Promopalooza - Linda Neal – Gyroscope Review

Linda Neal

Your Chapbook or Book Title, Press, Where available for sale.

This is my second collection. The first, Dodge & Burn, came as a response to my long-term partner’s death, but included other grief-focused poems. That led to the larger griefs of aging, personal extinction and planetary extinction which inform the poems in Not About Dinosaurs.

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I also take orders for signed copies by email lindarneal@gmail.com

What inspired you to write this Chapbook/Book? What else should we know about it? Or just add the Blurb.

Linda Neal’s poems reach toward the ecstatic and explore the quotidian. Her chapbooks and first collection, Dodge & Burn, detail experiences of loss and grief. In Not About Dinosaurs, she digs deeper into questions of love, longing and loss, traveling the arc of life and contemplating matters of death and extinction. Writer, meditator, therapist, teacher, wife, mother, divorcee, widow, dialysis and transplant patient, she is the daughter of an engineer and a pin-up model. She grew up in the South Bay area of LA under the spell of The Wizard of Oz, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and The Bomb. Over the years, she has founded and run several reading series and led writing and meditation workshops. She is editor-at-large for ONTHEBUS, a journal of art and poetry. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Pacific University. Her poems and memoir pieces have been accepted for publication in many journals, including Calyx, Chiron Review, Crosswinds, Lummox, Prairie Schooner and Tampa Review.

What was your journey to publication like?

Any upcoming Chapbook/Book releases? Upcoming poems in magazines?

I have two poems coming out in upcoming issues of Calyx, a sestina experiment and the title poem from my thesis manuscript, Bearded Iris, with which I finished an MFA in poetry at Pacific University last year. I’m still tinkering with the thesis before I send it out.

Your Website and Social Media Links.

Any poets or books that inspired your writing?

Who are you currently reading?

Currently, I’ve been reading the Finnish poet, Edith Sondergran, and Ai.Also returning to the work of my late mentor and mensch, Marvin Bell whose spirit is strong with me.

Pay it Forward – Promote your favorite Charity, tell us why you love it, add a link.

I contribute to anything to save the environment, and I like to support local efforts, so South Bay Parkland Conservancy is a group I heartily support.