A little belated, but so happy to have a poem in the new issue of Gordon Square Review!
Please head over there and support all the writers by reading Issue 10!
http://www.gordonsquarereview.org/
New poem in GSR!
Tag: #amwriting
Aubade for Poetry Month
Another morning shifts into view like frost receding from rooftops, the unexpected cold of April’s end. The sheets are warm with your body, the imprint next to me where your hand pressed the mattress. Now entropy. I have to leave this space and wake the baby. I finger the edge of the comforter will-less to leave. You snort in your sleep. Our parting is the same every morning. In one motion I’m sitting on the edge of the bed and throwing open the curtains–the sun shouts GOOD MORNING on the walls and throws the light across your face. Your eyelids screw up because even in half sleep you can feel the light.
My Sonnet for Poetry Month
Bright cold sun of April, the northwest winds
whipping your cheeks red and spreading
the first of the season’s pollen. Shock of yellow
Daffodils holding on through sleet and snow cover
reminders of the coming warmth. You pick handfuls
of stems and spread them on the concrete
leaving trails of green against the composite
like the slick a snail leaves behind.
I love you in your discovery. This new world
you find, this bright cold place you embrace
as only a child could. The sky opens blue
and streaks with robins and you pierce
the noisy silence with your laughter. A temporary
moment I will hold onto forever.
Poetry Month: Sonnet
The elusive sonnet. Shakespearean, Petrarchan, traditional or modern, love them or hate them. There’s so much scholarship out there about sonnets, but my favorite is definitely Stephen Fry’s section on sonnets from The Ode Less Travelled. Learning about ancient metered poetic forms from a comedian really does it for me! Here’s an excerpt:
So for a prompt, try a sonnet. Whatever that means to you. Could be traditional, metered, rhyming, or not. But keep the Volta! The beautiful turn in line nine (or thereabouts) that shifts the poem. That I think is true embodiment of a sonnet, in whatever form you make it. Oh and 14 lines of course!
Happy National Poetry Month
I am thrilled to share another wonderful April of poetry with you all!
Local highlights this month include:
-April 7, Flying Words Project at Kent State
-April 9, “How Do We Talk To Each Other?” The Cleveland Humanities Festival
-April 21, Ekphrastacy at Heights Arts
-April 24-May 1, Lakefront Cleveland Poetry Festival, including workshops, open mic, and the CSU Poetry Center Lighthouse Reading on May 1.
-April 29, Poem In Your Pocket Day
If you know of anymore events I can add to this list, please let me know!
Every year, I share a month-long list of poetry prompts for National Poetry Month. However, this years prompts will look a little different from the last few years. Instead of posting every day, I’ve decided to upload every few days and include a prompt, along with a formal poem in celebration of this great month. I want to challenge myself to write more poetry and to write more poetry in form, at that. I hope that I can end this month with at least five poems in form, whether that’s sonnet, haiku, villanelle, terza rima, ghazal, etc. I hope that you will participate with me!
*
Let’s start things off with less pressure: haiku
cold threads early spring.
icicles down the maple
branches. sunny sky.
*
And here’s a prompt for the first few days, mull it over!
Write a few lines describing a setting you know well that’s easy to picture: snow on pine trees, the back row of a classroom. Establish the scene with sensory details (don’t forget visual/sight isn’t the only sense we perceive in a place). Then have your poem twist, go somewhere very different, whether spatially or thematically, from where you started. (adapted from Billy Collins’ Masterclass)
Happy Poetry Month! Happy April! Happy Writing!
Individual Excellence Award 2022
So happy to announce that I have been awarded the 2022 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council! I am thrilled to be named among so many talented Ohio artists and so grateful for the recognition of the council for my body of work.
The poems that I submitted represent such a labor of love, trauma, and growth over the past couple of years. I cannot wait to show them to you this year!
Thank you, Ohio Arts Council!
The Landscape Nerd Podcast Feature
Hello all! So happy to announce that I’m featured in the newest episode of The Landscape Nerd Podcast! The episode is called Interdisciplinary: Poetry and Landscape.
Host Maci Nelson is a dear friend and I was honored to join her feature on interdisciplinary work, particularly the intersection between poetry and landscape.
You can find the latest episode and all of her wonderful content at https://www.thelandscapenerd.com/ or on Instagram @thelandscapenerd !
Literary Artist of the Month
I’m happy to announce that Heights Arts has named me Artist of the Month: Literary for August 2020! Heights Arts is an organization I’ve worked with in the past located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. This organization offers programming for the community that focuses on the arts and works to bring local literature, music, and art to the Northeast Ohio community.
I am happy to represent Heights Arts and their programming, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
You can find the announcement on Heights Arts’ website here!
In honor of this title, I am getting a reprinting of my chapbook, SPACE SPECTACULAR, and copies will be for sale as soon as they arrive. Stay tuned!
National Poetry Month 2020
We need poems and poets now more than ever. If ever a group of humans existed who could see the world through a broken lens, a skewed lens, a rosy lens, it is poets. I am so glad I can speak about the world and read what truths other poets have gifted us.
Thank you, poetry. Thank you, poets. Thank you, world.
I am featured in Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Read+Write 30 days of poetry (on April 10). Please follow the link below to find the poems and maybe even sign up to receive them in your inbox.
30 Days of Poetry
1 – The Fool
2 – Satellites in Orbit
3 – The Letter “E” appears in odd numbers. You cannot use the letter “E”.
4 – “I used to be a roller coaster girl” jessica Care moore
5 – Write the moment you decide to cut a corner.
6 – Kigo – write a haiku
7 – Write the senses – we have 5, is there a 6th? Your scene: the backyard of your childhood home.
8 – Rest. In music, in bed, in the space of a poem.
9 – Your poem is a gift, wrap it in colorful paper, bows, confetti. What’s inside? Tell us.
10 – This algae bloom.
11 – On this day, Napoleon abdicated, 1814. You can find more here. Connect your words with something that happened on this day.
12 – Orange, Clover, Exile, Patent, Freeze
13 – Listen to your favorite song until you cannot hear the melody anymore, until the words are meaningless. Then, write a poem about that experience.
14 – Choose an Emily Dickinson poem and use her syntax to create something new. Use the same parts of speech that she does, but change the words. So, “Banish Air from Air” becomes “Burn face to face.”
15 – Write about Margaret Keane.
16 – Write a sonnet.
17 – Silence. It has a sound, a feeling, a space. I want to know about it. Tell me about your silence.
18 – Visit the Smithsonian’s website for the National Portrait Gallery. Find a face and write their poem.
19 – Write a crocus, snowbell, daffodil, or lilac poem.
20 – Columbine was 20 years ago. Google the shooting and write your thoughts. Don’t approach this as a poem, more like a meditation.
21 – Write about the color green.
22 – 22 lines about anything.
23 – Listen to Clair de Lune and tell me what it’s really about.
24 – Write a poem in another language… Like the language of food, of music, of car maintenance.
25 – Write an Ode.
26 – I can never write comedy. So now we all have to. Watch a couple of YouTube videos of your favorite comic and write a poem in their voice.
27 – Read an animal poem. Pick your least favorite animal and write something for it. Think The Tyger or The Walrus and the Carpenter.
28 – Embrace symmetry and write a square poem.
29 – Write about Mondays.
30 – Serenade April, National Poetry Month. ðŸŒ
Amanda Stovicek D'Alessandro 
