From a Thrift Score

I found a fun children's nonfiction book at the thrift store recently, an illustrated paperback from the 1970s with explanations about different everyday things like foods, metals, modes of transportation, etc. The book is supposedly about "How Things Are Made," but the little essays on different topics give all sorts of facts about their subjects. I'm not sure yet if these essays will inspire a whole series of found poems, but I've been working on a couple of poems so far, and here's one...

Untarnished

Carbon plus iron plus chromium
and maybe some nickel?

Stainless steel. It takes
a high polish and can resist

rust and acid. Kitchen knives,
door knobs, golf club heads

and fishing gear? Stainless steel.
We also use it for mirrors

when glass is too fragile.

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Medium.com as a Place to Self-Publish (Kinda)

I started writing on Medium.com in late September of 2021, so I've been writing on the platform for eight full months now. Before I started on the site as a writer, I'd seen Medium articles come up in Google searches now and then, or my students had sometimes referred to articles in their papers. And I'd seen a couple YouTube videos about how Medium pays writers for their writing. Finally I decided to give it a try when I discovered that a lot of people read and share poetry on Medium. I thought it might be a fun way to find a new audience for my work and to meet other writers who are interested in different modes of self-publishing. It's not easy to get paid for your written work as a poet, so I thought it would be interesting to explore the possibilities on Medium. Medium is sort of a hybrid situation in terms of self-publishing. When you post work there, you still own the copyright. But instead of hosting the work on your own website or sharing it in a book or zine ...

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I'm excited to announce a new zine project from Teeny Tiny Press called Thank You . Using the classic Teeny Tiny format of an eight-page, single-sheet zine, Thank You collects a series of thank you notes in the form of poems and very short prose. Issue one includes work (in alphabetical order!) from Maura Alia Badji, X.P. Callahan, Del Ray Cross, Laura-Marie River Victor Nopales, BT Shaw, Eileen Tabios, and Mandy Zeller. To launch this zine, I'm doing a month-long fundraising drive (Aug 9-Sept 10) for Treehouse, a Seattle-based organization that helps kids and young adults in foster care. This is part of a larger back to school fundraising drive from Treehouse. They help kids with clothes, school supplies, books, toys, and much more. If you want a copy of the zine, donate an amount of your choice to Treehouse via https://engage.treehouseforkids.org/teenytinypress , and send me an email or instagram message with your mailing address. Then I'll send you the zine! Thank...

It Isn't Writer's Block

I said I can't write lately, and someone said it's writer's block, but it's not. It's more like, well, I could sit down and write, but it feels meaningless and small. Of course, writing has always felt small to me on some level, or I wouldn't have focused on all things teeny tiny. Surely I'll return to some "small but mighty" writing and publishing projects soon (as a friend kindly described them years ago). I was grateful to be able to raise a couple hundred dollars for Immigrant Families Together with my last tiny zine. I have an idea for a new zine that will tell the story a new online friend shared with me about her work with recent immigrants in New Mexico. If I didn't believe in the power of writing, I wouldn't spend my life teaching college students how to write in clearer and more focused ways. And it's a privilege to have the time and ability to write, and the access to a computer and a printer and an internet connection. But...

Teeny Tiny Press by Amanda Laughtland

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