Monthly Archives: May 2019

Format Changes for Blue Heron Review as of May 2019 — PLEASE READ

Posted on by under Uncategorized

BLUE HERON REVIEW NEWS: There are changes in the works at Blue Heron Review. I hope that you will welcome the energy of this new format with me, in the coming months. BHR will still be providing a space for contemporary, poetic voices on our Featured Author Page of the website, but we will no longer be publishing online issues, and we will no longer be having an open call for submissions. (*All past issues will remain available to read online, indefinitely.) After almost 6 years of existence, 11 issues, and countless featured authors, we will be changing our format. At some point in the future, we may shift back to a one-issue, per year schedule, but for now, we will gently offer a beautiful feature each month, about an author of my choosing. I will mostly likely be choosing to feature authors who have been past contributors. July and August will remain months of rest for me, as editor. Twice a year, I will still shine a light on voices from the past—and the wisdom they have to share with us, as readers and writers.

Thank you for your continued readership, and for joining us on this journey of Blue Heron Review! This is a continuation, in a slightly different form, so please stay with us. We will keep raising awareness for meditative, heart-centered poetry and the importance of this energy in our modern day lives. May we all strive to raise the vibration of this earth, together. Your presence is requested. Let us all lift each other up through art and poetry!

With kind wishes,
Cristina M. R. Norcross, Founding Editor
Blue Heron Review

PastedGraphic-4

 

The May 2019 Blue Heron Speaks Featured Author is KB Ballentine!

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Welcome to the May 2019 Blue Heron Speaks Feature! It is an honor and a delight to shine a spotlight on the work of poet, KB Ballentine, author of Almost Everything, Almost Nothing (Middle Creek Publishing, 2017), The Perfume of Leaving (Blue Light Press, 2016), What Comes of Waiting (Blue Light Press, 2013), and other titles. Ballentine’s sixth collection of poetry, The Light Tears Loose, will be released early autumn 2019 by Blue Light Press. There is music and dance in Ballentine’s words. There is color, vibrancy, and life in every line and every verse. The reader must pause, reflect, and re-visit each poem, in order to gather up every last petal of inspiration from the garden of ideas, which she so graciously gifts to us. This is especially apparent in these last lines (from the poem, “Recipe for Making the Color Gold”): “Sprinkle an echo of stars across the night, / and the light of a song will rise with the dawn.”

Please visit the Blue Heron Speaks Featured Author page of our site, to read 3 sample poems by KB Ballentine, and to learn more about her beautiful work!

KB_HeadShot2 copy

(author photo credit: Jim Canestrari)

KB Ballentine’s sixth collection of poetry, The Light Tears Loose, will be released early autumn 2019 by Blue Light Press.  Almost Everything, Almost Nothing was released in 2017 by Middle Creek Publishing. The 2016 Blue Light Press Book Award winner, KB’s fourth collection The Perfume of Leaving was preceded by What Comes of Waiting, also by Blue Light Press (2013). Published in many print and online journals such as Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, KB has two other collections of poetry, Fragments of Light (2009) and Gathering Stones (2008), published by Celtic Cat Publishing. Her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017), Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017), In God’s Hand (2017), River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the Twenty-first Century (2015), Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee (2013) and Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets (2011).

Ballentine received her MFA in Poetry from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She currently teaches high school theatre and creative writing and adjuncts for a local college.

Learn more about KB Ballentine at www.kbballentine.com.