Thursday, September 29, 2016

Narrow Chimney Reading Series, Lois Roma-Deeley's Poetry Reading




Lois Roma-Deeley, poetry reading Click 

Click on the link to view a video of my poetry reading for the Narrow Chimney Reading Series in Flagstaff, Arizona,

On Monday evenings, during Northern Arizona University's fall and spring semesters, Uptown Pubhouse, in downtown Flagstaff, presents The Narrow Chimney Reading series. The series pairs two different creative writers each week--one writer is from NAU's MFA program and one is an established writer in the Flagstaff community--and gives them a forum to share their original work. The hour reading takes place at 7 pm with networking to follow.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Friday, August 5, 2016

The Sensei of Venice Beach by Lois Roma Deeley, a video narrative


Check this out! A video narrative of my poem "The Sensei of Venice Beach," created and published by Helen: A Literary Magazine as part of the Friday Night Specials series.
http://www.helenpresents.com/issues/


Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Pinyon Review's Commemorative Issue, Lois Roma-Deeley


Honored to have my poem "Don't Tell Me My Future" published in the Commemorative Issue of the Pinyon Review along with Marge Piercy, Kathleen Aguero, Walter Bargen, Joan Coby, Lucille Lang Day and so many other wonderful poets and writers!


Monday, July 18, 2016

Of Wedding Vows and Hope



This was the homily given by my best friend and editor, Sydney James, as she  officiated at our best friend's wedding.

It is a masterful piece of writing that articulates a message of hope in a time which so desperately needs to hear it. 




***********



Good afternoon, and welcome to this wonderful celebration of the wedding of Dave and Marianne.

I’m Sydney James, and I’ve known Marianne for thirty-one years.  She’s a sister to me in all but blood. Lois Roma-Deeley, our other sister, is the Matron of Honor, and Rory Dave’s son, is the best man. Also standing here are four girls who love Marianne as their aunt.

In all the time I’ve known Marianne, I have known her to be hopeful. Many of you here today have sat with her telling her your deepest dreams, and she has carried the flag of hope into battle for you. And for herself, she never gave up hoping to find the love of her life.

I think it’s safe to say that everyone here has to choose, every day, whether to hope, and what to hope for. And at the deepest levels, despite the anger and violence in the world, and in the face of our own doubt and sadness and fear, we all are hoping that love will win. We all want love to win.

Isn’t that why we get emotional at weddings? No matter how cynical we might be, there’s something about two people taking this step together, declaring themselves absolutely on the side of love winning, that makes us dare to do it too. All of us in this room with them, for this moment, we’re living in hope!

But whenever we hope, here’s the thing--it’s always for something outside ourselves. Because if we could give it to ourselves, we would have done it already and we wouldn’t need to hope!

So it’s only something outside, something other, something bigger than ourselves, that can fulfill our hope. And that’s what makes it so difficult. We don’t control that Other, whether it’s a company to give us a job, or a neighborhood where we want to find a home, or finding our life partner.

When we hope for something Other like that, we have to surrender to something that often we can’t even see, and gamble that it might meet our needs. And that’s why we resist hope. We like to be in control and we like to look at something and categorize it, and define what its limits should be. That makes us feel comfortable. But it also leaves our deepest needs untouched.

When Marianne and Dave entered into this relationship, they had to choose whether to let that process of surrender even begin to happen. They had to choose not to despair when things weren’t going exactly as they wanted them to.

They had to choose not to drape some illusion over one another, to remake each other in their own image and then get mad if the other person didn’t play along. Or to cover themselves with an illusion of being somebody else, somebody they thought they were supposed to be.

For real love to happen, they had to choose to truly see each other, and hear each other, and themselves, for who they really are. And when they were each seen and heard like that, they were able to become more of their real selves.

To me each of them seems now to be a more strongly defined, clearer version of the person I knew before. They began by being as authentic as they could be, and that willingness to risk being known has led to them to be more deeply, more vividly, more truly themselves.

For Dave and Marianne, and for me and for many of you, it’s the love of God that is the biggest, most important love of all. These two believe that they found each other because God wants to manifest his love for them and for the world through their relationship. And they are daring to hope that that love will nourish and bring joy not just to them, but to others they’re in relationship with and those they encounter in the world.

And that is all of us, today, who may need a witness to testify to us that hope is a brave thing, a true thing, a thing we can trust. And that love will win.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Celebrate Poetry Month with Lois Roma-Deeley

 CELEBRATE POETRY MONTH with a reading by Lois Roma-Deeley


Listen to Lois Roma-Deeley read her poems and hear her interview.


http://ltdengagementpod.com/romadeeley.html



Limited Engagement is a monthly performance and interview series that takes place on the third Friday of each month at C-MOD Curated Modern Design at 7 pm, Friday, April 16, 2016



 

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Roma-Deeley's poems online, 2016

This has been quite an eventful month with new poetry publications to be found online!

Check out the my poems at:

Helen: A LiteraryMagazine
http://www.helenpresents.com/issues/spring-issue-2016/abduction-lois-roma-deeley/ 
 Abduction 


























Juked
http://www.juked.com/2016/03/lois-roma-deeley-bodys-prison-tattoo.asp
 Body's Prison Tattoo



























 

 




Red Savina Review
http://www.redsavinareview.org/14983-2/

Praise Song for She Who Would Clean the World

 and

Among the Red Rocks of Sedona,
a Soldier’s Wife Leaves No Stone Unturned





RSR-4.1-Cover-Art-by-Allen-Forrest
Praise Song for She Who Would Clean the World

Among the Red Rocks of Sedona, a Soldier’s Wife Leaves No Stone Unturned
 http://www.redsavinareview.org/14983-2/

 Sonic Boom



http://media.wix.com/ugd/61020d_55bafcf4b072409c940cf2992562a9d0.pdf


Excited to have my poem a recommend read by Change Seven Magazine for National Poetry Month!

7 Reads We Recommend: National Poetry Month

 by Emily Ramser and Laurel Dowswell

https://changesevenmag.com/2016/04/21/7-reads-we-recommend-national-poetry-month-by-emily-ramser-and-laurel-dowswell/ 




Arizona Commission on the Arts

http://azarts.gov/ardg/lois-roma-deeley/







Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Politics and Poetry








Excited to be included in Sundress Publications' newest anthology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity

$17.00 Regular
 
"In September 2014, NPR writer and critic Juan Vidal wrote an essay whose titular question, "Where Have All the Poets Gone?" provided a platform for various musings regarding the political state of contemporary American poetics. According to Vidal, "For centuries, poets were the mouthpieces railing loudly against injustice. They gave voice to the hardships and evils facing people everywhere... What has happened?" He further suggested that poets writing today have failed to create work that carries the same "weight" as the poems written by their literary forefathers.

Should American poets still be trying to write "Howl"? Are Neruda, Kerouac, Baraka, and the rest of the Beat Generation the only viable prototypes for political literary expression in American culture? How does the influx of identities, voices, and life experiences that are now expressed in mainstream American letters potentially create and communicate new political vision(s) -- vision that may sound or appear different from Ginsberg's poetic/political tour de force, but is no less necessary, compelling, challenging, or iconoclastic? What do we even mean when we talk about the weight of a political work? How is that weight both carried and expressed by poetry today?

To address these questions, Sundress Publications' newest anthology Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity showcases the substantial amount of political writing that is being done today.

Contributors include Kenzie Allen, Jasmine An, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Ahi Baraka, Anne Barngrover, Jennifer Bartlett, Scott Bear Don't Walk, Erin Belieu, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Callista Buchen, Cortney Larmar Charleston, Sarah A. Chavez, Chen Chen, Alicia Cole, CA Conrad, Oliver De La Paz, Emile DeWeaver, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Amber Flame, Lisa A. Flowers, Yolanda J. Franklin, Jennie Frost, Carmen Gimenez-Smith, Arielle Greenberg , M. Ayodele Heath, Sara Henning, Jeb Herrin, Elizabeth Hoover, Mark Irwin, Allison Joseph, Bhanu Kapil, Vandana Khanna, Ayisha Knight-Shaw, EJ Koh, Kristin LaTour, Kenji C. Liu, Timothy Liu, M. Mack, Shahé Mankerian, Shane McCrae, Freesia McKee, Lynn Melnick, Philip Metres, Hoa Nguyen, Jennifer Perrine, Saba Syed Razvi, Jessica Reidy, Lois Roma-Deeley, Danny A. Romero, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Danielle Sellers, Glenn Shaheen, Raena Shirali, Karen Skolfield, Christopher Soto, aka Loma, Anna B. Sutton, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Emma Trelles, Donna Vorreyer, Jim Warner, Ginny Wiedhardt, Hanif Willis-Abdurraquib, and Emily Jungmin Yoon!"

Monday, February 8, 2016

Redux: A Literary Journal and Lois Roma-Deeley's poem

http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/…/192-all-she-knew-she-learn…

Here is the link to Redux: A Literary Journal where you can find my poem "All She Knew She Learned at the Movies"--along with my mini-essay about the piece.

Many thanks to editor Leslie Pietrzyk!


Redux: A Literary Journal
An invitation-only literary journal of writers' favorite, previously published stories and poems, not found elsewhere on the web ~~ edited by novelist Leslie Pietrzyk ~~