Tom Kirkham is “a 30-something music obsessive and part-time explorer from North West England,” as well as a musician and songwriter in Silent Alliance, among elsewhere. Most recently, his the author of Pop Life – The Story of a Minor Musical Expedition, which finds Kirkham detailing how, after the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, he ‘learned to love music and life again via an intensive, year-long trawl through the back rooms and bars, concert halls and stadiums of the live gig circuit, searching for transcendence, or at the very least, an unobscured view.”
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum also puts on his music critic hat to talk with Kirkham about his process and motivations for the book, his love for artists like Bowie, Prince, Kate Bush, Steely Dan, coping with anxiety, depression, and the dangers and polarization of modern society, and much more!…
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The first issue of Voice of Eve (September/October 2018), under the direction of Richard Holleman, is now online. “The mission of Voice of Eve is to provide a place for women to express themselves through poetry and art.”
How did Voice of Eve evolve?
Voice of Eve started from my admiration of contemporary women poets such as Sarah J. Sloat and Jenna Le as well as past poets such as Jane Kenyon and Elizabeth Bishop. I always wanted to work for a literary magazine. About a month ago I was talking to a friend about my aspirations, and that friend challenged me to start a site on wix.com. I thought that night about it, about what really inspired me, and I realized all my life women had inspired me, both in and outside of poetry.…
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Nathan Elias graduated from Antioch University’s MFA program and is the author of a fiction novelette, A Myriad of Roads That Lead to Here (2017). He’s made films such as The Chest (which premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2015) and, most recently, his debut poetry chapbook, Glass City Blues: Poems, was released via Finishing Line Press.
In this episode of ‘Cover to Cover with . . .,’ Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Elias about his writing and acting, as well as working for Jennifer Lopez, yielding introspection from traveling, and more.
– Nathan Elias…
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Judith Skillman’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Web, the UK Kit Award, and is included in Best Indie Verse of New England (to mention just a few honors). Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, and her work as an artist has also attracted notice. She’s published sixteen poetry collections of acclaim, which you can find at her official website.
How did you decide on the title of your new poetry collection, Come Home to Winter?
A number of the poems deal with “the dark seasons,” at least here in the northwest: autumn and winter: “The Quaking Aspen’s First Autumn,” for instance. Then there more than a few pieces about aging, including “Rheumatism” and “Mobility”. It seems fairly clear, now that I am in my mid-sixties, that winter is more than an apt metaphor for the aging process, and also, ultimately, for mortality.…
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Drawing inspiration from her dreamscapes, Southern roots, and the innovative rhythms and structures of Americana music, Lauren Moseley has crafted a sensual and provocative collection of poems that invites us to reevaluate the connection between our inner and outer worlds. Her debut, Big Windows, which Carnegie Mellon University Press released in February of 2018, has surfaced at a time when humanity is confronting an onslaught of social unrest, political upheaval, and aesthetic bankruptcy that often distracts us from the ecstasy we might otherwise find by tuning into our immediate environment. Each poem in this collection is a progression through the stages of disillusionment, humility, wonder, and ultimately, enlightenment.
Moseley’s writing challenges readers to reinstate the practice of observing what the French writer, George Perec, refers to as, the infraordinary—the seemingly trivial and yet intrinsically beautiful objects and events of the everyday.…
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Nina Murray is a poet and a literary translator, as well as a U.S. diplomat. She grew up in Ukraine and have degrees in linguistics and creative writing. Her debut poetry book, Minimize Considered, was just published by Finishing Line Press and her individual work and translations can be found in a number of venues.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Murray about her latest poetry collection, the ups and downs of being a professional translator, journal guidelines, and more (including a live reading of her poem “George Washington’s Rules of Civility”).
– Nina Murray…
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Darrin Doyle is quite an accomplished writer, having published two novels (Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story and The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo), a sequence of fiction (The Dark Will End the Dark), and many individual pieces in various journals over the last decade. Couple that with his diverse history of jobs (including paperboy, pizza delivery job, janitor, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and janitor)—as well as his experiences living around the country and teaching English in Japan—and it’s no surprise that his latest short story collection, Scoundrels Among Us, radiates a mixture of [mostly] down-to-earth situations and eloquently refined yet quite accessible language. While not every piece in it is as conclusive, eventful, and/or impactful as it could be, they’re all at least enjoyably inventive, with a few downright enthralling entries that’ll stick with you long after you’ve read them.…
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