Barnes Update! Top 20

#LetsConnectPhilly #Art #PhillyArtDepot

Update! Recently  I wrote about the Let’s Connect! art show at Philadelphia’s famed Barnes Collection. My hipster postman mixed-media painting, “Mind, Heart, Soul” placed among the top 20 artworks out of over 310 paintings at the show. I was especially happy to see my friend Tim Barton also make the cut with his stellar wooden folk box. As a result, this coming year the other artists and I have been asked to work with the Barnes on a series of talks and lectures geared toward the public and fellow artists. It’s a very special piece to me, and I hope it will find a good home with you. (You can read more in this former post that includes my Artist Statement., which talks about how Van Gogh’s work served as inspiration.)

“Mind, Heart, Soul: After Vincent’s The Postman” by Kelly McQuain, 2018

On this blog I’ve mostly posted about my work as a writer, but it’s true I also do a lot of artwork, which I’m hoping to post more about in the future. Below is my current Artist’s Bio, in case you are curious. My artwork ranges from comics and cartoons to watercolors, acrylic and the occasional oil painting. I often mix media and like to embed details and back-stories within my visual work, things that a viewer has to look twice to discover and that leave a person wanting to know more. For instance, if you look close you can tell Mr. Postman is a major Eagles fan, but perhaps not the most attentive deliveryman. I take the occasional commission and book cover project, but most works start from a strong visual idea and spool out from there, with hopes they find a buyer in the future.

About the Artist

Kelly McQuain is an artist and poet who combines words and pictures in poems, essays, book covers, comics, and large-scale canvases. His collection, Velvet Rodeo, won the Bloom Poetry Prize, and his work appears in numerous journals. He has twice held Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Recent projects include a series of Poetry Portraits that have appeared on the cover of Fjords Review. The painting series was inspired by Barnes artist Charles Demuth, whose watercolor poster portraits of famous contemporaries included the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe and William Carlos Williams. When he’s not painting, McQuain teaches creative writing, literature, and film studies at Community College of Philadelphia.

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Speaking of Marvels: Chapbook Reviews

This week Speaking of Marvels, a site that publishes interviews by chapbook authors, published an interview with me about the creation and publication of Velvet Rodeo. Other recent interviews have include poets Danez Smith, Allison Joseph and Elizabeth Savage. For anyone interested in the creation, production, and marketing of chapbooks, the site reveals the various processes and provides sample poems by the authors. Click here to read the review: https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/kelly-mcquain/

Lots of shout-outs in the interview to those folks tagged.

A Writer’s Thanks

May the Year 2015 Find You in a Peaceable Kingdom

Allegory Charles Prendergast (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1863–1948 Norwalk, Connecticut)

Family, friends and health take the top spots when it comes to giving thanks this time of season. Reflecting back, 2014 was a series of highs and lows, from celebrating weddings and publications with friends to experiencing the blistering reminders of how hard this country’s citizens often have it. The country’s grappling with racial and economic issues made for many an interesting conversation with family members and friends, and fed into the development of new teaching materials for my students as well as the occasional bit of political writing. I am lucky to teach students at Community College of Philadelphia, and I am often reminded throughout each semester of the hardships and hurdles they must overcome to achieve their dreams. I learn from them, too.

Somehow despite writing numerous poems and a few articles, I found time to start a new Facebook page on seasonal folk traditions, an interest of mine, and to catch up with friends in an old-fashioned Christmas Letter. I wrote new prose projects for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Good Men Project, and Cleaver Magazine. As a poet, I was blessed with good reviews for Velvet Rodeo in Cleaver, Out in Print, MEAD Magazine, and the Philadelphia Review of Books blog by such wonderful writers as Jerry Wheeler, Kris Bigalk, Daniel Wallace and Suzanne Parker, and Matthew Girolami—and I thank them! I think there are even a couple others I am forgetting here (my apologies). These join a spate of early reviews from the summer. Thanks so much to all the reviewers who have shown support and made me see my little red book in new and different ways. These join a spate of early reviews from the summer.

As for poems, a handful have come out online lately. You can read “Architect” from the journal Codex. Two other new poems appear in the fall issue of The Fox Chase Review, “Ritual” and “Two Street, After the Parade”. The first is set in my home state of West Virginia and based on a true incident concerning a bat. The second is offered up as a love letter to Philadelphia and the holidays, especially the annual Mummer’s Parade on New Year’s Day and the after-party that occurs on 2nd Street.

It’s nice to share good news like this to offset the many lulls and lows we inevitably go through as writers. As I was working on this entry, another rejection popped in my mail queue. I choose to take that as proof that you need to keep writing and to believe in yourself. So believe in yourself!

Finally, a big shout out to editor Charles Flowers for shepherding Velvet Rodeo into print and to poet C. Dale Young for selecting it. Most of all, I thank John for continuing to put up with me for another year. And I thank you, for reading my words from time to time.

http://www.KellyMcQuain.wordpress.com

#Cleaver #Mead #GoodMenProject

Related Links:

http://www.cleavermagazine.com/velvet-rodeo-by-kelly-mcquain-reviewed-by-matthew-girolami/

http://phillybooksblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/no-bull-a-review-of-velvet-rodeo-bloom-2014-a-chapbook-by-kelly-mcquain/.

http://www.meadmagazine.org/velvet-rodeo.html

http://burlesquepressllc.com/2014/11/12/the-wild-bull-of-time-daniel-wallace-reviews-velvet-rodeo-by-kelly-mcquain/

http://outinprintblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/fall-poetry-roundup/

 

 

 

Burlesque Press reviews Velvet Rodeo

My thanks to writer/critic Daniel Wallace and Burlesque Press for sharing with me their new review of my poetry chapbook, Velvet Rodeo. (Burlesque Press, btw, offers a very cool and intimate literary conference in New Orleans over the holidays–it includes a masquerade ball!) My thanks for them taking the time with my little red book.

The review is here:
http://burlesquepressllc.com/2014/11/12/the-wild-bull-of-time-daniel-wallace-reviews-velvet-rodeo-by-kelly-mcquain/

More on their festival is here:
http://burlesquepressllc.com/handsonball/

‪#‎burlesque‬ BLOOM Literary Journal ‪#‎poetry‬ ‪#‎WVpoetry‬ ‪#‎phillypoetry‬

Gay Pride Month is in BLOOM at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore – June 5, 2014 – 7:00 p.m.

 

Join writers from BLOOM Literary Journal as they celebrate June as Gay Pride Month. Readers include fiction writer Viet Dinh and poets Joan Larkin, Brian Teare and Kelly McQuain. Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter lane, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19119. (Mt. Airy neighborhood)

 

LARKIN, TEARE, MCQUAIN, DINH

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/252657468255098/?context=create&ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming&source=49#

 

Big Blue Marble Reading: JOAN LARKIN, KELLY MCQUAIN, BRIAN TEARE, VIET DINH

 

June 5, 2014. Thursday, 7:00 pm. Join writers from BLOOM Literary Journal as they celebrate June as Gay Pride Month. Readers include fiction writer Viet Dinh and poets Joan Larkin, Brian Teare and Kelly McQuain. Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter lane, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19119. (Mt. Airy neighborhood)

 

JOAN LARKIN’s new poetry collection, Blue Hanuman, is just out from Hanging Loose Press. Among her previous books, My Body: New and Selected Poems received the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award. She is the current poet in residence at Smith College.

 

VIET DINH was born in Dalat, Vietnam, and teaches at the University of Delaware. He has received a Fiction Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work appears in the 2009 PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous literary journals.

 

KELLY MCQUAIN’s poetry collection, Velvet Rodeo, recently won the Bloom chapbook prize, judged by poet C. Dale Young. His poems and prose have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Assaracus, Kestrel, Painted Bride Quarterly, Between: New Gay Poetry, The Pinch, The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, and more.

 

BRIAN TEARE is the author of four full-length books, The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, the Lambda-Award-winning Pleasure, and Companion Grasses, one of Slate’s best poetry books of 2013. After over a decade of teaching and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, he’s now an Assistant Professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Interview from Outer Space

#poetry #WeaveMagazine #napomo2014 Recently Laura E. Davis, editor of Weave literary journal and blogger at Dear Outer Space, asked me five questions as part of a mini-interview about my writing process and my new book, Velvet Rodeo. The piece is now live at her site: http://dearouterspace.blogspot.com/2014/04/interview-McQuain.html #sasfest

Thanks, Laura!

Countdown to Philly Poetry Day

#phillypoetryday @phillypoetryday

PHILLY POETRY DAY APRIL 12, 2014

1:00 – 2:30 pm: Philly Poetry Day gets off to a fun start with a wienie roast and poetry reading at Port Richmond Books, 3037 Richmond Street, sponsored by the 215 Festival and American Poetry Review. Poet Laureate Frank Sherlock headlines, and I’ll be reading a couple of poems, too. It should be beautiful weather. Hope to see some friends there! Then I’ll be hopping down to Center City to take part in a…

POETRY READING AT PHILADELPHIA SKETCH CLUB

3:00 – 4:30 pm: Philly Poetry Day Gets a Little Sketchy: A Reading at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. On April 12, 2014, join four poets at the Sketch Club in the Exhibition Gallery surrounded by the works of the Small Oils Exhibition. Featuring Juditha Dowd, Kelly McQuain, Helen Mirkil and Wendy Steginsky.

Juditha Dowd is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet with work appearing in The Florida Review, Poetry Daily, Cider Press Review, Spillway, Ekphrasis and elsewhere. Her full-length collection, Mango in Winter (Grayson Books, 2013), joins three previously-published chapbooks. She is a poetry editor for US1 Worksheets and a member of “Cool Women,” an ensemble performing poetry in the metro area and on the west coast.

Wendy Fulton Steginsky traces her passion for poetry back to her Bermuda roots and childhood days growing up on the water. Her poems have been published in two volumes of Bermuda Anthology of Poetry, And The Questions Are Enough, online at tongues of the ocean, The Wild River Review and featured in a multi-media exhibition, Making Magic: Beauty in Word and Image at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Kelly McQuain grew up in the mountains of West Virginia. He holds graduate degrees from the University of New Orleans and Temple University. His recent book Velvet Rodeo is the winner of the Bloom Chapbook Prize and his poems have appeared recently in The Pinch, Painted Bride Quarterly, Assaracus, Redivider, MEAD, Paper Nautilus, and Kestrel, as well as in such anthologies as Between: New Gay Poetry and Drawn to Marvel: Superhero Poems. He also writes prose, essays, and book reviews. He occasionally designs book covers, illustrates comics, or draws for the sheer pleasure of it.

Helen Mirkil is both a poet and visual artist. Her recent book Sower on the Cliffs, poems and drawings (BookArts Press 2013) merges her two passions. Her poems have appeared in Apiary (online), Art Times, Bucks County Writer, The Griffin, and Ruah. She received a coordinate BFA from University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, as well as an MFA from the Academy. She was awarded a fellowship from the Academy to live and work in Raglan, Wales. Mirkil’s paintings and drawings are part of the permanent collections of several museums in the area.

For other poetry happenings in Philadelphia see phillypoetryday.com

 

Last chance: VELVET RODEO is available for discount pre-order price!

PRE-ORDER TIME for VELVET RODEO!

Today is the last day to order VELVET RODEO at the discount price of $7, including shipping.

“…What if you never meet
the person you are meant to be? The future
is a cocked gun –pretty, but peacock mean–
and you are devil’s paintbrush,
a blister of orange-red and velvet need…”

from the poem “Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers”, originally published in the journal Kestrel.

Hey, Friends–

My chapbook VELVET RODEO is available for pre-order at the discounted price of $7 from the fine folks at BLOOM, which includes free shipping if you act now. That’s less than a couple mocha grandes at Starbucks! In the coming weeks I’ll be doing some promotional readings for the chapbook in New York and Philadelphia, and if you know of any series that might want a reader in the coming months, drop me a private message. Order at: http://bloomliteraryjournal.org/shop/velvet-rodeo/

Velvet Rodeo is the recent winner of the Bloom Chapbook Prize, judged by poet C. Dale Young. The poems center on themes of travel, nature, outsider-ism and more, and are set in such places as West Virginia, the Virgin Islands, Mexico and Prague. The collection’s cover, above, features one of my recent paintings.

Here’s what the judge had to say about the collection: “‘The tongue I try to master / is a sticky one, forked and full of tricks,’ is the opening of a poem in Velvet Rodeo, and it becomes a point of return for the collection. These poems understand that to tell the truth, one must lie, play tricks, and even dare to say the unbelievable. Careful and exacting, these poems exact a price from a reader. They linger with you long after you have finished reading them.”

 

Velvet Rodeo Kick-Off Reading 4/4/14

#Poetry
Velvet Rodeo Kick-Off Reading 4/4/14:
Some Pittsburgh poets are coming to town and they asked me to read with them. Join us at Tattooed Mom’s on 4/4/14. I don’t know if I will actually *RANT*, but I’ll do my best to wax poetic!  This meeting of Pennsylvania east and west will also be the Philly debut of VELVET RODEO. 7 pm at Tattooed Mom’s, 530 South Street in Philly. Featuring Bob Walicki, Angele Ellis and Philly poet Laura Spagnoli.

 

VELVET RODEO Book Tour – Spring 2014

Announcing the VELVET RODEO Book Tour!
Scroll down for dates. #VelvetRodeo #Poetry

VELVET RODEO is the recent winner of the Bloom Chapbook Prize, judged by poet C. Dale Young, who wrote of it: “‘The tongue I try to master / is a sticky one, forked and full of tricks,’ is the opening of a poem in Velvet Rodeo, and it becomes a point of return for the collection. These poems understand that to tell the truth, one must lie, play tricks, and even dare to say the unbelievable. Careful and exacting, these poems exact a price from a reader. They linger with you long after you have finished reading them.”

******************************

Order at: http://bloomliteraryjournal.org/shop/velvet-rodeo/

NEW YORK CITY:

March 28, 2014. Friday, 6 pm. SIBLING RIVALRY PRESS Group Reading. Kelly McQuain’s first reading in NYC! The New York debut of Velvet Rodeo! Celebrating the Rainbow Book Fair at Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street. With Sibling Rivalry Press authors. Hosted by Bryan Borland and Seth Pennington. https://www.facebook.com/events/610168342400019/?ref=ts&fref=ts

March 29, 2014. Saturday afternoon. Rainbow Book Fair Reading at the Midtown Holiday Inn, New York City. Noon. www.rainbowbookfair.org

PHILADELPHIA:

April 4, 2014. Friday, 7 pm. VELVET RODEO — the Philly Book Launch!!! Tattooed Mom’s bar, South Street, Philadelphia. McQuain reads with Laura Spagnoli and Pittsburgh poets Bob Walicki and Angele Ellis.

April 12, 2014. Saturday. PHILADELPHIA POETRY DAY!
3 pm: Reading at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. On April 12, 2014, poetry will bloom in Philadelphia. Poetry Everywhere! Here at the Sketch Club in the Exhibition Gallery surrounded by the works of the Small Oils Exhibition, a poetry reading by four area poets is scheduled from 3:00 to 4:30 pm. Juditha Dowd, Kelly McQuain, Helen Mirkil and Wendy Steginsky!

May 13, 2014. Tuesday, 7 pm. PAINTED BRIDE QUARTERLY Featured Reading at Black Sheep Pub, 247 S. 17th St., Philadelphia. Also featuring poet Teresa Leo, author of Bloom in Reverse.

NEW ORLEANS:
May, 2014. Saints and Sinners Literary Festival — TBA.

PHILADELPHIA:
June 11. Wednesday. 7 pm. MOONSTONE READING SERIES. Fergie’s Pub. Reading with Teresa Leo. Open mic to follow, hosted by Charles Carr.

If you’d like a sneak peak at one of the poems in the collection, here’s one that appeared in Bloom: http://bloomliteraryjournal.org/read/poetry/kelly-mcquain/

Another of the poems, “Lent”, is scheduled to be republished in The Philadelphia Inquirer on April 30th.

Kestrel Pushcart Nomination for “Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers”

Just when I needed a nice shot in the arm to tackle some new writing projects, I got some terrific news from the journal Kestrel. The editors there nominated my poem “Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers” for the Pushcart Prize awards. The poem is the first poem in my forthcoming poetry chapbook, Velvet Rodeo, due out from Bloom press in early 2014. My thanks to the editors at Kestrel for making my day!

Prize Win from Bloom Literary Journal!

Velvet Rodeo poetry collection wins prize! This just in from BLOOM Literary Journal at http://bloomliteraryjournal.org/news/

Judge C. Dale Young has selected Velvet Rodeo by Kelly McQuain for the 2013 BLOOM Poetry Chapbook Prize. McQuain will receive 25 copies of the chapbook and a $100 honorarium. Judge’s citation: “‘The tongue I try to master / is a sticky one, forked and full of tricks,’ is the opening of a poem in Velvet Rodeo, and it becomes a point of return for the collection. These poems understand that to tell the truth, one must lie, play tricks, and even dare to say the unbelievable. Careful and exacting, these poems exact a price from a reader. They linger with you long after you have finished reading them.” “Alien Boy” from Velvet Rodeo appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of BLOOM. ~~~~~ Kelly McQuain grew up surrounded by the mountains of West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. His poetry has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Pinch, Assaracus, Kin, Mead, Bloom, Chelsea Station, American Writing and the anthologies Poems for the Writing and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. His fiction has appeared in such journals as Icarus, The James White Review, Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review, The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly and in numerous anthologies, including Best American Erotica, Skin & Ink and Men on Men 2000. His book reviews and columns on city life appear in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Recently his poem, “Camping as Boys in the Cow Field”, was selected by Reginald Dwayne Betts as the winner of Redivider’s AWP poetry contest. McQuain works as a professor in Philadelphia.

“Alien Boy” can be read here: http://bloomliteraryjournal.org/read/poetry/kelly-mcquain/

My thanks to poet C. Dale Young and the editors at BLOOM, Charles Flowers and Aaron Smith, who keep the journal going! — Kelly

Addendum:
C. Dale blogs about poetry at this site: http://blog-cdaleyoung.tumblr.com/post/62903981020/kelly-mcquain-winner-of-2013-bloom-poetry-chapbook