Happy Monday! I hope you had a lovely week. It was a wonderfully writerly week here in the Carolinas. After another few weeks of individual tweaking–and in my case writing a whole new poem–the Poet Sisters’ book is in the hands of our gifted copyeditor, who is making sure our project is all nice and pretty and ready to submit to publishers. We also have what we hope to be the cover all set. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to announce a pending ‘birth’ in a few months.

With the Poet Sisters’ project off into the next phase, another project is also moving along. As most of you know, I’m a co-editor for Kakalak, a poetry and art anthology. Submissions opened in March and by the close in May we had over 700 poems to judge and select from for Kakalak 2026. We can include only 130-135 poems so whittling keeps us busy for several weeks. The publisher then uses our scores to do her magic, and the poems are ranked. It sounds like it should be a simple task of taking the top 130-135 and Voila! we’re done. It’s not that simple.

Other than the winners, who are allowed two poems, each contributor is allowed only one poem in the anthology. This allows for more contributors, representing a larger area (we once had a poet from Iceland!) and a wider variety of poems. All good things. So, if a poet has several poems within the range of acceptance, we have to choose which of their poems to include. With the quality of poetry we receive, this is no easy task. Last month we co-editors and the publisher did an all-day gleaning session and made our choices. Then the publisher had the daunting task of sending out acceptance letters and rejection notices. The rejection notices are hard to send.

And this is what my living room looks like at the beginning of the next phase, ordering those poems into a connected body of work. We don’t organize the poems in alphabetical order by poets’ names or by poem titles, granted that would be easier and quicker. Connecting them in a way that creates a story or a vision of movement makes for a richer anthology, and by placing certain poems together, enhances the beauty of each. For my friends who quilt you know exactly what I mean.

Kakalak isn’t a ‘themed’ anthology in the sense we don’t request poems focusing on a specific topic. Or like in the case of one of my own recent acceptances, a specific region. So, we receive poems that fall into general categories like–nature, politics, life and death, spiritual/sacred, pets and other critters, and family. Quite a wide spectrum of topics that at first glance have nothing to do with each other. That’s where the needle comes in. We sift through all the poems looking for threads to connect them. This is how my living room floor looked as snippets of threads started appearing.

This is how things were left last night. Kakalak 2026 is very loosely basted together at this point. Poems within groups are falling into place, and the groups are vying for their place within the overall construction. It’s taken me several days to get to this stage, and tomorrow the other co-editor will come to my house with her own needle and threads. Together we’ll finish sewing the poems together.

The final piece once we’re finished, is the publisher will insert the chosen art pieces between and throughout the poems. I’ve mentioned before how seeing the first galley of the book is exciting and magical. In a few months I should be able to reveal and announce its birth too.

As I hinted above, I had another poem accepted in the last week or so. Will announce where when I get the go-ahead, but I will say it’s a special poem in a special anthology.

Some of you may remember I wrote about my brother-in-love, Mark, a couple years ago. Mark suffered a horrific accident, followed by a stroke. I got to see him last fall when I visited Ohio and while he wasn’t the same Mark, he was still Mark, still cracking a joke and sharing an impish smile. Last weekend while I sat in the ER with Hubby, I received word Mark had quietly passed away with his beloved Annie, his wife of 50 years, at his side. Mark was a master gardener and amazing photographer, and a generous soul. He is missed terribly. I’m closing with some of his photos that I’ve shared before, and may we all hold our loved ones close, and open our arms to our neighbors whom we may not love, because life can change in a split second.

Next Monday is Book Review Monday! and I have a book I can’t wait to tell you about. See you at my window then.