Monday, June 9, 2014

June 9th - Welcome to 2014 Virtual Blog Tour - This stop Lido Beach, NY.




WELCOME TO  "IMAGINE" MY SMALL PIECE OF THIS SPINNING BLUE MARBLE WE ALL SHARE




I'm delighted to see that you've all landed here safely from your different points in our collective connected global cyber-community. Welcome (!)  one and all to this tour "Imagine" - made possible through a most kind invitation by a "kindred writing spirit"- none other than Walt Wojtanik, whom many of us already know very well from this wonderful cyber-world in which we all write, share, commiserate and congratulate.  Incidentally, anyone who has not made the acquaintance of the mult-talented Mr. W.W.   I would suggest that they leave here immediately and go to one of the following sites provided below and get to know Walt ASAP.

Several weeks ago Walt asked if I would consent to present my blog for a "tour," and so here we are.  Throw your coat over a chair or on the railing and follow me.  You'll see that although there are hundreds and hundreds of poems here and pictures which I've mainly found through Public Domain Images and the ocassional personal photo, - there really isn't much else - unless you'd like to stroll over and take a peek at some things I've had published, and some limericks which I've enjoyed writing to prompts supplied by Madeline Begun Kane, who is an enormously talented writer.
I believe the idea of this virtual tour was begun by Laurie Kolp, (if I am incorrect I shall correct) with whom I shared a wonderful mutual cheerleading session several NaNoWriMo Challenges ago which I shall never forget - as we both pulled each other over the finish line.  But, I am beginning to ramble.  I'd like to echo the sentiments of Walt, as he spoke to the fact that we as a writing community give life and audience and support to continue creating.  I believe that this cyber community is very far from virtual - it is real, and powerful and actual and, in my case, has resulted in taking my poetry from a pass-time and venue for personal communication to traveling on my way to becoming a 'real' poet with a good number of poems now published in online and print journals, a couple of anthologies I had the pleasure of participating in and editing,  and a live reading coming up this summer at a poetry festival.  This would not have happened without the online community we all enjoy - but I am continuing to ramble, so I'd like to ask you all to come back for a moment, I see some of you wandering around looking out the window, trying to pet Oliver, the cat, no he won't scratch, but he is not all the fond of being fondled ...
                                                                      Oliver 

Please visit Walt at one or all of his blogs and get ready to pre-order the collection that he is now busily organizing - it is sure to be a wonderful read!  

THANK YOU AGAIN WALT FOR THE HONOR OF THIS INVITATION :) 







Bio: Walt Wojtanik 
Walter Wojtanik has been a writer since age 13. Starting out with lyrics penned for melodies he composed on keyboards, he realized that his words sang on their own. He can claim the title “playwright” thanks to three of his plays being performed by local theater groups around his native Buffalo. He was named the 2010 Poet Laureate for the Writer’s Digest.com/ Poetic Asides April Poem-A-Day Challenge. Walt’s Memoir Project Chapbooks : YOLO and WOODWalt’s Blogs:Through the Eyes of a Poet’s Heart http://wojisme.wordpress.comI AM SANTA CLAUS http://iamsantaclaus.wordpress.com
I'll now properly give a final thank you to Walt Wojtanik for inviting me to share in this virtual blog tour and I'll now get around to answering the four questions which I was asked:  Follow me....




1.         What am I currently working on?
I am currently working on trying to think about how to organize 1,000 poems into a collection of books that will have some sort of hook that will peak the interest of readers to actually buy and read them. I have a potential title for a first collection (Wonderland) continuing my ongoing fascination with Alice and walking through the looking glass in my mind.  I have two novels completed during the past three years, one inspired by the Kaitlin series of poems about a raped and murdered four-year-old that some of you might remember (with more or less distaste) from a past PAD challenge, the other is based on another character Josie who "appeared" to me - Now perhaps I am simply being visited by the spirits of little girls and there really are no stories to be told - mhmmmm.   Well, putting the disturbing possibility on the side for the moment, I abashedly admit that I showed each novel ONCE to a major house where they were (kindly) passed over and never worked on them again!  I am currently seriously working on working on them or finally giving them a proper burial.



2.         How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I am not precisely certain where my genre lies and so I suppose that is where the difference lies. Okay, that was a flippant non-answer:  Hmmm my poetry differs in that it seems to dance a great deal with the concepts of death and rebirth - dark and light, innocence and loss, both literally and metaphorically. I think that these are fairly simplistic and obvious concepts inherent in being a human being who is currently alive and perhaps harbors some hope of some sort of rebirth or continuance in order to forestall a major event of chronic existential angst, never mind the tremendous narcissistic injury in contemplating my own eventual non-being.  



3.         Why do I write/create what I do?

I write because I must write.  I know this sounds trite, so I'll elaborate just a bit - I think that for me, writing is an organizing envelope where the flotsam and flickerings of falling shimmering thoughts fall into some sort of order rather than simply whirling. 



4.         How does my writing/creating process work?

Writing nonfiction is a matter of having an idea, researching and then being able to tolerate a sense of nothing making sense and waiting while gazillions of pieces of glittering shards of bright stuff float about and then the incredibly wonderful feeling when suddenly they fall together, as though magnetized into a framework and an order which then needs to simply be transcribed.  Writing novels has been a dream since early childhood, and I have been able to FINALLY in the past few years to be graced with two separate characters that "came" to me along with their "story." - ... but I do not find it as simple a process as other writing - in fact the harder I work the less I enjoy what I have written.  In the interim between publishing nonfiction and the life-long struggle to write "that" novel ... I have always written poetry.  When I say always I mean from very early childhood. Yet, oddly I never considered myself a poet (or in fact poetry 'writing').  Rather, I used poetry as a way of communicating or commemorating important events and/or feelings for myself and mostly as gifts to, or about, others.  I claim no credit for the ease with which poetry comes to me, most often I have no real idea where these poems come from, I write and as I'm writing I tweak here and there.  Over the past few years of venturing out and sharing poetry publicly - and having a good deal of good fortune in being published in more than a few literary journals - I am beginning to suspect that I have been a poet all along - back to the process... I look at a prompt, or have a thought, stop still for a moment, feel a rush, and then go to the keyboard or paper or whatever and then write quickly without stopping.  I do believe that poetry is an alternate language for me (and others) - meaning that whereas traditional language is linear - poetry more closely approximates (at least for me) the way thoughts appear before they must be edited into linear understandable language - poetry on the other hand allows for multi-level communication involving images and fragments of images that taken in totality lend a richer sense of experience.  Practically speaking,  I usually write on an IMAC in a room which is dedicated to writing - my desk is a caddy-cornered affair and faces the corner of the the intersections of the wall with a window to my left.  

Of course - like anyone else when an idea strike in the shower or on the porcelain throne - or in bed - I have my IPAD at hand to write it into notes or will jot something down on any writing surface that is handy.  There are too many times in my life where I have either woken or had an idea in the middle of the night or early morning and was sure that I would 1) either remember it clearly ... I didn't or 2) that it had no merit .... when I began writing down these random thoughts it often turned out that they did have some merit.  Soooo.... I try to catch what I can as it comes.  That is about it folks, if you've followed along to this point, I thank you deeply and hope I haven't wasted too much of your time boring you with these musings.







Still here?   I've now (finally) come to the end of this tour and I'm sure you now know all and quite possibly more than you could ever want to know about both my projects, person, and process.  And, so without further ado I'd like to introduce my three selections of excellent blogs that I believe you would greatly enjoy visiting and learning more about the process S.E. Ingraham, Barbara Ehrentreu, and Richard Fenwick, three very different and wonderful poetic voices.  

And now here is a visiting marching band who have kindly agreed to introduce...... 
Peter Griffin


S.E. (Sharon Ingraham, Barbara Ehrentreu and Richard Fenwick) .... 
who will be describing their works in progress and their writing process on their blogs next Monday, June 16th. 





S.E. (Sharon) Ingraham 
http://whenthepenbleeds.blogspot.ca/?zx=d36f092f50b54848


S.E. Ingraham, a retired mental health consumer, pens poems from the 53rd parallel, where she lives with the love of her life, as well as a very old wolf/border-collie.  Recently, she's had work published in a number of online and print journals:  Poetic Pinup Revue, Free Fall Literary Mag, Tic Toc, Something's Brewing, In Gilded Frame, Storm Cycle-the Best of 2013, and From Kind Of a Hurricane Press, to name a few.  She recently won the 2013 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry contest, but her proudest achievement is a side-walk poem that will leave her words "written in stone" on a walkway near where her grandsons live. 







Bio: Barbara Ehrentreu
http://barbaraehrentreu.blogspot.com

Barbara lives with her family in Stamford, CT. She is the author of a young adult novel, If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor and has another novel, When My Life Changed, also young adult, coming this fall. She has contributed to Prompted: An International Collection of Poetry and Beyond the Dark Room. Several of her poems are published in various magazines online. Poetry comes to her when she needs to express what she is feeling.
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Bio:  Richard Fenwick 
http://www.ruiningsterner.com


I’m a Russian translator and work with Holocaust survivors from the former-Soviet Union. My first collection of poems is “Around the World Without a Sail,” and my second collection will be out by the end of the year. I live in Tucson, Arizona, and escape twice a year to Black Mountain, North Carolina, where I conspire with the mountains.







Thank you all for visiting, if you've left anything behind just give me a call and I'll be happy to send it back to you as soon as possible.  

Happy writing and it was wonderful to have to you visit.   

With all my appreciation and a heavy sprinkling of 
love pearl


I'm going to get out of this hammock swim out, lift anchor and sail off for now....











Looking forward to your feedback 
:)

pkp 

17 comments:

  1. What fun! I enjoyed strolling your space & hearing about your writing process, Pearl -- and the pics were delightful! (I think I left my shoes beside the hammock. I'll be back later to pick them up.) ;)

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    1. Thanks - delighted that you stopped by .... I do think that I noticed a rather large iguana munching the sole of a shoe just about an hour ago - so sorry ... I'll keep an eye out ! :)

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  2. I have landed here earlier this morning, strolled for a while through Imagine, enjoyed the surroundings, went for my day’s work, and came back this evening to stroll some more – your space feels so appealing… I was impressed, once again, by your creativity, your productivity, your genuineness, your warmth, your graciousness, your generosity… I love the way you describe the process and meaning of poetry and identify with the focus of your writing (and of your being) -- death and rebirth, dark and light, innocence and loss… I am impressed by Oliver’s photo (no, I did not try to pat him, but I did gaze intently into his amazing eyes, though he did not give me even a node of recognition…) Sail on, my dear friend. My love follows you.

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    1. Awww Nurit - Thank you! What a delightful and poetic comment - and written in the spirit of this "tour" - So very much appreciated. Much love <3

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  3. Nice interview. I like the way you answered number three with first the Standard answer of most writers and then with a more poetic reply.

    By all means, get back to those novels. (Not that I would know but) I hear the first draft is the hardest and the Revision eventually fall into place. (Or maybe people lied to get me started writing) But in any case, I think you'd make a great novelist.

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  4. Wow - you're tour stop is gorgeous...I don't think I'm going to pull anything this grand out of my hat but as I told Iain Kemp, you've given us something to aspire to...

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    1. Aw Sharon - you are a sweetie - I think though, you might be confusing your headshot with my tour stop :)

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  5. I'll give this another shot. Happy to have had you accept my invitation to open the doors to this marvelous place. When I was asked by Laurie Kolp to participate, I knew one person for sure I wanted to ask. That was you. Your expressiveness and vivid verbal pictures (along with your outstanding photos) made that a no brainer. And your process? Exemplary! It's no wonder you put out such wonderful work. Thanks for the tour and continuing the journey.

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    1. Awwwww - I was up for most of the night last night and went back to the beginning of "The Street". you were special then - more so now.... Thanks for the opportunity - delighted you enjoyed and blush blush on your accolades!!!

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  6. So glad you shared the link to this post, Pearl! It was fun to read about all the varied projects on which you are working. The creative process is a multi-faceted one for sure! :)

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    1. Thanks Patricia - Hear that you're up next.... Looking forward - be sure to post :)

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  7. Great stop! I loved hearing about your writing process. Funny how we are all so different in our approach. It sounds like poetry simply flows from you, whereas it is a painstaking process for me.

    Lido Beach is lovely and very much suits you, Pearl! We'll be talking again soon (wink wink)...

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  8. Whew! I am so glad to see this site back up and unscathed...I was getting a serious loath-on for Go Daddy...(hate-on sounds so last year)...I'm joking about it but I was dismayed for you. And probably a bit worried for all of us who seem to store a great deal of our lives on our computers...or set a great store in our lives on computer...hmm. I'm still trying to decide how to back up what I have in a somewhat methodical way that will make it easy to access but not too cumbersome to keep around, you know? Anyhow, as you can probably tell, my mind is spinning ahead of my thoughts a bit. Need some down-time methinks. Just wanted to weigh in and welcome you back!

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    1. Awww as soon as I get a chance I'll write a little piece on what I suspect actually happened and it does feel a bit nefarious. First, I have some promises to keep to folks to write a blurb and a Foreward. Thanks so much for your concern for me and of course I am sorry that I awakened alarm in so many others who keep things stored on the computer. I'm trying to figure out the best way of backing up content myself. Thanks again for all your support :)

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  9. So happy to be a part of this tour. I posted, but I haven't promoted it at all since I only had one person who could participate. However, I think I have another one so I'll be updating my post and republishing it when this is all set. I decided to do this when I saw your beautiful post and of course, anything Walt is involved in I want to be in too!! Thanks for inviting me and at least I hope one person has posted.

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