Each success, no matter how small, in practice of what I love is a lightning strike against the dark.
I am a poet-mother-wife living with bipolar disease.
I am a lifelong resident of Louisiana, and a graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana. My creative writing has appeared most recently in Blue Fifth Review, Wheelhouse Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Inch, The Dead Mule, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Press 1.
I have work forthcoming in Literary Mama and my poem “Mute” will be published in March of 2010 in ’blue collection 1′ from Blue Fifth Review – as part 3 of ‘the body series.’
My poem “Ice to Water” was nominated by The Dead Mule for inclusion the 2008 “Best of the Net” and “Best New Poets 2009.” The Dead Mule published my mini-chapbook, Growing into Myself.
Other bits about my writing life: I was a nominated finalist for the 2006 Farmhouse Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award, for my poem “4-way stop at dusk” which appeared in Farmhouse Magazine’s May/June 2006 issue and appears in Best of Farmhouse Magazine Anthology.
Recently, I served as a writer for the project Play. Music. Heal., a multi-disciplined theatrical piece where actors, musicians and writers are exploring the notion that music has the potential to heal across socio-economic and cultural lines. This grant-funded theatrical project of Acting Up (in Acadiana) made its debut as a workshop production in Spring 2009 at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA. Play.Music.Heal was performed in New Orleans, LA Fall 2009 as part of the New Orleans Fringe Festival, and will be restaged in the spring of 2010.
I am also the playwright of “Waterlines” produced in April and November of 2006, and in May 2007, as part of the project Sustained Winds, a collaboration with the theater company Acting Up (in Acadiana) and 40 Louisiana artists responding to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Sustained Winds was performed in New York City as part of FringeNYC 2007 in August 2007. Sustained Winds was performed at Festival International de Louisiane April 25, 2008.
I also served as a poet-presenter of a poetry workshop and facilitator of a storytelling session for the first annual Festival of Words, in the communities of Sunset and Grand Coteau, LA.
All content in/on Orphans of Dark and Rain is © 2006-2010 by Clare L. Martin
ORPHANS OF DARK AND RAIN
I’m good at telling sad stories: orphans of dark and rain. All of my gardens, overgrown, unkempt; flower with delusion. The swath of fear on my husband’s face is familiar. He can’t sleep without reaching for me. He saw wolves carry off my future, feeding on it to fullness.
