petalridge.com
the website of
Derek Kannemeyer
PNEWS CREVÉS
2023
1) November Newsiness
a) Derek is one of five poets featured in the October 31 Viewless Wings podcast, hosted by the California poet James Morehead. (Thanks, James!) Derek introduces and recites his poem “Laura in April,” which is about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, on Good Friday, 1865: it was Laura Keene, the star of the show that the Lincolns had come to see, who purportedly cradled him in her arms as he died. Click on the link to hear the whole podcast, or just Derek’s part of it (you can access the readings individually), or to read the text of his poem.
b) Derek has two poems (“An Unbecoming” and “For the Dusts of Us”) in the November 2023 Verse-Virtual, edited by the California poet Jim Lewis. (Thanks, Jim!) “For the Dusts of Us” is the closing poem in Derek’s new collection You Go In By The Gate That Isn’t There (Cyberwit Press, July 2023). Here’s the link:
https://www.verse-virtual.org/2023/November/kannemeyer-derek-2023-november.html
c) Derek read at Iris Art Studio, 501 Whythe Creek Road, Poquoson, on Saturday November 18. The event ran from 1-3. The reading part of it (all Derek) lasted maybe an hour, with a break midway. Thanks to Serena Fusek for the invitation, Cathie Abell-Nelson for hosting, and all who attended. It was a blast!
2) October Newsiness
a) Derek's second poetry collection, You Go In By The Gate That Isn't There, is now available. ISBN-13 : 978-8119228614.
b) Derek conducted a poetry workshop at the upcoming James River Writers festival in Richmond (it was a blast) and attended some great sessions. Thanks, JRW!
3) July Update
a) Two poems from Derek’s forthcoming poetry collection You Go In By The Gate That Isn’t There appeared in the May issue of Verse-Virtual. Here’s a link. https://www.verse-virtual.org/2023/May/kannemeyer-derek-2023-may.html
b) One of them, “In Praise of Memory,” will be published in the new collection in a very different version. I wish that publication "settled" all my texts into a definitive shape, but sometimes it doesn't. One poem in YGIBTGTIT, "How We Quit the Future Suicides Club," which I began work on in 1979 or 1980, has already been revised yet again.
c) In June 2022, Derek was one of the three names presented to the Governor of Virginia as finalists for the post of Poet Laureate of Virginia. The Governor declined to name any of the three, and in May 2023, after a long hiatus, he finally appointed Margaret O. Daramola. Let’s congratulate her and wish her a productive reign!
d) As a category finalist for the Hoffer Awards, The Memory Addicts was eligible for a review from the US Review. It will be up on the Memory Addicts section of the site, but here’s a link: https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1/The-Memory-Addicts-by-Derek-Kannemeyer.html.
e) Derek’s next scheduled appearance is at Westminster Canterbury, in Richmond’s Northside area, on July 14. He’ll be talking about the creative life and the creative process, and presenting bits and pieces from the whole range of his work. [It was a blast. Thanks to Ann Archer for the invitation.]
4) March Update
a) Appearance on Saturday, March 11, at noon, in the Auditorium of the Richmond Main Library. Speakers: Bill Glose and Derek Kannemeyer. Topic: Poets Writing Fiction. There’s a flyer over at the Memory Addicts page.
b) Goodreads is in its heightened March giveaways season. I’m offering ten free signed copies of The Memory Addicts. My giveaway runs from March 8 to March 22. It’s near the end of day one as I write, and there are over a thousand applicants. I just hope whoever wins a copy reads it, and likes it. (Update: I never heard back from any of them.) If anyone reading this is that hungry for a free copy, give me the spiel!
c) YGIBTGTIT is a manuscript of mostly older poems, mostly from the 1980s. Two of its lyrical narrative poems ran in the February Verse-Virtual. https://www.verse-virtual.org/2023/February/kannemeyer-derek-2023-february.html
d) The Wishing Shelf has provided editorial reviews of The Memory Addicts and of my light verse collection A Betabestiary. I’ll post the former on the Memory Addicts wing of this website (access it via PAPERBACK WRITER) and the latter at Press and Praise (access it under PUBLICATIONS).
e) We’re back up to date at the Puzzle Palace: check out the word square puzzles for January, February, and March at the Playground tab.
f) I have two April appearances schedule: at the James River Writers Lewis Ginter Retreat, and at the ARGS Poetry Festival. Both are on April 22. (The former went particularly well.)
g) I’ve been pleased to get some nice reader reviews up at Amazon and on Goodreads for The Memory Addicts and for A Betabestiary. Please, if you read any of my books and have something good to say, write me a review!
h) Congrats to my cover artist Beste Miray. The Memory Addicts is an Eric Hoffer Awards Da Vinci Eye finalist.
2022
1) December notes:
a) LIGHT has nominated my poem “Corgis and Bess” for a Pushcart. In October, they submitted it for a Best of the Net. A double hooray and thank you to them.
b) I've updated—and upgraded—my “charmingly homemade” 2018 collection An Alphabestiary. This was my alphabet book of animal trivia and animal quatrains—light verse, but with short lyrical poetry mixed in. The new version is better written, better designed, more selectively illustrated, and much expanded, to be more of the browsing book/semi-reference book I envisioned it as. An Alphabestiary was in four sections, and featured 110 alphabeasts, both true beasts and maybe-creatures; A Betabestiary has six sections and 150 betabeasts. Much of the returning material has been reworked also.
c) Kirkus has named Unsay Their Names as one of their top hundred indie books of 2022. Here’s a link to their December issue: see page 49 for the review. https://d1fd687oe6a92y.cloudfront.net/files/Kirkus_Reviews_121522_Online_Edition.pdf, and page 36 for a featured ad.
2) October appearances:
a) Saturday, October 1, all day: Derek reads, presents, and leads a writing session at the Appomattox Regional Governors School Writers’ Fest 2022.
b) Saturday, October 8, all day: Derek attends the James River Writers Festival, where he moderates two panel discussions and serves on a third one.
c) Friday, October 21, 6-8 p.m. at Blue Bee Cider: Derek is at the River City Poets Halloween event, reading from The Memory Addicts and performing “Johnnie & Suzie’s Halloween.”
3) A September update:
a) in July, my laptop crashed; so, almost immediately, did the replacement. Both required a wipe and rewire—no biggie for the new one, but a disaster in respect of its predecessor, which I hadn’t backed up for three years. The repair shop tried for eight weeks to retrieve my data, but in vain. I lost way too much work in progress and work newly completed. Gone also were my folders-in-waiting for petalridge.com. It was and continues to be a blow.
b) The 2022 Artemis looks glorious. Thanks to Jeri Rogers for including my poem “For the Fools of April.” https://artemisjournal.org/store/
c) On August 27, Dear Booze posted another of my pieces, “In Which I Jump Off The Right Train,” on their website: https://dearbooze.com/cocktales. And (with thanks to Jim Lewis), Verse-Virtual has come out with its September 2022 issue, featuring a poem I wrote in my late twenties: https://www.verse-virtual.org/2022/September/kannemeyer-derek-2022-september.html .
d) The trade paperback of my novel The Memory Addicts ships on September 13. The Kindle version is released on that same date.
e) Not even 10% of the books reviewed by Kirkus get their review featured in the monthly magazine. Unsay Their Names did, and The Memory Addicts has. This review is harder to find—you'll need to scroll through to page 205—but I'm so tickled that they liked the novel enough to include the review in the magazine. For more about this novel, including a link to the Kirkus review, please go here: https://www.petalridge.com/the-memory-addicts
4) July publications
I have two poems out in Verse-Virtual and an oddball poem/playlet piece in Dear Booze.
https://www.verse-virtual.org/2022/July/kannemeyer-derek-2022-july.html
5) June pre-laptop crash excitement:
a) I've been working on a new photography/non-fiction book, about China in 1992. Once I get the "just for me" version back from the printer, I'm hoping to cut it down to a publicly available 100 page tradebook. Watch this space! We're posting some of the images at the PHOTOGRAPHY tab as a mini-collection. [Update: this MS was lost in the laptop crash, and while I could re-upload and re-edit the lost photography, and no doubt reconstitute the history research, I remain, two years later, too dispirited to do so. I had written several new poems for the project, some of my best work, I thought, in a fair while, and I deemed them gone forever.]
b) Yay! Catch me on Verse-Virtual's June podcast, where I have a 15 minute slot. We're live on Facebook at 2 pm. on Saturday, June 17, and available on youtube shortly afterward. And I'm to read again on June 29, in the Connecting Our Community Series, sponsored by PSV's Northern Region VP Cathy Hailey. The focus is on poetry that connects with other arts, and I share a couple of pieces where I combine photography and writing.
c) And (drumroll) I've made it to the six-name shortlist to be the next Poet Laureate of Virginia. This gets cut down by popular vote to three names, and then the Governor and his team have the final say. But being in the top six is a real honor! [Update: I made the top three! But for the first time ever, the Governor and his team chose to ignore the short list. See March 2023 pnews.]
6) May flowers:
a) Unsay Their Names won a silver medal in the 2022 IPPY Awards, in the category Best Non-Fiction Book, Mid-Atlantic Region. Conducted annually, the Independent Publisher Book Awards honor the year's best independently published titles from around the world. https://www.ippyawards.com/
b) For National Poetry Month 2022, Mike Maggio once again hosted a "30 poems by 30 poets" feature on his website: http://mikemaggio.net/. The challenge this year was to write an eleven line poem, each line being of eleven syllables, on the topic "Love on an Imaginary Boulevard." My poem "Two Sleepwalkers"* was chosen as the best of the month. The winners and runners-up were interviewed by Dennis Price for his hour-long show on Radio Fairfax.
c) The new LIGHT Poetry Magazine features my tribute to Queen Elizabeth and her corgis*. With thanks to the editor Melissa Balmain and acknowledgments to Alexander Pope.
d) I have two poems in the May Verse-Virtual*, and will be a featured reader for their June podcast. Thanks to Joanne Durham, one of my co-presenters, for nominating me to read with her, and to Robbi Nester for hosting this Zoom event. Sign up to attend on Facebook!
*Links to these poems are given under POTPOURRI, at the PERIODICALS subtab.
6) April showers:
a) To read my interview in the April issue of KIRKUS REVIEWS, please check out "Praise and Press" at the PUBLICATIONS tab.
b) Read my contribution to Luisa Igloria's wonderful postcard poetry project at her blog: http://www.luisaigloria.com/blog. The sampled works are wonderfully varied and inventive. Mine is the April 9th piece.
7) March matters:
a) MUTT SPIRITUALS, my first full-length poetry collection, is now available directly from the publisher! Here's a link to the website: https://www.sanfranciscobaypress.com// It's also available on Amazon, in the US and in the UK. (Official publication date was in the fall of 2021, but it took so long to overcome Amazon mislabeling—and become findable—that it wasn't eligible for 2021 Library of Virginia consideration. Real bummer for me.
b) KIRKUS INDIE gave Unsay Their Names a starred review, and the Vice President of Kirkus Indie put a spotlight on it in her "Perspectives" column for their February newsletter. You can read both at the PUBLICATIONS tab, under PRAISE & PRESS. (April update: also a full interview!)
c) My Black History Museum exhibition closed in December 2021. The museum kept some of the fifty blow-up display boards, and may display some photographs again at a future time. But they offered me back the majority of them. Show catalogues are sold out, but the museum may still have a full book or two in their bookshop.
d) Visit the PERIODICALS file under the POTPOURRI tab to get links to my journal publications since October 2021. They include poems in Anmly, Light, Lucky Jefferson, Rat's Ass Review, Rigorous, The Pine Cone Review, Unzipped, and four issues of Verse-Virtual, plus photography in Riddled with Arrows.
8) February, I guess:
a) I was one of the Zoom Launch readers for the new issue of Unzipped. The issue is titled "Bare," and I read my creative non-fiction piece "Indoctrination Training."
b) My poem "A Tortoise" made an appearance in a wonderful anthology pairing poems with quilts: Quilted Poems Book Interview by Bill Glose with the Editors-Kathleen P. Decker, & Terry Cox-Joseph Here is the link to buying the book on Bookbaby: https://store.bookbaby.com/websearch/index.aspx?searchterms=quilted+poems
9) A January gig
On 1/25/2022, I was a panelist for a Zoom conference hosted by James River Writers. The topic was "Get Out of That Rut" and my fellow presenters were Rachel Douglas, Noah Scalin, and Melissa Scott Sinclair.
FALL 2021
The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia's exhibition of photographs from Unsay Their Names ran from October to December, 2021.
Derek will be giving an artist talk at the Black History Museum in Richmond on Saturday, November 13, at 2 p.m. There is a $15, 60 page, full color trade book for sale at the museum in conjunction with the exhibition, which is scheduled to run through December 18.