has started appearing in good places. I love every chance I get to see that gorgeous cover!
The busy year so far
Updated the publications page today. How have I already published 19 poems this year? That’s bizarre. I feel like I’ve spent most of my time working on the final manuscripts for my upcoming three books vs writing new stuff. Mind you, as publishing works, a lot of this year’s publications were submitted and accepted in 2023!
Today we move through the autumnal equinox and night surpasses day until next spring. Normally, I’m a long day, hot weather kind of person, but this brutal summer has burned off my love of swelter. At least until the first cold snap and morning spent scraping frost off the windshield.
Meanwhile, I made my official masthead debut as a poetry editor with Driftwood Press. It’s been a treat (and a lift) to read manuscripts all summer for the Adrift Chapbook contest. So. Many. Amazing. Chapbooks. The amount of talent and quality submissions is a blessing, even as it made our tasks that much more difficult.
Lastly, I’m trying to book readings for the late fall and winter to promote It Was Never Supposed to Be. It was a blast reading for the Poets for Harris event and got me back into the mood. (You can find me at the 1:35:15 mark in the Harris event video linked above.) I’m hoping to create a couple of local and live events too. So we’ll see what develops!
Might be doing a thing
Late Summer Settles Around the Oak Trunks
It’s August. That all important month in the Twang universe of my work. The swelter penetrates my bones and attunes to every ghost I carry from the holler well. The farm was its most quiet in August. More free time for the swimming hole and hanging from low branches. More time for haunting.
Speaking of Twang, did I mention it’s going to appear in 2025 from the amazing ELJ Editions? More on that here and here.
In other news, I visited Philadelphia for the first time this summer. Loved the art museum, visited Whitman’s tomb in Jersey, enjoyed some amazing restaurants and realized I could work in a public library again if it’s the Free Library in Philly! I also enjoyed some mixology fun (see photo above) and have watched a lot of old movies. (We took a Faye Dunaway journey and watched a lot of 90s queer cinemas classics during June.)
I have several cool (and wildly varied!) poems debuting in journals this fall. First looks at future projects, as well as poems from It Was Never Supposed to Be, Twang, and a couple of in-progress chapbooks. Meanwhile, work continues on the proof for It Was Never Supposed to Be. (That work begins for Twang in early winter.) We have a cover we hope to debut soon. A few writers have been asked to blurb. I need a new author photo, but have been vacillating about mustache, beard, both or neither! I need to mix it up!!
If you’re around Sunday, Aug. 11, tune into the Uncloistered Online Poetry zoom – I’ll be reading with a couple of amazing poets, including Yalie Saweda Kamara, the poet laureate of Cincinnati! You can register for the reading here.
Quick Update
Work continues on preparing It Was Never Supposed to Be for publication with Variant Literature. The original art commissioned for the cover is amazing and the design keeps the vibe of the art forward and fresh. Although given recent political developments, I’m beginning to fear the arc of the poems in this book will soon represent a brief respite in the history of humanity’s cruelness to itself.
Anyway.
We’re on our second round on the interior proof. That fun part where the formatting asks us to make some edits to the text, think about placements and punctuation, then ask ourselves one last time, “Does this poem really fit?” We made some changes. Why not? When your name is on the cover, you want it to be the best it can be.
Meanwhile, I’m between projects, writing random “very gay” poems when struck by the feeling, fussing with a couple of chapbooks, sending them out, and conducting research for my next large project. It’s weird to realize a year from now, the two books I’ve been working on FOR A DECADE will be out in a world.
Stay cool kids! Check out some of my recent poems here. The one I’m especially happy/proud to have out in the world, “It was supposed to be,” is available in audio from West Trade Review!
More new work debuts.
As the year progresses, more new work (written in the past couple of years) debuts. I have had poems appear at Pithead Chapel (one of my favorite places for contemporary prose) and Atmospheric Quarterly (a new lit journal focused on the environs above us.)
Three poems appeared in Pithead Chapel: “A Lisp,” “Holler Psalm 6:02,” and “5 Months.” These three pieces are all prose poems, but in very different places and voices.
Three poems also appeared in the debut issue of Atmospheric Quarterly: “Aurora,” “Ghostbirth,” and “Another Year.” Another set of poems with three very different speakers and points of view.
New work, and lots of it!
Publishing doesn’t race; it doesn’t even turtle. It watches a thousand sunsets from the porch, Aperol spritz sweating in hand, god in the wind, not the chime.
And I’m not one who ascribes to good things come to those who wait. I’m more you better make it happen – but I have been waiting for some of these poems to meet the world. Expecting a trickle, they arrived like a colony of bunnies.
- “Iraq Is for Lovers (2003 Remix)” and “The Other Cheek” – featured in The Poetry Society of New York / Milk Press Winter 2024 – Lovers will appear in It Was Never Supposed to Be, and “The Other Cheek” comes from my unpublished chapbook about aging while gay, Stiff Wrist.
- Appearing on Twitter, Lickety Split featured – “Wayward Throuple” – a fragment of a burning haibun I turned into a haiku trio about desire in the modern era, by way of Macbeth and orgies.
- “Antidote” from the STILL unpublished Twang appears in Issue 47.2 – Page 16 on The Florida Review. This poem is one of my favorites from Twang.
- “Abecedarian in which my mom leaves” appears in Poet Lore Volume 118, 1 / 2 – only viewable if you buy the issue. I don’t have a lot to say about this poem other than I still can’t read it to others without choking up.
- Meanwhile, Dream Pop Press published “White Limozeen” in January. It’s a fun one-off poem I’d almost forgotten I wrote a few years ago.
I didn’t expect to have so much work debuting in a short time frame, but March promises to feature even more new work, as I’ll have sets of poems debuting in atmospheric lit and Pithead Chapel.
Between all these older and newer poems appearing, work progresses on a couple of chapbooks (not including Stiff Wrist mentioned above) and a potential new full-length project with talking oak trees, miners and librarians who practice dark magic and a deputy preoccupied with femurs appearing in odd places.
Lovely Review of DEAD UNCLES
Check it out over at the Sundress Blog! The reviewer does a fantastic job of distilling the themes and feels of Dead Uncles.
2023 in review?
No, in the rearview.
Good riddance to a dud year. While I managed to publish 13 poems in various journals and have a full-length collection accepted for publication, the shadow of my mom and my favorite aunt (my mom’s older sister) dying darkened the entire year. Both in day-to-day life and creative enterprise.
Thank the universe for my partner A and my friends – they got me through, probably without even realizing how much they helped/supported.
I’m channeling progress into 2024 – It Was Never Supposed to Be will debut soon (we’re still working on its design, layout, etc.!) – and I turn 50 in the spring. 50! WTF. But, I’m ready. I have more poems to write. Halley’s Comet is on her way back. There are more readings and events to orchestrate. Lots to do. I mean, I saw Madonna in concert again this week! Life is for living!
Summer 2023 Review
Summer 2023 tumbles toward conclusion and spent most of the summer 1. writing dead mom poems, 2. managing Poetry Afield, 3. working on rewrites and new poems for IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE, 4. running, and 5. hanging out with friends. Lots of cocktails, mahjong and one crazy fun evening playing Celebrity.
If there were a 6, it’d be going to the movies. I loved Oppenheimer. Just wow cinema.
In poetry news, I had a few poems accepted for publication; they will debut later this year and next year. I want to do more collaborations. Todd and I worked on a second batch of poems for an open call and once again the process pushed me into new creative territory.
It’s been a busy summer for the MLVC podcast team. We had hilarious movie retrospectives, wild live episodes and a couple of really interesting/enlightening interviews with Madonna collaborators. We’re building up to our 30th anniversary Girlie Show special that really takes us next level!
Ben Kline 
