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Three Poems in Blood & Bourbon #8 “Grace”

June 4, 2021 by Steve Mentz

My sourdough has been writing poems. Over the 400+ days of pandemic mostly-isolation out of which we’re just now emerging, I’ve neither learned to bake bread nor, despite downloading an app, to identify the songs of my local birds. But I have written somewhere north of 200 new poems.

This week I’ve had the a trio of those poems published in the Toronto-based literary magazine Blood & Bourbon. I’m especially pleased because when I submitted I didn’t mention my half-shelf of academic and para-academic books, but instead described myself as a writer who lives on the Connecticut Shoreline. Will I develop a new literary persona as coastal poet? Hard to say – the poems are about swimming, living with the nonhuman, and environmental connections. I’m not sure it’s all that different from my other writing! Fewer footnotes, I suppose.

But it’s fun to have a new creative outlet and to practice something creative on an almost-daily basis. I hope, over time, try to publish some more of these many poems, or maybe new ones, or maybe I’ll figure out a new way to cross-involve my critical and poetic voices.

Thanks to Raya Morrison, the editor of Blood & Bourbon, and to the members of the Sonnet Corona group on Facebook, especially Shannon Garner , Art Zilleruelo, and Maureen Daniels, for the encouragement.

The three poems in the current issue of Blood & Bourbon are “Of Thirteen Minds,” about swimming past a flght of cormorants sunning themselves on Whale Rock last summer; “Sea Music,” about an especially noisy corner of the surf in Negril, Jamaica; and “Soiled Poem,” which is mostly about the garden and my back yard. Here’s a image of the last one. You should buy a copy of the issue!

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Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
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Shakespearean. Ecocritic. Swimmer. New book Ocean #objectsobjects Professor at St. John's in NYC. #bluehumanities #pluralizetheanthropocene

Steve Mentz
stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
4 May

Today's the day! I'm doing something a bit different in this lecture, shaping my thoughts around the work and intellectual legacy of John Gillis. It'll be recorded, for people who can't be in the room or on the Zoom today in Bern!

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stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
2 May

Very excited to be in Bern, and I’m looking forward to the lecture and workshop!

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