...In-between sets from poet Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow

January 7, 2013

The Red Hen Press Poetry Award and Me


SENSATIONAL NEWS!!

I have won the RED HEN PRESS POETRY AWARD for my poem “Super Dan Comics Question Box Series #18.”

I am so elated I'm practically speechless. And for a poet, I assure you, this is hardly ever a predicament. I am profoundly beholden to the editors at Red Hen Press for selecting my poem as a finalist, enabling it to be chosen as the winner by the final judge, Cynthia Hogue.  Thank you to Cynthia for choosing my poem for this amazing honor from a powerful pool of entrants that made it to finalist status. This award is especially gratifying because the competition is a completely “blind competition,” from the minute the entries hit the desk at the Red Hen Press offices. A blind competition is important to us in the literary community because it’s immeasurably significant for a poet to know that the poem alone speaks for itself - and nothing else, no identifying authorial information whatsoever, colors its potency. Just the lines on the page. I am over-the-moon with joy that my poetry has impressed the editors at Red Hen Press – bless you!, Editor-in-chief Kate Gale, and Judge Cynthia Hogue. You bet I’ll be thrilled to come out to LA to visit the offices, meet Kate, and the other editors, and staff. Don’t have to ask me twice!

The Los Angeles Review, Issue #14, will publish “Super Dan Comics…#18”, and if I’m not mistaken, also the runners-up, along with a fine collection of wonderful work by other poets and writers.  Please pick up or order a copy! Support the written arts – and welcome to the world a wise alien new to our planet, making his rounds in the “Super Dan Comics Question Box Series.”  Hurrah!

The “Super Dan Comics Question Box Series” is a sequence of poems occupying one section of my new verse collection-in-progress, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2016.

Background on Award:
The Red Hen Press Ruskin Poetry Award is named after John Ruskin, and in honor of The Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles, CA. The Ruskin Art Club, founded in 1888, is Los Angeles’ oldest cultural association.  Its 1922 clubhouse was declared a Los Angeles Historical Monument in 1997. 

So this is what it looks like on the other side of the moon. Fabulous!



January 4, 2013

2013 and Ringing In the Brand New

2013. Brand new year. Brand new poetry news. I await the public announcement before I can share this good fortune with all of you. How many times have I said how blessed I feel on this blog? Probably a dozen, by now. And I've only been at this for a year. Every single day is a day of appreciation.








That's how much I feel the spirit.  I know someone who once told me, "If you just don't turn around the other way, you'll get there." Of course, we always hope that to be true. Once in a while, it isn't.  Most times, surprisingly, we get there, if allotted the time and energy to do so. Just don't stop. You'll get there. Why don't we go together?