Return to Poetry

Since January 2017, I have been able to return to writing poetry on a more routine basis, which has been, for me, a joyous renunion with my art of choice.  After my daughter's birth in 2014, I found it difficult to devote as much time, particularly as I was concentrating so intently on graphic novel projects.  Although Max and I have no plans to curb our collaboration, I do intend to continue spending a significant amount of time writing poetry and getting back into the swing of journal submissions.  I've also begun participating in a local poetry Meetup group called Living Poetry (https://livingpoetry.net/), which has created opportunities for meeting, writing, and workshopping with fellow writers.  Collaboration and communion with practitioners of one's craft is, I find, so essential to my life as a writer.  I recently had the opportunity to participate in a very cool online poetry project called ERASE-TRANSFORM, which I heard about through one of the Living Poetry organizers, Bart Barker, who produces a lovely blog at https://bartbarker.wordpress.com/.  ERASE-TRANSFORM invited poets to create poems out of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration speech by removing words, thereby re-envisioning the message therein.  You can read my submission at http://www.erase-transform.ink/blog/2017/03/10/apology/.

Joyous Reunion

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've posted, but better late than never? My graphic novel-making partner, Max Dowdle, and I have self-published our first full-length graphic novel under our imprint, Artagem Graphic Library. The book is called An Unlikely Refugee: The Story of a Python Named George It is a speculative "autobiography" about the Burmese python, George, who lived in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) for over two decades after being rescued by a U.S. Army Special Forces operative from Vietnam during the early years of the Vietnam War. We decided to write the story from George's perspective, which gave me the opportunity to be pretty free with using poetic language in conveying the contents of the snake's consciousness. We ended up successfully collaborating with the NCMNS around our project and had opportunities to speak at the museum at one of the Thursday evening Science Cafe events last year as well as at their recent annual Reptile & Amphibian Day. The museum ended up purchasing all of the original artwork, including the cover painting, which is now all a part of their permanent collection. Some of it is currently on display on the uppermost floor of the NCMNS, adjacent to the butterfly conservatory. It has been an exciting venture, and we are hoping to be able to do some more events related to the book around the Triangle area in the near future. You can learn more about the project at http://www.artagem.com/?page_id=120 or buy the book at https://www.storenvy.com/products/18094337-an-unlikely-refugee-the-story-of-a-python-named-george.

First graphic novel publication

Through Artagem (www.artagem.com), I've had the opportunity to collaborate on a couple of self-published short graphic projects, including Greasemonkey and Nightswimming (I'm still hoping eventually to expand Nightswimming into a more full-length piece). However, this past year, Max Dowdle and I were invited to submit a piece to an project called Speculative Relationships, a series of stories around the theme of sci-fi romance. Tyrell Cannon and Scott Kroll, the creative directors, completed a successful Kickstarter, putting us officially in print! Please check out the project's website at www.speculativerelationships.com.

It's been a long time. . . .

It's been a long time since I last posted to this site. I moved from New Jersey to North Carolina in 2012, and my writing got put on hiatus for awhile. I published a poem called "The Carrot" in Apiary Magazine out of Philadelphia in September 2012. In 2010, I had begun collaborating on various graphic novel projects with Max Dowdle, and in 2013, I began to focus primarily in this direction. I'm still writing poetry, but in my precious spare time I'm mainly writing scripts for various small and large graphic projects. You can find out more about these on www.artagem.com.

SchuylI kill Valley Journal

I just had two poems, "Ringtone" and "The Lesson," accepted into the Schuylkill Valley Journal Spring 2012 edition. The launch reading will be May 20th, 2012. You can check out the journal's website at http://www.svjlit.com/.

First place in a local contest

My poem "Ringtone" was chosen for first place in the Medford Cultural Arts Commission Fourth Annual Juried Poetry Contest open to poets in Burlington County in New Jersey. "My Father and Jack London" received an honorable mention.

Edison Literary Review

A poem of mine called "Security Blanket I" was accepted for the volume 12 edition of the Edison Literary Review, due out in the fall of 2013. You can check out the journal's site at www.edisonliteraryreview.org.