WHAT IS RRR? Reading Resolution Round-Up.

WHAT IS RRR? It's a challenge to myself and to you. In 2017 and beyond, let's read more inclusively. Let's be better allies. 

BUT WHAT IS RRR? Each month I'll will be actively seeking out poets whose voices have been historically marginalized (EX: PoC, LGBTQIAP+, women, immigrants, Muslims, refugees, ETC.) and I will share a round-up of what I've been reading. Expect relatively little commentary from me. This series is about their voices, not mine. Read more about this project in January's Letter from the Editor.

WHAT DID YOU READ LAST MONTH? Here's what I read in January.

What a whirlwind month! I had the fortunate opportunity to follow up on January's RRR post by being able to hear Danez Smith and Oliver Baez Bendorf read at AWP events. (BOTH SO SO INCREDIBLE.) I also bought Samiya Bashir's book Field Studies from the NightBoat Books AWP booth....from Kazim Ali! (Who is incredibly nice, by the way.) I also had the opportunity to learn more about Sibling Rivalry Press (which published Christopher Soto, featured last month) and their current collections. Although I didn't get to hear Ocean Vuong read at AWP (sobs), I do have the comfort of knowing I was in the same gigantic conference center as him for three days. So there's that. 

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FEBRUARY: Aracelis Girmay, Tim Seibles, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Sarah Kay, Nicole Homer, Claudia Rankine, Brenda Shaughnessy, T Fleischmann, Vievee Francis, and Jamaal May.

1. Aracelis Girmay

via BOA Editions

I was able to hear Aracelis Girmay read the the Split this Rock/BOA Editions sponsored reading at AWP and I cannot even begin to describe the experience. It was intense, complex, painful, and so, so beautiful. I immediately bought two of her books: The Black Maria and Kingdom Animalia. I cannot recommend Girmay enough. Start with this excerpt from "The Black Maria" from Poetry.

The fight, first, to open, then to breathe,

& then to close. Each of us entering the world

& entering the world like this.

Soft. Unlikely.      Then — 

the idiosyncratic minds & verbs.

                 Beloveds, making your ways

to & away from us, always, across the centuries

**

2. Tim Seibles

via Etruscan Press

I heard Tim Seibles read the Split this Rock/BOA Editions AWP reading as well. (This reading as fire, by the way. Danez Smith also read.) His work cuts to the heart of racial tension, violence, and inequality in America. He also has a wonderful reading voice that molds itself around the shifting tones in his work. Start with his poem "Mosaic" available from Poetry.

In America skin was

where you belonged,     a who

you were     with, a reason

someone might: how — at the

parties     of hands unknown — 

astonishing deaths

could meet you.

**

3. Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

via Button Poetry

I heard Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib perform at the Page Meets Stage event at AWP and....guys, I can't even describe how good it was. His book, The Crown Ain't Worth Much is out through Button Poetry, and I suggest you check it out. There's a lot of Youtube footage floating around of his performances, too. Here is a list of his published work available online. Check it out. 

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4. Sarah Kay

via Write Bloody

I also heard Sarah Kay perform at the Page Meets Stage event at AWP. I think I almost cried in the third row at one point because it was so overwhelmingly good. Start with the one that went crazy viral: If I Should Have a Daughter. (I linked to the text, but her performance is not to be missed and can be easily found on YouTube.) And then watch all her videos here.

**

5. Nicole Homer

via Write Bloody

Nicole Homer is a poet I ALSO say perform at the Page Meets Stage event at AWP. Spoiler alert: she is also an incredible poet, and her performance left me in awe. Here is video to her poem "Motherhood". And here is a link to all her published work available online. 

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6. Claudia Rankine

via Graywolf Press

I mean, do I even need to sell you on Rankine's Citizen? It is so necessary that if you haven't read it, you need to go read it ASAP. It is a masterpiece. 

because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying

**

7. Brenda Shaughnessy

via Copper Canyon Press

I have been a fangirl of Brenda Shaughnessy since my freshman year in college and I have never, ever looked back. I got to be in the same room as her at AWP and it was beautiful. You should read all her work, but you can start with her poem "I'm Over the Moon" (warning: intense lfeatured on the Poetry Foundation. 

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8. T Fleischmann

via Sarabande Books

I read T Fleischmann's book Syzygy, Beauty, after picking it up from the Sarabande Books booth at AWP. It's a nonfiction essay in (what I view as) prose poem units and it's incredible. I'm including the book synopsis from Sarabande Books' website below because they say it best: 

"The word “syzygy” refers at once to the alignment of celestial bodies in astronomy, repeating relationships in mathematics, and male/female pairings in Gnosticism. T Fleischmann’s Syzygy, Beauty, then, is an essay ordered by complimentary needs: art criticism, the narrator's construction of a house, and the direct address of a lover. Playing with scale and repetition, the speaker keeps us off-center, and therefore always looking, as we are lead through an intimate relationship that is complicated and deepened by multiple partners, gender transitions, and itinerancy. In language both plainspoken and startling, Fleischmann attempts a reconciliation between the sadness and beauty that come with a love that must always be, in some ways, distant."

**

9. Vievee Francis

via Northwestern University Press

I hadn't heard of Vievee Francis until I encountered her on a panel at AWP, but boy am I so, so glad I did. She rescued a panel about sentimentality in women's writing from the clutches of white feminism and overall said some incredibly powerful things about femininity and what it means to be a black woman. Check out an interview with her on Muzzle, and then read one of her poems published on Rattle. 

**

10. Jamaal May

via Alice James Books

I picked up Jamaal May's book The Big Book of Exit Strategies from the Alice James Books booth at AWP during their stellar Saturday sale, and I was not disappointed. Check out his poem "There Are Birds Here" published in Poetry for starters. 

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WHAT'S NEXT? Share this post. Then share it again next week. Use your platform to make sure these voices are heard. Listen more and talk less. Support the featured poets -- buy their books, go to their readings, shake their hands, and thank them. Resist the urge to make their work about you. Reflect and listen some more. And of course, never stop reading better. 

See you next month. 

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

WHAT IS RRR? Reading Resolution Round-Up.

WHAT IS RRR? It's a challenge to myself and to you. In 2017 and beyond, let's read more inclusively. Let's be better allies. 

BUT WHAT IS RRR? Each month I'll will be actively seeking out poets whose voices have been historically marginalized (EX: PoC, LGBTQIAP+, women, immigrants, Muslims, refugees, ETC.) and I will share a round-up of what I've been reading. Expect relatively little commentary from me. This series is about their voices, not mine. Read more about this project in January's Letter from the Editor.

****

JANUARY: Christopher Soto, Ocean Vuong, Warsan Shire, Danez Smith, Sandra Lim, Kristiana Rae Colón, Samiya Bashir, Natalie Diaz, Oliver Baez Bendorf, and Monica Youn.

1. Christopher Soto 

via Sibling Rivalry Press

Christopher Soto's chapbook, sad girl poems (Jan. 2016, Sibling Rivalry Press), was sent to me from a stranger through "Secret Stanza". The introduction (as well as the poems of course) is so necessary. 

Start here: [Somewhere in Los Angeles] This Poem Is Needed, via The American Poetry Review. Here's an excerpt from the poem: 

Mothers are getting // handcuffed & harassed. Homes are being

            Crushed [like cigarette butts]. Everyone I know

Hates the racist police & wants a revolution. // But we seldom

            Aim the gun... Have you heard // how the bullets

Sing their anthem // throughout the body?? // It sounds like

            God shutting the door— Bang. Bang.

2. Ocean Vuong

via Copper Canyon Press

Like pretty much everyone in the poetry community, I read Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Apr. 2016, Copper Canyon Press) and died a million tiny deaths because it was so, so, SO good. You need to read it. If you can't afford the collection, start with Aubade with Burning City, via The Poetry Foundation. I honestly can't choose which part of the poem to quote as a teaser because I love every syllable of it. You'll just have to take my word for it and read the poem. The Poetry Foundation also has a recording of Vuong reading the poem available. He has additional poems published online that are accessible. Find them on his website. 

3. Warsan Shire

via Amazon

Warsan Shire has long been one of my favorite poets since I discovered her work in college. I even had the incredible opportunity to take an online class about poetry and trauma through The Poetry School. Her collection Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Dec. 2011, flipped eye publishing limited) is incredibly powerful and I highly recommend. I thought I'd share her poem The House, via The Poetry Foundation, which I recently found and have already read ten times over. Here's how it starts: 

i 
Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women; kitchen of lust,
bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy.
Sometimes the men - they come with keys,
and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers.

4. Danez Smith

via Danez Smith's website

I found Danez Smith's poem From "summer, somewhere", via The Poetry Foundation, in the Ecopoetics issue of Poetry. I was on a plane home from Los Angeles, and I wept openly. (Note: not saying that to elicit sympathy for myself; only to showcase the raw power set loose in the poem.) Here's an excerpt from the first section: 

...here, there is no language

for officer or law, no color to call white.

if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call

us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray.

we go out for sweets & come back.

5. Sandra Lim

via W.W. Norton

I had the great pleasure to hear Sandra Lim speak and read from her latest collection The Wilderness (Sept. 2014, W.W. Norton) when she visited George Mason University. Before that, though, I had the even greater pleasure of reading and living with her wonderful collection. Here's a good place to start: Vous Et Nul Autre, via Drunken Boat 18. This is how it starts:

I have hung our dwelling with enormous
nets, crackerjack feeler though you are.

But nets don’t help us in the awful
enormity of the emotion of thinking.

The electrifying interiors keep
turning their faces from the light.

6. Kristiana Rae Colón

via GoodReads

I found Kristiana Rae Colón while seeking out Latinx poets. I stumbled upon a remix for remembrance, via The Poetry Foundation, and was instantly captivated. She has many, many other talents outside of poetry as well. (Read more about that on her blog.) Here's a stanza from her poem "a remix for remembrance", dedicated to her students, that I found particularly lovely: 

Speak away the limits to heights of your existence

Be a witness, be a record, be a testament, a triumph

Set your poems flying in the glitter of the planets

Feed open mouths with truth, the truth is we are famished

The Universe is starving for the symphonies you play

Clarinets and thunder and the syllables you say

are the instruments: you are infinite. Stretch your hands to heaven

7. Samiya Bashir

via Samiya Bashir's website,
forthcoming from Nightboat Books Spring 2017

Samiya Bashir is another poet that I found within the pages of Poetry's Ecopoetics issue. Her poem Blackbody Curve, via The Poetry Foundation, had my brain churning in a million directions with its innovative structure. 

Here's how it starts: 

Stairs: a rushed flight down thirty-eight; French doors unlocked always.

Always: a lie; an argument.

Argument: two buck hunters circle a meadow’s edge.

I know I'll be keeping an eye out for Bashir's forthcoming collection, Field Theories (left). 

8. Natalie Diaz

via Copper Canyon Press

I heard Natalie Diaz speak and read at the  Fall for the Book festival in Fall 2016 and she was incredible. The entire audience sat in stunned silence every time she finished reading a poem. If you aren't paying attention to her voice, you're not doing this whole "poetry thing" right. Start with this poem: My Brother at 3 A.M., via The Poetry Foundation. This is another one where I can't decide on an excerpt, so just take my word for it and go read the full poem. I'm currently in the process of buying a copy of When My Brother Was an Aztec (May 2012, Copper Canyon Press), so perhaps...more poems from Diaz to come on RRR!

9. Oliver Baez Bendorf

via Kent State University Press

I also discovered Oliver Baez Bendorf through the Fall for the Book festival last year. He read in the same session as Natalie Diaz, and was also absolutely incredible. I left this reading last night swimming through their poetry. The Spectral Wilderness (Jan. 2015, Kent State University Press) is another collection on my wish list. Bendorf's work is important and resonant on so many levels. Natalie Diaz introduces his work beautifully and selects two great poems ("Queer Facts About Vegetables" is a very memorable one from his reading in Fall 2016) to feature in this article from Poetry Society. 

10. Monica Youn

via Graywolf Press

I missed Monica Youn when she came to read at Fall for the Book (argh!), but I did catch her episode on the New Yorker poetry podcast. Her collection Blackacre (Sept. 2016, Graywolf Press) has been kicking ass and taking names lately. Yes, this is another collection on my wish list. You can start with the collection's namesake poem, Blackacre, via The Poetry Foundation. Here's an excerpt from the second section: 

A wide-eyed girl is extreme in her unliddedness, her bare membranes flinching at any contact, vulnerable to motes, to smuts, to dryness. A wide-hipped girl extends the splayed arches of her body to bridge the generational divide. A wide-legged girl unseals a portal between persons; she is disturbing to the extent that she is open to all comers, a trapdoor that must be shut for safety’s sake. A wide-eyed girl is often thought desirable; a wide-hipped girl is often thought eligible; a wide-legged girl is often thought deplorable. A wide-legged girl is rarely wide-eyed, though she may have started out that way.

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WHAT'S NEXT? Share this post. Then share it again next week. Use your platform to make sure these voices are heard. Listen more and talk less. Support the featured poets -- buy their books, go to their readings, shake their hands, and thank them. Resist the urge to make their work about you. Reflect and listen some more. And of course, never stop reading better. 

See you next month. 

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

Hello readers, writers, dabblers, artists, and web surfers! 

I wish you all a happy, happy new year! However, for many of us, a happy 2017 seems nigh impossible given the political circumstances here in the USA. And that's partially what I want to talk to you about today: what you can expect of Floodmark in the coming years and where we stand, given the current political environment. Let's get that out of the way first, shall we? Then we can discuss the 2017 Reading Resolution Challenge, and exciting forthcoming projects.

Floodmark was founded on the idea of inclusivity, and now more than ever we are committed to it. We believe that creative writing serves everyone and should represent everyone. That means this site is a safe space for all, and we have zero tolerance for hate speech or anything that makes other readers feel unsafe. Our commitment to that is unwavering. This is a space for people from all backgrounds, ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, beliefs, and (of course!) writing skill levels. We welcome you to our space on the internet, and hope you will find inspiration, support, and perhaps a smile while you're here. If you ever find yourself triggered by anything on this blog, please speak out! Nobody is perfect, and we expect to make mistakes. You will find a very receptive and responsive team of editors ready to learn, make amends, correct the mistake, and be better editors and people moving forward. You can find our Contact Information here.

While we're on the subject of contact information -- if you ever have anything to talk to us about, we're around. If you want to ask "What's up?", we'll tell you what's up. If you want a book recommendation, we've got you. If you're looking for guidance or want to see something on the blog or need a friend to talk shop with, we're here. When we say "creative community", we're not just saying it. That's always been the beauty of Floodmark: we are writers, just like you, and we're on the other side of the computer. Not hiding, but waiting, writing, thinking, laughing, crying, binge-watching Netflix, eating too much sugar, and generally doing all the same things you're probably doing. So get in touch! We'd love to hear from you.

While we continue our commitment to inclusivity, we want to do more than open up our space. We intend to get more involved. (If you've got an idea for a partnership, contact us!) We started to do this in 2016, if you recall Floodmark getting into the classroom to lead creative writing workshops at Loyola University's Q-Summit and our visit to the Center on Halsted in Chicago. (You can read all about it here!) We want to do more of that. And this brings us to the 2017 Reading Resolution Challenge. We'll be seeking out the many brilliant writers who have been historically marginalized in the USA -- Native American, Black, Latinx, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Atheist, Women, LGBTQIAP+, and immigrant writers. Every month, we'll publish a round-up of writers that we've had the pleasure of reading. Share it. Send the poems to family, friends, whoever. Let these writers be heard. True, it's a small act. But when we actively seek to read outside our own experiences, or focus on finding writers who aren't being heard, we make a tiny difference. We build a bridge, brick by brick, poem by story by essay. We should celebrate our differences as well as our similarities. Diversity is what makes humanity -- and thus literature -- so beautiful. Sometimes people forget that. Let's remember it in 2017.

We challenge you to not just read these writers, but to give them your time, attention, and make room in your life for their voices. Perhaps you will disagree with some of them. All we ask is that you know why you disagree -- respectfully. The art of respectful disagreement is one that all writers and readers should be studying closely in an age where disagreements escalate so easily to violence and "otherness". And while we're on the topic: we reject the "other" in 2017. We (and you) can and will be better than this. We owe it to ourselves and everyone we share this world with not to make "others" out of people who are different from ourselves. We are all writers here. Live by the golden rule and treat each other how you'd like to be treated. We encourage you to comment on social media and/or the blog posts, send us an email, whatever is easiest. Tell us what you think.

What else can you expect in 2017? Lots of excitement and inspiration! We've got a couple projects under construction that we hope to launch by mid-year. The most exciting project we've been working is our soon-to-be self-paced, online open course called "Poetry 101". Don't be fooled by the name; poetry veterans will find things to take away from this course, too! We'll be providing video lectures, reading lists, and prompts in each module. There will be 10 modules in total, each covering what we see as the foundation of good poetry. Learn the ropes with us, or hone your craft. You can submit your poems for feedback from each other and us throughout the course. Pretty neat, right? We're hoping to launch the course in the Spring.

The Editors will also continue our monthly reading series on SoundCloud, which you can find here. Each month, we'll all select pieces (poetry, non-fiction, fiction, etc.) that fit a seasonal theme. (For example, January's theme is Winter.) We'll record ourselves reading, and pow! Story time for you. Now you can get your daily dose of poems/stories/essays while you're driving, mowing the lawn, or doing something else equally boring.

There are more things under construction, but this should give you a good idea of where Floodmark is headed in 2017. By the end of the year, we hope we'll have made an impact, and helped you get some good writing done. Stay tuned!

All the best & brightest,

Pssst, read Alexandria's other articles on Floodmark here.