Poetry Book Revisits, Reflects on National Trauma

-


Part memoir, part multimedia experiment, part catharsis, Amalie (“ah-MAHL-ee-ah”) Flynn explores how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 both shatter and echo in us—both as individuals and as a culture.

Flynn is author of the 2013’s Wife and War: A Memoir, and is also the poetry editor of the monthly literary journal The Wrath-Bearing Tree.

Her poetry collection September Eleventh grew first from a 2011 series of blog posts at septembereleventh.wordpress.com. In 2021, she recrafted the work as a random-access constellation of 130 social-media posts and companion YouTube videos. Collected and presented now in print and e-book, the work can be read sequentially, or browsed by flipping among pages.

“Leave it to a poet to unlock something fresh and new in the space of ‘remember that day” stories, writes the publisher. “Here is a narrative that both invites participants to recall their own experiences of a trauma in our nation’s shared history, while also recreating the immediacies and uncertainties of what it was like to live through it.”

In the print edition, each micro-poem is presented along with a shortened URL link to a corresponding YouTube video. In the Kindle e-book edition, each URL is a “live” hyperlink to that poem’s video. Both editions features a scannable QR code to direct readers to the entire set of 130 videos. 

Starting Dec. 7, 2021:

SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH (150 pages, Middle West Press LLC) is available in a $11.99 trade paperback edition through Amazon and other booksellers, as well as a $5.99 Kindle e-book edition exclusively via Amazon.

Middle West Press LLC (www.middlewestpress.com) is a Johnston, Iowa-based editor and publisher of non-fiction, journalism, and poetry. As an independent micro-press, we publish one to four titles annually.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anthology Editors Seek Stories of Modern Midwest Monsters

-
Image
Middle West Press LLC , an independent micro-publisher based in Central Iowa, has issued a call for human-generated poems and micro-prose (300 words max.) telling fantastic stories of monsters in a 21st century American Midwest. The working title of this project is Cryptids, Kaiju & Corn: Poems and Micro-Stories about Modern Midwest Monsters . Deadline for submissions is Mar. 3, 2025. This anthology will published in both print and Kindle e-book formats . Publication is projected for Fall 2025. Contributors will receive one complimentary digital contributor’s copy. Submit via Submittable here at this link . This is explicitly a speculative poetry (and related micro-flash-prose) market. We welcome both established artists, and those experimenting with such genre narratives and forms for the first time. We want to read your poems and stories of monsters —whether your protagonists are giant or relatively human-sized; traditional, pop-cultural, or newly created —as set in (or against...
Read more

Midwest Cryptids Anthology Goes on Sale Oct. 7, 2025!

-
Image
In an exciting 175-page anthology, more than 50 emerging and established voices of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, horror, and other genres join to deliver fresh visions and explorations regarding the “forgotten” terrain and deep recesses of the American Midwest! “As people who live and visit here already know, the American Midwest is more than just ‘Children of the Corn,’” writes anthology editor Randy Brown. “ Giants still walk our flat and rolling lands, and swim in our deep lakes and rivers. Ask around any truck stop or diner, and you’ll likely meet or hear-tell of frog people. Dog men. Wendigo spirits. Even our endless, flyover-skies contain ancient and thunderous birds . Remember that, as you run to your next connections.” The book Cryptids, Kaiju & Corn: Poems and Micro-Stories about Modern Midwest Monsters collects more than 70 short poems and 300-word narratives of mythic beasts that illuminate, celebrate, or challenge stereotypes of Midwestern identity. Sections of the anthol...
Read more

Abby E. Murray is War Postcard Project's "Keynote Poet"

-
Image
Author of the poetry collections “Hail and Farewell” (Perugia Press, 2019) and the forthcoming “Recovery Commands” (Ex Ophidia Press, 2025),  Abby E. Murray  (they/them) is now also author of the “keynote” poem for the War Poetry Postcard Project (WPPP) . Murray’s poem  “Hello, I am Not a Soldier,”  wrestles with a daily dissonance felt as a spouse in an active-duty U.S. Army family:  “[...] Wherever I go, I cling to my hope / like a weapon I have been trained to love.”  The work was first published on-line in  Rattle  magazine Nov. 17, 2024. Now, it will be produced and shared with others on a postcard! “Like many of our fellow citizen-poets, we’ve been struggling to find constructive, useful ways to deploy our words and talents in a world of increasing  fascism, racism, genocide, and cruelty ,” says Randy Brown , editor-publisher of the independent micro-press  Middle West Press LLC . “For us, Abby’s poem provides a perfect example o...
Read more