Pam Grier and NIWRC Fundraiser

As a reminder for my National Indigenous Women Resource Center fundraiser, here’s a New York Times Magazine Pam Grier interview, “Pam Grier on maintaining her independence and identity in showbiz.” Pam Grier is a Black Indigenous actress, and a survivor. I love her answer to the following question about her experience as a survivor and acting in Blacksploitation films.

“Given your personal history, was it hard to act in movies that often featured the threat of sexual violence? It’s in a lot of the blacksploitation films.”

“Sure, but by being nude in those movies I was trying to help men understand. Society created this mystery about the vagina, the breasts. When you create a mystery, people want to see it and attack it if they can’t have it. So I was like, here’s the mystery. I hope I bore you and you’ll never get a hard-on again.”

Check out the full NYT Mag article, and my birthday fundraiser for NIWRC, an Indigenous-run organization benefiting Indigenous survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. If you can’t give, please share!

https://www.facebook.com/donate/3039799119436640

Trauma poetry in Luna Luna Magazine

I’ve been honored to have three poems about childhood sexual trauma appear in Luna Luna Magazine, a favorite ezine of mine (and sister publication to Quail Bell Magazine). These poems are the first to be published from a series on trauma that I’ve been working on for many years. I’m putting together the manuscript alongside the novel I’m working on about Coco, a half-Romani (Gypsy) dancer and fortune teller at a Parisian circus who becomes a Nazi hunter. Coincidentally, the novel will contain a few poems. I’m so motivated to finish both projects within the next year. A large part of that is due to the warm reception that these poems have gotten– I couldn’t be more grateful or more touched. Many thanks. And a big thank you to Lisa A. Flowers, founder of Vulgar Marsala Press and author of diotomhero, who solicited me. I also got a lot of good advice about writing trauma poetry from Erin Belieu, Florida State University professor and co-founder of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and I so appreciate her help and encouragement. Check out Erin’s latest book Slant Six, and its starred review in Publisher’s Weekly.

You may know Luna Luna for their powerful feminist content, their fierce leader Lisa Marie Basile (Apocryphal), their cutting edge poetry and fiction, and their articles and features on alternative spirituality, the occult, and beautiful cultural practices from all over the world. One of my new favorite things is their Poescopes, that is, poetic horoscopes by Fox Foley-Frazier (Exodus in X Minor), curator of The Infoxicated Corner of The The Poetry Blog. P.S. I have some poems about Romani rights and mythology in the Infoxicated Corner as part of the Political Punch series. 

So here’s the link for “In the Oven,” “Night and Night,” “Gulls Calling Over Corcaigh” in Luna Luna Magazinehttp://lunalunamag.com/2014/11/03/poems-jessica-reidy/

Thank you for reading, readers. I feel fearsome and strong, and I’m writing like a demon. I was a demon for Halloween, by the way.

horns2

Click the demon to read the poems, I dare you.