Field Recordings

For the month of August, Tupelo Press has asked me to write a new poem a day for 30 days. During the month you can donate money towards keeping small presses alive. Small donations count! I have to raise $350 bucks for the month. It's a marathon, not a sprint. I'll also be taking commissions for the month of August. Make a donation and I'll write a poem about whatever you want. You can check out the innovative fund raiser here .

From a poem a day project I did in 2011. A response to a visual work of performing arts. A kind of Ekphrasis. Micah Watterson is a former student of theater at Northampton High School, where he was active playing numerous roles in my early days as a theatre teacher on the Eastern Shore. Ambitious, eager and thoughtful, he has done numerous Shakespeare roles since playing Romeo in my NEA funded grant project that turned Romeo and Juliet into a rock musical for teens. (As Romeo, the first we see of him is a busker strumming “No Woman. No Cry."—Juliet, played by Raven Bonniwell, sang “Walking After Midnight") His one man show Roughly Hamlet inspired this: when skull and humor combine then the divine shall bless our lips and seal our embrace and offer kisses to small nations who still believe. When spine and heart divine a way through the avenues of the broad city, spiking out like a heart attack, the girl aloof, hiding in the back of the theatre, the romance on...

A promotional reading of one of the poems from The Black Narrows. I also discuss some of themes of the book, and the steampunk inspiration behind some of the imagery. You can find more information on the Key Poetry Series here.

The trailer is out. Check it . Clips provided and purchased via VidLab. Trailer is intellectual property of S Scott Whitaker. Music composed by Proxy17, S Scott Whitaker using Garageband App & Soundcloud. Buy the book here.

The trailer is out. Check it . Clips purchased and provided by VidLab. Trailer is intellectual property of S Scott Whitaker. Music composed by S Scott Whitaker using Garageband App & Soundcloud.

We have heard your answer and will meet it with chops. Find us beyond the lea, in southern country where tongues like wicks do so many pleasurable motions with our mouths. We make blush a continuous virtue. You could not lie when faced with so much desire. We know this is true. We know what it is like to have love returned to us like an arm in a box from a botched military operation. The limb packed in dry ice and neatly washed as if it could just attach itself to any body with need. We know what to do with such rituals, we have two celebrations, one for the body and the other for the lonely part that only wants to be reunited, back to we, back to love, back to art. We keepers, we misers, our club of a club, our ivy board club. Poetry is a dialogue between the poet and the breath, any more is good bread indeed.

The quotidian project closed last month. Read a little about it here , and here . It's been fun. Which was the heart of the whole project in the first place. T he Black Narrows is available. It's summer. No more daily writing of poems,but I'm revising and editing, which is where the real work lies. Thank you for reading, sharing, and discussing the poems or the project. I'll still post poems and short stories on Figment and Wattpad regularly, I promise. Special thanks to Seasofme and Lisaner, especially for their kind Wattpad comments, and occasional editorial notes. I'll be grinding out some YA/Speculative Fiction of the big and broad and magical variety. It's been cooking and all I can really say is: sharks, giant spiders, mermaids, airships, and a house that forgot it was a boat. Stay tuned. Soon there will be a book trailer for my first, well reviewed, but hardly read Seven Days on the Mountain. It's cool making movies. Takes time. Lots ...