A Fine Cider Toast 3/2/20, The One Where I Talk About What’s Happening This Month At Fullbeard Lit
Good evening, friends, guests, and readers of Fullbeard Lit. Some of you may have been wondering why things have been a bit sporadic around here; others may be curious about the Into My Own Series or why promised Poetry Analyses haven’t been done. All is well, quite simply, since the turn of the new year, my energies have been focused on the Go Dog Go Cafe, the brain child of mine and Christine Ray from Brave and Reckless. In my hermeticism where Sailor Poet retreated to become Captain Fullbeard, the Cafe was kept alive by Christine and the other Baristas in spite of my neglectful and/or erratic presence. In December, I reached out to Christine and asked her if the group would welcome me back, and when she said yes, I knew it was time to give the Cafe my attention, and so I have done.
I have also had a wicked head-cold that prevented me from getting a decent breath for like two months, and decided to pursue a teaching credential in English, and had some visits with my kids… etc. The standard reasons we all have when we ebb and flow from blogging. Nevertheless, I have been writing, a lot, as always… sometimes I am embarrassed to admit to how many files I have on my phone, in Scrivener, on my Google Drive, but as an indicator, the poetry folder in Notes on my iPhone has 169 separate files. So I writing poetry has never been the problem; collecting them into cohesive collections, submitting them, finishing them, stopping the constant editing… those are the problems. I finally submitted a collection to a regional competition, though, whoop whoop!
So, a few weeks back Donna Matthews at DJ Ranch asked me who decides which month is what. Like, who picked February to be Haiku month? And why NANOWRIMO and not like DENANOWRIMO or MANANOWRIMO? Whatever, I don’t know. March is Madness, Lent, St. Patrick’s Day all rolled into one. When I mixed them up I got… Gratitude. Who is/was mad enough to make the sacrifices to make me feel lucky to be alive? Gratitude… get it? So over the course of the month, I will be doing gratitudy things here, at the Cafe, in my private IG, etc. Why not do this in November, Eugi might ask? Well, Sailor Poet was still a hermit then, that’s why! LOL.
I am not sure how Gratitude will make his way here, maybe… some songs that influenced me to become a writer or some poems? Maybe I will finally do that Dead Poet’s thing? Perhaps just focus on supporting the hundreds of prompters out there by taking their prompts on? Not sure… but my focus remains on the Cafe, so if you don’t see me here, I will be there. Psst… Shameless plug… this Saturday, Tanya Cliff starts the new Writing Workshop series… please stop by, it’s going to be, as we say back home, wicked awesome!
Meanwhile, I will be writing. I have specific projects in progress that I am excited to announce. Both are like Chapbooks or blog-poetry-albums to be released over the course of a month… one in April and the next in May. April will see The Butcher released, a series of poems pulled from throughout my years of writing that touch on the journey I have been on from becoming a man I hated to destroying that man to recover as the one I feel I was meant to be. This will be a passionate and personal series of poems that I am eager to share. May will see me a long-delayed series of poems based on the Big Country Album, The Crossing.
Who knows, is the Into My Own series just the thing to show gratitude between the young poet and old, between my influences and me? I don’t know… we shall see. Regardless, keep reading, keep writing, and raise a glass of fine cider to toast the poet who must write in all of us!
— Stephen
18 Responses to “A Fine Cider Toast 3/2/20, The One Where I Talk About What’s Happening This Month At Fullbeard Lit”
Very informative! Thank you!
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Thank you for stopping by Barbara!
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Love the “gratitude” theme, Stephen! And I am grateful for the mention! 😂😘
👍🙏🙌🤗👐🤲👐🤗🙌🙏👍
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You trying to our finger me? You are very welcome. 🦶
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🦶🏻👣🦶🏻👣🦶🏻👣🦶🏻👣🦶🏻👣🦶🏻😘😂
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Looking forward to you new
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🤓🙏🙏🙏🤓thank you EC
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Good to see you back and the coming months promise to be action packed! 😀
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I hope so, but more importantly, I hope go dog go continues to grow!
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I am sure go dog go will continue to flourish! 😊
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🤓🙏🙏🙏🤓
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Sounds wonderful Stephen 🙂
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🤓🙏🙏🙏🤓 thank you Christine 🤓🙏🙏🙏🤓
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Let me know if you need a beta reader my friend! Rumor has it that I’m pretty good at that kind of stuff. 😉
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Will do, my friend, will do. I have to admit that every time I start I always end up feeling like something else is more important, needs my attention more. I wonder if this is what Russell Brand recently described as self-sabotage?
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Consider another step in taking yourself seriously as a writer and accepting that working on your manuscript is part of your job as a writer. I really struggled with making my own books a priority but you owe it to yourself
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I guess that I do, and since recovery is really about becoming the person you were meant to be, and since I keep using that Rilke quote about looking inside and figuring out that we must write. I guess, I must write… which means… I must give myself a chance… it’s all part of the recovery.
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on the title page of my 2020 bullet journal I wrote ‘I Deserve to be a Priority in my Own Life” It can be a hard message to embrace
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