new story, new e-chapbook

Hello!

Hope everybody is well. I'm on my way out the door, but I wanted to post these before I forgot:

I've got a new short story up at the fantastic Essaysandfictions.com. This is my story about the pregnant mermaid, so you know it's gotta be, well, um, I'm not sure.

Also, I have an e-chapbook up at Gold Wake Press. It's a poetic treatment of Wong Kar-Wai's beautiful film 2046, though I think you can still enjoy it without having seen the movie. But have you seen the movie?

Okie dokie, that's all I got for now. Thanks for checking in!

New poem in Diagram!

http://www.thediagram.com/10_5/martin.html

This one is different than my usual fare, but I still like it. :)

facebooking

Hey there--

If anybody reads this blog and would like to add me on FB, feel free. My page is:

http://www.facebook.com/erinlyndalmartin

Please do click "add a personal message" and let me know how you know me so I don't think you're a random sketchy internet person. :)

the winged painter is on

Hi all--

Hope the summer is going well for you.

I'm just back from a wonderful trip to Madison, WI to see old friends (and eat at old favorite restaurants!). There is even a new-to-me veggie paradise restaurant named The Green Owl, and they deserve a shoutout for all their amazing food and beer. As long as I'm giving shoutouts to Madison restaurants, let it be on the record that I always love going to The Weary Traveler, Motherfool's (coffeehouse), Baraka, and Monty's, to name a few. One of the trip's highlight's was a behind-the-scenes look at the new children's museum, which isn't open yet. My friend Erika Koivunen is doing some metal art projects there and gave me a tour--it made me so happy to see so many local artists working really hard to make a truly magical place. Plus there is a delish crepe place across the street, yeah! (All about the food!)

So, yes, I am trying to move back to Madison for many reasons. I've been applying for jobs both there and here since Blacksburg is still a great place to live (don't take my potential exodus as an anti-recommendation). Fingers crossed that somebody needs an adjunct in comp or creative writing this fall.

While I was in Madison, I did a phone interview with Rufus Wainwright. It was brief but he seemed really nice--he was quite nice when I met him briefly in 2001 when he was opening for Tori Amos. Here is the interview:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/128673-im-never-quite-sure-what-to-expect-an-interview-with-rufus-wainwrigh/

And, recently posted, here is the interview I did with Xiu Xiu a few months back:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/124492-dear-god-i-love-xiu-xiu/

And here is a poem in the latest issue in Typo, which has always been one of my favorite literary magazines:

http://www.typomag.com/issue14/

'Til next time!

Change of time, love

I'm sitting outside a cafe, staring at a parking lot, drinking iced coffee, and listening for the millionth time to Josh Ritter's new album So Runs the World Away. 

I need to blog more, which is not the same as saying that I lead a fascinating existence.

I felt like my brain was turning to mush (and this was even after I managed to give up America's Next Top Model, thank you very much) so I pulled out the Books I Don't Understand from moving boxes that will never get unpacked.  I've been spending the week with Kristeva's "Revolution in Poetic Language" and Elizabeth Grosz's Time Travels. Both are strangely exciting, though I'd be hard-pressed to actually summarize the Kristeva.

I'm definitely ready to work again, but we'll see what that looks like. I doubt there are any adjunct openings nearby for summer, but hopefully by fall I'll have made contact and found a few classes to pick up. In the meantime, I strangely miss working in a cafe, so I'm hoping that plan will come through for the summer.

It's my birthday!

All day long!

New story in H_ngm_n

Hello all--

I have a short story up in the latest edition of the fantastic H_ngm_n, edited by poet extraordinaire Nate Pritts. Here's the link to my story:

http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n10/erin-lyndal-martin.html

Though it's just being published now, this is a story I wrote quite some time ago. It took me a while to find a home for it, though I'm quite happy with the one it found. This was the story that really got me started writing short stories in a way that stuck. While all my stories are my favorites in some way, this one holds a special place for me because of that.

Happy February

Hello from the longest shortest month of the year.

I hope you're seeing the slow, subtle signs of spring thaw like we are here. I'm starting to believe that winter won't last forever, Narnia-style, after all.

My parents' (and my) longtime neighbor just passed away well into his 90s. He was generally in great health, but he slipped and fell in the grocery store, breaking 6 ribs. His body wasn't in any shape to rebound from that. I keep thinking about that, how a body that has had the fortitude to survive over 90 years can be undone so quickly. It's also strange to think of him as mortal--he's been old as long as I've been alive; I never thought of him as being able to depart the earth even if he wanted to.

I've been contemplative about that and about bodies in general. Corporeality is loosely the subject of my second poetry manuscript, which I'm working on now. It's alternating between blissfully easy and painfully hard to write. A lot of new existential questions were just raised by my finally reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. It made me miss Boston terribly.

I've slacked off on my reading of new poetry lately, so I'm afraid I can't recommend anything fresh and exciting. Musically, there's plenty of love to go around. Daniel Bjarnason's Processions has been getting a lot of love from my speakers, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about Scout Niblett's The Calcination of Scout Niblett, along with breaking in Xiu Xiu's newest album.

Take care, everyone, and enjoy whatever sun comes.

Last post today, I promise

Ocean 2010 is out and full of wonderful images and words about the ocean. Some are scientific and some are more interpretive. I have a short story in there that falls in the latter category. This is the first publication from my series of mermaid short stories, so I'm excited for that. When I wrote the story, "Swim Back," I was thinking about love and music--the story heavily involves Arvo Pärt's "Tabula Rasa"--but Ocean's editor, Diane Buccheri, was creative and saw ecological meaning in the story as well. I think that came naturally from my love of the ocean.

While I'm on the subject of the ocean, Oceana.  I can't afford charitable donations as often as I'd like. but I do give something to Oceana when I can. If you're an ocean-lover and have a few dollars to spare, that's a good place for your dollars to go.

Perhaps there's all this ocean in this post because I. miss. the. ocean. Thinking about Oceana reminds me of last spring, when I was teaching at Salem State College and also working in Quincy, MA, making for long, long drives. On the drive to and from Salem, I would pass the ocean, and it would always take my breath away, even though I was sleep-deprived and it was early and I was always looking at it through dirty auto glass. Sometimes, usually on especially good or especially bad days (It's funny how they're interchangeable to a certain extent), I'd stop for as long as I could without being late. There weren't any beaches on the route, but there was a pier, and I'd park at the ubiquitous Dunkin Donuts and walk to the pier to commune a bit with the water.  I think during those months, I was more glad for the ocean than ever.

My latest Pandora station

is here.

a correction and a link

In my last post, I referred to VenusZine and VenusZine.com being gone. But oh, no. You can't keep a good woman down; both were simply on hiatus. There's life at the website and there will be even more on shelves at your local bookseller soon (April, I think), so yay.

And here is a recent interview with my former professor and perpetual writer/editor extraordinaire, Kate Bernheimer. I really hope this woman wills me her imagination...