Reveals and challenges
If you’re looking for a clever subtitle, keep looking.
A lot has happened in the past six weeks, so I’ll try to catch you up on it all.
In case you missed it on social media, I’ve revealed the cover of my book, What Haunts Me, which you can now preorder at this link. Other ordering options for folks outside the U.S. will be announced soon, but I’m also hoping to have a launch in Berlin later this year where my local peeps will be able to buy it in person.
Thanks to Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Sandra Beasley, and Sean Thomas Dougherty for their generous blurbs and to April Gloaming Publishing and Constance Sellers for the evocative book design!
------
It’s a busy time for my nine-to-five job – gearing up to attend a conference in the U.S. and producing a magazine special edition for it. Outside of that, I’ve been pushing forward with publicity for What Haunts Me, sending ARCs to reviewers, and pitching myself for interviews.
I also recently got a new author photo – the first in about 15 years!
Thanks to Kateryna Myronenko for a very productive photo shoot. The 3.5 hours flew by and resulted in many photos that I can use for multiple purposes. Here’s the one that ultimately made it to the author page in the book:
August is also Sealey Challenge month, in which many folks try to read a poetry book each day: 31 books! While I don’t have that kind of time on my hands, I have read 13 and am on the fourteenth. Here’s the list so far:
From the Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, vol. II FOOD, edited by Karren Alenier
Kings Highway, by Nancy Naomi Carlson
Cuffed Frays & Other Poems, by Grace Cavalieri
A Life on Its Own Line, by Corrado Calabrio, translated into English by Moira Egan and Damiano Abeni
Sonnets from the Portuguese, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Life and Death of Poetry, by Kelly Cherry
Loose Woman, by Sandra Cisneros
Middle Earth: Poems, by Henri Cole
The Apple that Astonished Paris, by Billy Collins
What There Is, by Christopher Conlon
Of Whiskey and Winter, by Peter Conners
Slow Lightning, by Eduardo C. Corral
In the Carnival of Breathing, by Lisa Fay Coutley
Between Gods, by Donna Lewis Cowan
I’ll send a pic of the whole stack at the end of the month. If you’ve read any poetry collections lately that you’d recommend, please let me know in the comments. I am always looking for my next poetry purchase.
Interesting fact: Elizabeth’s poems were never actually written in Portuguese. Robert Browning called her his “little Portuguese,” so the title of the collection is a nod to this little reference between them.
In case you missed it
My craft essay, “Circling the Drain: The Movement from Idea to Essay,” was published on the Brevity Blog earlier this week. I love reading the comments from those who stopped by to share their own feelings about their writing process.
Also, Lamp Lit published my poem "The Most Beautiful Clown in the Circus," which was inspired by my visit to the David Bowie exhibit at Gropius Bau several years ago, where I got to see his Pierrot costume. Bowie had told the designer to make him "the most beautiful clown in the circus." How could I pass that up for inspiration? Read the poem and the entire issue of the magazine online here.
Wishing you a great end to the summer! As always, thanks for reading.
----------
Bernadette Geyer is the author of the poetry collection The Scabbard of Her Throat (The Word Works) and editor of My Cruel Invention: A Contemporary Poetry Anthology (Meerkat Press). Her poems and translations have appeared in Barrow Street, Bennington Review, The Massachusetts Review, The MacGuffin, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Bernadette’s fiction and essays have been published in Westerly, The Smart Set, and Gargoyle. Her audio essay, Leisepark, was broadcast in the “Wednesdays, 3 p.m.” series on KCRW Berlin.
Bernadette’s second poetry collection – What Haunts Me – is forthcoming in October 2025 from April Gloaming Publishing.
You can pre-order it at the following link: https://aprilgloaming.com/shop/what-haunts-me/
Here’s a look at the blurbs on the back cover…
