The Friday Influence

There’s this practice on Instagram where people do a “photo dump” which has them sharing a random hodgepodge of recent pics. Please consider this post as a blog version of that. Am slowly relearning my voice here. More reviews coming, and other things as well 🙂

The influence here, at least for this post, is a series of tabs that I’ve kept open for more months than I care to admit, all things that I’ve been meaning to share on here. Hope this makes sense, haha.

Without further ado:

• Been late on sharing news of some of my former students: First, there’s N.K. Bailey, a PNW poet, who published a chapbook, A Collection of Homes with Bottlecap Press. Bailey is a dynamic poet whose work is intimate and imaginative.
• Also, I’m proud to have worked with Sarianna Quarne last fall on her honors creative thesis, the poems of which are featured in her self-published chapbook, Church Confessional Booth, which can be read for free on her site. Quarne’s work often uses the image as a jumping off point for charged, lyric meditations.
• Also, also: I’m happy to share that I recently had an essay of mine published in Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master which is part of The Unsung Masters Series from Pleiades Press. I’ve written about Bert Meyers for a number of years on the Influence. Glad to have worked out this memory and experience with Meyers’ work! Thank you to Dana Levin and Adele Elise Williams for the opportunity and for being great to work with!
• Lastly, here is a collection of clips of me reading in various spaces:
  • here’s me reading as part of the River Road Reading series;
  • here’s me interviewed by dear friend and poet Dimitri Reyes;
  • here’s the recording of my recent reading at The Grolier Poetry Bookshop alongside Levi Rubeck (this clips includes me reading a fresh occasional poem at the start);
  • lastly, here’s me reading in January at the Solstice MFA faculty reading (this clip includes me reading an excerpt from my upcoming memoir, Ruin and Want).

I realize that’s a lot of clips at the end, here’s the link to my YouTube channel in case you’d like to save that to check them out later.

Alright, more content coming soon, as long as it makes me content, haha.

If you even just read this, thank you!

Abrazos,

José