Thank You for the Love Letters

First off – if you haven’t received your copy of Bird Fly Good Issue No. 1, please shoot me an e-mail right away. I will gladly send you a copy with a nice little note on pink construction paper.

Also, check out the new Shop page to see where you can find copies of Issue No. 1. They are currently available at BookWoman in Austin and can soon be found at City Lights Books in San Francisco.

Second – thanks to everyone who has read Issue No. 1. I hope you all have thoroughly enjoyed the work from it and become inspired by the authors who were so kind to share their work with me. And thank you to all the poets, publishers, bookstores, and readers who have sent me sweet notes in return.

Cuneiform Press sent over a nice note on a wicked postcard. Thanks, Kyle!

I love this card – “You are not yourself.”

I am so not myself.

She’s Ready. Get Your Copy of Bird Fly Good Issue No. 1

Bird Fly Good Issue No. 1, including new work from eight wonderful poets, is now available. E-mail jennifer [at] birdflygood [dot] com to request your copy.

About the authors of Bird Fly Good:

Sarah Blake is from New Jersey, and her poetry is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics.

Kate Greenstreet‘s second book, The Last 4 Things, is new from Ahsahta Press and includes a DVD containing two short films based on the two sections of the book. Her fourth chapbook, “but even now I am perhaps not speaking” will be out on Imprint Press in June. Find her work in recent or forthcoming issues of VOLT, Fence, Trickhouse, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and other journals.

Hoa Nguyen lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches creative writing and co-edits Skanky Possum. She also curates the Skanky Possum Reading Series. Her poems have been published in various journals, and some of her recent collections include Kiss a Bomb Tattoo (Effing Press) and Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey Press).

Elisa McCool is pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She edits the irregularly produced journal Come Hither, and her work has appeared in Spooky Boyfriend, Skanky Possum, WOMB, and is forthcoming in Ekleksographia and Mantis. She is a founding member of the Washtenaw County Women’s Poetry Collective and Casserole Society.

Eileen Myles‘s collection of essays The Importance of Being Iceland, for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant, is out from Semiotext(e)/MIT. Eileen also writes novels (Chelsea Girls, Cool for You) and libretti (“Hell”) and many, many poems (Sorry, Tree, Not Me). She’s a Professor Emeritus of Writing & Literature at UC San Diego. She lives in New York.

Christopher Perez graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, will never work, and sleeps in a black hole. Reach him at mrchristopherperez@yahoo.com.

Dale Smith is a teacher and writer in Austin, Texas, and holds a PhD in rhetoric from The University of Texas. He has published essays, reviews, and poems in Best American Poetry, Bookforum, Chicago Review, Jacket Magazine, and other print and online journals. He is the author of four books of poetry, many of them available through Small Press Distribution in Berkeley, California.

Cindy St. John is the author of City Poems (Effing Press) and People Who Are in Love Will Read This Book Differently (Dancing Girl Press). She lives in Austin, Texas.

Happy reading.

Binding My Life Away

Paper, covers, needles, and thread. These have taken over my home office, coffee table, and meal times. There is also the beeswax, and the garbage corner. It’s piling up and the end is buried around here somewhere.

I just have to keep reminding myself: I am a ninja and I can fold and bind 300 books without wincing.

Actually, the binding is the easiest part! A simple five-hole stitch with some Irish linen is quite soothing and extremely easy to do over and over again once you get the hang of it.

It’s the folding and the soreness in my thumbs that’s getting to me.

But look how pretty:

Sneak Peek

It’s all very exciting. The covers for Bird Fly Good are with the printer and pretty soon we will be in bookbinding business.

Cover design by Katie Daly.

This Is Bird Fly Good

Bird Fly Good is a small poetry magazine based and published in Austin, Texas.

We’re brand new and itching to publish poetry that brings us together. I’m not talking about koombaya or open mic. I’m talking about publishing pieces of poetry that are somehow connected to each other, whether it be the work, the authors, etc. I guess you could say that each issue has a “theme,” but I’m just going to call it “connective tissue.”

Starting with Issue No. 1, which is currently in the works and will be ready to distribute by the end of April. The issue will feature work from artists who have some sort of connection with our great city – they either live in Austin, wrote a great amount of poetry during a time they were in Austin, or have had a creative influence on the community by giving readings, hosting workshops, etc.

Check back for updates on Issue No. 1.