We welcome the new year with a brand new issue of MockingHeart Review. We’re completely enthralled with this issue and hope you will be too. Please enjoy the issue and keep coming back to these pages as we will be presenting a new schedule of interviews and articles of interest to poets and readers in 2017.
With you in words,
The Editor
Submissions are open NOV. 1 – DEC. 1.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND INTEREST in MockingHeart Review.
~The Editor
PLEASE READ OUR GUIDELINES BEFORE SUBMITTING
I want to share an opportunity with readers of MockingHeart Review. Recently I decided to use my expertise to develop a program of mentoring writers, and now I have expanded this program to address the needs of creatives in other disciplines. Please read on.
I give nearly 200% of myself during the eight weeks I work with mentees. I have numerous strategies to get creative juices flowing. If you find you need creative coaching, consulting on a creative writing project, editing insights, want to work one on one in your craft, or all of the above, consider engaging my services.Mentorships will be conducted through email, phone, and weekly consultations in person, if local, or via Skype link up to meet anyone across the miles.
The writing mentorships are structured courses that provide energetic and substantive relative-to-now literary conversations between the mentor and mentees. Great emphasis will be placed on craft and form. The mentee should have expectations of fast-paced, rigorous writing and reflective, nurturing and honest feedback from a skilled and admired contemporary poet and publisher.
My second collection of poetry, Seek the Holy Dark, is forthcoming from Yellow Flag Press in 2017. My widely-acclaimed debut collection of poetry, Eating the Heart First, was published in 2012 by Press 53. My poetry has appeared in Avatar Review, Blue Fifth Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Melusine, Poets and Artists, and Louisiana Literature, among others. I have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web, for Best New Poets and Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net. I am a lifelong resident of Louisiana and edit MockingHeart Review.
I am also a visual artist and offer mentorships for creatives of other disciplines that address breakthroughs in creativity, the creative process, creative problem solving and honoring the self as an artist in a hectic, sometimes dystopic world.
Other unique approaches to customized courses may be considered. Inquire with Clare at the email below or by phone. The number is listed below as well. I will always be honest with you if I feel your need would not match well with my expertise. But I will try my best to brainstorm on how it could.
Specific goals of the eight-week course will be decided upon in conversation prior to agreements being made to engage with me. It is encouraged that the course is structured as goal-oriented to produce visible and viable results.
The fee for the eight-week course is $250 US currency, (non-refundable due to course limits, serious inquiries only), payable through PayPal or by check. The spots are limited due to the very intimate work and close personal attention offered. For more information, please email: clmpoetrymentor@gmail.com or call (337) 962-5886
Clare L. Martin, poet and MockingHeart Review editor and publisher, offers eight-week, one on one, poetry-writing mentorships with young and new poets that offer the promise of a sustained relationship beyond the initial intensive generative and critique-based working relationship. The mentorships are structured courses that provide energetic writing potentialities and substantive relative-to-now literary conversations between the mentor and mentees. Great emphasis will be placed on craft and form. The mentee should have expectations of fast-paced, rigorous writing and reflective, nurturing and honest feedback from a skilled and admired contemporary poet and publisher.
Clare’s twelve-year track record of publishing her own poetry in both print and electronic literary journals and reputation as the author of two books of poetry give her insight into traditional and new media forms of publishing available to upcoming writers. Her guidance in these areas will be offered as well, emphasizing the importance of building meaningful relationships with editors in mutually respectful and beneficial ways. Challenges facing today’s poetry writers in the digital age will always be at the forefront of the conversations.
September 19th, 2016 through November 7th, 2016
December 5th, 2016 through January 18th, 2017
The fee for the eight-week course is $225.oo US currency, (non-refundable due to course size limits, serious inquiries only), payable through PayPal. The spots are limited due to the very intimate work and close personal attention offered. Mentorships will be conducted through email, phone, computer/camera link up, on a selective basis, to meet anyone across the miles.
For more information, please email: clmpoetrymentor@gmail.com
Dear MockingHeart Review Readers,
Thank you for visiting the pages of MockingHeart Review. We are glad to have your company. We welcome you to enjoy the fall issue just released September 1st. With this issue, we celebrate our first anniversary. We are thrilled to mark this occasion with more beauty gathered here from poets near and far. So, please pour yourself a beverage and get comfortable. Take in the words of souls who have achieved mastery in the art form of poetry and have chosen to live their lives bringing their gifts to humanity for the betterment of humanity. To showcase such poets is our mission here at MockingHeart Review.
I cannot recommend this chapbook highly enough. Poem by poem, MockingHeart Review contributor, Dr. J Bruce Fuller, takes us into the depths of the human soul unearthed by floodwaters of two historic events: The 1927 Flood and Katrina. We feel the losses as our own, and they are. J Bruce puts us in the maw of the rivers and in the coursing waters to be carried away unless we cling to his language, which is deeply grounded, rooted in a passion for Louisiana in all her mystery and mystique. In light of the 2016 Louisiana Flood, I encourage you to purchase a copy of this perfect volume while it is still available. It will haunt you like no other book on the subject.
~ Clare L. Martin, Editor, MockingHeart Review
To purchase Flood follow this link: http://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781930454408/flood.aspx
More about Flood
“In this sensual and deeply informed collection, J Bruce Fuller gives us two floods in the lower Mississippi River, almost a century apart. Describing the 1927 flood, the poems speak of men who stand on the levee to report the water’s rise. Some are forced to knit arms and legs, a kind of human dam, and are washed away. In 2005, the levees are strong, and people ‘in the shadow of the levee’ feel smug and safe. They see meteorologists on CNN, and they watch the floodwater and destruction follow Katrina. Beyond those differences, the poems make clear, in concrete language, that there was the same betrayal, superstition, family ties, same indiscriminate death, wealth and its small protections, poverty and its vulnerability. These poems do not elegize life on the river a century ago as a time that will never return, or evoke New Orleans as it used to be before the storm. These poems know, as the river knows, that time is not linear, it is cyclical. The river will be there when our brief stories are gone. The flood can come again, when it will. As one of the men on the levee says, and repeats like a line in a blues song: ‘What water will come, will come.'”—Ava Leavell Haymon
Our Fall Issue, which will be released September 1, 2016, will coincide with the one year anniversary of the founding of the magazine! With this celebration of one wonderful year, we have undertaken a new site design. We hope it is to your liking. We hope to bring a fresh look year after year to go along with the freshest, juiciest poetry of all seasons. We have so many to thank: all of our contributors and readers of course. We have had so much interest and positive conversations about our venture! Thank you all. Our Fall Issue will be presented in just a few weeks. Please visit the website often to read its treasures.
Volume 1, Issue 3
Our Fall Issue will be released September 1st, 2016. Please enjoy our first two issues and do return in September.
Thank you for your interest in MockingHeart Review.
The Editor.
Submissions are now open until August 1st, 2016. Please read the guidelines at the link above.
Thank you!
Wonderful work being done by Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson in my hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. I hope the good word spreads of the work she is doing in our community. If her work inspires you, maybe you can be inspired to work in your community to address this vulnerable population in our society. Contact info for Alex and informational links are below.
Clare L. Martin
MockingHeart Review
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Lafayette’s Juvenile Detainees Learn Spoken Word Poetry
Every Friday, students at the Lafayette Parish Juvenile Detention Center in Lafayette, Louisiana gather to study, practice and perform spoken word poetry.
Spoken word students at the JDC face enormous psychological, social, and financial difficulties. Four out of every five residents in Louisiana’s Juvenile Detention Centers are children of color. (Children of color make up 46.5% of Louisiana’s children.) Incarcerated juveniles are disproportionately from impoverished families, and represent our most at-risk and underprivileged children. 24.5% of detained juveniles will experience recidivism within three years.
Teaching detained children is particularly difficult, with a restrictive environment and a continuously changing group of children. But spoken word artist Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson gives these children the tools and opportunity to educate and express themselves artistically. Each week, she teaches a rotating group of kids, from one to ten at a time, ages 11-17, how to convert their fears and frustrations into positive, life-affirming art.
Most recently, a total of thirty students created the group poem wrote, edited, and directed the poem “Eyes of the Sun,” which PoeticSoul then composed and recorded as a spoken-word-and-music video. In April 2016, she presented the video at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC, where a national audience of poets and activists learned of our children’s efforts, returning videos and notes of encouragement. Through experiences like this, these children get to see the quality of their own hard work. They have the chance to learn that, by transforming their anger and frustration into something positive, they can produce wonderful fruit.
Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson is a UL Student Senior Marketing Major and the founder and manager of Lyrically Inclined, an organization that hosts spoken word events in Lafayette, at places like the Acadiana Center for the Arts, the Festival of Words, Cité des Arts, and Black Café. She encourages the people of Lafayette and Acadiana to take this opportunity to encourage our incarcerated children, and help guide them onto a more creative and fulfilling path. She is available for interviews at poeticsoul337@gmail.com or (713) 933-4448.
CONTACT: Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson
(713) 933-4448
For more information: Official YouTube performance of “Eyes of the Sun:” https://youtu.be/KF-x-qGSeUg
Poeticsoul reading and discussing “Eyes of the Sun” at Crescent City Books: https://youtu.be/-u0Kdmv66Co
Lyrically Inclined on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lyricallyinclined337/
Lyrically Inclined on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/poeticsoul337/
Split This Rock Poetry Festival: http://www.splitthisrock.org/programs/festival/2016-poetry-festival/panel-roundtable-discussions/#Roundtables
Response to “Eyes of the Sun” from Split This Rock Board Secetary Susan Scheid: https://www.facebook.com/PoeticSoul337/videos/vb.47903650/10101865578642720/
Sources for incarceration rates: Juvenlie detainees, by race: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/8391-youth-residing-in-juvenile-detention-correctional-and-or-residential-facilities-by-race-and-hispanic-origin?loc=20&loct=2#detailed/2/20/false/36/4038,4411,1461,1462,1460,4157,1353/16996,17598
General population statistics: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/3852-child-population-by-race?loc=20&loct=2#detailed/2/any/false/868,867,133,38,35/13,3,141,142,2,1/7997,7998
Recidivism statistics: http://ojj.la.gov/ojj/files/file/Demographics/Recidivism%20Website%20July%202013.pdf
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