New Year, New Enterprise

Happy new year to all our friends and relations here in Stoneboatland. I hope 2013 is getting off to a good start for everyone and that your creative juices continue to flow even in our sub-zero Wisconsinwinterweather. Yes, that is one long word…

This past month, I have been warmed by my participation in an email discussion under the fearless guidance of Verse Wisconsin co-editor, Sarah Busse, on the topic of Women Poets, Publishing, and Blogging. She invited four women poets who also tend blogs to answer some questions about our process and to muse on why we blog and for whom. The discussion was far ranging, and I really don’t want to give too much away because Sarah is writing an article that will appear in an upcoming issue of Verse Wisconsin.

One of the happy by-products of our interaction was the group commitment to intersecting on each other’s blogs where feasible. Hence, the idea was born that Stoneboat would introduce the concept of guest bloggers.

In the coming weeks, keep your eyes open for posts by this diverse group of women writers who became friends through our online conversation and whose bios appear below in alphabetical order. Also, if you go to Peggy Rozga’s blog today, February 1, you will see an offering by yours truly, a poem called “Some Facts About Poets.”

Guest blogger bios:

Sarah Busse is one of two Poets Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin (2012-2016). She co-edits Verse Wisconsin and her first full-length collection, Somewhere Piano, was published in fall 2012 by Mayapple Press (Woodstock, NY). She has been awarded an Edenfred Day Fellow Arts Residency, the WFOP Chapbook Award, the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker Prize and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival. While Sarah does not keep a blog (yet), you can see the fruits of her many labors at www.versewisconsin.org

Jennifer Morales is a multi-genre writer, editor, and performance artist in Milwaukee. Her poem “Pillow / Book” is forthcoming in pixel and sound at KenningJournal.com. Earlier poetry has been published in Between the Heart and the Land/Entre el corazón y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest and at Poetic Milwaukee. "Cross Reference," her poem about the bombing of Hiroshima, won an honorable mention in the 2010 national War Poetry Contest. She serves as a board member for the Council for Wisconsin Writers. Visit her blog at http://www.moraleswrites.com/blog.php

Margaret (Peggy) Rozga has published two books: Two Hundred Nights and One Day and Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad. Her poems have appeared recently in Stoneboat, Verse Wisconsin, the Kerf, Nimrod and as a Split This Rock Poem of the Week.  Her essay “Community Inclusive: A Poetics to Move Us Forward” was published in the Fall 2012 issue of Verse Wisconsin and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Milwaukee and blogs about poetry and social justice issues at http://www.benupress.com/For-Words/for_words.php

Margaret Swedish is a writer/speaker currently working on a project called Spirituality and Ecological Hope. She has written two books, Like Grains of Wheat: A Spirituality of Solidarity, about the impact of the Central American solidarity movement on U.S. people of faith, and Living Beyond the ‘End of the World:’ A Spirituality of Hope, which describes the ecological crises unfolding in our times. She is currently working on a multi-generational memoir connecting her deep ancestral/immigrant roots in Wisconsin to the myth of the unsustainable American Dream. Relatively new to poetry, her first published poems appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Vol 110, October 2012. She also blogs about writing at “Swedish in Milwaukee: My Life as a Writer,” (http://milwaukeereflections.blogspot.com/).

So, please stay tuned for some well-made blogger’s food for thought. Here at Stoneboat, we hope to stir the pot, add a bit of spice, and satiate any cravings you may be experiencing at this otherwise barren time of year. Please enjoy the feast!