I haven’t shared anything here in a while because I’m working hard on 100 Warm Days of Haiku. And my daughter thinks I share too much of my books before they’re published. She’s not wrong. It’s a delicate balance sharing enough to intrigue you but not enough to make it not worth your while to buy the book when it comes out. However, today is my 26th wedding anniversary and I just drew a very romantic haiku. 🙂 So I thought I’d share it. Here, for your reading and viewing pleasure, is Haiku 52, which will be in my upcoming poetry book, !00 Warm Days of Haiku.
Poem and Illustration by Michelle Garren Flye. Copyright 2021.
I cannot tell you how much it means to find a positive new review for one of your books. The surge of triumph, heartwarming and uplifting… For poets, this feeling may be elusive, but it’s just as powerful, if not more so. It’s why we writers risk rejection so willingly. Because we’re basically junkies for that feeling.
So you can imagine how I felt when I found this review on Amazon:
Thank you, Anna! 🙂
If you haven’t read UnSong yet, you’re missing out. Reviewers (my fellow poets) had already proclaimed it “wicked-smart” (Dennis Mahagin, author of Grand Mal), “joyful and optimistic” (Alice Osborn, author of Heroes Without Capes), and “a dash of light to repel the darkness” (Sam Love, author of Awakening: Musings on Planetary Survival). Now it’s got five stars on Amazon!
Happy May Day! It’s a perfect day here in Eastern North Carolina as I sit in my bookstore, one of my favorite places in the world. The sun is shining, a breeze is blowing. If I walk outside, I can see the river a couple blocks away.
Speaking of May Day, I snapped a picture of a young cypress tree. I love cypress trees. Their green is so soft and perfect. I took this picture because she seemed so happy with her new spring dress.
Photo by Michelle Garren Flye.
I’m thinking she needs to be a poem, but sometimes real things are already poems and can’t be improved on by words.
Of course, UnSong is my attempt to capture some of those things with both words and pictures. See below for a video of me reading the title poem. Then go check it out! I’ve gotten some pretty great reviews on it already!
Today is usually both a relief and a sad day for me because I love National Poetry Month. 🙂 In case you couldn’t tell. I enjoy challenging myself by writing a poem a day. I love reading others’ poetry, and this month I took it a step further and invited local poets to submit recordings of themselves reading one of their poems, which I then posted on my store’s social media.
It’s a been a good month.
If you’ve enjoyed my illustrated haiku, thank you. They’ve been a great deal of fun to come up with. I’m planning to continue through the summer (though not posting them online, sorry) and at the end I hope to have something I can be proud enough of to publish with the title “100 Warm Days of Haiku”. This one will be different since I’m getting more confident with my use of color. It’ll still be pretty cheap as a Kindle book, but the physical book may be a bit more expensive since I’d like to publish it in color this time.
In the meantime, please consider giving my first collection of illustrated poetry, “UnSong”, a try. It’s available online today. I don’t have physical copies in my store yet because I worked on it right up til the deadline to make sure it was something I could be proud of (and I am).
So here it goes. I’m releasing UnSong on the world. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.
Available today! Check your favorite online retailer.
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 