Writing music, writing dance

Do you have things that you constantly try to capture in writing, but only rarely succeed, and if so, only partially? I have several – well, everyone probably does – but the two that I struggle the most to capture are music and dance. I’m deeply into the contemporary Finnish folk music and dance scene; […]

Lengthening nights

During May a lingering flu, grant applications, and other PhD work basically ate up all my energy. But now I’ve been getting into the writing groove again. I finished and submitted a story on Monday in a glorious frenzy. I submitted two more stories yesterday. I’ve been dipping my toes into poetry again. I’m pondering […]

Sunday recs

I’ve had a flu for the past eight days and it doesn’t seem to be going away. I think it’s going and then… back it comes, mostly in the form of a sore throat. So, I haven’t had any extra energy to spare. I’ve tried to keep up with PhD work, but creativity has been […]

Story sale to Silver Blade Magazine

Good writing news to start off May: my novelette “Moss” will be published in Silver Blade Magazine! I’m really happy that this 14,200-word baby is going to go forth into the world – it will be my longest published story to date. It’s set in the same forest world as “Boat-husk” and “The Ruin” … […]

Camp Nanowrimo success

Long time no post (not even Sunday recs – sorry about that). This month has been ridic busy. So much work, so many other things I’ve been taking care of… I think I haven’t even mentioned that I decided to do Camp Nanowrimo this month. Anyway, I did! 😀 Because of all the busy and […]

The art of interpretation

At my writing group meeting last Friday, we had a pretty cool poetry exercise: using literal English translations of poetry originally written in other languages, we had to transform the translations into our own poetry, or make the literal translation more “poetic”. Since I’m rather pleased with what I came up with, I thought I’d […]

Poem sale to Goblin Fruit

Some lovely news I’ve quite forgotten to share – my poem “Village Woman” is going to appear in the Winter 2015 issue of Goblin Fruit! So happy to get that poem out, and to be included in GF again. I lovelovelove that magazine.

Three short poems in Snakeskin!

Three of my poems are included in April’s Short Poems issue of Snakeskin: Read “Pomeranian”, “Lauttasaari Bridge”, and “Human Nature” here! “Pomeranian” is part of a silly series of dog poems I’ve been writing occasionally, with an emphasis on cuteness and word-play. I really like other people’s dogs (would not have the time or inclination […]

Poem to appear in The Stare’s Nest

My poem “The World in Springtime” will appear in The Stare’s Nest in about a week’s time! Huzzah! Springtime seems very far away in Finland right now, though. We had horrendous sleety weather yesterday (which I biked through heroically); today it’s grey and rainy, and I’ve got a sore throat and a cold. Siiiigh. Come […]

Spec poetry article at Bookslut

Bookslut has an article on speculative poetry by Sessily Watt, featuring a review of Stone Telling 11. (The existence of this piece was kindly pointed out to me by Carrie Naughton. Thanks, Carrie!) I was pretty much over the moon when I saw that the article includes a discussion of my poem “Kuura (extract from […]