Holiday Gift Guide 2016: BOOKS!

Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon (a Blood Pudding Press contest winning poetry chapbook) is included in this Holiday Gift Guide 2016! - http://www.smartymommies.com/single-post/2016/12/01/Holiday-Gift-Guide-2016-BOOKS
Thank you very much to Shannon Brugh.

 You can acquire your very own copy of "Fiddle Is Flood" (and/or other chapbooks and artsy offerings too) within the Blood Pudding Press shop HERE -  https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_active_1

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

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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

Blood Pudding Press's Pushcart Prize Nominated Poems

Blood Pudding Press is delighted to announce its 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees!

The press has chosen to nominate one poem from each of the three poetry chapbooks published by Blood Pudding Press this year.

The nominees are listed below followed by their nominated poems.

Congratulations to  Lauren Gordon, Matthew J. Hall, and Nicole Rollender for these Pushcart Prize nominations.

-"O Tennyson!  Tennyson!" by Lauren Gordon, from her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Fiddle Is Flood (see the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_feat_4)

-"The Pigeons and the Peace Dove" by Matthew J. Hall, from his Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Pigeons and Peace Doves (see the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/236081194/new-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j?ref=related-0)

-"Disassembling" by Nicole Rollender, from her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Bone of My Bone (see the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/246781871/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_feat_2)

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O Tennyson! Tennyson!

what is good and wild in my country

nine miserable Nellies from New York whose fathers sell

goods on God’s grass her brother is alive and warm with two

hands and no one knows why but God, God hates

weather, weeds, heart, finally, round as a Christmas orange

crisp as an oyster cracker fished from a woolen winter pocket

you never saw two boys picked up dead and raped naked by a tornado

never knew another word for Indian or an outhouse hole of biting

flies, tiny graves in cellars or oh, that kind black doctor

with medicinal powders and the hair of your parents still grows

long after they’re under find a prayer to fix to water a calling card

with trailing flowers a bonnet that keeps slipping blue smoke cat tails

in your hoops, good and wild, one dead child, one loam son for everyone

(from the chapbook Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon)

***

The Pigeons and the Peace Dove

my apologies are short lived and dim

like headlights of a passing car

reflecting off gutter puddles

from yesterday’s rain

I wanted to be sincere

but anxiety hurls my goodwill at the wall

and laughs and cuts us with the shards

I should have collected all the tears

I have pulled from your eyes

taken them back and choked on the poison

the olive branch has withered

and fallen to the ground between us

the peace dove is twitching down there

her feathers are dirty like those of the pigeon

and the pain I have handed you freely

and the embarrassment of sharing my tarnished reputation

and the band of abuse

all run too deeply

and though it may not be worth a damn

I do love you and I am sorry

(from the chapbook Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall)

***

Disassembling

The disassembling: 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, the way your remains

lowered in, collapses into earth,

and some other part of you enters and exits

by the ear. The drum shivers as you hum.

Your hair grows longer. The hip is something

no longer examined in the light.

We speak the language of departure. 

One word to you is love.

To me it’s ruin. Or a declaration of war, 

the moth wing your delicate,

plucked scalp.

(from the chapbook Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender)

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 Lauren Gordon at Blot Lit

"A piece is done when I have gotten some distance from it and can come back to it without seeing anything I want to change. That’s a process that takes anywhere from three months to five years (so far)."

A small snippet from a new interview with Blood Pudding Press poet Lauren Gordon at Blot Lit Reviews.

Read more here - http://blotterature.com/2015/09/26/blot-lit-reviews-an-interview-with-lauren-gordon/

Procure Lauren Gordon's Blood Pudding Press chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood" here - 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_feat_3

NEW Review of Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon (Blood Pudding Press 2015)

 "She uses images of buried babies and oversexed grasshoppers"

A strangely amusing snippet from a new Blot Lit Review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook "Fiddle Is Flood" by Lauren Gordon.

Thank you to BLOTTERATURE.

Partake of more HERE - http://blotterature.com/2015/09/24/blot-lit-reviews-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon/

Procure a copy of the chapbook HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_feat_3

NEW Review of Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon (Blood Pudding Press, 2015)

 "Gordon moves from the pure white milk to the mud and grime. Dirt lines the cracks and spine of this collection in such a delectable way. "

and

"Gordon repeats the word “sweet” a word often used to describe little girls, but it is disturbing in a sense here. Other words like “hot” and “spittle” really deliver the tone home to an all-new way of thinking about this particular time period as well as punching us in our modern-age guts, conjuring up countless stories we’ve all heard about the street harassment of women (and even young girls)."

Just a few lines from a wonderfully detailed new review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood" by Lauren Gordon.

Thank you very much to Jennifer MacBain-Stephens​ for writing this wonderful review.

Read the entire review on the Infoxicated Corner today! - http://www.thethepoetry.com/2015/08/infoxicated-corner-jennifer-macbain-stephens-reviews-lauren-gordons-fiddle-is-flood/

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After partaking of this new review, you might want to partake of the entire chapbook, by purchasing a copy for yourself, from the Blood Pudding Press shop here -  https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_active_2

A NEW Interview with Lauren Gordon about her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood" (at THE VOLTA BLOG)

"I love chapbooks. I love reading in small bites. I love the affordability and the art and love put into them. No one is starting a chapbook press because they want to make money. It’s purely for the love of the art...Fiddle was a long series poem at first, and then it evolved into a chapbook manuscript – and then I wrote for another year and it grew into a full length manuscript. After sending it out and getting a lot of honest feedback... I cut it back down to a succinct chapbook manuscript. I thought it would be neat to see a handmade chapbook for this manuscript with a small press and I was lucky that it won the contest with Blood Pudding Press. The editor, Juliet Cook, makes really lovely handmade chapbooks and I’m so happy with the finished product. It seems like something that is true to the art. I also created the artwork for the cover. It’s a combination of images from a children’s nursery rhyme book from the nineteenth century. Hidden in the scroll-work are the names of my husband and daughter, and the blackbird is homage to Blood Pudding Press’s journal, Thirteen Myna Birds."

from part of a new interview of Lauren Gordon, about her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood" - conducted by Lizi Gilad at THE VOLTA BLOG

read more of the interview here - https://thevoltablog.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/interview-fiddle-is-flood-lauren-gordon/

buy the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_active_20

A NEW Review of Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon

"vivid and visceral. The lines in these poems are short, spare. Each image is sharp and singular... and each poem pushes against our need for story as well as for sense. We read of the pull of the physical, and much is left to be discerned between the lines."

from a new Book Review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook "Fiddle Is Flood" by Lauren Gordon, reviewed at Extract(s) Daily dose of lit

read more of the review here - http://dailydoseoflit.com/2015/05/20/book-review-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon/

partake of and consider purchasing a copy of this chapbook for yourself here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227740935/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_active_1

AWP2015 - Lauren Gordon's Fiddle Is Flood

It was exciting for Blood Pudding Press editor Juliet Cook to meet the latest Blood Pudding Press poet  at this year's AWP. Here are Lauren Gordon and Juliet Cook AND Lauren Gordon is holding her new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Fiddle Is Flood, which sold out at AWP, but copies are still available within the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_active_1

What Held Your Hand Was a Ghost: A Reading of Hauntings, Place, Cinema, the Fabulous & More

This poetry reading (and AWP) is now just a little more than a week away (AAAH)!

What Held Your Hand Was a Ghost happens Thursday, April 9

at 8:00pm - 10:00pm in CDT

 at Crooked Pint Ale House. 

It features a variety of fabulous poets from a variety of unique presses, including three Blood Pudding Press poets - Kelly Boyker, Daniel Shapiro, and Lauren Gordon.

Lauren Gordon will have her NEW Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook available too, "Fiddle Is Flood".

https://www.facebook.com/events/1561428764109738/

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While at AWP, don't forget to visit Table 525, being shared between Blood Pudding Press and Menacing Hedge. 

New Thirteen Myna Birds - First of Spring 2015!

The NEW Thirteen Myna Birds has arrived! It offers four teaser pieces from the NEW Blood Pudding Press Press poetry chapbook, "Fiddle Is Flood" by Lauren Gordon, followed by new poetry from Davide Nixon, John Claude Smith, Joe Milford, Bekah Steimel, (and a few older poems by Jessica Lindsley and Martin Willitts Jr. have moved from the top of the flock to the bottom of the flock, but still live on)!

http://13myna.blogspot.com/

"silver fishes and all that swim in the darkness - inside my belly - up and over my other bones - cutting my body in half - bared fangs tearing into hope - gyrate & spill give voice to swill - in the black soil of night - a glimmer of hopelessness - in heaven blood up to your ankles"

NEW from Blood Pudding Press! - Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon - the first Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook of 2015!

The first new Blood Pudding Press contest winning poetry chapbook of 2015, Fiddle is Flood, by Lauren Gordon, offers twenty-two unique and powerful poems, inspired by Little House on the Prairie!

Semi-abstract and gorgeously emotional, fabulously crafted, with an utterly one-of-a-kind approach, this content is worth multiple reads.

It is also charmingly wonderful to hold this hand-designed chapbook in all its cover art glory and yarn binding.

The cover art was created by the poet herself. 

Here are a few sample lines for you, from the poem "Dreamt of Haying" - 

  

God takes care of us so far

as we do what we please

Godless muskrats clambering

up parched tight grass

never seeing soft prairie

never feeling the soft weight

of your son pressing

your ribs       when I’m sixteen

my prayers sound like a woman

behind a sheet in the ink

with a knife a knife renting

air terror my prayers sound like

Read more by purchasing a copy of this chapbook for yourself at the Blood Pudding Press shop here - 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress

New Thirteen Myna Birds, before February ends!

The Thirteen Myna Birds flock has been freshly updated and offers new poetry by Jessica Lindsley, Martin Willitts Jr., Michael Lee Johnson, JT Williams, Luke Jeffrey Wilkinson, and Mitchell Krockmalnick Grabois here! - http://13myna.blogspot.com/

"a disaster of blood petals - watch the hands waving distress flags - like a reverse mapmaker - moonlight cracks open - the moon burns - lacerated throat of the skyline - the ghosts got replaced - sunset hemorrhaging - impeded by grey"

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Next month's Thirteen Myna Birds flock will feature some poems from the FIDDLE IS FLOOD collection by Lauren Gordon, the first wining Blood Pudding Press chapbook of the year, coming soon...