The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-life Crisis
Poems by Luisa A. Igloria

Now available for pre-order at a special price through March 20, 2018.

"Reading Luisa A. Igloria’s poems is like opening doors within doors within doors. These doors give access to the mind, the imagination, into lush and lyric worlds. ...Poem after poem reveals the Buddha. S/he is sneaky and coy. S/he peeks behind every stanza, meditating at every end-stopped line, her robes overflowing in every layer of images. And in the end, after we’ve taken in every poem, s/he finds a place in the center of us." -- from the foreword by Ira Sukrungruang, author of  Southside Buddhist, Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, and the forthcoming Buddha's Dog and other meditations, and professor at the University of South Florida.

For full information and to place a pre-order, please click the image or links, and sign up for our newsletter to be eligible for one of two free copies to be given away in March.

(Cover art by Elizabeth Adams)

Phoenicia Publishing is delighted to announce that a new book of poems by Luisa A. Igloria, The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-life Crisis, will be published in March 2018. This is a collection of 53 "Buddha poems" that Luisa wrote in early 2016, many of which have appeared online at Via Negativa, where she has posted a new poem every day since November 2010.

The author says these poems began from the premise that "if the Buddha in me can greet the Buddha in you," then the aspiration to transcendence is a daily work in progress. She writes about the constant seesaw between our appetite for worldly things and the hunger for deeper permanence; about our human imperfections and foibles; and our longing to be touched by grace, if not love and absolution, in this lifetime.

There will be a pre-order period a month before publication, with discounted pricing and special offers for Phoenicia newsletter subscribers, so please be sure to sign up if you aren't already on our mailing list!

Phoenicia Publishing is proud to announce that an excerpt, "February," from Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy, is our nomination for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. Dave's book was recently named a finalist (one of three) in the poetry and fiction category of the 2017 Banff Mountain Book Awards.

As editors of qarrtsiluni online literary magazine, Dave and I nominated many poets and writers for this award over the years, so I am delighted to be able to nominate Dave himself for this honor this year. Congratulations!

We're delighted to share the excellent news that Tim Mayo's Thesaurus of Separation has been named a finalist for both the 2017 Eric Hoffer Award and the Montaigne Medal.  The Eric Hoffer Awards are one of the largest international book awards for small, academic, and independent presses.

Within the larger umbrella of the Eric Hoffer Awards, all finalists are also considered for the Montaigne Medal, given in honor of the great French philosopher Michel de Montaigne to the "most thoughtful" books  -- those that "either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought." We certainly agree with that assessment of Tim Mayo's book, and are proud that Thesaurus of Separation was chosen for this distinction. Heartiest congratulations to  Tim Mayo on these awards!

One of the great pleasures of working with our authors here at Phoenicia is that all of them, without exception, are more than just writers: they all have passionate interests that make them multi-dimensional people, and, of course, end up making their writing far more interesting.

Dave Bonta has been observing the natural world since early childhood, and he's one of the best-read people I know. Whether he is leading a nature walk, being an environmental activist, explaining the spring mating of wood frogs, discussing politics, or studying the fermentation process for home-brewed beer, he's articulate, amusing, well-informed, and often unconventional. That makes him a whole lot of fun to talk to, as well as read.

Central Pennsylvania radio host Jason Crane recently interviewed Dave about his new book, Ice Mountain: An Elegy. In this excellent, wide-ranging twenty-minute conversation, they discuss Dave's very specific way of observing and writing about nature; the difficulties of choosing "green" energy sources; and a whole lot more -- hope you'll listen!

We are proud to announce our nominations for the 2016 Pushcart Prize. They are four poems from Thesaurus of Separation by Tim Mayo: "Mourning among Strangers," "Self-Storage", "Shelter," and "Hiroshige: near Komakata" and two essays from Monster, by Jeneva Burroughs Stone: "Brain as Variation," and "Notes on Creativity and Originality." We hope you'll join with us in congratulating Jeneva and Tim!

Poet Ren Powell (Mercy Island) talks with poet and mental health worker Tim Mayo in a fascinating podcast interview that you can listen to on SoundCloud. Ren is doing a series of podcasts with other writers , called "This Choice," in which she seeks to understand "how their work with poetry influences the choices they make in their daily lives."

In this intelligent and penetrating interview, Tim Mayo talks about his beginnings as a poet as a young man who grew up in foster care, was adopted, and then studied literature in college. After this came many years in which he did not write, for reasons he discusses. He returned to poetry later in life, able to write about those earlier experiences with some detachment, which he calls less a cathartic experience than an attempt to create, in each poem, a work of art. For him, poems tend to be narrative, and always to tell a story: his new book with Phoenicia, Thesaurus of Separation, is full of such poems.

Ren and Tim also discuss the differences between "necessary solitude" and loneliness, with Tim speaking of the need for "a barrier between yourself and distraction" which he often didn't have as a younger man, as well as the development of "the inner resources necessary to sit and write on his own," speculating that the instability of his childhood might have made that impossible for him earlier on.

The interview concludes with a moving reading by Tim, and discussion about what inspired and influenced those particular poems.

Having worked with both Ren and Tim to publish their work, I was fascinated by this discussion, which covered territory we had not in our own meetings. It's great that Ren is doing this beautifully-produced series, and I can't recommend the podcasts highly enough for anyone who is interested in poetry and poetic process.