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Carolyn Martin - Poet

“All my life I have tried to find the truth and make it beautiful.” – Sting

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It happens this way ...

From Italy and Albania with Love

April 30, 2022 by Carolyn Martin 1 Comment

By popular request, here is the original interview in English with Irma Kurti. If anyone speaks either language, let me know how she did!

 Your poems have appeared in more than 150 journals throughout North America, Australia and the UK and you have also published five poetry collections. Do you think poetry is a great means to convey a message to the people?

I don’t write to convey messages. If readers find one in my work, that’s lovely. I write to see if I can capture the world — inside and out, past and present–in language and images that are new and fresh and give me joy. Perhaps that is the message: I want to share the blast of joy I experience when I’m writing and the simmering hope that someone will read my poems!

You are passionate about writing and photography. Any preference between the two? Do they complement each other?

I spend more time writing than photographing, but each activity has one thing in common: the call to pay attention. I feel I am more present to the world when I have a camera in my hand. Likewise, as I go through a day and experience my inner and outer worlds, I try to be aware of the sights, sounds, smells, touches that make this day unique. These details may find their way into a poem.

You are a poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation and you read a lot of poems every day. What is the impact of a beautiful poem on you?

 When a poem makes me jump out of my chair or pump my fist in the air shouting “Yes! Yes! Yes!”, I know something special has happened. The language, form, and subject matter have drawn me in and shown me things I haven’t seen or heard before. When a poet can take a truth — even a difficult one — and create something beautiful out of it, I’m engaged and delighted.

We have been through a difficult period due to the pandemic. How did this affect your work as an author and editor?

Truthfully, the pandemic didn’t affect my writing or editing that much at all. Since both are solitary activities, I had more time to spend on them. Perhaps one of the best things that came out of this time was Zoom poetry readings. I attended more readings virtually during the pandemic than I had in person during the previous five years. To be able to read with or listen to poets from around the world was a gift. I hope this virtual option will remain available to us going forward.

May you share any advice for the poets, for those who want to dedicate themselves to writing?

I’d like to share three thoughts for aspiring poets:

  1. Read, read, read – but not only good contemporary poets. Read the recent masters who have stood the test of time like Frost, Yeats, Whitman, Dickinson, Bishop, Williams, and Eliot. We are standing on their shoulders and they provide us with themes and techniques we may want borrow and expand.
  2. Network, network, network. Go to readings, take a class, join – or create – a critique group. However, recruit people into your group who are knowledgeable about the craft of poetry. You want to spend time with poets who are already good writers and know what good writing is. Although it may be fun to hang out with those who will applaud everything you write, that may not be the best use of your time.
  3. This may sound counter-intuitive, but poets should challenge themselves to write about what they do not know. Science, art, music, cosmology, world religions, etc. offer images and ideas that will enrich anyone’s work. I remember reading articles that claim the sun rings like a bell, that North America moves closer to Japan by three inches each year, and that there’s a species of frog that listens with its mouth. Each of those images delighted me and worked their way into poems. I couldn’t make them up!

What is your routine for writing?

I am totally undisciplined, so routines vary. One thing I have latched on to: Before I start a  new poem, I re-read a few recent ones to see if they need any tweaks (They usually do!) That often jumpstarts working on a new piece.

Also I keep lots of files. One is filled with the “Word of the Day” from Dictionary.com. I’ve had fun filling my poems with the extraordinary vocabulary I find there. I have a file  brimming with quotations on any topic I come across in my reading or watching TV (Yes, I do!). I have files filled with phrases or lines that pop into my head and I don’t want to lose them. Many have found there way into my poems.

If you are blocked, what do you do?

For years, whenever I hit a fallow period, I thought I’d never write again. These times could last for weeks or months – and that was discouraging. However, once I realized there was a rhythm to my writing life, I was able to ease in and out of these blank-page times with less angst. What I substituted for writing was gardening, photography, and all kinds of crafts.

See, I believe we create or we die, and one type of creativity leads to another to another to another. Of course, when you’re not writing, you’re reading and observing. You’re amassing those files of new words, quotations, snippets of conversation you’ve overhead: all gems that may sparkle when the time and energy to write returns – and it will.

 

 

 

Remembering 9/11

September 11, 2021 by Carolyn Martin Leave a Comment

It happens this way …

Twenty years ago today, I settled in the front row of a hotel conference room after delivering a management training presentation to 300 people in Orlando, Florida. I had just taken a few deep breaths when the back doors burst open and hotel personnel rushed in to tell us about the attacks on the World Trade Center. In those first surreal moments, people rushed from the room, scrambled to call home, book flights (the airports were already closed), and grab rental cars that would drive them all around the country.

For the next three days I was hunkered down in a darkened hotel room doing the worse thing I could do: watch the continuous stream of news about the horrors unfolding in real time. I flew home four days after the attack.

A month later I was in NYC, standing in front of another audience. I had already taken the subway down to ground zero, talked to as many policemen, -women, and citizens I could find, and heard stories of tragedies and miracles that haunted me for years.

Then, last September 11, 2020, I almost forgot to commemorate the day because we were preparing to evacuate from near-by fires. Ultimately, we were blessed not to have to leave our home. Now in the year that brings us to another September 11, fires, floods, deaths, upheavals around the world remind us again and again that, on any given day, we have not here a lasting city.

Here’s a poem I wrote that unites last September with the original event. It will appear in The Poeming Pigeon: From Pandemic to Protest which will be released on October 15, 2021. For information, go to https://thepoetrybox.com/taking-pre-orders-tpp-pandemic-protest.

 

https://carolynmartinpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Fires-This-Time-9_7_21-4.30-PM-1.mp3

Fires This Time

Oregon, September 11, 2020

While I check out evacuation routes and pray

our packed cars are precaution not necessity,

thousands have lost all there is to lose except

each other and maybe a treasure or two: a dog,

a cat, livestock raced to fairgrounds, a teen’s diary.

 

They don’t see what we­­––the hunkered-down-in-place––

see: miles of ash heaps, contorted cars and trucks,

war-weary firefighters who breathe the unbreathable.

 

Meanwhile, my mother lies in a NJ nursing home.

She can’t remember if she ate her lunch or how

to answer her phone. I watch her mind slip

into the smoke that wipes out our Douglas firs.

 

Today she doesn’t know her air is clean

or that nineteen years ago, she breathed the ash

of 3000 souls drifting by in another blackened sky.

 

“About Nothing”: An Early Spring Poem for the End of August

August 29, 2021 by Carolyn Martin Leave a Comment

It happens this way …

When Sarah Law, the editor of the UK-based Amethyst Review, accepted “About Nothing,” I was delighted. But when she told me she scheduled this early spring poem for August 30, I was amused. As an editor myself, I receive  many seasonal poems and must decide if they fit–– or not–– into the seasonal issues of Kosmos Quarterly. Being on the other side of the desk as a contributor may make me reconsider. If a poem is good, it’s good no matter what the season.

Enjoy reading and listening to “About Nothing.” It also appears in The Catalog of Small Contentments.

Amethyst Review, August 30, 2021

Click here to read:

 About Nothing – a poem by Carolyn Martin

Click here to listen:

https://carolynmartinpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/About-Nothing-8_28_21-11.04-AM.mp3

Fifteen Thoughts for the Last Thursday of August

August 26, 2021 by Carolyn Martin Leave a Comment

It happens this way …

My name is Carolyn and I am a collector of quotations. I have files and files of them that I occasionally re-read for inspiration or just to fill up time before a football game comes on. In any event, last week I took a stroll through a number of them and found 15 I’d like to share. They cover a variety themes by a variety authors who spoke to me this time around. May they speak to you!

“Just do your best to keep yourself in balance. One of the first things that causes Energy misalignment, is asking or demanding too much of yourself in terms of time and effort. In other words, you just cannot burn the candle at both ends so that you are physically tired, and then expect yourself to have a cheerful attitude. So, the rule … has to be: ‘I’m going to be very, very, very happy, and then do everything I have time to do after that.’” ––Abraham

“Be kind. Everyone you meet today is fighting an uphill battle.” –– A bar sign

“Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time…” ––David Brooks

“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” ­––Oscar Wilde

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” ––Georgia O’Keeffe

“I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.” ––Jeanette Winterson

“More grows in a garden than the gardener knows he has planted.” ––Spanish proverb.

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.” –– Walt Whitman

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” ––Maya Angelou

“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.”–– Emile Zola

“To do good work, one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace.” –– Vincent Van Gogh

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” ––Albert Einstein

“Beer is made by men, wine by God.” ––Martin Luther

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ­––Will Rogers

“…whatever else we might think of this world – it is astonishing.” ––Wislawa Szymborska

 

Breaking News: God’s Rewilding Plan Leaked

August 22, 2021 by Carolyn Martin Leave a Comment

It happens this way …

Not being super tech-savvy, I just discovered last week that I can add audio-recordings to my blog posts.

Since some of you told me you appreciate hearing poems as well as reading them — I’m the same: the visual and the auditory are a marriage made in poetry heaven! — I’d like to share the second poem in The Catalog of Small Contentments. Given the current situation on our planet, “I’d support a God/ as transparent as this”! Enjoy!

https://carolynmartinpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Breaking-News.mp3

 

The Catalog of Small Contentments Launched

August 15, 2021 by Carolyn Martin 2 Comments

It happens this way …

Yesterday I had the pleasure of reading from my new poetry collection with two fine poets from New York at The Poetry Box’s monthly show. It was another Zoom event that brought together friends and family from around the US and Canada. I have to admit I’m loving not having to dress up, get in a car, and battle traffic and summer heat to attend poetry events. My wish is that live events will return and they will be balanced by online experiences that allow more people in more locales to attend.

In any event, I’d like to share “Mandate,” the first poem in the book. If you pre-ordered your copy, you received a broadside of this piece as well as the code that will enable you to hear me on your phone. Ah, technology!

If you still would like a copy, email me at portlandpoet@gmail.com with that request, and I’ll be happy to put one in the mail to you. The cover price is $16.00 and I’ll pay the postage for you. In the meantime, enjoy “Mandate.” It was written in April 2020 as we were just starting to hear about the deaths from COVID.

https://carolynmartinpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Mandate.mp3
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