Happy Valentine's Day! Watch some RetroLove on YouTube!

It has been a cold, snowy, sleeting, jeez-enough already, winter here in Philadelphia.  Hopefully, you are finding ways to keep warm -- some of which may include your own version of RetroLove.

If you missed my reading at Moonstone, here is a two-minute RetroLove date for you and your sweetie, your kid, your best friend. Remember what it was like to try to remember those precious details about your new love before you could look up their whole life on Facebook?

Watch it here and share it with the one(s) you love...hope it helps keep you warm!

Come Support Las Gallas! And hear some RetroLove

My buddies Julia Lopez, Magda Martinez, and Michelle Ortiz,  otherwise known as the Las Gallas collaborative have the chance to perform in Cuba!

I am so honored to be asked to do some RetroLove poems as part of their fundraiser this upcoming Wednesday night.  They have an amazing line-up planned including Sonia Sanchez, Pablo Batista, Chuckie Joseph and more.  Tickets and more info here.  Join us for a great night of arts, passion and a funky good time!

Change of Venue for January 8th Reading!

My reading of RetroLove will still be on January 8th at 7:00 PM but will take place at the Brandywine Workshop, conveniently located at 728 South Broad St, not Fergie's Pub.  Nice spot although without the stale beer aroma.

Same Bat-time. Same Bat-channel.

See you there, perhaps!

We have a winner!

Thanks to all those who got out the vote for my haiku and those Philadelphians are quite good at getting out the vote. Enough said. All of you put me on top for the 2013 Haiku-Year-in-Review!  Here I am with the final broadside featuring my poem and three others plus art.

(By the way, the most orderly, civilized place in Philadelphia is people taking pictures in front of the LOVE statue.  Go try it some time.)

Now comes your part of the Broadsided Press experience.  

1. Click here and download a copy of the completed broadside.  You can read more about the project (including some sassy observations from the poets) here.
2. Print it out.
3. Post it somewhere in your world.  Like your library or a bus shelter or the grocery store or a coffee shop or your office water cooler or your laundry room. 
4. If you are so inclined, take a picture of where you post it, with you in it if you like, and send it to me or to Broadsided.
5. Poetry in the streets in 2014!  Let's go people...

And if you are really in the poetry mood now, join me next Wednesday, January 8th at Brandywine Workshop, 728 South Broad Street (not Fergie's Pub as originally scheduled) in Philadelphia at 7:00 when I do a 15-minute set of my new poems, RetroLove! All the details are here.

Here's to a groovy, creative 2014!

VOTE FOR (MY) POETRY!

For the second time, I am a finalist and need your votes (and those of your social media friends) to put my poem on the broadside, far and wide for the annual Haiku-Year-in-Review at Broadsided Press.

Combining an old newspaper tradition and the haiku tradition of including seasons, this annual competition puts poets and artists together to make a cool letter-sized broadside (this year's image to the left) that you can print and post anywhere in the world.

Vote for your favorite for all the seasons -- I hope one of them is mine!

To cast your ballot, check out my haiku here -- the first selection in the Winter series:

two suns in one sky 
leaving us like dinosaurs 
awestruck and stricken 

 Thanks!

P.S.  If you can share this link on Facebook and ask folks to check out my poem, that would be great!

RetroLove Live! Save the Date!

Note: Venue changed to Brandywine Workshop, 728 South Broad Street as of January 2, 2014.

Yes, I will be making the leap from Page to Stage, reading the RetroLove poems, and maybe a few others, on Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 7:00 pm at Fergie's Pub (1214 Sansom Street in Philadelphia) as part of the Moonstone Poetry Series.  Here is another small taste of the series to whet your appetite....RetroLove haiku.

RetroLove: The Kiss

under the street light

at the end of the evening

lingering heartswell

© Beth Feldman Brandt

RetroLove ™

Sometimes when you are really, really stuck trying to write a poem, any poem, you need to just try something completely different.

While on vacation at the beach in August (one of my best writing times), I was trying to explain to my kids what dating was like before the age of cell phones, Facebook, pictures on your phone, yes, even answering machines. Remember having to decide whether to stay home just in case that person you had a crush on called you?  And telling everyone in your house to STAY OFF THE PHONE!

And so RetroLove was born.  I threw out all my rules of writing.  No research.  No multiple drafts in a sketchbook.  I wrote every morning,, straight to the computer.  Eight poems in two weeks. And, man, it was the most fun I have had writing in forever.

RetroLove is taking on all kinds of possibilities -- more later on that. So to whet your whistle, with a shout-out to any New Yorkers out there who will find special meaning in this one, let's take a look back.  

The Song

When it spilled from the dashboard as we drove

to the shore in my yellow Oldsmobile with the top down

and then again from the dial-tuned 77WABC, transistor radio

on our blanket on the sand at Jones Beach,

we figured Cousin Brucie was sending us a sign --

and we spun that tune from the black vinyl LP

held tenderly by the edges, dropped the needle again

and again,  so we could slow dance when we were together

and sigh when we were apart until the groove wore down

into a stutter skip right before the second chorus

which made it, irreplaceably, ours, and now Cousin Brucie

is pushing 80, and the tune has gone digital, its underlying

hiss erased, but still when I hear it, I wait for the stutter,

the way my heart still skips when I hear the first notes of us. 

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt, 2013