Bestseller in Canadian Poetry, Amazon.ca ~Now on Kindle & Nook !
Carry On Dancing: Opening Soon!
LEAP on Kobo and Kindle; WHERE THE BUTTERFLIES GO on Sale!
Thanks for your wonderful support in buying LEAP on the Kobo! Sales were fantastic in its first week out on the Kobo, and I really appreciate those five-star ratings!
Check out Leap on the KOBO here
I’m thrilled to announce the long-awaited release of LEAP on the KINDLE. Thanks very much to my regular readers for giving me that little shove (“Heather! Do It! Now!” ) to get this book out there digitally. LEAP is now on iBOOKS in several countries, NOOK BOOKS, KOBO and KINDLE, SONY READER and soon beside its paperback version on THE COPIA
Where the Butterflies Go in paperback has benefited from some fantastic REVIEWS lately with the most recent at The River and I want to thank those reviewers for taking the time to write about the collection and share their thoughts on it with others. Where the Butterflies Go is now on sale at AMAZON in their 4-for-3 sale, and so thanks to the new reviews and this sale, lots of new readers are finding it. It’s so touching to me that people are grabbing this book off the shelves again four years since its release!
Graceful Publications last made a $100 donation to UNICEF GIFTS OF EDUCATION in the summer. If you keep supporting these two books as much as you have since Jan. 2012, I think I will be able to announce another donation long before summer 2012 arrives.
Thank you so much for reading, commenting, tweeting and LIKING–for sticking with me every step of the way!
Best wishes and Happy Valentine’s Week! Here’s a visual treat to thank you ~ sorry I cannot deliver these home made chocolate lollipops to each and every one of you readers, but perhaps I will make some for one of my readings in the near future, or for the Carry On Dancing launch party 🙂
Heather
Where the Butterflies Go Review in iBOOKS (four stars): ‘These poems are like a key’
‘A willful and successful destruction of boundaries’ **** (4 stars)
by Shawn Halayka, Dec. 24, 2011 under Where the Butterflies Go in iBOOKS
Anima and animus. Love and sorrow. Past and present. An array of dualities are presented to us in these poems, accurately depicting both the beauty and horror of life at the same time in a masterful way that gives no ground to useless pretense or extraneous detail. Most importantly to me, these dualities are not presented as paradoxical or contradictory, but rather wholly integrated. The end result is quite illuminating.
What really hit home for me were the poems about Challenger/Columbia and the tragedy of Di. These specific poems are deceptively short — it may have only taken a few minutes to read them, but then it took me much longer to process the resulting flood of memories related to my own childhood and young adulthood. These poems are like a key, and one’s own life is the vault.
I can only assume that some sort of fancy voodoo magic was implemented by the author, because I am fully enchanted by these poems. Superb work, as usual.
Interview with a Poet: mark Stratton
mark Stratton is an American poet and writer living in Columbia, MO with his wife and three cats. His poems have appeared in The River Paper, The American Zig-Zag Volume One (and forthcoming in Volume Two), MediaVirus Magazine and Four and Twenty.
My first question for mark was one that I didn’t even think of asking (because I hadn’t noticed) until I reread his first collection Tender Mercies. What’s with the lowercase m in his given name, ‘mark,’ and Uppercase S in his family name?
“I firmly believe that the Work is far more important than I am. However, I do not wish to show any disrespect to my family as they are quite important. Not only to me, but in their own right and accomplishments. So, I honor them and leave my given name lower case.”
mark began his writing journey as a self-proclaimed “angsty” teenager, but argues that back then, he “had nothing to say that hadn’t been said before.” He got more serious about writing in 2008, and continues to write today because it has become habitual and “more importantly,” explains mark, “it’s become needful for me to do so.”
James Brush, author of the blog ‘Coyote Mercury,’ wrote about mark Stratton’s writing style in his recent review of Tender Mercies:
I don’t always get what mark’s getting at, but the ride, the language, is a pleasure, and sometimes a line or two finds a place in my mind, takes root and won’t leave me alone. So the book goes back in the bag and I carry it around some more, sometimes forgetting it’s there only to be happily surprised again.
The most challenging part of writing Tender Mercies for mark was trusting the poems, trusting “when they were telling me they were connected as I was making them,” he explains. The greatest reward, now that the book has been out a while, has been “learning that the poems have resonated with readers.”
He enjoys being a part of online writing communities on Twitter and Facebook, but it puzzles him at times. “The very fact that people from all over the world have read my little scribbles fascinates me and humbles me at the same time,” he says.
mark’s most recent chapbook Postmarks is, as he says, “a total DIY job, handmade and assembled by me.” mark even took the cover photo.
One of the poems, ‘Frank,’ takes on the persona of a dead speaker: I’ll see them when/they get here, They’ll hate it too./And we’ll laugh. /Like being dead isn’t such a big deal after all.
A sign of the times, perhaps, is that ‘Frank’ was sparked by a discussion on Twitter. “The “trigger” for this was a discussion on Persona Poems on the Twitter #poetparty,” says mark. “The story in the poem is true, except for the parts I made up. It was an exercise in writing outside of my own voice, and I was fairly pleased with the result.”
It doesn’t surprise mark that poetry survives, and in some places, thrives, today. “Poetry, in some for or another, will thrive and survive because it was in our souls, bone deep, to express ourselves. The form and patterns may change, but poetry will survive as long as human kind does. Poetry truly is a way to express in words that which cannot be said any other way.”
You can follow mark (lowercase m) 🙂 on Twitter and Facebook, and please take a moment to check out his books Tender Mercies and Postmarks ~ support the art of poetry; support an indie author!
Heather Grace Stewart 