When a Reporting Trip Inspires Poetry

As a journalist, I’ve been lucky to cover events that have been downright inspiring for my poetry. Here’s a story I did for the Times back in the day:

Listening to the Faint Flutter of Birds Passing in the Night

And here’s the poem that resulted. It appeared in the Paterson Literary Review and my most recent book, Rise Wildly, from CavanKerry Press.

World Premier, Nocturnal Bird Migration Concert

–Metro Assignment, Prospect Park, Brooklyn

On high highways of wind, three to five billion

birds head north for the summer, sometime

singing, calling through fog, short tseeps

hard to distinguish, impossible to ignore.

Focus your spotting scope on the full moon

to see them whiz by, but that’s like watching

baseball through binoculars locked at first base.

They appear, tiny dots, benevolent squalls

on Doppler radar if you know how to look.

Why bother seeing a four-inch finch 500 feet up,

when the clamor, everywhere, reaches for miles?

Why not just listen, past midnight, past words?

The sounds form their own cartography.

If you’re an hour north of a lake, you’ll hear

birds for an hour, then a lake-shaped, hour-shaped

silence, since few birds depart from water,

then raucous hellos from the southern shore.

Listening, hearing: acts of fond hope.

Rise Wildly, Let Loose!

Hello blog readers, Hope you are well! Big news here, the page for my next poetry book, Rise Wildly, is going live today! It’s due out October 6 from CavanKerry Press, and I am so in awe of the whole process, especially the cover and design, which I adore, (thank you Judith Bergerson for the art and Ryan Scheife for the design) and the editing, which was thoughtful and wise (thank you Baron Wormser and Joy Arbor!)

You can pre-order it as of today! Please do! There’s a 20% discount if you sign up for CavanKerry’s newsletter. The book’s $18 and sales support the non-profit press, which has the refreshing motto, Lives Brought to Life.

The book includes poems from Adanna, Alaska Quarterly Review, Battery Journal, Blinders Journal, Cimarron Review, Ekphrastic Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Juxtaprose, Midnight Oil, MER VOX, Mom Egg Review, North American Review, On the Seawall, One, Paterson Literary Review, Porter Gulch, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, TheRumpus.net, Shrew, Terra Incognita, U City Review, and US 1 Worksheets.

(Time out! Do you know how many rejection slips that list represents? Holy moley. I have about a .100 batting average, so the above yesses appear after many many nos!)

The oldest poem here dates to the late 80s, honoring a mixed tape of poetry an old boyfriend made for me, and there are several from my reporting days at The New York Times, plus some as recent as late 2019. They feel all very pre-COVID, with groups of people gathering close together.

I hope you enjoy them!

Rise Wildly, Due in October!

I am so excited to share the cover of my fourth poetry collection, coming October 6, 2020, from CavanKerry Press!

Upcoming Readings

Hi, I’m excited to announce the following readings, featuring poems from Abloom & Awry, my new collection, out last month from CavanKerry Press. Please show up if you can! And please tell your friends who live in the various neighborhoods.

Saturday, May 27, 2017 at 7 PM I’ll be reading with Anton Yakovlev, courtesy of the North Jersey Literary Series, at Classic Quiche Café, 330 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck, New Jersey. Open Mic will follow. There’s a $10 minimum, come early and enjoy a relaxing meal. Café phone is 201- 692- 0150. Anton’s latest poetry collection is Ordinary Impalers (Aldrich Press, 2017) and he has authored two chapbooks: Neptune Court (The Operating System, 2015) and The Ghost of Giant Wood (Finishing Line Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Prelude, Measure, and elsewhere.

Sunday, May 28, I’ll be reading at Mamapalooza, in Riverside Park South. I’ll be joining a group of writers from Mom Egg Review, time to be announced. The Festival’s theme is “SING OUT SISTER” with mothers and the people who love them, featuring music, family-focused vendors, wellness activities, art, & activism. 2017’s theme inspires all to find their voice and bring a message of peace, tolerance, and equality. Fierce FEMINISTS as well as FAMILIES of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds WELCOME.

On Tuesday, June 6 I’ll be joining Joan Cusack Handler and Danny Shot at the Cornelia Street Underground, 29 Cornelia Street in New York City, at 6 p.m. Joan is the publisher of CavanKerry Press and her most recent book, Orphans, is a verse memoir that explores our most primitive and essential relationships – those with our parents. Danny’s next book, Works, comes out from CavanKerry in 2018, and he is the poet-in-residence of the Hoboken Museum.

Saturday, June 10, I’ll be moderating a panel for the first ever Maplewood South Orange Book Festival. Poets Theresa Burns, Michael Lally, Danny Shot, BJ Ward and I will be sharing work that focuses on justice, resistance, and/or ways to bolster spirits and protect the disenfranchised in uncertain times. Post-election, poetry has emerged as a way to channel the uncertainty that comes with regime change. The panel is at 10 a.m. in the Burgdorff Center, 10 Durand Rd, Maplewood, NJ 07040.

Sunday, June 11 I’ll be reading at the Books NJ 2017 festival, at the Paramus Public Library. Check out the schedule of other terrific writers here.

Looking further ahead, I’ll be reading on Friday, July 7 at my home-away-from-home bookstore (am ever loyal to Words in Maplewood) That’s in Seattle, Elliott Bay Books at 7 pm.

On Tuesday, October 24 at 7 p.m. I’ll be reading at the Highland Park Library Poetry Night Series.

I’m very open to other opportunities to read, please let me know! Hope to see you at one of these upcoming events!

Abloom & Awry on the Launchpad

As I head down to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference, where poet-extroverts get to bask in their elements, I am excited to share news of Abloom & Awry, my third poetry collection, which will appear in early April.

Here’s what the one-pager says about it:

With the eye of a journalist and the heart of a caretaker, Kelley shares her love of words, fireworks, kites, sea salt caramels, metaphor, and humans. Armed with a generative impulse, her poems pay close attention to the dark, moving through it with wit and affirmation….Journalistic sparseness and accuracy are framed with childhood’s wit and curiosity to roll around in decay, music, and love.

You can order advanced copies here!

I already have two readings planned, and am looking for more. There’s this one on March 26 at the Bernardsville Public Library, where I will be interviewed by Julie Maloney of Women Reading Aloud, and on home turf, at Words Bookstore in Maplewood on April 22. Hope you can make it!

CavanKerry Press, which is publishing Abloom & Awry, has been nominated for a Small Press Publisher Award, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they win!

Introducing Abloom & Awry!

I’m very excited to announce that my third collection of poetry, Abloom & Awry, will be published next spring by CavanKerry Press, one that I have aimed for over the years, a Jersey press that makes some of the most handsome poetry books out there. I am pleased to be joining the company of Joan Cusack Handler, Teresa Carson, Baron Wormser, Nin Andrews, Ross Gay, Mary Ruefle, and John Haines, among others.

The title poem of the collection won The New Jersey Poets Prize two years ago, and some of the others have appeared or are appearing soon in Belletrist, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crab Creek Review, Cream City Review, Connecticut Review, the Journal of NJ Poets, Poetry East, NYtimes.com, Stillwater Review, The Southwest Review, and US 1 Worksheets, among other journals. They’ve also appeared in anthologies like The Crafty Poet, Fire on her Tongue, and Intimacy by Jacar Press.

I am looking forward to proofreading and doing readings and carting boxes of books around. I’m also looking forward to making way for the new by getting rid of the old – if you haven’t read my two earlier books, The Gospel of Galore and Precise, please consider buying them now! I’m offering free shipping if you buy both, for $35. Or a 15 percent off sale, for either. Click here to buy Precise, and you can order either through that link. Thanks!