POETRY LIVES!
WHERE SHE’S BEEN/WHAT SHE’S DONE
Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is BLUES FOR FRENCH ROAST WITH CHICORY, available from Deerbrook Editions. She is the author of NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE(from Deerbrook Editions), WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions),
LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press). All books are available from this website’s “Bookshoppe.”
Newberry has been included in The Cenacle, Cog, Blue Nib, Braided Way Roanoak Review, THAT Literary Review, Mortar Magazine, and many other literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad.
Her work can also be found in the anthologies Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Moontide Press Horror Anthology, A Decade of Sundays: L.A.’s Second Sunday Poetry Series-The First Ten Years and others.
RESIDENCIES
She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.
Yaddo
Djerrasi
Anderson
Martina Reisz Newberry was born in Upland, California, daughter of a steel working, storytelling father and and an extremely gifted artist mother.
Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.
SHE WRITES ABOUT…
Los Angeles is my woman, my mother, my sister, my lover, my friend, my monster. I am L.A ’s slave and her bitch and her partner and her conqueror and her patient and her most fervent fan. Los Angeles has been my comfort and sometimes a dangerous companion. I love this city as much as I have loved any person and so I write inside her and about her.
I can’t let go of the divine play of words which has been my tool for growing up, my sword in the stone. I have yet to pull the damn thing out and , until I do, I’ll keep writing.
I write about circumstances, how people feel about them, how we all continue – day after day – to feel about those angel-headed, demon-infested circumstances.
…the same stuff that got us here will take us out
and we will continue to try to make “family” out of strangers.
It is perpetual the way we wait out the night,
venturing out into its dark eye,
holding the belt of the poor sucker in front of us.
Somebody must know where we’re going,
And here is the ideal “College for Bards” as daydreamed by W.H. Auden in his essay
The Poet and The City collected in The Dyer’s Hand.
(I like Number 5 a whole lot.)
Dear Everybody,
Buy books!
Go without that latte from a coffee place for one or two days and buy books!
Buy my books!
Buy your friends’ books!
Buy your favorite poets’ books!
Buy chapbooks
and paperbacks
and hardcovers!
Buy them new
and used!
Buy them from independent presses
and independent booksellers
and from the writers themselves!
Then, take a minute or two and write a note (Twitter, LinkedIn, email, etc)
to those writers to tell them that you read their book(s), that they meant something
to you, touched you, or enthused you, or pissed you off.
We’ll love you for it. We’ll write better and stronger for it. I promise.
With so much love,
Martina Reisz Newberry
Martina Reisz Newberry 