Taut Caesuras Available Soon

Taut Caesuras by Pamela Moore Dionne $14.99 A caesura is a pause in a line of poetry using the rhythms of natural speech rather than of meter. In Taut Caesuras, Dionne uses pauses to bring home the mighty punches of addiction, of loss, of biological predispositions, and ultimately enlightenment. –Sheila Bender, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry …

It’s About Time Writers’ Reading Series Through the Seattle Public Library’s Ballard Branch, Reading #370: With Intention

My reading with Tamara Kaye Sellman and Lauren Davis is now available on YouTube:

I’m a featured reader for It’s About Time Writers’ Reading Series Thursday, Sep. 10, 2020, 6 – 7:30 p.m.

I’ll be reading from my upcoming poetry chapbook titled Paradox and Illusion. Below is a Webex link to the Seattle Library’s Ballard Branch reading series featuring me, Tamara Kaye Sellman and Lauren Davis. Be sure to log in early in case you have difficulty with the Webex connection. https://www.spl.org/event-calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D147344039

Orogeny Is a Geological Mountain-building Event. Today in the U.S. People are Struggling Against a Mountain of Racism Built Out of Ignorance and Hate.

As I was going through the poems in my soon to be released chapbook, Paradox and Illusion, I was struck by the significance of the poem below. It carries weight because of what’s happening in the U.S. right now. We have lost George Floyd, Breonna Taylor,  Ahmaud Arbery and many other black lives to racial …

Featured Book of the Day

Paradox and Illusion was the featured book of the day at Finishing Line Press, May 6, 2020. Please place your pre order today at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/paradox-and-illusion-by-pamela-moore-dionne/ and help me get my numbers up.

Paradox and Illusion is coming out in August. Help me get it into the world by pre-ordering your copy.

Praise for Paradox and Illusion: In her poem “Pleiades,” Dionne writes, “We pirouette like comets, free spiraling through atmospheres we create and interrupt, leaving shallow footprints in our wake.” To read the poems in Paradox and Illusion is to be swept into such a pirouette and to spiral from what is ordinary into transformative landscapes, …

My Wish for All on New Year’s Eve, 2019

Each ending carries with it a beginning. This is the cycle lived every day of our lives; the slowing to rest, to sleep, at the end of day. That pause is the moment just before possibility presents itself as new. Tonight, we turn from the past to step into a new year, a new decade. …

Me? As Inspiration?

I enrolled in Goddard College’s low residency program for an MFA in Creative Writing that began in July 2017. At my fourth and final residency in February 2018, I celebrated my seventieth birthday. On July 15, 2018 I graduated with a Masters in Creative Writing. The past two years have been challenging and joyful as …

I’m Offering a Writing Workshop in Port Townsend

Time/Dates: Tuesdays from 3 – 5:00pm beginning September 12 – October 24, 2017. The final session on October 24, 2017 will run three hours (2 – 5:00pm) in order to accommodate a reading by participants.  Location: Writers’ Workshoppe & Imprint Books 820 Water Street, Port Townsend, WA. www.writersworkshoppe.com 1-360-379-2617 You can register for this class after …

My Annotation on The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Missing Voice of Tyranny in the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver             The Poisonwood Bible is a novel that uses five different voices to tell the story of Nathan Price and his family who go to the Belgian Congo in 1959 as itinerate Baptist missionaries. The only adult narrator is Orleanna Price, Nathan’s wife. …

Assimilation Themes in Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, Memory demonstrates how immigrants bring their home culture ethos with them when arriving in a new country and how that makes assimilation difficult. The novel gives us a view of the better life that many immigrants hope America will deliver. This narrative achieves its purpose using gender issues, race issues, …

Deadline Day on a San Francisco Fellowship

Today is the deadline!Fellowship applications are now open through September 30. To apply, click here.The Grotto FellowshipOur fellowship program is dedicated to fostering emerging writers. It is open to writers of every genre, including fiction, nonfiction memoir, journalism, poetry, dramatic writing, etc. Writers who have demonstrated a commitment to their craft but who are not …

One of My Annotations from the First Packet in My MFA Program with Aimee Liu at Goddard College

Admiration, Envy and Resentment in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Short Story, “Fatherland” Viet Thanh Nguyen gives us entry into complex family dynamics when he opens the short story “Fatherland” with the statement, “It was a most peculiar thing to do. Everyone said so who heard the story, of how Phuong’s father had named his second set …

Welcome to My Updated Website

Welcome to the new simplified website. As books, poems and/or articles are published you’ll hear about it on this page. Meanwhile I’m really enjoying working toward my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. My advisor this semester is Aimee Liu. Her ability to get to the heart of whatever I’m working on and help …

Fall Tomatoes and Mushrooms

Today has been a day of harvesting. After bringing in the tomatoes we went mushrooming in the Olympic Mountains and came back with a bonanza of Lobster and Chanterelle mushrooms.

My Edits Are Painfully Slow So I Took a Poetry Break

Below are two poems I’ve been working on whenever I get sick of editing 350 pages of text. Poet I live on an inland sea where daily I hear the wheeze and hack of herons, long dactylic hexameters, odd wracking convulsions, sad tuneless songs to lost sailors. Like Odysseus – a low down drunk Cyrenian …

Now My Space Really Is Complete! It Has a Cushy Chair, a Dog & Her Bed, a Character Gallery & Most Important of All – a Plotting Wall!

Here are a couple photos of the plotting wall in progress. All the visuals for composites of each major character are up where I can stare at them for inspiration. They’ll help keep my descriptions consistent, too. In addition, I’ve got a 7-foot strip of butcher paper tacked to the wall with a line that …

My Writing Space Is Finished!

I finally have a room of my own again. It’s in the basement away from distractions and completely self-contained. I never need to come upstairs unless I WANT TO!