manuscript consultations.

Hoping to jumpstart some new poems this summer? Looking for a writing community or focused feedback? Today I'm launching Studio & Craft, a poetry community offering generative sessions, workshops, and manuscript consultations!

If everything ends,

why are you sharpening your sorrow

—Martha Silano

So fantastic to see you and everyone today!

Congratulations, Mitch!

In Those Years Adrienne Rich In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I

from Dark Fields of the Republic. W.W. Norton, 1995.

Catherine Pierce This Is How We Keep Going By the surf, a mussel shell wedged into wet sand, edge-up. Someone could cut their foot on that, I thought, and turned it flat, while behind me the entire beach rippled with mussel shells.

Seems like a good day to share this poem, originally published in About Place journal. Here's to turning over the mussel shells.

Southern Prize and State Fellowships for Literary Arts | South Arts The Southern Prize and State Fellowships for Literary Arts support, acknowledge, and celebrate writers in our nine-state region with $80,000 in awards. The genre for the 2025 cycle is Poetry.

Southern poets! Apply and share the call:
www.southarts.org/grants-oppor...

Dorianne Laux w/ the plainspoken elegance

You adorable human ❤️

A little Jane Hirschfield for a tender, tender Wednesday.

Past contributor, and glad you're here!

I would write frequently about this extremely cute dog, too!

Katy Didden

River River Books: Poetry Distribution Help us ship poetry to independent bookstores, libraries, and readers.

Happy National Poetry Month! We’ve got a kickstarter for @riverriverbooks.bsky.social, full of good rewards, from digital copies to custom poems and manuscript consultations! Share with a friend? 🌊🌊 Help us continue to get poetry to readers. Support the places you love, y’all 📚💙

Haha--yes! I've definitely learned some stuff from it (though it's maybe 1/3 Big News, 1/3 Interesting Stuff, and 1/3 Games/Puzzles). Also, bonus: excellent spot-the-difference pictures.

Oh, seconding The Week Jr.! Our 9 and 12 y/o kids love it (so do I).

thx to poem-a-day & steve bellin-oka for choosing to run this new one of mine today💙
poets.org/poem/what-i-...

Oh, wow, what a poem!

perhaps you too need this Jenny Browne poem today…

Grateful to Charif Shanahan for guest editing this impressive issue of Poetry magazine dedicated to lineage & influence, & very happy to have 2 new poems of my own included among the dazzling array of poems here.
www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

I Wonder if the Guy Who Catcalled Me in the Blockbuster Parking Lot When I Was 15 Ever Thinks About That --Catherine Pierce When the Jeep revved up what I saw was three or four or thirty guys laughing three or four or thirty heads of blond hair mouths of white teeth and one of them yelled out something about my ass or taking me for a ride I don’t know because it’s been 30 years but what I do remember is that I spun around and said Fuck off middle finger raised like a flare gun and it was not the first time I’d felt the hot fizz of fury but it was the first time I’d uncorked it and I remember how his face slackened and the mouths said ooooh and the blond heads drove away in the cartoon-yellow Jeep and when I got back in the car where my parents and sister had been waiting while I returned the VHS tapes

my mother said What’s so funny because I couldn’t stop laughing and I said Nothing which was true nothing was funny at all I was laughing because as I’d let my rage rise

Cover of Water~Stone Review, with title written in white above an image of a red rollercoaster and several castle turrets.

Happy to have two poems in the new Water~Stone Review, including this one about a formative moment in a Blockbuster parking lot.

Darling Almost immediately, in our first moments on this planet, we learn to turn our faces toward what we desire. We spend our lives repeating this gesture. This morning, a late snow, and I lift my eyes to the icy sky. Save this under beauty. Save it under hope.

One of three short poems by me in the new issue of Smartish Pace.

Submissions — EcoTheo Collective

We are now open for submissions through the end of the month & look forward to seeing your work that explores themes of friendship in the more-than-human world

This incredibly ecologically aware love poem from Stacey Balkun ✨