Berkshire Choreography Project collaboration

This has been a new angle on writing poetry for me! For the last two weeks, I've been working with choreographers and dancers in a collaborative project. One of the choreographers has developed dance inspired by my poems, while I've written new poems for four others inspired by their dances - or, more precisely, created as partners for their dances. Two of them wanted poems that would be read before their dances, as introductions and mood-setters; two wanted me to read a poem afterwards, as conclusions and/or "translations." A fascinating kind of commissioned work - writing to others' obsessions, as it were, and finding their intersection with my own....

The project concludes with two informal showings/readings, Friday 8/21 and Saturday 8/22, at 7:30 PM at the Berkshire Music School, Wendell Avenue, Pittsfield MA.

Poems spotlighted in Reiter's Block column

Thanks to Jendi Reiter for this lovely write-up of my chapbook, Everywhere at Once, with two of the poems reprinted. Both are poems that will also be in my upcoming full-length book, What We're Made Of, due out next summer from the Cherry Grove imprint of Word Tech Publications.

http://www.jendireiter.com/2015/06/10/chapbook-spotlight-two-poems-from-lisken-van-pelt-duss-everywhere-at-once/

A new online publication - and an exciting announcement!

I'm happy to provide a link to a new online poem, in an ezine called here/there.  They put a call out for poems with a transatlantic theme - and having grown up transatlantically, I sent them one called "Split-Flap Display."  Here's the link: 

http://here-there-poetry.co.uk/web/liskin-van-pelt-dus/

Then, in even more exciting news, I just signed a contract for a full-length book with Word Tech, under their Cherry Grove imprint.  The book's called What We're Made Of, and is a lyric manuscript.  It's made semi-finalist or finalist status in several contests, but now it's finally going to be in print.  Tentative publication date is May 2016.

New Publication

Please enjoy my poem, "Yours Sincerely, Loneliness," now available at Cider Press Review, in their wonderful new issue online.

http://ciderpressreview.com/cpr-volume-16-4/yours-sincerely-loneliness/

New online publication

I'm delighted to have my "Four Postcards," as well as a mini-essay "interview," in the newest edition of Centrifugal Eye.  A print version and digital pdf will be available soon, but you can read the work online now.

“Four Postcards” – Centrifugal Eye - Winter/Spring 2014, Volume 8 Issue 3

http://centrifugaleye.com/

 

Videos from 2009 reading

Please enjoy this footage of me reading back in March of 2009, at Rouge Restaurant in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as part of the Berkshire Women in the Arts Festival, sponsored by the Bookloft, of Great Barrington.  My fellow readers were Irene Willis, Mindy Dow, Michelle Gillett, and Joan Peronto.

There are four poems: "Christmas in Puerto Angel," "West Stockbridge, 1942" (In Memoriam Marjorie Dus), "Light," and "Taking My Leave."

Many thanks to Matti Kiin, who filmed the event and gave me these recordings.

 

Mad River Literary Festival reading

I'm delighted to announce that I'll be reading, with Dennis Barone (and another poet yet to be announced), at the Mad River Literary Festival at Northwestern Connecticut Community College, in Winsted, CT, on Wednesday, April 9.  An open reception will follow.  Hope to see you there!