Author Archive: j0ry

Upholding a Literary Tradition for the Third Year in a Row: Postcard Poems

For the past two years I hand sketched postcards for that most dreaded of holidays: St. Valentine’s Day.  I think I am one of the few people who insist on keeping the S-A-I-N-T on the holiday.  I don’t insist for religious reasons, more for tradition.  I am perfectly aware that the story of St. Valentine […]

Correspondence and Post in a Digital World

What good is a letter sent by snail mail these days?  Don’t get me wrong, most of us appreciate hand written letters.  They are such an unexpected pleasure to receive in an age of tweets, text messages and e-mail.  It takes time to put pen paper, label an envelope and hunt for stamps.  It’s much […]

New Year means New Poetry in New Journals!

I’m happy to announce that four of my poems in the “Carbonite Dream Series” are now in Issue #3 of Ghost Ocean Magazine.  Read the whole issue for free online at: http://www.ghostoceanmagazine.com/ Click on “Current Issue” and then you will see my name under poetry.  I am doubly pleased to see that Kathleen Rooney, one […]

Reading in the Gap: High Culture vs. Low Culture, Indie Music and CornNuts

The longer I am in my MFA program, the more I notice a distinction between what my classmates and I are reading and what members of my extended family are reading. While I was finishing Lyn Hejinian’s My Life and Zak Smith’s memoir We Did Porn, my relatives finished the third book in the Twilight […]

Guest Blogger: Poet, Artist and Mad Biolgist John Myers

  John Myers is a poet and developmental biologist who lives in Missoula, Montana. His manuscript, Cider Kit, was a finalist in Omnidawn’s 2010 Book Prize. He blogs at http://www.ineffectualeffigy.blogspot.com/ Writing is like collage, for me, and I work in both media. Writing is about recombination and surprise for me, and, because I have […]

Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Berlin Wall and Mixed Metaphors

Let me start out by saying that my situation is nothing like the division of Germany after WWII.  I have not been separated from the rest of my city, country or had my freedoms restricted by a totalitarian regime.  But the metaphor of wall may work. Some of you know that I have spent the […]

Why are You Still Wasting Your Time with This?

Second year MFA candidates read from their work at what people at the University of Idaho call a “symposium.” It is a chance for writers to showcase their work and share just what they are up to in their writing lives. After reading, students are asked questions about the pieces. There is also a potluck […]

Guest Blogger author ‘Nathan Burgoine shares about Queer Youth and the Arts

‘Nathan Burgoine is an ex-pat Brit living in Ottawa, Canada with his husband. His works appear in FOOL FOR LOVE (Cleis Press), edited by R.D. Cochrane and Timothy J. Lambert; I LIKE IT LIKE THAT (Arsenal Pulp Press), edited by Lawrence Schimel and Richard Labonte; 5×5 Literary Magazine; and I DO TWO (MLR Press) edited […]