Poetry and ice cream

On Friday morning, I hit the road for Ohio to spend the weekend with my sons Ben and Jonah. We had a great weekend filled with visiting the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, SunWatch Indian Village, Sugarcreek Reserve, Glen Helen, Young's Dairy, Marion's Pizza, Skyline Chili and more. (Psst...Young's Dairy is where we got the ice cream.)

It was a great weekend, and I even snuck in a 3-mile run last night.

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I'm still in Ohio through Thursday morning, because I'll be speaking at Books & Co. (at The Greene) at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening. If you have questions about publishing and/or need to pick up a 2011 copy of Poet's Market, Writer's Market, Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, Guide to Literary Agents or Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market, then you should definitely attend. And if you do attend, be sure to say, "Hey."

Click here to learn more about the event.

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Here are some links to poems that have been published recently:

• 5 poems in Hobble Creek Review
• 2 poems in Ghost Ocean Magazine
• 2 poems in The Smoking Poet
• 1 poem in MiPOesias

All 10 of these poems are part of a series I've been writing this year. Recently, Otoliths accepted a poem from this series and Caper Literary Journal accepted two, which will be published in conjunction with a Q&A.

The Caper Literary Journal acceptance came after I was asked to serve as a guest judge (along with Leslie Adrienne Miller). This is actually the third time this year I've been asked to be a judge (the first was for Writer's Digest magazine and the second for a conference up in Ohio), and Tammy's recently been asked to be a judge for the Georgia Poetry Society.

It's kind of cool to have the opportunity to read poetry and select my favorites. Makes me want to start a poetry journal or something.

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Okay, time to start another week!

Yawn. Stretch. Let's get at it!

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Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer and read my Poetic Asides blog.

2010 Labor Day Weekend

Wow! What a weekend!

On Saturday morning, we (Reese, Will, Tammy, and myself) met up with the Teague clan (Tammy's sister Anne, brother-in-law Big Sean, and nephew Little Sean) and took a Marta train into the city to watch the DragonCon parade. Then, we wandered around in the hotel lobbies where the event was happening, which was a lot of fun.

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On Sunday, Tammy and I headed to Decatur for the Decatur Book Festival. We both were invited by JC Reilly to read at the Local Poetry stage at Java Monkey. It was a very fun experience, and I got to meet up with a lot of cool poets, which always gets me excited.

I think I even gave Thomas Lux a poem of mine with a handwritten url for my Poetic Asides blog after he said he liked my set (as well as Tammy's) and was interested in my blog (even though he said he doesn't read too many blogs). Of course, I didn't realize who I had spoken with until Tammy pointed it out to me later. Probably a good thing, because I would've been stumbling over myself. I happen to be reading his collection The Cradle Place right now, and I think it's great.

I'm not good at completely planning out my set list for poems yet, but I think I read the following poems during my 15-minute spot:

1. "Babies"
2. "Dream"
3. "notveryreadableforhumans" (which took off with the person who may be Lux)
4. "One day we looked for the snow" (which was published by La Fovea)
5. "The world will worry for you"
6. "Should she burn across the atmosphere"
7. "the silence between us"
8. "like welcome miracles"
9. "dozen fortune cookies" (which was published by Ghost Ocean Magazine)
10. "Father's shoes" (which was published by OCHO and selected by Collin Kelley, who was also in the audience and is one of the kindest people in poetry anywhere)
11. "Solving the world's problems" (which was published in a different issue of OCHO)
12. "Cold Water" (which was published in Escape Into Life)

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Today, we were mostly lazy, which is, of course, the best way to celebrate Labor Day.

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Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer