ROBERT HILL LONG

2011 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship

roberthilllong — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:29:08 +0000

Just received word that I’m being awarded a 2011 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship in poetry. This is my second OAC (the last was in 1997). This award will help support 2011 readings of the current books; journal publication/revisions of the MSS Perpetua and The Republic of Robinson; and efforts to get the following MSS published: Hello Hell (flash + prose poems), Battle Hymnal (poems), and Aftermathematic (poems).

An essay on the composition of The Kilim Dreaming & The Spear Lily

roberthilllong — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 17:43:25 +0000

Beth Spencer of Bear Star Press asked me to reflect on the concepts, characters and composition of The Kilim Dreaming and The Spear Lily (as well as the third poem in the trilogy/triptych, The Wire Garden, which inhabits its own separate book). You can read the resulting essay on her blog There’s a Bear There: http://theresabearthere.blogspot.com.

Recent work online

roberthilllong — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:25:53 +0000

In the new Stickman Review 9/2, three prose poems: “Dog Fennel,” “The Throw Pillow” and “Rasa” http://www.stickmanreview.com/V9N2/. Also, four poems about my jazzbo alter ego Robinson in The Writing Disorder: http://www.thewritingdisorder.com/poetryfour.html. If you like those, three more poems from the MS The Republic of Robinson can be read at Arabesques: http://www.arabesques-editions.com/journal/robert_hill_long/index.html, plus another at The Pedestal: http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=15426. Several more Robinsons will soon come out from Dead Mule.

New Books: here, Bear Star, SPD, Amazon

roberthilllong — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:56:02 +0000

The Kilim Dreaming is now available from Small Press Distribution, directly from Bear Star Press, or signed/inscribed from me. Booksellers interested in discounted orders should contact SPD, or Beth Spencer at Bear Star Press. The retail price is $16/$20 Canada; standard bookseller discounts apply. Also possible to obtain Kilim from Amazon (last resort).

I can offer a single signed/inscribed copy postpaid for $16 anywhere in the US. Two or more signed copies will be progressively discounted.

The Wire Garden, my Arlo Press companion book to The Kilim Dreaming, is also available as signed/inscribed copy. The Wire Garden is a clothbound limited edition that contains the third part of a trilogy begun in The Kilim Dreaming, and is available (signed/numbered) for $20 anywhere in the US. You can have a copy of both books together for $35 postpaid. Contact me here or at rohilong [at] gmail [dot] com for more details.

Kilim Dreaming jacket

Wire Garden jacket

Two prose pieces at Glossolalia

roberthilllong — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:46:04 +0000

“The Water Doesn’t Stop” and “Onan, Low Tide,” a pair of prose pieces about a couple of low points in my life, are readable at Glossolalia, a lovely Tumblr zine edited by Kristina Havet in Vancouver. If you enjoyed Peter Johnson’s journal The Prose Poem and Brian Clements’ journal Sentence, add Glossolalia to your blogroll: http://glossolaliaflash.tumblr.com/

“The Wire Garden” available via Lulu

roberthilllong — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:24:19 +0000

The Kilim Dreaming originally included “The Wire Garden,” a sequence about my father’s last days juxtaposed with with the events of a summer when I was 15 and he was 46. Beth Spencer and the other Bear Star editors decided they preferred “An Indefinite Sentence of Exile in Florence, Massachusetts,” and I concurred. But I had also been looking forward to presenting my mother with a book containing “The Wire Garden,” since at 88 her reading days are numbered (as she’d be first to admit).

My timely solution was to create a book at Lulu.com that includes “The Wire Garden,” plus a number of other elegies for my father that were first published in Poetry, Seneca Review, Diagram, Del Sol Review, Whiskey Island, Cream City Review, and the Duke Medical Center health Arts Network. It’s a handsome cloth book of 40 pages, and retails for $21. You may order it directly from Lulu.com, but if you’d like a signed/inscribed copy, contact me here or at rohilong[at]gmail[dot]com.

Lulu.com also offers the PDF for $2.74. Follow this link for more info:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rohilongatgmaildotcom

2 poems in 2River View

roberthilllong — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:42:50 +0000

2 in 2River View: “Good Friday” about a daughter refusing to draw her father (and the consequences); “The Swimmer” about my old friendenemy depression.
Plus audio clips (Quicktime): http://www.2river.org/2RView/14_4/default.html

The 2River View, 14.4 (Summer 2010)
Mitch Roberson Walter Bargen Antonia Clark James Grinwis Clark Holtzman Anna Hurst Robert Hill Long Martin Ott Amy Pence Carolyn Foster Segal Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon

Other work forthcoming in Poetry East: http://www.poetryeast.org/about.html

The Kilim Dreaming: advance copies for reviewers

roberthilllong — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:32:20 +0000

Advance review copy, The Kilim Dreaming

Here’s a look at a draft of the front/back cover for The Kilim Dreaming, which should come out from Bear Star Press in California in September. Advance review copies are going out now, and if you’d like to review a copy this summer or fall, contact me. Distribution will be through Small Press Distribution of Berkeley, and of course you’ll be able to find copies in the tentacles of the giant octopus (Amazon). The book will retail for $16 ($20 Canada). Signed copies will be available through PayPal, too, with email invoicing, for approximately $2.00 more per single book: contact me here, or at rohilong[at]gmail[dot]com.

The Kilim Dreaming, slightly over 100 pages, consists of four long poems: “The Book of Joel,” “The Spear Lily,” the title poem and “An Indefinite Sentence of Exile in Florence, Massachusetts.” One of these (“The Book of Joel”) is an elegy and sonnet sequence; “The Spear Lily” and “The Kilim Dreaming” are also sonnet sequences, but are narratives about the romantic (dis)illusions found in the quest for an elusive earthly paradise. “An Indefinite Sentence of Exile in Florence, Massachusetts,” however, is in the Monty Python tradition–and now for something completely different (cue laugh track).

Portions of The Kilim Dreaming were published in Cream City Review, Del Sol Review,The Water~Stone Review; special thanks to Howard Junker of Zyzzyva for printing entire “An Indefinite Sentence of Exile in Florence, Massachusetts,” and to Ellen Dudley of Marlboro Review for printing most of “The Book of Joel.”

PS: if you zoom into the cover, you can hunt for the final typo we caught before the launch of the ARCs.

Nice note at There’s a Bear There

roberthilllong — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:17:32 +0000

My Bear Star Press editor Beth Ann Spencer writes the delightful blog There’s a Bear There. A few days ago she posted a kind note about The Kilim Dreaming and quoted “Parable of Shadows” from “The Book of Joel,” one of the 4 sequences in the manuscript. Follow the Bear to read on.

New collection forthcoming 2010

roberthilllong — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:10:39 +0000

Recent good news: my MS of three long narrative sonnet sequences, plus one sonnet-sequence elegy, was taken by Bear Star Press in California as the winner of the 2010 Dorothy Brunsman Prize. The working title is The Kilim Dreaming. Go to http://www.bearstarpress.com/ for more prize/publication/ordering details.

The three narratives explore the Eden conundrum–how do you create or sustain companionship after you’ve been kicked out of paradise?–with three pairs of people, none as conventionally paired as Adam & Eve. They’re contemporary stories set in San Francisco, North Carolina, and Antalya (Turkey), and each involves some sort of garden. The 19-sonnet elegy, “The Book of Joel,” is for the son of friends who died just shy of his 19th birthday.