Poet Showcase: Vinnie Kinsella

Name: Vinnie Kinsella
Location: Portland, OR

Blogs: I have my own site, Vinnie Kinsella Publishing Services, but it’s really my business site. I’m more inclined to direct people to Four and Twenty, but that’s not a showcase for my writing. I’m in the process of creating a site for my creative writing, but it’s still in the works.

How do you know Cara? We met through Four and Twenty, but we bump into each other elsewhere on the internet.

How long have you been writing poetry? I’ve been writing poetry since I was a child. I’ve been writing poetry I like sharing with others since I was in college.

What kind of poetry do you write?  I write mostly short form poetry, such as haiku and poems in the Four and Twenty format.

Please share a poem:

1. An untitled haiku I wrote during NaHaiWriMo 2012.

soapy swimsuit
three days in the coin-op —
negligent lifeguard

2. “Blind Girl” (from “Poems in Transit,” a collection of poems I’m writing about taking the bus).

Her dogged companion
ignores her unsightly
haircut. The rest of us
are human.

3. An untitled haiku I wrote that won the “Awesome Sauce” award at High Coup Journal.

Two lines, one corner:
basic trigonometry.
You and I converge.

Poet Showcase: Me!

Today, I’m pleased to be featured on Christina Nguyen’s wonderful blog, A wish for the sky…, answering my own questions. 😉

 

April Four and Twenty

The first published poem of mine appeared in Four and Twenty, back in 2008. So it gives me great pleasure to have a poem appearing in the current double issue, in honor of National Poetry Month.

April Acceptances

It is always a red letter day to receive news that one of my poems has been accepted for publication. I currently have haiku, senryu, short form poetry, tanka, haibun, and rengay that was selected to appear in upcoming issues of the following publications:

• Moonbathing
• Four and Twenty
• The Heron’s Nest
• Mariposa
• Haibun Today
• A Hundred Gourds
• Modern Haiku
• The Haiku Foundation Haiku App Database 2012
• Notes from the Gean
• Multiverses
• Prune Juice

April Poet Showcase

For three years now, I have participated in at least one daily poetry writing challenge in April, in honor of National Poetry Month. It was a great way to kick start my writing, and make new friends in the process. As this April approached however, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the idea of taking on yet another daily writing challenge. In the first place, I have been doing this for three consecutive months now, and am ready for a break! And in addition, now that I am regularly writing and submitting haiku, tanka, haibun, and rengay to journals, I feel like trying to write to daily prompts can sometimes become a distraction. So I sat back and gave some thought to what I could do this April. And the answer came to me at once.

I have met so many creative poets over the last few years. Why not showcase them, and in the process, learn a bit more about my poetry friends, many of whom I have not yet met in person. So I sent out a short list of questions, one of which is how they met me. I have been involved in many online poetry writing communities, including the Four and Twenty journal– the first place my poetry was published– Poetic Asides, Read Write Poem, Big Tent Poetry, Shiki Kukai, Sketchbook Kukai, Caribbean Kigo Kukai, NaHaiWriMo, and most recently, I Doodle, You ‘Ku. Again and again I see many of the same names popping up in various poetry publications and communities, and new ones being added all the time. So this April, I will be showcasing many of my poetry friends in guest blog posts, and hope you will follow along.

Just to whet your appetite, here is the line up, for the first two weeks, in order of appearance. (And if you haven’t sent in your answer to my questions yet, please do!)

Week 1: Kirsten Cliff, Cassie Premo Steele, Laurie Kolp, Terri L. French, Margaret Chula, Michael Dylan Welch, and Curtis Dunlap

Week 2: Aubrie Cox, Margaret Dornaus, Alegria Imperial, Gillena Cox, Angie Werren, Christina Nguyen, and Johannes S.H. Bjerg

So with no further ado…

Morning Commute

My very first poem was published by Vinnie Kinsella, in the Four and Twenty online poetry journal, back in November/December 2008. Between November 2008 and April 2010, I had seventeen poems appear in the journal or on the website. The earliest Four and Twenty issues are no longer online, but one of my favorite issues was Volume 3 Issue 4, April, 2010, in which three of my poems appeared: “Inheritance”, “What I Think About”, and “Vagaries of the Season”, the latter two illustrated by my daughter.

For no particularly good reason, I haven’t submitted to Four and Twenty again until recently, although I read every new issue cover to cover, so I was very honored to learn that one of  my poems, “Morning Commute”, was selected as the November 8th Four and Twenty of the Week.

If you’re curious, a four and twenty is simply a short form poem containing up to four lines, and no more than twenty words. That’s it. As such, all haiku are also four and twenties, but four and twenties are much more inclusive. That means all the literary devices forbidden for haiku are allowed in four and twenties, including metaphor, simile, personification, alliteration, consonance… well, you get the idea. Anyway, check out the journal and try your hand at four and twenties; they’re as addicting as haiku!

 

Musings on my Muse

To the Four and Twenty Facebook prompt to write a four and twenty “that defines your muse”:

Musings on my Muse

bigger than a breadbox
smaller than a sequoia
fickle and flighty
will work for words

Word Antics

More of my early poetry….

 

A hundred sequestered monkeys
typing away —
is Shakespeare really inevitable?

(Four and Twenty, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2009)

 

 

Puddle in the Rain

This poem first appeared in Four and Twenty, Volume 1, Issue 2, November/December 2008:

Puddle in the Rain

One drop joins another
In a rivulet, a stream, an ocean, a flood.

 

Still my pre-haiku days, but moving towards them…

A Poetry Retrospective- December 2008

So I’ve had this pet project I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. Things seem to have a way of disappearing in cyberspace, and even though I have pages dedicated to listing my online publications, I discovered recently that many of the old links are now defunct. So my idea was to resurrect some of my favorite publications and posts from the past (how’s that for alliteration?) and re-post them here. That sounds easy in theory, but the trick is finding which of my many files and/ or notebooks to look in to find my old works. However, that’s my problem!

My very first published poem (which is no longer online) was “Sleeping With a Open Window”, and it appeared in the online journal Four and Twenty, Volume 1 Issue 2, November/December 2008. I reproduce it in its entirety here:

Sleeping  With an Open Window

Frogs, he says
Crickets, I insist
We stop again to listen.

I wasn’t quite to haiku yet, but was approaching it, with the four & twenty short form developed by Vinnie Kinsella.