Karen Douglass, Author

Karen Douglass, Author: Prose & Poetry

Tag: writing life

  • Not Your Grandmother’s Poetry Reading

    How to build an audience for poetry: combine words with song, with percussion, with a delivery that goes beyond the traditional solitary poet at the mic reading original work. Stir in familiar and fresh music. Read interpretively, dare to be political, personal, confrontational and/or confessional. Last night a performance group called The Readers’ Lab did just…

  • Sins of Social Media

    Of course, I use Facebook, Twitter, this WordPress website. I have accounts on Pinterest and LinkedIn. You are using one of these sites to read this blog entry. Thank you. Now allow me to rant. It will soothe my soul and clear my sinuses. I oppose the hard sell that I see all too often on these…

  • Earth Day & Trees

    It’s Earth Day and I am thinking about trees. One of my first childhood friends was a giant sugar maple from which hung my rope swing with its blue wooden seat. I did not name the tree–it needed no name. It was always there. It did not scold when I nicked the bark with the…

  • Poems for Poetry Month

    I tell other people to write, write, write, even if it’s practice rather than product. And here’s what happens when I tell myself that. Probably these are more dabbles than haiku, but they are of that family. I’m flummoxed with the spacing, so pretend they are single spaced. Totally modern woman with a phone, no…

  • Play Nice with Reviews?

    We now know more than we ever wanted to know about speaking truth to power. But what about speaking truth to other writers? Part of my work is to critique manuscripts, and assessing those darlings can give me hives, gastric reflux and headache. What if I tell the truth?: “This story lacks conflict. What I see here is…