My fourth poetry collection, Hold Still, a full-length book at 73 pages, is coming out soon from Main Street Rag. It will be released in March 2014, but you can buy an advance copy at a discounted price of $9 plus shipping for a limited time if you order from the online bookstore at the link above and pay with PayPal. The regular price is $14. (You can also order with a credit card, but the discount isn’t much.) If I sell enough advance copies, the release date will be moved up. The link also takes you to sample poems.
If you’re local and would rather buy a signed copy from me, that’s fine. I’ll have a book release party and some exciting readings coming up, and I’ll share details when I have them. I hope to see many of you in the audience!
Hold Still means the world to me. Writing the poems helped me survive cancer, and I’m tickled that the publisher used a photo I took for the cover. I was learning to operate my fancy camera from work and went to the lake near my house to practice. I sat in the road to shoot a close-up of an agapanthus flower and a bee happened by. I am awfully fond of that bee!
I’ll be reading in the nation’s oldest city, at Flagler College, as part of the Florida Literary Arts Coalition’s Other Words Conference.
I’ll share the spotlight with talented poets Susan Lilley and Suzannah Gilman on Friday, Nov. 8, from 1:15 to 2:30 p.m. in the Solarium in Ponce Hall. Our reading will be sponsored by Finishing Line Press, which recently published chapbooks by the three of us (mine is Flame, Susan’s is Satellite Beach and Suzannah’s is I Will Meet You at the River).
Learn more about the Other Words conference here.
I don’t have much time to read right now, but I never miss this blog, written by poet and teacher Martin Achatz, also known as Saint Marty. He is a saint to me because he reviewed my books Beauty Lessons and Flame with eloquence and kindness, sharing three of my poems with his readers. Here are excerpts followed by links to his full posts.
Flame
“Godbey is fearless, taking the ugly aspects of a life and searching them for beauty. Her verse is full of light and heat, soot and cold. Her lines connect on a level deep as the San Andreas, where all of us groan and split against the shifting plates of the heart. Flame is hot. It burns the fingers, scalds the tongue. And it leaves afterimages, bright ghosts that hover in the corners of memory.” Read more…
Beauty Lessons
”Beauty Lessons is a stunning collection, full of the pain of childhood, the wars of adult life. Literally, some of the poems in this collection take my breath away. Mostly narrative, these poems tell stories of growing up, of learning what it takes to move from girlhood to womanhood. At times, the poems are wistful. At times, the poems are brutal. Always, the poems connect the reader to the fragile tapestry of human existence. Through her work, Godbey reminds us of our common need for connection and love, and the terrible/wonderful cost of that connection.” Read more…
Yes, I’ve been a bit busy. My poem “Burn, Baby, Burn” appears in the new issue of Dressing Room Poetry Journal, with a nod to poet Jim Tilley.
I wrote a story in Orlando magazine about Florida’s new official perfume. I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing. It’s part of the state’s 500th birthday celebration, Viva Florida 500.
Also, I was profiled, along with five other Central Florida poets, in Orlando Arts magazine.
Click away, my friends.
