Sweet Connections: Irene Hoge Smith

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Irene Hoge Smith
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: My People
Issues: 13.1

Find Her:
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

You find Irene at home, “in a post-pandemic state of bewilderment about what it might mean to “go out” again.”

Be sure to check out her website!

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

The biggest accomplishment is the completion of The Good Poetic Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir, now available for pre-order at IPBooks! (See my website for the story of how Charles Bukowski, my mother’s lover in the early 1960s, gave me my title.)

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I’m thinking about a book that would expand on a paper called “Disobedience” that I recently presented at the New Directions writing program of the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. I’m fascinated by how hard it is for any person, no matter how fair-minded they consider themselves to be, to understand a women who leaves her children.

Who is your favorite author?

I can’t imagine having only one, of course, but here are some: Nicholas Freeling, Kate Atkinson, P.D. James, Marilyn Robinson.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come” is a perennial source of comfort and hope.

What inspires you to write?

I’m inspired to write by the knowledge of what state of mind I’d be in if I didn’t write. More seriously, I want to be known. When I can figure out what I have to say, I want people to hear it.

What are you reading right now?

The Equivalents, by Maggie Doherty, about women writers and artists who benefited from support at Radcliffe in the early 1960’s. Most of them did not leave their children.

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

Chocolate-covered orange peel! It’s a bit of a project, involving blanching strips of orange peel and then cooking them in sugar syrup. Then you have to temper chocolate, also kind of tricky, so that it melts but then sets up hard and not sticky. I dip almost but not quite the whole strip of peel in dark chocolate and once finished, make packages that, I am told, make people happy at the holidays.

Want to try it for yourself? Here’s a recipe to help you out!

Thank you, Irene, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Sweet Connections: Jory Mickelson

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Jory Mickelson
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: In April
Issues: 13.2

Find Him:
Twitter
Facebook

You can find Jory in Bellingham, WA. Probably picking raspberries.

Be sure to check out his website!

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

I had two poems appear in Court Green which felt like a huge victory. I have been sending them poems for 8 years and finally got in.

Super cute set-up they have! Those lunchboxes are adorable.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

My new full-length poetry manuscript is making the round with publishers. I am also working on a chapbook about LGBTQ people and visual art.

Who is your favorite author?

Currently, deeply in love with May Sarton’s journals. I keep returning to them year after year.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Hard call! It is usually whatever I am reading at the moment. That said, I am reading Jane Mead’s collected poems and am continually blown away.

What inspires you to write?

For me, writing creates breathing room and space for me to see my life right now. Writing is one of the few times I can let everything else go and just look. Also birds. I am always looking out for birds.

What are you reading right now?

Reading Padraig O’ Tuama’s memoir “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World”

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

I am always up for a scone. These Irish scones with all the fixings are pretty great.

Epicurious - Wikipedia

We found a recipe but this one is probably better left to the professionals!

Thank you, Jory, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Sweet Connections: Jonathan Baylis

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Jonathan Baylis
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: So… Orderly
Issues: 3.3

Find Him:
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

You can find Jonathan in Brooklyn with his wife and 5 year old, who is cute as a….button. Couldn’t resist.

Be sure to check out the So Buttons website!

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

I’ve continued to publish my comics once a year and am up to So Buttons #11, but this time, a small press publisher published my book.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

So Buttons #11, my newest issue!

Who is your favorite author?

Right now, I’m loving comics by Noah Van Sciver.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

One of my all-time favorite comics by Noah is Fante Bukowski.

What inspires you to write?

The little sparkling nuggets and moments of life itself.

What are you reading right now?

Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

I just came across a shop that had one of my favorite childhood candies, Bit-o-Honey.

Francois et Moi

We found a recipe so that you never have to go looking again!

Thank you, Jonathan, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Poetry Contest 2021 Winners

Sweet is pleased to announce the winning poem of the 2021 Poetry Contest, along with two runners up and eight finalist poems.

Judge Laura Donnelly selected the poem “Before school there are icicles” by Meghan Sterling from a field of eleven finalist poems chosen by Sweet Lit poetry editors. Donnelly also singled out “Prey Drive” by Anna Chotlos and “Just the Daily Turn” by Cathlin Noonan as runners up. You may read the judge’s comments on these three poems in the special poetry contest issue of Sweet Lit, which will go up some time this summer. All finalists will be offered publication in the special poetry contest issue of Sweet Lit.

FINALISTS:

“With Any Luck” by Angela Just

“If The Wound Is How the Light Enters You, How Do You Heal?” by Anna Chotlos

“Post-Menopausal Love Poem That Begins with Guilt and Ends with Air Plants” by Jen Karetnick

“The Customs of Grief” by Karen Craigo

“I Wanted My Mother to Say to Me as She Lay Dying” by Natalie Marino

“Bound to Repeat It” by Connie Post

“That’s Right It Starts with an Earthquake” by Michele Parker Randall

“A Walk After Being Let Go” by Meghan Sterling

Sweet Connections: David Sklar

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: David Sklar
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: Real Estate
Issues: 3.2

author head shot in morning glories

Find Him:
Twitter
My pet project The Poetry Crisis Line is on Facebook.

Still in New Jersey, but a few inches to the west.

Find more from David on the Poetry Crisis website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Surviving.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I’ve been working on this thing called the Poetry Crisis Line, which is sort of a cartoon, sort of an intertextual experiment, at the web address I listed above.

These look super fun and we are going to check out the rest!

Who is your favorite author?

I can only pick one? I mean, maybe I can narrow it down to Toni Morrison, Charles Baxter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joy Harjo, T.S. Eliot, Richard Brautigan, Walter Tevis, Shel Silverstein, and Ursula Le Guin. But I’m sure I’m leaving someone out who I’ll think of shortly after I click Submit.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

My favorite poem is “The Abortion,” a traditional poem from Santal, India translated by W.G. Archer, that appears in Technicians of the Sacred, edited by Jerome Rothenberg. It deals with a couple of different castes grieving the baby they could not bring to term. It is heartbreaking but not judgmental, and the flow of it is ceremonial, but not in anything like a fixed meter that I’ve ever seen.

What inspires you to write?

Not enough, lately, though I’ve been working on getting my good habits back.

What are you reading right now?

That is one of the good habits I’m trying to get back. I read poetry a few times a week, but I’m not in the process of reading any book-length works at the moment. My favorite poem that I’ve “recently” discovered (probably late 2020) is “Aboriginal Landscape” by Louise Gluck.

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

Lately I’ve been into ice cream sandwiches.

We found a recipe for you try and this might be one that we give a go, too!

Thank you, David, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Sweet Connections: Joey Franklin

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Joey Franklin
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: Cool Enough, For the Moment
Issues: 7.3

head shot of Joey Franklin

Find Him:
Facebook
Twitter

You can find Joey, associate professor of English, at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, where he runs the MFA program, and I co-edits Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction with Pat Madden.

You can find out more about him on his website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

In November of 2020, University of Nebraska Press published by my second book–Delusions of Grandeur: American essays. It’s a collection of 10 essays that examine our American obsessions with race, class, faith, and family. Essays cover everything from toy guns and bad grammar to plasma donation and apocalyptic thinking. Also: playground brawls, white privilege, JV football, sex and death, Trayvon Martin, The Tohoku Tsunami, Early English grammars, shame, fatherhood, and a tent city in Lubbock, Texas.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I’m writing a book on creative writing professionalization for Bloomsbury. It covers all the stuff writers need to worry about when they’re not actually sitting at the keyboard. How to make the most of a writing group, what to do at a conference, how to finish big projects, how to submit work, prepare for graduate school, find a mentor, etc.

Who is your favorite author?

Impossible to narrow it down to just one–so how about a few: Brian Doyle, Eula Biss, E. B. White, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Lia Purpura. I’m a big fan of big ideas and beautiful prose.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Two essays I always come back to: “Meteorites” by Brian Doyle. A tutorial in capturing teenage summer magic. And Eula Biss’s “Time and Distance Overcome,” the most poignant lyric essay out there.

What inspires you to write?

Margaret Atwood said it best: “Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that’s wrong. They know less, that’s why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.”

What are you reading right now?

Southbound, by Anjali Enjeti. And Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, by Samin Nostrat

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

Lately, it’s been Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Got to add cranberries too!

White plate of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies
@ Sally Baking Addiction

We just made these last week and they are super yummy!

Thank you, Joey, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Asian Solidarity – Special Issue

A large part of Sweet’s mission is to create a space for writers of marginalized communities. The mass shooting in Atlanta that killed 8 people–6 women of Asian descent–is a tragic reminder of the increase in hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans over the past year. According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased 149% from 2019-2020. 

Everything about this breaks our hearts. This country continually breaks our hearts. But Sweet believes in the power of art, the power of words, the power to heal in the face of systems that seek to exclude, exile, and terminate. 

Sweet Lit is opening up submissions for a special issue on Asian Solidarity during the month of May. Please send your poems, short essays (300-1000) words, your in-betweens, your comics, your video and photo essays, your playlists, your rants here:

Poetry

Creative Nonfiction

Nonfiction Graphics and Misc

If you’re not sure which category your piece fits into, please just select one that seems closest. Our editors will confer and reassign as needed. As always, Sweet doesn’t charge submission fees or subscriptions fees so that we may all be a part of something Sweeter.

 

Sweet Connections: Enid Shomer

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Enid Shomer
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: Lightning Demonstration Museum of Science, Boston
Issues: 10.3

Enid Shomer head shot. Woman sitting at table in beige, sparkly sweater. She has short brown hair and wire rimmed glasses.

Find Her:

Instagram
Twitter
Facebook

You can find Enid in Tampa, Florida where we are sure she is soaking up the sun while the rest of us are still trying to push winter away.

Find out more about Enid on her website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Release of fifth book of poetry, “Shoreless”, published by Persea Books in October 2020. Most recently, I had a poem appear in the anthology “Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight” Edited by Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos. The poem is titled “A Lady Astronaut Tests for Space.” I also just gave a reading on March 11th with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers for “Poetry at the Dalí” which can be watched on YouTube.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I’m working on new poems, and I’m writing a memoir in essays.

Who is your favorite author?

Of the dead authors, I would have to say Shakespeare. For the living writers, there are too many to name.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

My favorite book is always whatever I’m currently reading. I recently finished George Saunder’s book “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.”

What inspires you to write?

Reading!

What are you reading right now?

“Transit of Venus” & “SPQR”

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

Rum baba, but it’s too complicated to make at home.

We found a recipe for you try from one of our favorite sites, The Spruce Eats. Let us know if you give it a try!

Thank you, Enid, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Sweet Connections: Jill McCabe Johnson

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Jill McCabe Johnson
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: Borderlines
Issues: 8.1

Find Her:


Twitter

You can find Jill writing, teaching, editing, and publishing in Washington State’s beautiful San Juan Islands.

Find out more about Jill on her website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Since Borderlines was published, my second full-length poetry collection came out, Revolutions We’d Hoped We’d Outgrown. It was shortlisted for the Clare Johnson Award in Women’s Literature from Jane’s Stories Press Foundation. I also co-edited with Andrew Shattuck McBride the anthology, For Love of Orcas, which won a Nautilus Books Silver Award.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I’m working with my agent getting ready to send out a memoir that includes the essay published in Sweet, and also finishing an essay collection and my third poetry collection

Who is your favorite author?

I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite, but of living writers, Rebecca Solnit, Rick Barot, Claudia Rankine, Ana Maria Spagna, Pam Houston, Donna Miscolta, Ira Sukrungruang, Lidia Yuknavich, Kathleen Flenniken, and Natasha Trethewey always wow me. I could easily add 100+ more names to this list. We’re really lucky to live in a time when we have access to so much great contemporary literature.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

I don’t have a favorite, per se, but I could read Marylin Robinson’s Housekeeping over and over. The same for Rebecca Solnit’s Field Guide to Getting Lost.

What inspires you to write?

Reading others’ works (including in Sweet!) inspires me, as does spending time in nature. There’s nothing like hiking a trail, away from everyday concerns, to free my mind, instill a sense of awe, and allow the imagination to thrive.

What are you reading right now?

My nightstand has a stack of fabulous books. Carolyn Forche’s memoir “What You Have Heard Is True,” Rick Barot’s poetry collection “The Galleons”, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Italian memoir “In Other Words,” Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition,” and a stack of books from Copper Canyon Press, including “The Essential Ruth Stone.” I’m also reading submissions for Wandering Aengus Press and its imprint Trail to Table Press, so I’m fortunate to have a deep bounty of reading riches right now.

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

My husband makes a cinnamon-oatmeal pancake with fresh berries that has just the right amount of sweetness. With a little butter, maple syrup, and a mug of hot coffee, it’s my favorite way to start the day, though, truth be told, I’d eat them for dinner, too.

Thank you, Jill, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

Sweet Connections: Sandra Yannone

Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Sandra Yannone
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: The Taste of Blueberries
Issues: 12.2

Find Her:

FaceBook
Twitter

While I’m still picking blueberries from the farm down the street from my house in Olympia, WA, when in season (even during the pandemic), I now host a weekly live international, intersectional, intergenerational reading series on Facebook, Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry, and a monthly reading series, The Collectibles, with Headmistress Press, based on their lesbian trading card series.

What!?! That sounds amazing!

Find out more about Sandra on her website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Eavan Boland published my poem “Gratitude Workshop, 1991” in her final issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review in December, 2019, and of course, watching Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry group emerge out of the shadows of Covid has been astonishing, nourishing, and inspiring. I’ve enjoyed connecting with poets and their poetry from around the world.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

My debut collection of poetry, Boats for Women, came out in March, 2019 from Salmon Poetry. I am starting to organize the poems for my next collection, The Glass Studio, due out from Salmon in 2022 or 2023, and I am beginning preparations for my third collection, an erasure poetry project based on Walter Lord’s 1955 classic about the Titanic disaster, A Night to Remember. Then there’s always the curation of the special event readings for Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. Upcoming this spring/summer will be readings that celebrate the life and poetry of Eavan Boland, express solidarity with labor/fertility rights on May Day; bear witness with Asian-American/Pacific Islander women poets, and a 40th Anniversary tribute to Salmon Poetry. And that’s just by the end of May! In June we’ll host our 2nd Annual Poetry PRIDE Parade. All virtual, of course, nestled between our New Books Showcase readings.

Who is your favorite author?

I have a top ten or so of poets I return to often and necessarily. Easily, however, at the pinnacle of that poetry peak is Elizabeth Bishop. Not only do I absolutely adore and admire her poetry, but Bishop’s example of a poet who did not rush to publication gave me permission to feel comfortable with my slow, meandering journey (Boats for Women took 21 years from completion to publication).

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Now this one is much harder. I can’t exist without these books about poetry: Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry and Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. The book of poetry I have cherished for years is Suzanne Gardinier’s The New World (Pittsburgh). Poems I most share with people: Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do”; Li-Young Lee’s “One Heart”; and William Stafford’s “A Ritual to Read Each Other”.

What inspires you to write?

The quirky, poignant, unfathomable, prismatic aspects of humanity. The desire to discover something about myself and my connection with humanity that I could not perceive/receive in the conscious world.

What are you reading right now?

I continue to gobble up all the literary print journals I’ve accumulated over the years as well as reading or rereading anthologies. A few anthologies of note: All of Us: Sweet, the First Five Years, Poetry 2008-2013; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press); Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry; and HERS: a poets speak anthology (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse). I’m also reading lots of collections. I’d like to mention: Eduardo Corral’s Guillotine (Graywolf), Tamara J. Madison’s Threed: This Road Not Damascus (Trio House), and Hilda Raz’s List & Story (Stephen F. Austin State University Press). Then there’s always a book about some aspect of the Titanic disaster for good measure.

What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!

I know you will not believe me, but this is my favorite question that I always look forward to reading! It’s the essence of Sweet! My favorite sweet is a confection made in Gloucester, MA, at Nichols Candies, a family-owned candy store that’s been in Gloucester since 1932. The sweet: a pink wintergreen dollop of a wafer mint that literally melts in your mouth. Divine!

Thank you, Sandy, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

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