Black Dog Arts Coalition Literary Chapbook Prize

25/05/2023

🌻 The Black Dog Arts Coalition is pleased to share photos from the celebration of The Black Dog Arts Coalition Literary Chapbook Prize for Spring 2023! What a fun event honoring the talented poet, Diana Prokopchuk! 🌻

11/04/2023

Come on out & join the celebration with poetry, food, conversation & community! Raise a glass, get your signed copy, & meet poet Diana Prokopchuk, the recipient of the spring 2023 Literary Chapbook Prize. Congratulations Diana!

The Black Dog Arts Coalition has been supporting and publishing poets for over 10 years!

31/01/2023

The Black Dog Arts Coalition is pleased to announce that the Winter 2023 Black Dog Arts Coalition Literary Chapbook Prize is awarded to Diana Prokopchuk. Congratulations Diana!!

Come celebrate Diana's poetry at the spring launch party. Watch for announcements coming soon.


Dog Arts Coalition
Black Dog Arts Café, Inc.
Dog Arts Coalition Literary Chapbook Prize
.annaphotography

23/05/2022

Beautiful!!
https://poets.org/poem/why-whales-are-back-new-york-city?mc_cid=8177a66504&mc_eid=7e21d2277c

Why Whales Are Back in New York City - After a century, humpbacks migrate

24/04/2021

VENETIAN SIESTA

I know I’m getting away with a crime
stretched out on the couch
and listening to rain
making a hole in the afternoon
through which I can drift slowly away

for sleep is sometimes
just as delicious
as white polenta and grilled angle fish.
So I give up my hands,
my tears and my face,
the smells of tar,
damp rope and mud,
the late slanted light of November
rippling below on the gondola wood

and then I count backwards from 27
trying to pretend I’m Wallace Stevens
he of the freakish intellect
and the taste of a ruthless
wandering gourmet
who rummages in the mystical kitchen
in search of oranges and café espresso
or a blown glass peacock
or a Byzantine horse
cast in some delicate metal.

He speaks of the world,
how it’s changed by art
and bread you can’t eat
powdered with light
where someone is toasting
their mother’s health
and someone is writing a letter to death
which makes things beautiful
in its way
and also makes everyone the same
as laughter does
or the late autumn rain.

Copyright © 2021 by Joseph Millar.

19/04/2021

NEAR THE END OF APRIL

Near the end of April
On the verge of May—
And o my heart, the woods were dusk
At the close of day.

Half a word was spoken
Out of half a dream,
And God looked in my soul and saw
A dawn rise and gleam.

Near the end of April
Twenty Mays have met,
And half a word and half a dream
Remember and forget.

--------------------------
William Stanley Braithwaite

William Stanley Braithwaite, born December 6, 1878, was a poet, literary critic, editor, and anthologist. His books include Selected Poems (Coward-McCann, 1948), The House of Falling Leaves with Other Poems (John W. Luce & Company, 1908), and Lyrics of Life and Love (Herbert B. Turner & Company, 1904). He died in Harlem, New York, on June 8, 1962.

20/02/2021

Part One: Life
VII

WITHIN my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

19/12/2020

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it q***r
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Photo: Kenneth Johnson

03/10/2020

"For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet" By Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

https://poets.org/poem/calling-spirit-back-wandering-earth-its-human-feet

07/09/2020

To commemorate Labor Day, a poem as nuanced ode & remembrance to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire & the changes labor activists have made to improve working conditions in factories in the U.S.

https://poets.org/poem/shirt

Shirt - The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

06/04/2020

“every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/03/26/crossing-brooklyn-ferry-janna-levin-walt-whitman Recorded at "The Universe in Verse" — a charitable celebration of science through poet

06/04/2020

'Whitman understood and celebrated this intricate tessellation of being, not only across society — “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” — but across space and time, nowhere more splendidly than in his sweeping, horizonless masterpiece “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” — a poem that opens up a liminal space where past, present, and future tunnel into one another, a cave of forgotten and remembered dreams that invites you to press your outstretched living fingers into the palm-print of the dead, into Whitman’s generous open hand, and in doing so effects, to borrow Iris Murdoch’s marvelous phrase, “an occasion for unselfing.'

“It avails not, time nor place… What is it then between us?… It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, the dark threw its patches down upon me also.”

31/10/2019

THE WITCH

The cutting wind is a cruel foe.
I dare not stand in the blast.
My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,
And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still,
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

By Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

23/10/2019

Black Dog Arts Coalition

05/10/2019

Black Dog Arts Coalition Literary Chapbook Prize's cover photo

28/08/2019

Come on out back of the Cafe and check out the new poems and signs on the Poetry Pole in August! Pin up some of your own writing too!

Come dance around the Poetry Pole! Bring your poems or poems by your favorite poet to share. Pin them up! And bring your dancing shoes!

Our beautiful Poetry Pole through the years going back to the May 5, 2017 Poetry Pole Dedication Ceremony featuring WA Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna.

28/08/2019

Black Dog Arts Coalition

Black Dog Arts Coalition

The Black Dog Arts Coalition is a 501c3 that promotes music, art, theatre, poetry and other artistic expressions through performances and free workshops.

12/08/2019

color bleeding


one year, i carried the blues around
like a baby. sure, my coffee mugs cupped



amethysts :: water gushed, rose-tinted
and -scented, from the faucets at my touch ::
the air orange with butterflies that never



left me. meanwhile, indigo held fast
to my toes :: lapis lapped my fingertips ::



and a hue the shade of mermaid scales
bolted through my hair like lightning.



my eyelids drooped, fell, heavy with sky.
that year i carried the blues around



left me mean :: while indigo held fast,
the daily news tattooed azure to my back.
true, festivals of lilies buoyed me. but what



good could white do? the blues grow like
shadows in late sun :: stretch creep run.

By Evie Shockley

13/07/2019

Women Writing for (a) Change

19/06/2019

An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate | poets.org

Poet Joy Harjo — a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation — has become the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate.

"You hit words together with rhythm and sound quality and fierce playfulness," she says, calling her poetry a kind of music.

An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate - Joy Harjo was appointed the new United States poet laureate on June 19, 2019. Born in Tulsa,...

06/06/2019

We, Made of Bone
By Mahtem Shiferraw

These days, I refuse to let you see me
the way I see myself.

I wake up in the morning not knowing
whether I will make it through the day;

reminding myself of the small, small things
I’ve forgotten to marvel in;

these trees, blood-free and bone-dry
have come to rescue me more than once,

but my saving often requires hiding
yet they stand so tall, so slim and gluttonous

refusing to contain me; even baobab trees
will split open at my command, and

carve out fleshless wombs to welcome me.
I must fall out of love of the world

without me in it, but my loves have
long gone, and left me in a foreign land

where once I was made of bone,
now water, now nothing.


Copyright © 2019 Mahtem Shifferaw. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Shifferaw reads "Instrument."

About This Poem --
“How do you continue on living an ordinary life when the rest of the world is on fire? How do we, as humans, continue to marvel in the smallness of things, when there are more urgent things that need our attention, our activism, our passion? These are the things that inspired the poem into being.”
—Mahtem Shiferraw

30/05/2019

Black Dog Arts Coalition

Black Dog Arts Coalition

Check out this wonderful blog post by WA Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna about The Black Dog Arts Coalition's 2019 Hike and Write that happened earlier this month!

20/05/2019

Hike and Write 2019 ~ What a lovely day to be in the woods with writing friends. And we had great weather. Many thanks, Claudia Castro Luna, for sharing your wisdom and thoughtful writing prompts!

Hike and Write 2019 ~ What a lovely day to be in the woods with writing friends. And we had great weather. Many thanks, Claudia Castro Luna, for sharing your wisdom and thoughtful writing prompts!

17/05/2019

This Sunday! This will be so much creative fun! Bring friends, water, snacks, a notebook, and an umbrella/rain gear --> just in case :) If you bring the gear, the skies will clear! :)

09/05/2019

Come dance around the Poetry Pole! Bring your dancin' shoes

Come dance around the Poetry Pole! Bring your poems or poems by your favorite poet to share. Pin them up! And bring your dancing shoes!

Our beautiful Poetry Pole through the years going back to the May 5, 2017 Poetry Pole Dedication Ceremony featuring WA Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna.

04/05/2019

Cover art by Kylie Warren. [Kylie T Fluttershy Warren ]

04/05/2019

Winter 2019

23/04/2019

For Keeps
Joy Harjo, 1951

Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

MARCH 4, 2013, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS