Creative Stuff

I'm very excited to have gotten my photography website back up and running just in time for spring (well, supposedly it's spring but we did get snow yesterday).  I had a great time doing photography back in Indiana, and I'm happy to be doing it again here at our new home in Ohio.  I do outdoor photography (unless clients would like pictures taken in their home) and have experience with shooting couples, individuals, children, infants, and more.  I'm doing a senior photo shoot in April and my first wedding in August (yay!), but I still have lots of open slots.  Check out my website here:

klafolle.wix.com/lsphotography

You can contact me via email through my website to set something up or talk about options.  Prices and a gallery of my work are available on my website. 

A sample of my photography work.  This was a family shoot I did with my brother-in-law, Ryan, and my two adorable nephews, Nathan and Ian.  You can see more photos from this shoot and other samples on my website.

 Earlier this month, LEVELER Poetry Mag published my poem "Fawn" along with an amazing commentary by the editors.  The editors had no idea what I wrote this poem about, but I think their commentary was spot-on (from the LEVELER website):

"Before we discuss the context, we’d like to talk about how Kristin LaFollette’s poem ends: with the smell of rain. If you’re curious, there are reasons why rain smells the way it does. But to stay with the image, the smell of rain seems to evoke a universal feeling of freshness. It isn’t, however, a simple unsophisticated feeling you’d expect from, say, a sunny day (not to put down sunny days – not in a winter like this one). There’s something more complex about rain smell – it isn’t exactly pure; it isn’t easy-going. But it’s special. 'Fawn' ends with '[i]t smelled like rain' and 'it' is a heart. Our speaker remembers standing in the kitchen holding one, pressing on it. It is explicitly a 'real one,' not a metaphoric heart. Not the heart poetry may have grown weary of. For that very reason – this heart’s tangible, sensual existence in this stanza, 'purple tissue' and all, we are actually able to think of its underlying role. The speaker held this heart (a fawn’s maybe) and it smelled like a fresh thing. There’s an enigma to it. Perhaps the enigma is solvable, if you keep reading back. You’ll learn that boys lose their innocence early in Iowa. They’re taught to shoot, kill, be proud of bloody hands. Read further up. Our speaker watched such a boy. The boy became a man, learned to feel the still, sad music of humanity. The speaker watched it happen like she watched this heart, pressed it, maybe in order to try and grasp its essence. To us, this is a Romantic poem (as in Romanticism, not romance). We miss that boy. We know childhood ends this way more often than not. We learn to see things factually, let blood be blood. The smell of rain reminds us of a thing or two. The memory is ambiguous: metallic, wet. We handle it, we’re doing fine. Occasionally snakes come out of the corn."

Interested in reading the poem?  Head over to the LEVELER website to see the poem and commentary side-by-side:

levelerpoetry.com/fawn-levelheaded

The editors perfectly captured what I was trying to portray with this poem:  "We miss that boy...The memory is ambiguous:  metallic, wet."  "Fawn" just happens to be a coming-of-age poem I wrote about my little brother.

And in case you missed it with my last post, here is the latest edition of NEAT Mag, which features two of my poems:

neatmag.net/issues

What I'm most excited about right now is the new edition of Harbinger Asylum.  The new issue features several pieces of my artwork along with two of my poems.  I'm still waiting on my free contributor copy, but you can support this press and writers and artists like me by ordering a copy here:

createspace.com/5334557?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

There are several other amazing writers and artists featured in this issue, as well.  And you can check out my collages and poems.  Cool stuff, I promise. 

Coming up in May, I have two poems being featured in Poetry Pacific.  And, as always, I'm still writing and submitting like crazy.

I'm very excited about the poetry scene here in our new city.  The downtown library does a poetry series called Poetry Speaks every spring.  I was able to attend the first installment of that earlier this month and hear some wonderful writers read their poetry.  The most exciting thing about that night was that they had several poetry books from featured authors on a shelf up front in the room.  I was beyond excited to see that one of the featured authors/books was The Bottom by Betsy Andrews.  That book was published by Indiana University South Bend's publishing press, 42 Miles Press, which is based out of the English department and is run by my favorite professor there (I went there for my undergrad and grad school and taught in the English department there for three years).  My husband and I were both there at the release for that book and listened to Andrews read from it. 

There is some great poetry coming out of South Bend, folks. 

There is another Poetry Speaks reading this Thursday at 6:00pm, but I won't be able to make it to that one because of work.  Speaking of, my new job is going well.  The kids are great and I haven't picked up any major illnesses yet (every time I've had a job working with kids, I seem to be sick ALL of the time).

Life is good.

Now, go read some poetry.