Valerie Nieman v. 3.0

I've been touring around with Hotel Worthy   since it was released in March. I've read at Piccolo Spoleto and gotten to know beautiful Charleston, SC. It was a hot July Sunday when I read in the Joaquin Miller Poetry Series in Rock Creek Park - a real pleasure to join Grace Cavalieri for the first time. Always, whether the event is large or small, local or distant, a Reading in the Dock Street Theater courtyard at Piccolo Spoleto poetry reading draws the "People of the Word," those who treasure language and make the effort to seek it out in a noisy world. New friends and old - always the chance to make that connection. I am looking forward to reading Oct. 9 for the Center for Women Writers at Salem College, then Oct. 10 in Fairmont, WV, for the 34th Kestrel Festival . It's hard to believe that it has been 34 years, 34 festivals, since I met Marty Lammon and John King to discuss starting a magazine. Sadly, John is no longer with us. There will be old friend...

A big thank you to James Tate Hill, my colleague at North Carolina A&T State University, for inviting me on this blog tour, My Writing Process. His post appeared last week at this site. It’s always interesting when people ask us to step back and explain exactly what we’re doing, what I’m doing there in the corner in front of the computer, early in the morning or into the night, typing in words in uneven bursts. 1)                    What are you working on? Right now, I’m engaged in far too many projects. I am completing final edits to a new collection of poetry, Hotel Worthy , which will be published in the spring by Press 53. I’m pretty pumped about that – the best of ten years’ worth of poetizing. The editing has been light from the publisher, but I have to skinny down three formal poems – a ghazal, pantoum, and sestina – to fit the page width. Free verse and prose poems are not an issue...