Welcome to National Poetry Month and Gyroscope Review’s month-long celebration of poets – and their diverse Writing Assistants. Enjoy the audio/video works by previous Gyroscope Review poets and be sure to check out the Author and fun Writing Assistant Bio at the end of each NPM poet post. Don’t forget to tag the poet on Social Media and let them know you enjoyed their work!
Rorschach Test
Rorschach Test Consider daffodil blades in the crackling cold of February, those green thumbs up breaking through earth’s rind, obliterating doubt—what’s left of winter suddenly endurable. What tethers us to the tentative, to contingencies, to the life force we are designed to abandon from birth? I am reluctant to call it destiny, knowing too well which neuroses rush forth from that word, sifted through lobes and sockets to lubricate our worry. Listen—there are things to love about failure too. Sometimes we make mistakes, call them coincidence, trapped like thirsty sponges between memory and the moment, our imagined selves the deal we make. Aren’t most of us in fact still children mishandling oversized bodies, echoing songs seeded in our mind’s eye? We pump our legs on a playground swing, avoid the dare to jump, the grass beneath our feet heeled to death, the slaughtered ground a pit of sharps and flats, scars the shape of shattered hearts stamped into our elbows and knees. First print: Writing in a Women’s Voice
WRITING ASSISTANT BIO
Gunter-Seymour’s writing helper is served in a tall, insulated plastic tumbler, with a screw-on lid that occasionally and without notice, decides to flip its seal and spill the hot hazelnut-flavored elixir contained within, causing all matter of calamity. In its defense, it is at least ten years old and has traveled the country with the poet many times over. But it’s the elixir, made golden with oatmilk, sucked through a bright red straw that is magic. Lord knows she can’t get through a day without it. Believe me, she has tried!
AUTHOR BIO
Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour focuses on lifting up underrepresented voices including incarcerated adults and women in recovery. Her collection Alone in the House of My Heart received the 2023 ABF Best Book Award. She is an artist in residence for the Writing the Land project, a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project, and editor of its anthology series Women Speak. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, Poem of the Week, World Literature Today, The New York Times, and Poem-a-Day.
Dirt Songs
Order here: https://eastoverpress.com/books/poetry/dirt-songs-by-kari-gunter-seymour/
Alone In the House of My Heart
Order here: https://www.ohioswallow.com/9780804012430/alone-in-the-house-of-my-heart/
A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen
Order here: https://sheilanagigblog.com/sheila-na-gig-editions-quick-shopping/kari-gunter-seymour/
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2024 Issue of Gyroscope Review.
NPM 2024 Poets
April 1 – Cal Freeman
April 2 – Susanna Lang
April 3 – Marion Brown
April 4 – Melissa Huff
April 5 – Elaine Sorrentino
April 6 – Alison Stone
April 7 – Alexandra Fössinger
April 8 – Laurie Kuntz
April 9 – Dick Westheimer
April 10 – Wendy McVicker
April 11 – J.I. Kleinberg
April 12 – Ellen Austin-Li
April 13 – D. Dina Friedman
April 14 – Connie Post
April 15 – Georgina Key
April 16 – Judith McKenzie
April 17 – Jacqueline Jules
April 18 – Amanda Hayden
April 19 – Lisa Zimmerman
April 20 – Richard Jordan
April 21 – Beth Kanell
April 22 – Kari Gunter-Seymour