New Review of Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender

The consistent onslaught of desolation through the eyes of womanhood is a moving experience for reader and writer alike. She highlights a world where bodies are seen as decrepit when mothers are unable to produce milk for their starving offspring, and similarly when their wombs are unable to provide a safe passage between pregnancy and birth. Rollender deals with gateways and passages, blurring the lines between birth, life and death, “A woman’s skin / is one world. The birth canal is another”, “The women who don’t bear children / are held down and singed with black lines before // they return to work in fields, skin a book / of illumination”

-from a new review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Bone of My Bone" by Nicole Rollender

-thank you kindly to Nathan Hassall and The Luxembourg Review

-read more of the review HERE - https://theluxembourgreview.org/2016/05/26/bone-of-my-bone-a-review/

-procure your very own copy of Bone of My Bone from the Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912275/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_feat_1

Blood Pudding Press chapbooks have found new homes and want to find a new home with you too!

A "Bone of My Bone" by Nicole Ross Rollender, a "Pigeons and Peace Doves" by Matthew Hall, a "Fiddle Is Flood" by Lauren Gordon, a "They Talk About Death" by Alessandra Bava, a "Stick Up" by Paul David Adkins, a "House On Fire" by Susan Yount, a "RENEGADE // HEART" by Lisa Marie Cole and a "Sister, Blood and Bone" by Paula Cary each found themselves a new home in Virginia last month, at the PoetCon event.

Thanks again to JT Williams for inviting Blood Pudding Press chapbooks to this event.

And for anyone interested in Blood Pudding Press chapbooks who couldn't get one THERE, you can get one HERE - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress

Review of Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender (Blood Pudding Press 2015)

In the title poem, Rollender uses imagery in a mystical, ritualistic way, paying homage to the women who made her. She calls back to "the old world" in which "piss prophets mixed / a woman's lemon urine with wine to discern what / was in the womb," and, later,

I put
the lines that grew on her skin into a bowl, muddy
my fingers in her waxiness and into her dead eye,
unraveling her, seaming her skin, blanching her
bones back to such a shine, like a giant star's last open
into brilliance.

In this devotion to memory, the body isn't sacred; it just provides ingredients for a potion that makes what's greater, that "last open into brilliance."

See more at: http://www.literarymama.com/reviews/archives/2015/10/mothering-the-unknown-a-poetry-roundup-review.html

***

I didn't encounter this review until several months after it was published, but it focuses on several poetry chapbooks by women, including Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender, which was published by Blood Pudding Press.

Thank you to Literary Mama and Farah Marklevits for this review.

You can acquire your very own hand-bound copy of Bone of My Bone from the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912275/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_3

NEW Review of Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender (Blood Pudding Press, 2015)

The speaker grapples with her own creation, and the subsequent birth of her children. The body is gruesome, especially in its decay, but Rollender wrangles this gore into “a giant star’s last open into brilliance.” The waxy and dead skin of her grandmother is given a second life in the speaker’s skin and the Frankenstein effect is a reconciliation

some thoughts about the 2015 Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Bone of My Bone" by Nicole Rollender, newly reviewed by Lauren Gordon at damfino

partake of more here - http://www.damfinopress.com/WP/2016/01/24/review-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender/

acquire your own copy of "Bone of My Bone" here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912275/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_3

NEW Review of Lauren Gordon's Fiddle Is Flood (Blood Pudding Press, 2015) at Galatea Resurrects

Those who have followed the Little House books and Ingalls family history will be aware of the deep losses sustained by the family on the prairie, and Gordon certainly doesn’t skirt over these sadnesses. In the first poem in the collection we learn that “Baby Freddie” “straightened out his little // body and was dead,” and later we are reminded that sister Mary “has stupid eyes, too.” We read about miscarriages, “tiny graves in cellars,” and Gordon adds new perspectives, emphasizing that “the old Indian” “has a name had a name once.”

from a NEW mini-review of the 2015 Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood" by Lauren Gordon, at Galatea Resurrects (thank you to Genevieve Kaplan)
More here - http://galatearesurrection25.blogspot.com/2015/11/chapbooks-by-lauren-gordon-marco.html

***

Acquire your own copy of Fiddle Is Flood here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_active_4

This Saturday November 7th, Meet Blood Pudding Press!

This Saturday November 7th at the Sigmund Sanger Branch Library in Toledo Ohio!

I'll be reading a poem from each Blood Pudding Press chapbook of 2015, talking about Blood Pudding, and we'll see what else happens.

I will have Blood Pudding Press chapbooks for sale, Blood Pudding Press business cards and more.

***

"Meet the most exciting independent publishers of poetry and fiction in the Ohio area! Come listen to them share their works and give advice on how to get published. It is a perfect opportunity to mingle with these publishers from the following presses:

Azriel Johnson Writing Knights Press (Cleveland,OH)

Dianne Borsenik NightBallet Press (Cleveland, OH)

John Burroughs Crisis Chronicles Press (Cleveland, OH)

Vertigo Xi'an Xavier The Poet's Haven (Massillon, OH)

Juliet Cook Blood Pudding Press (Medina, OH)

There will be FREE Refreshments provided. All are welcome to attend!"

https://www.facebook.com/events/1640197596238930/

New Interview with Blood Pudding Press poet Lauren Gordon at New Books in Poetry

"Using colloquial language and the cadence of hymn to a mesmerizing affect, Gordon pulls the reader into a melding of prairie, nostalgia, and memory:

…endless, endless
prairie for corn and mud and loss and dirt

and the seeds and the silky tassel of half truths
and how you find God in the middle of a haystack
naked and crouching and warm..."

from a new interview with Lauren Gordon about her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood", conducted by Jen Fitzgerald at New Books in Poetry

you can read the rest AND even listen to Lauren talk about her writing HERE - http://newbooksinpoetry.com/2015/10/13/lauren-gordon-fiddle-is-flood-blood-pudding-press-2015/

New Interview with Blood Pudding Press poet Matthew J. Hall at Blot Lit

"The pigeons in my chapbook Pigeons and Peace Doves are – at least in part – a representation of trying to adjust to city life and dealing with the dark and ugly parts of life, in general. City pigeons are often referred to as flying rats because of their parasitic nature and disease spreading potential; but they are only like that as a consequence of the way urban culture functions. They are dirty because built up areas are dirty places to live. They are parasitic because we are wasteful. They often have missing feet, contorted legs or some other disfiguration because urban life is aggressive, self-serving and fast. I relate to these pigeons, yet I am disgusted by them, which is the other part of what they represent in this collection; my own contradictions, anxieties, depressions..."

From a new Interview with Blood Pudding Press poet, Matthew J. Hall up at Blot Lit.

Read more HERE - http://blotterature.com/2015/10/01/blot-lit-reviews-an-interview-with-matthew-j-hall/

Procure Matthew J. Hall's Blood Pudding Press chapbook, "Pigeons and Peace Doves" HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/236081194/new-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j?ref=shop_home_feat_2

NEW Review of Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall (Blood Pudding Press 2015)

"It is not often I come across a chapbook that incorporates the tangible materials of its binding and pages into the reading experience. The silvery sparkle of the grey pages and the messy, yet endearing thread binding of Matthew J. Hall’s Pigeons and Peace Doves gently pull the reader into a pool of melancholy reflection his poetry creates.

Through the narrator’s stream of consciousness, the reader is able to peer into the thoughts of an often stigmatized and ignored voice—the voice of those who live with mental illness. Hall writes candidly about depression and the contemplation of suicide, and he does justice to the realities of those living with mental health issues. The reader witnesses the narrator struggle. They are in bed with him as he is torn between the grace of the peace dove and the effrontery of the pigeon—the chaos of depression and the peace of mental health."

From a new Review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Pigeons and Peace Doves" by Matthew J. Hall at Blot Lit Reviews.

Thank you to Blotterature Literary Magazine and reviewer Kayla Greenwell.

Partake of more HERE - http://blotterature.com/2015/09/30/blot-lit-reviews-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j-hall/

Procure a copy of the chapbook HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/236081194/new-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j?ref=shop_home_active_4

Yet Another Wonderful New Interview with Nicole Rollender about Bone of My Bone

At the beginning of her most recent interview at Speaking of Marvels about her new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Bone of My Bone", new Blood Pudding Press poet Nicole Rollender mentions two other Blood Pudding Press poet chapbooks as some of her favorite chapbooks:

"I’ve become such a fan of Blood Pudding Press’s chapbooks, especially Lisa Ciccarello's At night, the dead and Lisa Marie Cole's Renegade // Heart. Ghostly, visionary, metaphysical, macabre, haunted, these small but powerful collections make me want to write even more – the poems speak to the concerns my work centers on: the complexities of being an embodied spirit, how the dead still haunt/influence our lives and what we learn from them...

These chapbooks are also beautiful art objects: the cover images, the cover and text stock is deckle-edged, the pages are hand-numbered and spider-stamped, and the tomes are bound with decorative ribbon and wrapped in paper and tied with more ribbon when delivered. I was such a fan of how BPP produces artful chapbooks that I specifically wanted to send Bone of My Bone there first"

Read more of Nicole Rollender's new interview HERE - https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/nicole-rollender/

Procure her chapbook for yourself HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912253/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_5

Another New Interview with Nicole Rollender about her Bone of My Bone chapbook

"I’m drawn to the chapbook form because they’re tiny little countries that allow a poet to experiment and to also work through a theme or narrative arc in a smaller space. I actually put together Bone of My Bone specifically for the Blood Pudding Press 2015 Chapbook contest last December. I had been thinking about the theme for a little while, and felt that the subject matter was a good match for BPP, since I own several of its chapbook titles that embrace the spiritual, the mystical, the ghostly, the macabre, the day’s darker undersides. I know that my poetry isn’t for everyone – my longer book of hours poem was rejected from numerous journals. That’s partly why I used it as a skeleton or starting point for Bone of My Bone. Luckily BPP Publisher Juliet Cook liked the chapbook enough to select it as one of the Blood Pudding Press Chapbook Contest winners."

A snippet from another new interview with Nicole Rollender, regarding her new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Bone of my Bone".

Thank you kindly to Nancy Chen Long for conducting this interview, which appears here - http://nancychenlong.blogspot.com/2015/09/chapbook-chat-nicole-rollender.html

The chapbook itself can be acquired from the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/246781871/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_2

The NEW "Bone of My Bone" by Nicole Rollender is only ONE WEEK OLD as of today!

"Bone of My Bone" by Nicole Rollender is one week old as of today! This Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook is still fresh and new and waiting for you to open it up and partake of its unique insides.

Get your very own hand-designed copy HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912253/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_4

"...remember when

we pulled apart moths,

first clapping them between our hands, to stun

their flight? Pulling off one dusty wing,

wrenching the other. Dropping the torsos

in the stream, the water performed the final kill.

Was there an opening the illumined moth

slipped through? Or, did it sink

to be eaten? Or both..."

(from the poem "Disassembling")

NEW Review of Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall (Blood Pudding Press 2015)

A new review of the 2015 Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Pigeons and Peace Doves" by Matthew Hall.

***

"The best poems in the collection...are confessional in style. They are highly reflective with a melancholic edge... These are mature, complex ideas & emotions adeptly handled by Hall in his poetry."

read more of this new review at BOLD MONKEY here -http://georgedanderson.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/mathew-j-hall-pigeons-and-peace-doves.html

then consider procuring your very own copy of the chapbook at Blood Pudding Press here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/236081428/new-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j?ref=shop_home_active_8

New! Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender is now officially available!

Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender is now newly available, as of September 5 2015!

HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/246781871/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_1


















The third and final Contest Winning Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook of 2015 includes 16 poems focused on birth, death, the body in between, and what is divine.

What if you lose a life before it even comes out of you? 

How is life combined with skin and bone and spine and marrow and femurs and skulls?

From cracking and contracting; from breaking down to floating away - will you sink, will you drown, will you rise up higher? 

From torture and fear and numbness to in-depth internal connections between this life and the next.
Bone of My Bone will haunt you and taunt your thoughts in different directions.

Bone of My Bone will disturb you and urge you to consider what life is worth to you and what might happen next. 

***

Bone of My Bone has already gotten attention.

You can read the poet's original perspectives on her own work in several different places:

In this H_NGM_N Book Interview here - http://h-ngm-n.tumblr.com/post/127159192089/chpbk-qs-and-as-with-nicole-rollender

In this Tinderbox Editions Interview here - http://www.tinderboxeditions.blogspot.com/2015/08/book-interview-bone-of-my-bone-by.html

You can also read the first review of Bone of My Bone, by Alessandra Bava, at Sabotage Reviews here - http://sabotagereviews.com/2015/09/01/flesh-of-my-flesh-a-review-of-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-ross-rollender/

***

"Maybe this is just a form 
of sleep. Your fingers curled around an oar. 
We’d have to break metacarpals and phalanges 
to separate your hand from the waves
and the stones. The sinking 
under the moon, the overturn,
dirt still underneath nails. Your ceramic 
tongue, your ruined eyes, three lost ribs."
from the poem "The Preparation of the Body"

NEW Book Review of Blood Pudding Press poet Nicole Rollender's poetry chapbook "Bone of My Bone" by Blood Pudding Press poet Alessandra Bava at Sabotage Reviews

In the narrator’s footsteps, we face the grief of giving birth nine weeks early, a baby “rowing out” the inert body “as the waters shake through me.” The speaker asks her dead mother for consolation and help: “You tell her how your body failed, / the baby was born nine weeks early. / Her hands make the shape of wings. / […] You say the hummingbird is too frantic to watch. / To keep the baby alive, you hold him over your heart, / skin on skin.” Images akin to Anne Sexton, confessional in ways that can be beautiful, piercing, harrowing and real.

From another new review of the coming-soon (in less than a week!) Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Bone of My Bone" by Nicole Rollender.

Thank you kindly to Alessandra Bava for writing this review.

Read the review in its entirety at Sabotage Reviews here -http://sabotagereviews.com/2015/09/01/flesh-of-my-flesh-a-review-of-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-ross-rollender/

Pre-order "Bone of My Bone" here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912253/preorder-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole?ref=shop_home_active_2

***

The reviewer of this 2015 Contest Winning Blood Pudding Press chapbook happens to be a Winner of last years 2014 Blood Pudding Press chapbook contest.

Partake of and/or purchase Alessandra Bava's "They Talk About Death" here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/195494626/they-talk-about-death-by-alessandra-bava?ref=shop_home_feat_4

NEW Tinderbox Editions Book Interview with Nicole Rollender about her poetry chapbook Bone of My Bone, coming soon from Blood Pudding Press!

"My son, my second child, was born nine weeks premature. I woke up at 5 a.m. to find that my water had broken, so we took this eerie, awful drive to the hospital with my daughter chattering in the backseat. I didn’t feel him move for more than half the trip, and I kept thinking we had lost him. It was surreal and terrifying. Several of the poems in the chapbook are concerned with this – what if I lose a child I had never met?"

from a new Book Interview with Nicole Ross Rollender, about her COMING SOON Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Bone of My Bone".

Thank you very much to Tinderbox Editions for conducting this interview, HERE -http://www.tinderboxeditions.blogspot.com/2015/08/book-interview-bone-of-my-bone-by.html

"Bone of My Bone" is now available for pre-order in the Blood Pudding Press shop, HERE -https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912275/preorder-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole?ref=shop_home_active_1

NEW H_NGM_N Book Interview with Nicole Rollender about her poetry chapbook Bone of My Bone, coming soon from Blood Pudding Press!

“How do I measure the body’s gardens from within its bone fences?” 

The dead and what is the divine inhabit this collection – they’re looking for kinship, for remembrance, for some kind of communion.

From a new interview up at H_NGM_N Books, about the forthcoming "Bone of My Bone" Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook by Nicole Rollender!

The chapbook is coming very soon - but before it has even arrived, you can read the author's perspective on this collection's poetry innards, HERE - http://h-ngm-n.tumblr.com/post/127159192089/chpbk-qs-and-as-with-nicole-rollender

*

This chapbook will be officially available the first weekend of September, but is available for pre-order now in the Blood Pudding Press shop, HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912275/preorder-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole?ref=shop_home_active_1

Get TWO 2015 Blood Pudding Press Poetry Chapbooks for a lowered price - Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon and Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall

End of June 2015, A NEW listing has just been added to the Blood Pudding Press shop, through which you can procure a SET OF TWO, meaning both 2015 contest winning Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbooks, for a substantially lower price if you purchase them as a set.

Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon AND Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall for only 10 bucks (plus shipping).

Here's the listing - https://www.etsy.com/listing/238583883/get-two-2015-chapbooks-for-a-lowered?ref=shop_home_active_1

An Excerpt from Pigeons and Peace Doves (Matthew J. Hall's NEW Blood Pudding Press Poetry Chapbook) created by Marcy Erb, appearing at Illustrated Poetry Today

Marcy Erb, the cover artist of the new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall., has created and featured an excerpt from this collection on Illustrated Poetry Today, HERE - http://illustratedpoetry.com/2015/06/09/city-poem-hall/comment-page-1/#comment-2070

NEW from Blood Pudding Press! - Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall - the second Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook of 2015!

June 2015 offers you the new "Pigeons and Peace Doves", the second Blood Pudding Press Contest Winning poetry chapbook of the year - and the first poetry chapbook by Matthew J. Hall.

It includes thirteen gorgeously written, emotionally rendering poems by Matthew J. Hall that are "representative of a...self-destructive struggle, an internal struggle".

Matthew J. Hall is an artist and writer living in Bristol, England. He is an avid reader, writer and reviewer of poetry and fiction and has been featured in some fine literary publications and websites including The Small Press Book Review, Literary Orphans, Rusty Truck and Hobo Camp Review. To read more from Matthew, visit his blog (www.screamingwithbrevity.com) where he frequently publishes reviews and other poetry and fiction related things.

Here are a few lines from one of the Pigeons poems, "This City is Sad and Angry", followed by a photo of the new chapbook.

You can procure a copy of these broken, lovely Pigeons for yourself at the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/236081428/new-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j?ref=shop_home_active_2

"the high risers are leaning in

and the tarmac pulls

and sadness wells and spills

in and from the crippled pigeon’s eyes

I think he wants to cry

but doesn’t know how

I'd like to make a lollipop-stick splint 

for his contorted leg"