Everything Writers Need | Writers of Kern
Written for International Day of Peace (September 21, 2021) video of the Peace Initiative, Bakersfield College
Portia Choi published a chapbook of her poems Sungsook, Korean War Poems. At Writers of Kern meetings, Choi met Helen Shanley and MaryLou Romagno who became good friends and mentors. Choi hosts First Friday Open Mic and publicizes National Poetry Month in April. She administers www.kernpoetry.com. Email at [email protected]
under stirring gnarled twinkling lights, the little room, the little poems, under goddamn bushes and adobe trailers, what’s desire or need or silence, a gut’s un-flitting storm? Look, I flinch when the wind comes. Listen to friction, it is treacherous, a platform leveling the mind, wooden and shapeshifting with each experience. A horror movie with multiple endings. I lock the doors. Hide upstairs. I listen to every creak, watch a shadow display its crooked skeleton, towering over my guise, it whispers to me: you let it crack you open, you want it to pill // pull everything out of you. one hard slice, one furious pop, and you’re nourishing the greediest parts you hid: sickle tongue, engine teeth. What climbs out is the beast, the torrent of antlers, sawdust, and fur, blood next, sure, always blood, guilty blood, undeniable blood, loud blood, pooling at the feet of the captor and the conspirator, that lives inside the hole you dug up to resurrect, they feast on all the dead bad parts of yourself you buried. Now look, goddamn, the newness, the old, the past, the future, right now, all scratching at once to get a glimpse of the mess, to witness the creature and its evolution, stretching alive and glowing, my god, the pulse.
Mateo Perez Lara is a queer, non-binary, Latinx poet from California. They received their M.F.A. in Poetry as part of the first cohort to graduate from Randolph College’s Creative Writing Program. They are an editor for Block Chronicles and a Communications Specialist for Nectar Digital Collaborative. They have a chapbook, Glitter Gods, published with Thirty West Publishing House. Their poems have been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, and elsewhere.
Your Poem on the Writers of Kern Blog
April is National Poetry Month if you’d like to include a poem in our blog for that month, please send an original poem. Established poets, emerging poets, and would-be poets all have the possibility of being published during the month. At the end of the month, all the poems published in our blog will be compiled into an online ezine and available to read and embed on your site for free.
Please send your poems to [email protected]
Guidelines:
You have questions? Please send them to: [email protected]
April Workshop: Writing Childhood
Course description
When writing memoir about childhood, or fiction with a child protagonist, how do we convey a child’s point of view and experience? What are the particular characteristics of child consciousness we need to capture? Do we use a child’s language or an adult’s? If we are writing in the voice of a first person child narrator, how do we transmit information beyond what the child understands? Author of the coming of age memoir, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me and Antioch college instructor, Deborah A. Lott, addresses these questions and others to enable us to create memorable and specific child characters, and to convey the perspectives, fantasies, and dilemmas of childhood. 90 minutes with ample examples from fiction and memoir and time at the end to discuss our own work.
Purchase tickets here: In Person $15 members $18 non-members | Zoom online $5
What some distinguished writers and reviewers have to say about Don’t Go Crazy without Me
“Deborah A. Lott’s Don’t Go Crazy without Me is funny, horrifying, and heartbreaking – and often surprisingly, all three at once. It’s an astonishingly vivid book, and to read it is to be caught up, just as the writer was, in an impossible, crazy, misfit family. Through grace and nerve and will, Deborah learns that you can’t “screw nature,” or “stop time,” as her father tried to do, “but you could turn your grief into love.” This writer’s love for her deeply screwed-up family is unforgettable. As the best memoirs do, Don’t Go Crazy without Me makes this writer’s story belong to all of us.”
Mark Doty, National Book Award Winner, author of the memoirs, Firebird, Dog Years, Heaven’s Coast, and multiple volumes of poetry.
“Don’t Go Crazy without Me is an extraordinary book. Deborah A. Lott writes about everything – parents, children, bodies, illness, sex, writing – with a voice that is utterly clear and beautiful and funny and original. This is a book written with honesty that will both break your heart and enlarge it.”
Karen E. Bender, National Book Award Finalist, and author of A Town of Empty Rooms, Refund, and Like Normal People.
“Deborah Lott writes with an intelligence that’s simultaneously hilarious, devastating, and generous. Don’t Go Crazy Without Me turns whatever we thought a memoir should do completely on its head and makes something glorious and fresh of the form. It reminds us why we need to laugh, especially in dark times.
Paul Lisicky, author of Later, The Narrow Door, and Lawnboy
“Sentence by sentence, Deborah A. Lott is one of the finest writers I know. Her keen insights into the dynamics of her quirky, unforgettable family, and into family dynamics in general, make this book bound to be a classic.”
Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters
“Brilliantly written with grace, generosity, and a highly refined sense of the absurd, Don’t Go Crazy without Me is the harrowing account of a chaotic, bewildering childhood. This reader was enthralled from the get-go and Deborah A. Lott is now one of my favorite writers and I kiss the hem of her garment.”
Abigail Thomas, author of Safekeeping, Three Dog Night, and What Comes Next and How to Like It
“A vivid, compelling, and highly provocative read, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me showcases the memoir as an art form.”
Jody Keisner, The Adroit Journal
“The deeper story, of Lott taking control of her body and thoughts and finding her voice, is what makes this memoir important. . . . Try it, you won’t put it down.”
Bettina Berch, Jewish Book Council
“Don’t Go Crazy Without Me is a fearless, fascinating story of self-discovery and reconciliation.”
Laurel Miriam, Hippocampus Magazine
“A candid, unsettling family portrait of madness and enduring love.”
Kirkus Review
Biography
Deborah A. Lott is the author of two books, In Session: the Bond Between Women and Their Therapists and the recently published tragicomic memoir, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me. For twelve years, she served as Senior Writer/Editor for the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.Her creative nonfiction and reportage have been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellingham Review, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, the Huffington Post, Salon, Tin House online, The Rumpus, Scoundrel Time, Psychology Today, the Writing Disorder, and many other places. “The Daddy-Cure” which was published in StoryQuarterly garnered Lott’s third Pushcart Prize nomination. Her work has also been thrice named as notables by Best American Essays. She now teaches literature and creative writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where she also serves as faculty adviser to Two Hawks Quarterly.com.
Writers of Kern is accepting applications March 19 through April 9 for the Peg Connelly grant for children’s writers residing in Kern County. The grant is given in memory of Writers of Kern’s long time member Peg Connelly who wrote for children. One winner will receive $500 to aid the writer in attaining writing goals.
To apply send the first five pages of your children’s work-in-progress (or the full text of a picture book) to [email protected] along with a cover letter answering the following questions:
1. What do you consider your strengths as a children’s writer?
2. What obstacles do you face as a writer?
3. What goals have you set for yourself as a writer?
4. If you are awarded the grant, how will you use the money to further your writing and achieve these goals?
Submissions must be correctly formatted, double-spaced with,12-point font. Only works in progress that have not been previously published will be considered. Do not send illustrations. Membership in Writers of Kern is not a requirement, but applicants must reside in Kern County. Direct any questions to Rebecca Langston-George at the email above. Please do not wait until the last day to ask questions. You will receive an email confirming receipt of your application. Winners will be announced at the April meeting. The judges reserve the right to not grant an award if they deem it appropriate due to insufficient entries.