Ruth Bavetta
Jan 29, 2015
From my book, Embers on the Stairs, available here http://ruthbavetta.com/shop.php or from Amazon. Ode to the Toothpick Not really tan, more like ecru, fawn, tawny beige, presented unshellacked and oddly mismatched in a lidded box. Shavings of thin veneer stamped in clean tapered Bauhaus lines. Singly they have no aroma,\ but place your nose to the small blue cardboard casket and breathe the birch woods of Maine, white-skinned, under a sky of Botticelli blue.
Jan 03, 2015
For January, FutureCycle Press is giving away a free copy of my book, Fugitive Pigments. This book draws extensively on my background as a practicing artist. There are ekphrastic poems, instructive poems, poems riffing off the principles of art—the art of living, of shading, perspective, colors; how to create an exquisite corpse, and what one should know about shadows.
Enter here to win:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/enter_choose_address/121068
Oct 17, 2014
"Blue Heron Review is proud to share the news that we have nominated your poem, "Expendables," from the June/2014 Blue Heron Speaks feature for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology."
This is a journal that leans towards the "spiritual" in poetry. They contacted me last spring and asked me to be a featured poet. I have never written anything intentionally spiritual in my life, but I sifted through my culch pile of poems and came up with several that could work that way.
Of course, nomination does not guarantee inclusion in the anthology. I have to wait to find out if my work will be chosen. Here's the poem she nominated:
Expendables
Give them your heart, liver, lungs,
the network of nerves, the strum
of your breath. Let them deconstruct
the architecture of your bones,
pile them on the hill in an ossuary
of discontent. Let them pull
and release the sinews,
tug apart the tendons,
pluck the feathers.
They will not find
the mystery.
Sep 07, 2014
August 23rd, I got to go to my old home town, Redlands, and read as the featured reader with five other Inland Empire women in A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN WRITERS. I had a wonderful time. (I'm such a ham.) Lots of old friends showed up. It was SRO.
Great audience, too. Audiences have collective personalities and this one was warm, welcoming and fun.
Aug 16, 2014
August 15, 2014
I’m happy to be reading in Redlands on Aug 22. It’ll be fun to be back in my old home town. Over 30 years I lived there. I’d be thrilled to see some of my friends from that area. Dying to see who turns up. It’s a group reading, but Maureen Alsop and I will be reading the longest. Friday, Aug 22, 5-7 pm, at Greater Good Coffee, 300 E. State St., Redlands, CA.
The online publication, Barely South, has my poem Packing My Grandmother’s Suitcase. I wrote it one day when I was thinking about her and all the things she loved. You can read it on page 42 at http://issuu.com/barelysouth/docs/barely_south_review_fall_2013/1?e=3496987/5648369
The Wisconsin Review has accepted my poem, Since My Father Died, My Mother and I Often Discuss the Best Way for Her to Kill Herself. It’s a print publication.
And last, but not least, Splitting the Genre: An Intersection of Poetry and Art is a beautiful little book by Six Arrow Press. I’m pleased to have four of my pieces included. My MFA is in Painting, I spent many years as an exhibiting artist, and teaching art at the college level. In these hybrid pieces I combine my two loves, poetry and art. The idea is built on the poetry of “erasure,” eliminating words from a piece of prose to expose the poem within. There’s also a nice interview. You can see the entire book online here: http://www.blurb.com/books/5377678-splitting-the-genre-an-intersection-of-poetry-visu My stuff is on pages 13-21.