Saturday, August 26, 2017

Backbone Press will publish The Ocean Between Us!

I'm excited and honored to announce that Backbone Press chose my chapbook The Ocean Between Us as one of their two Fall 2017 publications from 120+ entries.  It will be in the pre-order stage for a few weeks ($9 via paypal).  The Riddle of Longing by Faisal Mohyuddin is the other chapbook chosen. Faisal just won the the 2017 Sexton Prize selected by Kimiko Hahn! 

Backbone's description: 
The Ocean Between Us is a collection of poems wrapped in memories and language. Beatriz Fernandez artfully weaves together dazzling imagery and alluring sounds to create concrete visions of Puerto Rico, Florida, and a geography of loss. With the ability to use the perfect words to describe imperfect times, she poses questions that pierce the human spirit. Unsure of the answer, this is a book of poetry that is rich with the “embryonic code of things to come.”

I'm really happy to have another chapbook published so soon after my first, Shining from a Different Firmament, in 2015 (Finishing Line Press).

The Ocean Between Us is very different than Shining, which was mostly a collection of persona poems about historical, literary and legendary women.  Ocean, as I described in my last post, is a collection of 25 poems about my personal experiences in Puerto Rico and Florida, from childhood to the present.  The first poem, Calle del Cristo, is an exception in that it is a persona poem.

The suffering of all Puerto Ricans as the island has endured two hurricanes is omnipresent in my mind these days.  My family members are safe and being very brave about the circumstances but I can't imagine living through that.  We were in Miami during Hurricane Andrew, but it did not hit our area directly.  Irma again sideswiped us, leaving only fences and trees down, mostly.  We are so lucky to have our homes and our lives to go back to.

Friday, August 04, 2017

Backbone Press finalist!

I'm very happy to learn that my chapbook, The Ocean Between Us, is a finalist in Backbone Press's Spring open reading session.

Backbone Press is a small press for ethnic poets and is interested in:
language that is elegant and provocative; poetry that informs and engages us in broader cultural conversations.
Even if my chapbook doesn't get accepted for publication, it is an honor to make it to the final round!
The Ocean Between Us is a 25-poem chapbook divided into two sections: Puerto Rico poems and Florida poems.  The journey begins with a brief visit back to Puerto Rico that brings back many memories of my childhood spent there. I’m the daughter of an immigrant and an islander whose ancestors also immigrated to their respective homelands.  Within every generation of my family there came a decision: to leave or to stay, and my ancestors always chose to leave, for their own sake and for their children’s.  From this restless heritage I derived a curious lack of home sense—I’ve always been neither one thing nor another, neither native nor alien.  These poems are an attempt to gather all these emotions together into a cohesive whole—to define what we mean by “home” and to highlight that perhaps it’s the ocean between that really matters:  that ever-changing, ever-the-same body that divides us and yet also unites us into a single body.