Nadja Maril’s prose and poetry has been published in literary magazines that include Change Seven, Lunch Ticket, Thin Air, and The Compressed Journal of Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, a chapbook published by Old Scratch Press that includes both poetry and creative nonfiction prose. Author of two children’s books illustrated with paintings by her father Herman Maril, as well as Who IS Santa? for which she did her own illustrations, Nadja is also the author of two reference books on antique American Lighting, published by Schiffer. A former journalist and magazine editor, Nadja has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. To read more of her work and follow her weekly blog posts, visit Nadjamaril.com https://nadjamaril.com/
We are proud to announce that Old Scratch Press will be publishing Gabby’s first chapbook of poems. The working title is No Ocean Spit Me Out. Approximately 30 pages in length, the poems in No Ocean Spit Me Out explore the dynamics and evolution of family relationships. It is scheduled for release in 2024, so keep following our website as well as Gabby for more details.
When Old Scratch Poetry Collective Members were asked to write about a favorite poem, I knew my choice would be my first poem love affair. Before this poem, which I was introduced to in college, I had a healthy love of words, and a newfound interest in poetry, but it was more about my intrigue with the craft of it. I liked learning how things like rhyme and meter, form and pattern, didn’t need to hit you over the head. The tools of poetry were more like puzzle pieces that you both created, took apart, then put together again. But then came Emily.
Ample Make This Bed
by Emily Dickinson
Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise’ yellow noise Interrupt this ground.
I can’t explain exactly what alchemical combination occurred to cause me to fall for this particular poem by Emily Dickinson. I know it had to do mostly with the way the lines, “Let no sunrise’ yellow noise/Interrupt this ground” made me feel. I was blown away by two lines. The image of the “noise” of a sunrise, the choice of the word “interrupt”, the idea of this sacred “ground”. All of it. Who knows how or why such a thing speaks to you?
Much like falling in love, the factors that come together to create the feeling are a mystery. I know it was a combination of the known entity of craft mixed with the necessary ingredient of emotion. I had no need to do a critical exorcism of the poem, or analyze each syllable in every word, to know how the poem made me feel.
Dickinson scholar Marta Warner says that “she (Dickinson) is a constant summons to think about language and its preciseness. And not only its preciseness, but its power”. Dickinson was prolific, writing over 1800 poems, and while her image is as a recluse, she was actually quite social in her younger years. She lived in the mid-1800’s, and her poetry was practically unknown during her lifetime. It certainly was not a time of female literary empowerment (has that happened yet?). Dickinson would go on to become a “beacon of verbal power”, and I know her light certainly led me to a lifelong love of poetry.
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Old Scratch Press is delighted to be publishing Ellis’s first chapbook, a collection of poems entitled A Break in the Field. In her poetic statement about herself on her Bewilderness Writing website, Ellis says,
“I am a perennial student of nature, inner realms, and the wisdom of the body, and write to bear witness and disentangle the world as I perceive it.”
Approximately fifty pages in length, the poems in A Break in the Field grapple with the concept of how human perception can change, depending on the vantage point. You can pre-order the book by clicking on the link in the previous sentence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ellis Elliott is a writer, ballet teacher, and facilitator of online writing groups called Bewilderness Writing. She has a blended family of six grown sons and splits her time between Juno Beach, FL., and the mountains of Crozet, VA. She has an MFA from Queens University, is a contributing writer for the Southern Review of Books, and an editor/workshop teacher for The Dewdrop contemplative journal. She has been published in Signal Mountain Review, Ignation Literary Magazine, Literary Mama, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letter, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine/Award Poem, Sierra Nevada Review, Women of Appalachia Project Anthology, Delmarva Review, The Rail, Spotlong Review, Euphony Journal, and others.
Our series on “Favorite Poems” and why we think about them over and over again, continues with a post by Contributing Editor Virginia Watts.
Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
I love this poem because as much as the kitchen table is metaphor, it is not. I remember both of my grandmother’s kitchen tables, one had a well-worn aquamarine Formica top and the other was round and oak.
I remember the things I ate there, tea sandwiches, lemon sponge pie, fresh caught rainbow trout from the mountain creek tumbling by. I remember the smell of coffee. I remember listening to the adults, learning about life.
The table in Harjo’s poem can be seen as a metaphor for a human lifetime. Within it, childhood, adulthood, love, births, old age, war, joy, sorrow, death. Throughout what it means to live a human life we can always return to the feeling a being surrounded by those who nurture us, believe in us, where we were shaped and where we dreamed. We are never alone at this table and if you think about it, our kitchen table is with us always.
Do you have a favorite poem you’d like to share? We’d be happy to publish your comments here. Part of the mission of Old Scratch Press is to promote the love of poetry.
Poetry Practice:
Twice a week, says Virginia Watts, I listen to the podcast Poetry Unbound where Irish poet Padraig O Tuama unpacks one poem in his uniquely contemplative, conversational, kind and down to earth way. Each podcast is less than fifteen minutes. Like his recent book “50 Poems to Open Your World” his podcast opens hearts and minds to poems and poets from around the world. It feels like an invaluable gift each and every time I listen.
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Congratulations to OLD SCRATCH PRESS founding member Robert Fleming, whose poem “we were before waring,” featured in impspired was a Delaware Press Award winner.
WAY TO GO ROBERT!
we were before waring
we were before waring
we wore hair keratin like baboons & knocked our chests like gorillas
we wore skin like zebras & bent-over to water like wilder-beasts
we wore muscle like lions & paw swatted flies like bears
we wore bones like swine & dug dirt worms like robins
we wore blood like falcons & taloned on branches like pigeons
we wore fig leaves like chameleons & hide motionless like a rat out-preying an ambush snake
Old Scratch Press will feature original chapbooks and short-form prose
For Immediate Release
June 15, 2023 – Los Angeles: Devil’s Party Press of Los Angeles announced the launch of a new publishing imprint, Old Scratch Press. This new imprint, based in southern Delaware, will produce quality chapbooks that feature poetry and short-form prose by leading authors.
Supporting this endeavor will be ten contributing editors, members of the Old Scratch Press Short-Form Prose and Poetry Collective: poets and writers Alan Bern, Anthony Doyle, Ellis Elliott, Robert Fleming. R. David Fulcher, Gabby Gilliam, Morgan Golladay, Nadja Maril, Dianne Pearce, Janet Holmes Uchendu, and Virginia Watts who will work together to help promote the love of poems and short form prose.
Old Scratch Press’ inaugural publication is Break in the Field, a collection of verse by award-winning poet, Ellis Elliott. Ms. Elliott is a contributing writer for the Southern Review of Books, an editor/workshop teacher for The Dewdrop, and facilitator of the Bewilderness Writing Workshops. Her publishing credits include Signal Mountain Review, Ignation Literary Magazine, and Literary Mama.
Break in the Field addresses how human perception can change, depending on the vantage point. “I am a perennial student of nature, inner realms, and the wisdom of the body,” says Elliott, “and I write to bear witness and disentangle the world as I perceive it.” Break in the Field will be available in mid-July 2023.
November 2023 will see the publication of White Noir, a chapbook by Robert Fleming. White Noir is a black and white visual poetry exploration of human birth to death and beyond on Earth. A prize-winning poet who explores masculinity, sexual orientation, sin and virtue, and dystopia in words and graphics, Fleming is a self-described word-artist whose work has been published internationally in more than 95 print and online publications, and has appeared in art galleries and in online mic features. “The vibe is dark, Goethe, and dystopian, but I lighten it up by including humor, and it offers a hopeful ending,” notes Fleming of his upcoming collection.
Beginning in 2024, Old Scratch Press will produce three or more original titles per year, available in both print and Ebook formats. For more information visit oldscratchpress.com and devilspartypress.com.
About Devil’s Party Press Devil’s Party Press, LLC, an independent publishing house located in Los Angeles, was founded in 2017 by Dianne Pearce, an award-winning author, editor, and publisher. The mission of Devil’s Party is to help showcase the work of unsung authors over 40 years of age. Devil’s Party publishes literary fiction while its four imprints are genre specific: Gravelight Press (horror), Hawkshaw Press (crime/cozy), Out-of-This-World Press (sci-fi), and Old Scratch Press (poetry). To date, Devil’s Party and its imprints have published over 200 authors internationally. In addition to print publications, Devil’s Party produces the award-winning online literary magazine, Instant Noodles
As writers and poets, many of us have been trained to write with an aim to edit and revise, seeking to choose the right word, the right sound, the right meter, and rhythm to capture our thoughts. But there’s a different kind of writing, spontaneous writing, not meant to be censored. Once the phrase is written, it stays.
In visual art, I watched the sculptor Reuben Kramer create what he called his one-minute ink sketches. The game, he said, was not to lift the brush off the paper, once he began, but to keep moving it until the image was complete.
Postcard poetry follows the same protocol. You write within the confines of the small space, what pops into you head that you think will be well received by the recipient. In the case of the annual Cascadia Poet’s LAB Poetry Postcard Fest, the recipient will likely be a stranger, but that is part of the fun.
The festival began in 2007, the brainchild of Lana Ayers and Paul Nelson, and has expanded into an international event. Last year they had 544 participants from twelve countries, five Canadian provinces, and 44 USA states, the highest participation rate ever. So, anyone who is thinking poetry is dead, think again. The artform is alive and well in many different forms.
Co-founder of the festival Paul E. Nelson wrote this essay “The Joy Of Postcards”, published by Rattle, a valuable read, https://www.rattle.com/the-joy-of-postcards/ it can get you started on exploring the medium, if you aren’t already familiar with the form.
And it’s not too late to sign up for this year’s Festival or if you are so inspired, start another version of a poetry exchange on your own. To participate in the Cascadia Poet LAB Postcard Fest click here and learn all about the various approaches to writing postcard poetry and how to participate in the festival.
Thank you for reading and please visit our facebook page and sign up here to follow our posts. If you’d like to learn more about Old Scratch Press, send us some questions and let us know what you’d like to read about.
“I like a challenge,” says writer/poet Nadja Maril, “Which is why I like short-form writing. Carefully choosing just a few words to depict a scene or describe an experience is skill that requires tenacity. The process is humbling. The results gratifying.”
Ten dedicated writer poets comprise the Old Scratch Short Form Collective, with the goal of working with the Devil’s Party Press, a small independent publisher, to bring to fruition the concept of publishing chapbooks of poetry and short form prose under the imprint Old Scratch Press.
Nadja began her writing career as a freelance journalist and subsequently as a magazine editor, but her love has always been creative writing. “I remember reading Shirley Jackson’s short story in high school, “The Lottery,” and wanting to re-read it again, to fully digest everything it contained and thinking what a gift,” she says, “to write a story less than 10 pages long, so powerful that it calls out to be read over and over again.”
Nadja Maril’s first published books, while she was still in her twenties, were two children’s books about Molly Midnight, the artist’s cat (Stemmer House) that were short form in their own way. Inspired by her artist father Herman Maril’s paintings of the family cat, the text required brevity and the use of simple language. “The content,” Nadja says, “Needed to appeal to a child and to the adult who was reading the book to the child. A favorite children’s book is read many times, but it can’t be boring to the parent or caregiver. It has to sound pleasing to the ear, be visually appealing, and tell a story worthy of reflection.”
An expert on antique American lighting from the late 19th and early 20th century, Nadja’s two books on the subject (Schiffer) became mainstays in collector’s libraries as she continued to pen weekly newspaper and magazine columns about antiques.
Refocusing her efforts on further refining her creative work, in 2018, she returned to school to earn her MFA in literary fiction from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine (graduating in January 2020). Her essays, short fiction, and poetry has been published in dozens of literary magazines including; Lunch Ticket, The Journal of Compressed Literary Arts, and Invisible City Literary Journal.
“I like flash fiction,” she says, “Under 750 words. But then I discovered short memoir, which takes on the form of a prose poem.” Her working title for her chapbook, tentatively scheduled to be published by Old Scratch Press in 2024, is Recipes from My Garden: herb and memoir short prose and poetry.
“I’ve published a number of pieces about herbs, vegetables, and kitchen memories,” she says, “And I like the idea of putting them together in a small book.” One of her favorites, published last summer by Anti-Heroin Chic is “Cilantro.” Her prose piece, “Reboot,” appearing in the upcoming edition of the Devil Party’s Press literary magazine Instant Noodles, has a number of components, but the imagery of growing things play an important role in the story line.
Concurrently, working on a novel, Nadja likes to write and revise her work in the context of each short chapter or section, being complete in itself. “I like telling a long story from several points of view which means that each point of view is short story within itself, another short form, she says.
This year, in 2023, Old Scratch Press is looking forward to the upcoming releases of chapbooks by Ellis Elliot and Robert Fleming.
Don’t forget to visit our Old Scratch Press Facebook Page and follow us on Twitter to find out what our contributors are up to and the latest poetry news. Thank You as always for your support.
Ten dedicated writer poets comprise the Old Scratch Short Form Collective, with the goal of working with the Devil’sParty Press, a small independent publisher, to bring to fruition the concept of publishing chapbooks of poetry and short form prose under the imprint Old Scratch Press.
This week we are introducing founding member Janet Holmes Uchendu.
Janet Holmes Uchendu grew up in Eudora, AR, with a love of reading, writing, abstract drawing, and music. She wrote many poems and stories, created loads of colorful abstract drawings, and sang in her church and school choirs.
When she graduated from high school in 1973 she left behind her love of drawing and writing, and focused on music. She attended the University of Arkansas at Monticello with the aid of a vocal scholarship majoring in vocal performance. In 1978 she attended Henderson State University, and finally earned her BA in Music Education from Philander Smith College in 1985.
Life has taken many twists and turns, but Janet never lost her love of reading and writing. She will tell you that the dream of being a writer never died. It was simply a dream deferred. In April 2018, thirty-three years after earning her BA, she enrolled in an Introduction to Creative Writing class at the University of Central Arkansas. It took another two and a half years before she decided to apply to graduate school.
“It was always my intention to go to grad school after I retired from the workforce,” says Janet. “When Covid-19 moved my retirement date up to about two years earlier than I had planned, my deferred dream of being a writer woke up, spoke up, and said the time is now.”
She is currently studying for her master’s in creative writing through the Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop at UCA.
Janet is working on a poetry collection, and a memoir. She is a longtime member of a poetry writing group titled, Pens on Fire, that meets weekly via Zoom. She has been a guest contributor in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, her story, “The Color Red,” was posted on the Arkansas Heritage blog in August 2021 and you can read it here. She has also been published in Writing Our Lives, A Southern Storytellers Anthology, Volume IV, and Volume V.
Don’t forget to visit our Old Scratch Press Facebook Page and follow us on Twitter to find out what our contributors are up to and the latest poetry news. Thank You as always for your support.
For writer, poet, photographer and performer Alan Bern, pairing of images and words, what are termed photo-poems is a daily practice. As he states in his introduction to his work “next S-s-startle” published in Mercurious : “Creating photo-haiga is a central part of my daily art practice: I find it both invigorating and meditative, an often odd, but for me, happy combination. I have found that my photo-haiga can bring some readers closer to the poems. And please note that sometimes I find the photos to match poems sitting in waiting.”
One of the ten founding writer poets comprising the Old Scratch Short Form Collective, this week we introduce Alan Bern.
Alan Bern is the author of three books of poetry: : No no the saddestand Waterwalking in Berkeley, Fithian Press;greater distance and other poems, Lines & Faces press. Alan launched broadside press linesandfaces.com, with artist Robert Woods. Robert and Alan grew up together in Berkeley in the 1960s. Both men became commercial printers, but also continued to produce works that combined Woods’s prints and Bern’s writing as well as the writing of other poets, such as Robert Hass and John Anson.
A photographer and a performer with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Weaver as PACES and with musicians from Composing Together, Alan also had a career as a children’s librarian. Drawing inspiration from his work as a librarian, he has a book forthcoming from UnCollected Press, titled IN THE PACE OF THE PATH. which is a fictionalized memoir, a hybrid of prose, poetry, and photo-images. As Alan describes it, “It is a book about homelessness as seen and understood by a librarian — I worked as a public librarian for over 25 years before retiring three years ago — and also about the town where the librarian grew up and where he still lives. “
The draft title for Alan Bern’s chapbook, to be published by Old Scratch Press is sway. The theme/content of the chapbook, says Alan, “is (loosely) my responses as an American to the Festa di Sant’Agata in Catania, Sicilia. This chap is the intertwining of my words and photo-images, a vital part of my daily art practice. ”
Members of the Old Scratch Short Form Collective work together with the Devil’s Party Press, a small independent publisher, to bring to fruition the concept of publishing chapbooks of poetry and short form prose under the imprint Old Scratch Press.
Don’t forget to visit our Old Scratch Press Facebook Page and follow us on Twitter to find out what our contributors are up to and the latest poetry news. Thank You as always for your support.
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 