Category: writing

SoCS: headshots

My family is not that big on taking photographs all the time. I am particularly disinclined to selfies, so there are not a lot of close-ups of me.

As a poet, though, one often has to submit headshots to accompany poems and bios, so…

I was lucky that relatively early in my publishing experience I wrote a poem on a prompt from Silver Birch Press for their MY MANE MEMORIES series, which was about our hair. My poem was called “Crowning Glory.” We had to send a close-up photo of ourselves, illustrating the poem, so spouse B and I went into our backyard on a sunny day to show off my silver locks in the sunshine.


Since then, I’ve used this photo whenever I needed to submit a headshot. It’s appeared in a number of journals and is on the back cover of my chapbook, Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023). It’s the photo that is used here at Top of JC’s Mind and on its Facebook page. When I don’t have a more relevant photo to go with a blog post on Instagram, I use this headshot.

At this point, this close-up is a bit out of date. After cataract surgery, I no longer wear glasses on a regular basis. Due to some dental issues that required using orthodontia to correct my bite, my smile looks a bit different. I have a few more smile wrinkles now.

I really should have a new close-up taken.

Still, I’m so attached to this one and have spread it around to so many places, I’m not quite ready to replace it.

Maybe, someday…

[I should have included that I use this photo on my new author site (joannecorey.com), too. I really have plastered it everywhere!]
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “close up/close-up.” Please join us for SoCS and/or Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/12/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2024-daily-prompt-jan-13th/ 

jot, jot, jot…

The purpose of Just Jot It January is to write and post every day. Linda even invites everyday things like shopping lists!

I have been writing a lot of correspondence and other utilitarian writing so far this month. The brief lull in a lot of organizational and advocacy work ended on January second and everything got very busy very quickly. I’ve also been working through some poetry and poetry-adjacent issues. There have also been an inordinate number of zoom meetings with note-taking going on.

I will not bore you with excerpts of any of those, however.

You’re welcome.
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A reminder that you are welcome to join us for #JusJoJan24 at any time. You don’t have to post every day. You can use the provided prompts or not. It’s up to you! Find out the particulars here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/11/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-11th-2024/

One-Liner Wednesday: the purpose of practicing art

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Kurt Vonnegut

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays and Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/10/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan24-the-10th-so/ 

Angelus

During Just Jot It January, I thought I’d share some of my previously published poems that have been out for a while, as I did on New Year’s Day. I usually don’t put poems within posts when a poem is first published so that people will visit the site that has been so gracious in publishing my work. I will, though, always include the link, even though I am putting the poem in the post.

Today, I’m sharing the poem “Angelus” that I wrote in February, 2020 in response to an Ekphrastic Review Writing Challenge. I wrote a post about it at the time. I constructed a narrative inspired by The Angelus, the 1859 painting by the French artist, Jean-Francois Millet, shown below. I used part of the Angelus prayer in my poem. My home parish when I was growing up rang Angelus bells three times a day as a reminder to pray this prayer. Our pattern was to ring the bell in three groups of three followed by a group of nine. The Angelus rang at 6 AM, noon, and 6 PM, which I used in the poem. I have no idea what the tradition was in France at the time of painting but it worked for the poem, so poetic license?

Angelus by Joanne Corey

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

At the six o’clock bells, she pauses.
Her hands that had been preparing
breakfast, now clasped in front of her, drift
down to rest over her womb,
which, like Mary’s, conceals 
a miracle.

And the Word was made flesh,
And dwelt among us.

As everyone in the market stops
buying and selling to pray
at the noon bells, she reflects
that another’s flesh is forming
within her, dwelling
in mystery.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

The evening Angelus rings
across the field. As she stands
bowed beside her husband,
she beseeches God that this time
the promised child
will be born.

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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/05/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-5th-2024/

Just Jot It January ’24

For the tenth time, Linda G. Hill of Life in Progress is hosting Just Jot It January! She invites all bloggers to participate in the challenge to post every day in January and link back to her blog so we can easily find participants’ posts. The rules, though, are flexible, so you may join in whenever you like with whatever you like (although there are some extra precautions to take if your post is not G-rated). Linda will be posting prompts but their use is optional. I tend to do my own thing, unless a certain prompt really strikes me. Others (the vast majority) faithfully use the prompts for their posts.

Thanks, Linda, for the opportunity to welcome the new year with daily posts! Come, All, and join the fun!

In honor of the new year

The New Year poem below was published on December 31, 2015 as part of the Silver Birch Press ME, DURING THE HOLIDAYS series. The photo was our own that we took to accompany the poem. In the note I wrote in 2015, I talked about how we still liked to observe GMT midnight, a family tradition made more meaningful now by the fact that daughter E and granddaughters ABC and JG live in London.

Eastern Standard

As the third millennium turned, 
our family toasted with sparkling cider 
at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, 
seven in the evening for us,
in deference to daughters’ bedtimes.

With our children grown, the two 
of us honor that tradition, 
clink glasses, savor the past, 
sip, hope for the future, 
in evening dark as midnight.

Joanne Corey

This year, we were fortunate to have daughter T at home to celebrate with us with sparkling blush grape juice and pear-apple-cranberry pie that B had made. We were able to tune into the firework and light show from London, which is held on The Thames near the Millennium Wheel. The first time we visited E in London in December, 2019, we went for a ride on the Millennium Wheel, so it was fun to see it as part of the light show.

Best wishes for 2024, Everyone!

Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find our more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/01/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-1st-2024/

New poem on POETiCA REViEW

I’m pleased to announce that I have a poem published in the special 20th anniversary edition of POETiCA REViEW. You can find my poem, “The Bridge,” by clicking on my name, Joanne Corey, on the first page of the pdf which opens at the link.

Many thanks to the team at POETiCA REViEW for choosing my poem for this special edition. Thanks also to Trish Hopkinson, who published the submission call and an interview with editor Mark A. Murphy. Mark had mentioned in the interview that they wished they had more submissions of ekphrastic poetry, so I happily obliged and suspect that that was part of the reason that they chose “The Bridge” for publication. I was pleased to see that the painting that served as inspiration for the poem, Claude Monet’s The Japanese Footbridge and the Water Lily Pool, Giverny, appears on the page with my poem.

I wrote the poem initially in June, 2023 in response to an Ekphrastic Review Writing Challenge. While it wasn’t chosen for publication in the responses to that challenge, I workshopped it with both the Grapevine Poets and the Boiler House Poets Collective to revise it to the form that POETiCA REViEW published.

One of the things that I appreciated about the interview that Trish Hopkinson did with Mark Murphy was the response articulating POETiCA REViEW‘s mission “to reach out to ordinary people, who might not otherwise consider themselves as poets.” This resonates with me as someone who does not have an academic background in poetry. I very much consider myself a “community poet” who has learned about poetry through my connections with the Binghamton Poetry Project; my local poetry circles, the Grapevine Poets and the sadly missed Sappho’s Circle; and the Boiler House Poets Collective, as well as through poet-friends and through reading a wide range of poems and articles about poetry.

I also appreciate POETiCA REViEW‘s tagline, “for the many, not the few.” I have found that my poems are more likely to be published by journals and presses that are seeking a more general audience. For example, Kelsay Books, who published my chapbook Hearts this spring, states in their submission requirements that “submissions should be accessible to a general audience.” I think that many people were scared off poetry in school, thinking they couldn’t understand it properly. I try to write in a way that invites people to bring their own experiences and memories to the poem so it doesn’t feel foreign or intimidating.

I hope you will enjoy the 20th anniversary edition of POETiCA REViEW and more editions available in their archive. Consider submitting to them, in keeping with their mission! And, as always, comments are welcome here at Top of JC’s Mind.

Review: American Symphony

Last night, B, T, and I watched American Symphony on Netflix, a documentary which followed the extraordinary musician Jon Batiste in 2022. It is also being shown in theaters.

I had loved watching Jon Batiste on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He and his band, Stay Human, were the house band on the show, beginning with its inaugural episode in 2015. I appreciated Jon’s talent, his ability to cross and blend musical genres, and his gentle, positive spirit. While his jazz roots were always in evidence, he would often use elements from classical music or indigenous/folk music in his compositions, arrangements, and improvisations. During the early part of the pandemic when the show was being produced remotely, Jon would often still have a segment with Stephen where they would talk from their respective homes and Jon would play a bit on his piano or sing. Even though things were very different, it was a comfort to hear Jon’s expressive, calming voice in a difficult time.

Jon always had multiple projects going on, including performing, recording, and composing. For example, he won an Oscar for best original score as one of the composers for Disney-Pixar’s Soul in 2021. 2022 was set to be another busy, productive year for Jon Batiste, which director Matthew Heineman set out to document on film.

Jon was preparing to premiere his “American Symphony” which would bring together elements of influence of his and American music on stage at Carnegie Hall for a one-time-only performance. He was about to be nominated for 11 Grammy awards across an array of genres. There was still his Late Show gig.

And then, his long-time partner and soon-to-be spouse, the writer/author Suleika Jaouad, had a recurrence of leukemia after ten years in remission and American Symphony transformed from being a documentary about a composer and his music into a film about love, life, living, and how art expresses that all, helps us to process, and propels us forward.

The openness of Jon and Suleika in showing us their pain, anxieties, and vulnerability, as well as their love, art, and joys, is incredibly brave and moving. It was upsetting to me to hear that Jon faced a lot of criticism and negative comments about his eleven Grammy nominations – and eventual five wins, announced while Suleika was beginning chemotherapy. It just seemed so mean-spirited to inflect on a gentle soul at such a vulnerable time. I had known that things were stressful for Jon because he needed to end his years as band leader at The Late Show, but I hadn’t realized the extent of the situation until watching American Symphony.

While being a musician or music-lover will add to your appreciation of this film, it is certainly recommended to all teens and adults who are open to honest expressions of the human condition. It is not for younger children, who might be upset by the intensity of the medical side of the story.

My best wishes to Jon and Suleika for many years of love and art to come. Thank you for sharing so much of yourselves with us.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Avis Collins Robinson and Winter

Today is the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and one of the first things I read is this tender, reflective piece from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post about the unfinished art quilt and essay “Winter” – the last in a series that his spouse Avis Collins Robinson was working on at the time of her death. (The link above is a gift so it will open for everyone without paywall.)

The piece begins:

For Avis Collins Robinson, the artist who created these works heralding the seasons, winter meant both an end and a beginning. The bare trees and sere landscape were stark, but they held the promise of spring and renewal — not a mere hope but a promise.

I wanted to share his words and her art with you as the seasons continue to unfold inexorably before us.

We are fortunate that art and words continue to speak to us, even when their creators have passed away.

Love also endures.

(Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash)

SoCS: a Christmas baking poem

It’s been a busy week and I didn’t look at Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday post until just now, early Saturday morning. (Linda puts it out on Friday so folks have a bit of a heads-up, although huge amounts of advanced planning, as well as edits, are against the SoCS rules.)

As it happens, my post yesterday goes very well with the SoCS prompt today, which is “bake.”

I wrote yesterday about a poem that was just published by Silver Birch Press, “My husband and daughters make Christmas gingerbread.” Yes, it’s “make” rather than “bake” in the title, but baking is definitely involved in the poem.

B has turned into the main baker in the house. This year, with no visits from extended family planned and just the three of us at home, B is not doing our usual Christmas practice of having at least a half dozen kinds of cookies available at once. Instead, he is doing serial baking. So far, he has made pfeffernüsse and pecan puffs.

No gingerbread yet, but I’m sure it will be coming…