Tag: writing

Let’s Talk Womanhood…3.31.15

What is Womanhood? The question hangs over the head of our daughters with anxious anticipation. The youthful mind dividing itself into sections of experience: first date, first love, marriage, and children. We split ourselves into portions and gamble off pieces that do not fit. We grow old and still we find this question lingering against the frontal lobe of our minds, and occupying the mental space of our thoughts. “What is Womanhood?” It is a question we believe can be answered inside the quite deception tugging away at the purchase of cigarettes, the buying of liquor, the entering of the club scene or the mixing of our flesh with another’s. What does it mean to truly become a woman?

It has never been so exciting to ponder these questions in a time such as now. In just two weeks, together we’ll get to experience the questions themselves, and like short poems that tease our taste buds with instant melody, how delicious is the involvement.

This is not just a collection of poetry, but of inspirational quotes, and raw experience. It is the story of her.

Her Love. Her Man. Her Children. Her Womanhood.

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Copyright ©2015.Yecheilyah

Available 3.31.15.
theliterarykorner.com

Blogger Conferences?

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This may already exist, making this post completely irrelevant in which case you could be doing something more valuable with your time. Though I do hope you’re sacrificing a minute or two to hear this amazing idea of mine that probably already exist. 🙂

What if someone could organize a Bloggers Conference? I know there are a lot of them, but this is not just any conference. Not just a community of writers sitting around tables listening to boring PowerPoint presentations from “professionals” that cost you rent money to attend, I’m talking about a fun meet-up of the bloggers you interact with daily. A stream of writing activities, individual business workshops for you to sell your material, and exciting activities against the backdrop of a relaxed atmosphere. A place where bloggers, who may not be writers in the organized sense, can come together and meet face to face. And to top it all off this is an event that is funded & supported by….you guessed it: Bloggers. We can set a date (preferably in the summer) and vote on a central location that could better assist our goals for this event. We can set up committees to assist with food, funding, transportation, activities, & promotion. A conference like this can even give us the opportunity to have an Award ceremony in which we are able to give each other tangible awards. Depending on its success, this can be something for bloggers to repeat once a year and be less expensive to attend.

 

The Twins Had a Brother

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dem twins lived around the corner
boys
chocolate
tall and smooth skinned like
dem twins
didn’t know they had a brother tho
till word got round bout the mind he left on his mother’s front porch
that ain’t a metaphor
his brains divided itself between the concrete and front porch of his mother’s front yard
I heard the dice did it
the way it be running across the concrete
acted like it didn’t know better
than to come walking out the palms of hands
like it didn’t smell the misery of struggle between the cracks
like it ain’t hear the whispering of people on top the rocks
feel the oppression slipping outta the hands of wanna be gangsta’s
why it ain’t just stop before turning up numbers
maybe dem twins woulda still had a brotha
it was a block of them that seen it
almost as normal as a street fight
the way lives don’t matter in the hood
all because of dice
and dollar bills
ain’t know dollars were so expensive
till it expended ole boys life
I wonder if he rolled a seven or eleven
Wonder what he ate for dinner last
Or how that dolla ended up in his pocket
Or if the dolla knew what was coming
But anyway it was a block of them who seen it
some got carried off to hide outs from ole boy
and some was taken out of school
I wanted to go too
go away from the stench of prophecy behind my house
away from the Isaiah’s and Deuteronomy’s leaning against they mama’s voice
making it sound all crazy like
and dem Leviticus’s standing on the corner
akin like the ground wasn’t still warm from ole boys blood
just around the corner from my house
when I found out
that the twins had a brotha

Welcome

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I picked up your scent going out the door this morning. I should have known that the impulse of a summer dress, short sleeved and cool, and the sliding of my foot into sneakers meant you were not far away. Instead, I would let my sweater drape over my arm and sniff the moisture you left hanging in the air. It wasn’t very bright out, but budding flowers and children laughing was enough. Did not need to see the sun lean its body dramatically over the clouds to feel the heat of spring on my skin. Bright colored birds sang a joyful tune on into the sky, and the curtains moved against the window sill just as seductively as the tree branches swayed leaves to and fro. And as my husband presents me with a pot of African violet, with petals all soft and blooming, and my neighbors resurrect house chairs for a spot on the porch, I know that spring has arrived. Welcome.

Photography

My beautiful sister Pamela
My beautiful sister Pamela, Photo by EC

Honestly, I can’t teach your ways to anyone, nor do I know much about you. I don’t talk about you a lot either, or cough up revelations about how I came to enjoy the way your eyes capture and then freeze our lives. I do remember however our first real encounter. It was the 11th grade. Mrs. Luno coupled us for the school yearbook, and we walked the hallways of Harper High School like we had been together for years. You wrapped your arms around my neck and let my pupils kiss your face. Together we recorded, froze, and transformed time into memory. We followed Jesse Jackson and Arnie Duncan through interviews and meetings. You even let me choose what to see and hold you in my arms during assemblies, plays, and basketball games. Letting me control the way your body felt in my hands, and in seconds we created images both tangible and symbolic; both real and fantasy. It was the first time I came to appreciate this kind of relationship with technology. We had so much in common: Your shutter and my pupil, your film and my retina, and our capacity to record the past; your memory card, and my brain. I still don’t completely understand you, but goodness, don’t I love holding the camera!

Self-Publishing Questions?

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Do you have Self-Publishing or Poetry Questions for The PBS Blog?

Send me your emails at ahouseofpoetry@gmail.com and I will answer them live on my blog. Be sure to send me your contact information so we know where to find you. In the meantime, let’s take a look at our first question:

“As a Self-Publisher, do you think it’s worth it to try to get your books into the bookstores?”

In my opinion, No.

Put it this way: A Self-Publisher is a manufacturer. Bookstores are retailers. In the end I suppose it’s about one’s individual definition of success, but in truth, brick and mortars like Wal-Mart may get you the attention you need and the popularity, but you make more money distributing your books yourself even if its by way of POD publishing. You may not exactly be “making it rain”, but you have the potential to receive a royalty check for the number of books you sold. And naturally, the more books you produce, the more money you have the potential to make. You’ll get royalties from every book every month depending on which ones sold and how many of them sold the month prior. My advice is to simply skip the bookstore thing because everything is online. Just write and do some online self-promotion. There is however an offline community. But they can be driven to your electronic shelves in a number of ways (radio interviews, local newspapers, book signings, speaking events, etc.). Another way to consider, is to try to get your books into the libraries and into the  Schools  instead of the book stores. I say Library not necessarily for the money. I say the library because although everything is online, the offline community is still very much active in the libraries. Not only are computers available, but they have access to hundreds of books freely with a Library card and they can request your book if they know that it exists. That’s the focus I’m on now per offline promotion, among other things, visiting the libraries and following the protocol necessary to get into the system. As well as communicating with your local schools and getting into their systems. Again, you may not make a lot of money but the word of mouth on your new hot masterpiece will sell itself. You’ll get your book into the hands of the people and that is where you want it to be.