Thankful to Catherine Perkins about these words about Accents Publishing and Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning and her reading.
Category Archives: poem
Jeremy Paden reads three poems
Grateful to Jeremy Paden for this reading from how to recognize god’s chosen (Accents Publishing, 2025). Listen to three poems from this amazing book!
Woman by Wendy Jett
Woman by Wendy Jett is the final book in the popular mixed-genre trilogy about a young woman’s complicated relationships with her family, faith, friends and herself. Accents Publishing is proud to bring to readers these timeless, yet contemporary characters.
Order your copy today! 
Jennifer Litt Reads Three Poems From Her Accents Publishing Book
Hey Friends, superstar poet Jennifer Litt reads three poems from her Accents Publishing book, Strictly From Hunger! Give it a listen and enjoy!
Strictly From Hunger by Jennifer Litt is a powerful debut collection by a poet who has spent decades mastering a diverse set of literary skills, including writing fiction, poetry, teaching and consulting. The voice is playful, yet fearless, and walks us through events personal yet relatable. We love this book and are proud to share it with the readers.
Open Accents at Third Street Stuff aka Big Bad Community Open Mic
Dear Friends,
It’s time to emerge with poetry and books. Accents and Third Street Stuff invite you to an Open House and Open Mic on Saturday, the 23rd of April from 4pm to 7pm.
From 4pm to 5pm – browse books, drink coffee, hang out and catch up.
from 5pm to whenever – everyone is welcome to read a poem.
After the reading – hang out some more.
If the weather is nice, we’ll be outside. A few Accents authors will be in attendance to sign books.
We look forward to spending time together!
Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive (Accents Publishing, 2019)
Poet Pat Williams Owen answers a few questions about Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive (Accents Publishing, 2019)
Do you still like your book? Why or why not?
I still like Orion’s Belt at the End of the Drive. I’m proud of the poems and the period of my life it portrays. It’s honest and heart-felt and represents several years of conscientious work.
What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?
The highest praise I’ve received from it was from my granddaughter who said she loves it, that it made her laugh and cry.
What didn’t make it in the book?
What didn’t make it into the book were poems of lesser quality and those that didn’t fit thematically.
Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?
I’d like to share “After My Untimely Death” as a sample of a list poem that any writer can model.
After My Untimely Death
Sometimes as I leave the house
I foresee people coming in and finding
remains of my life spread out like the ruins
of Pompeii. For sure on the floor
my Birkenstocks, well-worn and embedded
with my DNA, journals, books and magazines
stacked by my chair, yesterday’s running shoes
beneath the table, shoe strings dangling
toothbrush standing at attention, maybe the towel
still damp, a coffee cup with the final dregs,
today’s New York Times spread out,
half read.
Did I leave a light still burning,
awaiting my return? The chairs
around the table askew,
a life in process, my fuzzy lap
blanket still on the footstool,
housing my sloughed -off cells
hiding out in the folds of the yarn,
fingerprints on the sliding door
belong to this particular life.
Thoughts and dreams religiously recorded,
black ink in journal after journal,
stacks of them. Shelves of books
underlined and notated, my sweat
smudged on each page. Light streams
in through the blinds as usual.
Funny, all the years of viewing Orion’s belt,
I thought my place on earth
was permanent.
How did you arrive at the title?
The title is taken from one of the poems in the book. In my poetry I try to address the intersection between the mundane and the transcendent. This poem is a metaphor for that.
Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?
My favorite Accents book other than mine is Katerina’s The Porcupine of Mind.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on new poems, observations of life as it passes.
Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.
Last Wash for the Old Car
To honor our 30 years of caretaking
I take my place in line with all the others
seeking purification,
that one moment of perfection
when the grey face of the car emerges
shiny dripping wet through the soapy steam.
Blue-shirted, brown-skinned workers
white towels wrapped round their heads
embrace it with rags
scrubbing until all surfaces shine.
I climb into the leather seat one last time,
fresh lemon scent surrounds me.
Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing, 2010)
Poet J. Kates answers a few questions about Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing, 2010)
Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.
Not sure there is a story to tell. I had written some poems, they seemed to fit together in theme, there was a chapbook contest from Accents Publishing, and I submitted to it. You liked it, apparently.
Do you still like it? Why or why not?
The poems I write that stand the editorial test of time long enough to make it to publication are poems I like. The rest, I throw away.
What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?
Not sure I’ve received any “praise” for Metes and Bounds. You published it, some people have bought it. That’s praise. Can’t recall if it was ever reviewed.
What didn’t make it in the book?
Most of the poems I’ve written in my life. Luckily, a good many have made it into other books, with, I hope, more still to come.
Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?
I’d like to have your readers read them all. That’s why I wrote them. If it’s your blog, you choose.
Selected by Katerina and inserted in the text:
DOING THE WORMS’ WORK
The first April I am certain I will die,
the ground too cold, too wet for planting,
the river only a foot down from flood,
the compost heap a contradance of bees,
I need to be looking toward a harvest.
I will turn dirt. Without stooping
to pick rocks, I do the worms’ work
for an hour or two, see how I like it,
see how I enjoy the company of worms.
Not bad, they say, not bad for a beginner .
How did you arrive at the title?
Ah, there’s an interesting question. In New England, where I live, it has long been customary to establish boundaries not by formal surveying, but by noting and describing landmarks (or by creating them, as with walls and cairns). All the poems in this little collection somehow have to do with limits and limitations, and there is a rural cast to them; it seemed an appropriate title. I have worried, since, however, that the title sounds a little too bucolic, characterizing my work (unfairly, I hope) as “when the Frost is on the bumpkin.” Perhaps that’s balanced by the cosmopolitanism of an earlier chapbook (Mappemonde, Oyster River Press) and by other published poems.
Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?
Partial to anthologies and to translation as I am, you can guess I’d single out The Season of Delicate Hunger, for its introduction and presentation of contemporary Bulgarian poets.
What would you like to see Accents do going forward?
Succeed. On your own terms.
What are you working on now?
I have two full-length manuscripts being widely rejected. I continue to write — including some experimental, urban prose poems — and to translate.
Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.
“The human in me knows how to retreat.”
ACCENTS POETRY CRAFT SERIES
ACCENTS POETRY CRAFT SERIES
We’re very happy to start offering live online craft sessions. We intend for these to deliver brief but powerful bursts of energy and inspiration on interesting topics. The sessions are accessible to anyone with a device such as a computer or smartphone and an internet connection.
The sessions are taught by Katerina Stoykova, owner and senior editor of Accents Publishing.
Every Monday 6:00-7:15pm
Sign up a-la-carte for $25.00 a session, or all 5 for $20 each.
Topics:
11/11 Developing a brilliant voice
11/18 Writing very short poems
11/25 Quotes, conversations and scenes in poetry
12/2 Arranging and titling a poetry manuscript
12/9 Submitting your work — pitfalls and strategies
Write to accents.publishing@gmail.com to reserve your spot.
Depending on interest/requests, local people may meet face-to-face.
“Ars Poetica” by Patty Paine
The dark beyond the window is
not the same as the dark inside
a piano, a dark you can’t know,
just as your body, sitting there
beside the piano, is an enclosure
with its own unknowable dark.
This is metaphor
for nothing. Just as a bird is not
a conceit, no matter how hard we want
to feel wings open
across our backs, taste flight
on our tongues. Even in death
a bird is not a blade that cuts
to the quick of our loss, it’s just
a splayed thing, something to be
stepped around, for decomposition to have
its efficient way, I don’t mean
to be cynical, but there are days
when language is heavy
furniture you push around
a house made of nothing
but hallways. I’m not feeling
sorry for myself, if that’s what
you’re thinking. I just want
you to be careful, because
sometimes a poem can lie.
It can make you think darkness
is a curtain that can be swept
back to reveal a sky gilded in light,
where wing beats fall
into a rhythm of hope, hope, hope.
-Patty Paine,
The Sounding Machine, 2012 © Accents Publishing
Patty Paine is the author of Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and many other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is assistant director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.