Thank you, @litbowl.bsky.social , again, for sharing a poem from EXPLODING HEAD, my OCD memoir in prose poems, again. What have I done to deserve you? 🥹

“i want back my rocking chairs, / solipsist sunsets, / & coastal jungle sounds...” A poem by Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by ICE earlier today. lithub.com/renee-nicole...

Excited for @susanlleary.bsky.social 's newest poetry collection to hit the shelves on February 1st! 🌺 You will love it. I was honored to read it early and offer this blurb.

"A great many things will happen to you, but none of the things you are afraid of." 🪶 🛁 🐦 Thank you for sharing this poem, @litbowl.bsky.social !!

To not only be read but also re-read is such a gift. Thank you @thorntonforreal.bsky.social

"I admire the way we’re invited into the speaker’s consciousness, to see her mind at work," says host @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social in today's episode. Read “Protection Spell Jar" by @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social and our full episode transcript: bit.ly/3J9U8Uw 📖: Persea Books

Thank you, @djvorreyer.bsky.social !

Cat and bird.

Summer is a busy time for filling up classes, but if you know anyone who might be interested in this, I'd love it if you'd share! Two poems in two hours ! This Sunday!🦋 Write Two: The Prose Poem as Diptych Memoir on Sunday, July 27, from 4-6 PM ET.

Friends, we'd love for you to join us for this class on Sunday, July 27th. @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social is teaching Write Two: The Prose Poem as Diptych Memoir and whew, does it promise to be an amazing two hours. thenotebookscollective.com/event/write-...

I blame the root cause of my undying obsession with the poetic series and project books on a creative writing teacher who introduced me to the diptych. Now I want you to to suffer, too! (Ha! I mean... prosper!). And it's just a really cool form. Would you share with anyone who might be interested?

you don't need chatGPT i am perfectly capable of drinking a bottle of water and lying to you

Thank you @litbowl.bsky.social 🌹 ⚡️ 🔪 🐰

I'm in my midlife/ motherhood sad rage era. Thanks to @swwim.bsky.social for giving this one a home. 🔪 🪓 🎸 🖤 🦋

For some reason, today seems like a great day to post "You with the Getting Shot" by @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social

With cuts to funding, resources, and rights--writing the disability experience is ever more urgent and necessary. ✨ EXPLODING HEAD✨ is on this Reading List of 7 poetry books for @electricliterature.com, in which @sfmontgomery.bsky.social also talks about her craft book NERVE. tinyurl.com/4sycj8ph

Can't wait to chat with Sarah Kain Gutowski for @notebookscltv.bsky.social Tuesday! We'll read a little, chat a lot, and share what we learned from our year of jointly pitching events and readings and classes! Also, mental health and genre-hopping! Free: thenotebookscollective.com/event/in-con...

Prairie burn.

There's still time to register for my zoom workshop Thursday, March 13. We're going to write sentences and cut up sentences with scissors and talk about this really obvious but mind blowing concept of sentence combining and the infinitely (sort of) generative tool of modifying clauses and anaphora!

I've got an essay up on reading Attic Rain, a collection of poems about OCD by @sjonespoet.bsky.social !! Thank you @anmlymag.bsky.social for giving this piece the best home. So much important work here. 💧🙂 📕 @newestpress.bsky.social

Mammoth Cave! Why are these experiences so brief and hurried and then they're just... over? How am I turning 50 in less than a week? I just want to sit in a dark and quiet cave, alone, just for a minute.

I think now that I'm about to turn 50, I'm tired of putting my writing in a drawer for 6 months to see if I feel different about it later. I'm ready to trust myself in the present moment and be messy. We can't always live in fear that our future selves will be ashamed of our present selves.... ?

🧡❤️🧡

Floored by this stunning review of EXPLODING HEAD in North American Review! Thank you to Shannon K. Winston for spending time in deep communication with this book, and for seeing it so clearly. ✨ Read it here: northamericanreview.org/open-space/2...

Happy 1-year birthday to EXPLODING HEAD! 💥🤯📕🎂 I was planning to itemize the year's accomplishments, but then I woke to a beautiful email that echoed so many of the meaningful connections I've made with people who have OCD (and loved ones with OCD). So that's what I want to celebrate. Thank you. ✨

Thank you for sharing this poem, @litbowl.bsky.social !! I'm celebrating the one-year anniversary of Exploding Head's pub date today! 🎂💥🤯📕✨

Looking forward to being In Conversation with Sarah Kain Gutowski on March 18 at @notebookscltv.bsky.social . I have a long history with this fabulist (and fabulous) poet, and we're going to talk about so many things, including what we learned pitching events and readings for our new books in 2024.

What a nice surprise to be paired with Joan Kwon Glass for this poetry reading!! WHAT: Cafe Muse Literary Salon WHEN: Monday, Feb 3, 7:30 PM Eastern WHERE: ZOOM! 🏎️ Hosted by The Word Works 🧡 REGISTER to receive the link: sites.google.com/view/cafe-mu... Would love to see you in cyberspace!

EXPLODING HEAD is still on tour in 2025 (and I'm dragging along behind it!). In February and March, l'Il be on Zoom and working my way through Minnesota, Kentucky, home in Madison-Wisconsin, and Virginia. Clinging to poetry right now, and looking forward to connecting via these events!

Really appreciated this thoughtful essay by @cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social on Sara Moore Wagner's equally thoughtful LADY WING SHOT. Hoffman considers our collective history with guns, our needs for agency and power, and what it takes to read a book in good faith. www.ronslate.com/bad-faith-ob...

SCOTUS announces it will hear whether or not LGBTQ inclusive education is unconstitutional. Not great for LGBTQ people, and could be disastrous to teaching that we have a history and have existed alongside everyone else for centuries.

These reviewers are 🔥. I feel lucky to be getting to know them all! Follow them. Tell them about your small press or your 2025 small press book here: www.miriamgershow.com/100smallpress

Ah! Thank you for reading Exploding Head, @simeonberry.bsky.social . Made my day to see it on this tremendous list of poetry faves!!

Christmas Day. ✨

Congrats to this year's poetry longlist!

It's the guns. time.com/6696791/ocd-...

So excited to launch my chap with these stellar poets and migraine friends who generously blurbed my collection, and Sheila "Shee" Gomes, who designed my cover, inspired by her "Resonance" series using brain MRIs. Sign up info below! #migrainechat #migraine #chronicdailyheadache #poetry

In anticipation of my chap launch this week, I'm thrilled, and humbled, to share the generous blurbs provided by several poets whose work I deeply admire. I am deeply grateful to Cynthia Hoffman for her stunning memoir-in-verse, Exploding Head, and for her kind and beautiful words here.

The writer's desk.

I thought I could write a whole book about my lived experience with OCD and not ever say "OCD." But that would have been, in the least, a lost opportunity, and at the most, a big mistake. From an interview in The Missouri Review's Substack DIG.

Never seen this particular feeling/anxiety described so perfectly. From Cynthia Marie Hoffman's (@cynthiamhoffman.bsky.social) book, Exploding Head: bookshop.org/a/862/978089... #poem #poetry #authors #books #cynthiamariehoffman

Zoomed tonight to celebrate the launch of Bear Review Issue 11.1. Read my poem from the issue and some from Exploding Head. It was so great to hear the voices of poets in the issue! You know when you've read the poems but then hearing them aloud just brings them to life?! www.bearreview.com/11-1

"We can do the body swap in the shower. When can we meet up?" Thanks @havehashad.com and @amorak.bsky.social 💀🔥

Poets! Essayists! I'm here and happy to see so many of you here, too. My most recent poetry collection is Exploding Head, an OCD memoir in prose poems from Persea Books. Will try to post a bit more often here. Looking forward to building this community. ✨ Please say hi so I can follow you!

Ice on the lake today. Wish I could share that clattery sound it makes in the waves. 🎶

One month countdown to EXPLODING HEAD, out on Feb 6! So grateful to @eugenialeigh.bsky.social for this generous blurb, which settled some pre-pub nerves about sharing the weird, wild, scary interior of my OCD life. Full blurb and Pre-order EXPLODING HEAD here: www.perseabooks.com/exploadinghead

Mood.

My poem "Hinge" about the mice in our cabinet and the lonely job of being the mother of a teenager is in the new issue of Whale Road Review. www.whaleroadreview.com/hoffman/ Thank you @katiemanningpoet.bsky.social for this beautiful issue, and congrats on 8 years of Whale Road Review!

Waiting for a leaf to fall.

When I was a kid, I was so shy, and so intent on being perfect, that when I slit my hand open in elementary school, I let it bleed until I felt lightheaded (more with anxiety than blood loss!) and finally passed out in the nurse's office. I still have the scar. #poetry #OCD