Fox Frazier-Foley

During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s first poet is Cortney Lamar Charleston. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Cortney Lamar Charleston: I’ve got a lot of things to say about the world. I’ve always had a lot of things to say about the world, but haven’t always been confident enough to say them, smart enough to articulate them, artful enough to make them strike the chord I wanted them to, at least before poetry. People who have known me long and well may disagree with that, but it’s my own personal assessment, and in [...]

“I am tired of people taking language from the Bible out of context and using it as a weapon against other people, so I started taking language from the Bible out of context and using it to create art. My process was to use the last chapter from one book of the Bible as a word bank for each poem. This is either the most heretical or the most reverent thing I’ve ever written.” ~ Katie Manning Click the cover or here to download.

During 2016, we will shine the spotlight of our public esteem & rapt attention on two poets per month. This month’s second poet is Samantha Duncan. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Samantha Duncan: I’m still very new to being a poet and the po-biz world. The majority of my creative work and education was in fiction, until about four years ago when I more or less switched over to poetry, so I’m still learning a lot through my experiences being a poet and press and journal editor. There are specific challenges that motivate me to write poetry—there’s a succinctness to it that requires cleverness and intimacy with language, and that [...]

Jansport Backpack I swap out key fobs like lovers I haven’t had— blue broken heart, glitter skull, sassy attitude jokes. Three boys vie for my number, but they don’t speak English, and their calls come in like water hallucinations in a desert. In Spanish class I learn dialogue I never mastered in English— small talk, city planning, how I feel morning, noon, and night. Walking the halls, you tap my ass when I lengthen your shoulder straps that sing anthems in white bubble letters— Peace Sign, WTVR, You Laugh Because I’m Different, I Laugh Because You’re All The Same. I buy so much white-out they must think I have problems of a different kind, unrelated to the test of matchmaking by expression. Why I feed a hairbrush to your front pocket every day is unclear to the pep rally for my insecurity. Coach Patent Leather Black Tote First time inside, [...]

During 2016, we will shine the spotlight of our public esteem & rapt attention on two poets per month. This month’s first poet is Chen Chen. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world – what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Chen Chen: Thank you for these questions—big and kind of impossible, but I’m glad to be living with them. Why poems? I actually started out as a fiction writer; I tried writing novels. These were imitations of whatever I happened to like, from Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In college, I wrote both poems and stories. I also wrote scholarly essays that went on too long and basically argued that literature [...]

The Sinister Barista Meets the Loch Ness Professor “Let us prepare for a life of rational happiness.” —Emily Dickinson’s father in a courtship letter to her mother The summer everyone I knew was going to Italy. The June everyone got engaged. So much getting down on one knee, so many surprises (but not really) in gondolas. I’m not ready for these kinds of summers. I’m not ready to get engaged, I’m not even ready to open a lemonade stand. Which is not to say I am not in love or not committed or don’t know how to make lemonade. I am, I am, & I do. I do but let’s hold off on saying “I do” with the rings & relatives, cummerbunds & giant cake. Except let’s not hold off on the giant cake. & let’s not hold off on being irreversibly in love. Happiness needs no preparation or warrantee [...]

Marcus Elliot is a jazz musician from Detroit who has been playing professionally since the age of 15, and continues to garner increasing recognition for his imaginative improvising and fervently thoughtful voice on the saxophone. Elliot has led the Marcus Elliot Quartet for the past eight years; they perform weekly in the Detroit area. He has performed internationally, including in Cuba, Barbados, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Egypt, Jordan, and Indonesia. He has two self-released albums, Looking Forward (2010) and When the City Meets the Sky (2015), and has shared the stage, as a sideman, with a long list of exciting performers, including Talib Kewli, Bob Hurst, Karriem Riggins, James Carter, Jimmy Cobb, Bobby Broom, Marcus Belgrave, Johnny O’Neal, Jimmy Heath, Sean Dobbins, Kris Johnson, Thaddeus Dixon, Ettiene Charles, Mulgrew Miller, Rodney Whitaker, and many others. In addition to his impressive résumé as a performer, Elliot is a composer and educator; [...]

During 2016, we will shine the spotlight of our public esteem & rapt attention on two poets per month. This month’s second poet is Amber Flame. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world – what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Amber Flame: It is necessary for me to create – I literally can’t help it, even if I gave up on putting it out in the world. I am compelled by everything; visual art, dance, music, as well as all kinds of writing, primarily for my own happiness. I always did write poetry, was drawn to writing creatively from an early age. I think now I am comfortable writing poetry because I can complete a piece in [...]

where I went while you were dying this poem is (about when your mother collapses in front of you) the emergency plan you don’t have when the emergency comes. not knowing your mother’s or sister’s or sister’s blood type. medications. history. is (about your mother telling you she is dying and then ____________) in lieu of health insurance. anxiety over social worker called height weight charts. or is (what your mother’s face looked like without oxygen) the story of your mother saving your newborn life. or waiting to find out if you’ve returned the favor. this poem (is about prying your mother’s teeth apart) wonders whether you did all you could to return the favor. says it will let you know. whether you did. enough. this poem is (this is not a poem. about her saying she was dying) hope that grinds you down. neither here nor there. cannot remain [...]

During 2016, we will shine the spotlight of our public esteem & rapt attention on two poets per month. This month’s first poet is Sarah A. Chavez. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world – what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Sarah Chavez: It’s funny, but I think a lot about what poetry does and how it has functioned in my life, but hardly ever why I ended up devoting myself to it. I did have other creative outlets: I played piano briefly and am fair at drawing; I even got within a class or two of an art minor with a focus in mixed media, and had a lovely professor encourage me to keep going with [...]

Turtle Finds Himself Once Again Upon the Land Turtle stands, claws digging dimples in the dirt, wondering which direction to go. Everything is possible in this new life granted by the Great Creator in which he was able to relinquish the weight of the Earth, suspend it from El Sol with clear celestial ribbon of sewn-together star particles and neutrinos. We’ve got to center it, Turtle had instructed, adjusting the ribbon around the curls of light emanating, endemic of El Sol’s brilliance. If the animals feel the swing and tilt too much, the proliferation of motion sickness will cover the roads in vomit, making it impossible to travel between the 7 Wonders. And it is not as though Turtle even truly wanted to see the 7 Wonders, so much as he wanted the opportunity to see them. Want begets want and he knew if allowed to swell, the want would [...]

During 2016, we will shine the spotlight of our public esteem & rapt attention on two poets per month. We are excited to have an extra installment of our Spotlight Series during the month of February, featuring the collaborative poetry-visual art hybrid work of Sally Deskins and Laura Madeline Wiseman. Fox Frazier-Foley: How did you two come to work together? I know you’ve collaborated on other books/projects in the past. How would you describe your collaborative dynamic? What’s it like working together? Sally Deskins: We met a few years ago via a poetry/exhibition event I produced in Omaha and thereafter did several events together until our first formal collaboration Intimates and Fools. Laura Madeline Wiseman: We’ve luckily been able to participate in a few gallery shows and readings. Sally is a fantastic curator of exhibits of artwork by women. Our collaborative working relationship takes place online or over the phone. [...]

The above text and images are by Laura Madeline Wiseman and Sally Deskins, from their book Leave of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to Common Garden Affections, a collaborative work whose lush look at the body and nature in this collection offers a rich pallet on the human form and these tall creatures that stand among us. Moving […]

During 2016, we will shine the spotlight of our public esteem & rapt attention on two poets per month. This month’s second poet is Nicole Rollender. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world – what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Nicole Rollender: Probably like many writers, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t tell stories or write stories. When I was a teenager, I really zeroed in on writing poetry, after buying an 1880s volume of Tennyson’s poetry in a used bookstore. I carried the tome (it had a green cover with flowers on it, and was ragged at the seams) around with me, and practically memorized “The Lady of Shalott” and “The Two Voices”—I’d recite [...]