One Night Stanzas

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that every week in my Procrastination Station, I use a little bit of space to pimp out the good works that my flock of Featured Poets/regular readers (if you’re a regular reader but never comment, this is why you should make yourself known!) are doing in the big scary online literary community. However, a while ago I realised that there’s a lot of stuff happening online that doesn’t necessarily involve ONS-ers, but which you lot might still want to know about. Therefore, I thought I’d create a ‘found online this week’ series outwith Procrastination Station to tell you all about it!

So, first to get the treatment is Cheryl Maddalena… but first, some context! Bill Cohen, poet and editor of Tattoosday, one of my favourite tattoo blogs, has been running a series for Poetry Month (that’s this month for those of you who are not totally on the ball!), featuring tattooed poets, one for every day of April. Each poet gets to post one of their poems and some images/info about their tattoos… me included! So far Bill has featured some great poets including the fabulous Kim Addonizio (who also graced the pages of Skin Deep), but one of my favourites was Cheryl Maddalena, a performance poet from Boise, Idaho.

Cheryl’s tattoo is the word “beautiful”, written down her forearm in 200 point type. Pretty striking, and brave. Also striking is Cheryl’s accompanying poem, aptly titled ‘Why I got the word “beautiful” tattooed on my arm in 200 point lowercase Times New Roman.’ I absolutely love this piece, and the piece above, which Bill also posted. Cheryl has a really distinctive performance style, which takes a couple of watches to get used to, but now I am hooked. The above poem is based on a really funny, quirky idea and has some great lines (”I’m sorry! You are the kinky mansion of my dreams and desires!”). I thought this was a good, off-the-wall candidate for my first “found online” post. Enjoy!

Found something online that deserves a mention? Plug it to me: claire@onenightstanzas.com!

Don’t forget to visit the One Night Stanzas store & The Read This Store!

 Subscribe to ONS!

Tags: advice for young writers, found online this week, publishing, resources for young writers, young poets

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 9:59 am and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.