Michael Janairo

Blog

  • So long, 2020!

    A cold December night

    Someday, 2020 will make sense. As the year draws to a close, there are a few pre-pandemic “lasts” to remember.

    • Last movie at a movie theater: “1917” on Feb. 2 — Glad I saw it in a theater on a big screen. At the theater I often go to, there is rarely a big crowd for the movies I want to see (and by then “1917” had been out for a while).
    • Last meal in a restaurant: Le Colonne Restaurant at the Hilton Hotel at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport on March 11 — The food was fine — I can’t remember what we had, but tables had been spread apart for social distancing, and there were diners at only about four other tables. We were only there to be sure to get our morning flight out of Rome, leaving the country early as more and more flights were being canceled, including our flights out of Genoa.
    • Last workout at the gym: Feb. 29 — I did some warmups and cooldowns, with a 5K run on the indoor track in between at a time of 33 minutes and 22 seconds
    • Last day working in person at the office: Tuesday, March 3.
    • Last time I had a cold: Maybe sometime in 2019
    (more…)

  • Merry Christmas!

    Figgis Zlotsky Janairo

  • Video poem: Mami Wata by Linda Addison

  • My latest purchase: Ruth Asawa stamps

    Fighting fascism with capitalism

    Will this help USPS?

    Are you familiar with Ruth Asawa? Get to know more about this great American artist here: https://ruthasawa.com/

    Also check out the exhibition from David Zwirner Gallery in 2017 here https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/ruth-asawa

  • Video poem: Tend by F.J. Bergmann

  • Line of Advance Announces Winners of 2020 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards

    Some great news today: Line of Advance, a nonprofit literary journal founded by three veterans of the war in Afghanistan, wrote me this morning to say I poem I wrote inspired by stories of my Lolo during World War II is a winner in the 2020 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards. The poem will be published online in September and in print in October in an anthology called Our Best War Stories.

    I have always been proud of my family members’ military service, my uncle Raymond, killed in action in World War II, and my Lolo, father, and Uncle Tony — all three of them West Point grads. You can read a little bit more about my Lolo in a previous post.

    Now I am also proud to be among the first group of civilians to be honored with this award, for both poetry and prose. This year was the first year military family members were invited to submit to the annual contest. I’m glad they expanded who is eligible. When you are part of a military family, a lot of your daily life is defined by the military experience—everyday things like where you live, where you shop, changes in schools and places of worship.

    Thank you to Line of Advance, editor Christopher Lyke, and guest judge Katey Schultz, and congratulations to all the winners!

    Among the winners, here are all the prize-winners in my category: poetry by a military family member:

    • First-prize: “Pursuit” by Lisa Stice
    • Second-prize: “Dancing with my Father” by Ellyana Gomez
    • Third-prize: “An Offering” by Michael Janairo

    You can read the award announcement here.

  • New poem just published in Abridged

    Check out my latest experiment in language, a poem called “Chaos Theory: The Butterfly Wing Set” recently published in the online poetry/art journal Abridged, out of Northern Ireland.

    You can find the poem here: https://www.abridged.zone/echoes-3-chaos-theory-the-butterfly-wings-set/

  • Because I Could Not Stop For Death

    Check out this video adaptation of Julian Peters’ poetry comic for this Emily Dickinson poem. The video is by Jim Avis. The comic is from Peters’ new book, Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry (Plough Publishing)

  • 2020 Rhysling Award Winners

    The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, of which I am a member, has just announced the winners of the 42nd annual Rhysling Awards for best speculative poems of the year.

    The winners were selected in two categories, Long Form and Short
    Form Poems, which were nominated by the members of the organization. From 67 publications. 77 poems in the Short Form category and 49 poems in the Long Form category were reviewed for almost 16 weeks by the membership, which includes award-winning educators, scholars, and poets from a diverse range of literary traditions and specializations. This year, the membership selected the following winners (links to the poems included where possible):

    SHORT

    First Place
    “Taking, Keeping” • Jessica J. Horowitz • Apparition Lit 5

    Second Place
    “when my father reprograms my mother {” • Caroline Mao • Strange Horizons, Fund Drive

    Third Place (tie)
    “Creation: Dark Matter Dating App” • , Sandra J. Lindow • Asimov’s SF, July/August, and 
    “The Day the Animals Turned to Sand” • Tyler Hagemann • Amazing Stories, Spring 2019

    LONG

    First Place
    “Heliobacterium daphnephilum” • Rebecca Buchanan • Star*Line 42.3

    Second Place
    “The Cinder Girl Burns Brightly” • Theodora Goss • Uncanny 28

    Third Place
    “Ode to the Artistic Temperament” • Michael H. Payne • Silver Blade 42
    and 
    “The Macabre Modern” • Kyla Lee Ward • The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities (P’rea Press)

    (more…)