The Midnight Heart

Notes on Parenting, Writing, and Nature

May 22, 2018 by zbthompson

I was thinking recently about parenting and writing again. This week has been a dizzy whirl of kids’ activities at the end of semester. Yesterday, I went into Kindergarten, and did some activities with the kids for the end of year party. We were studying Hawaii, its culture, myths, and incredible geology. The children were fascinated. Being around small children can (mostly!) be a remarkable experience. They are adults in progress, becoming versions of themselves. At six years old, kindergarteners’ […]

Categories: Family, Motherhood, Poetry • Tags: Nature

New Worlds, New Imaginaries: #metoo & #timesup

March 5, 2018 by zbthompson

[This talk was given on March 3rd 2018 at a talk for a Heforshe event at the Ohio State University.] I want to start by quoting a short poem by the British author Jane Commane. The poem is called ‘Landmarks’ and it describes the threat of violence in our everyday spaces, asks how or why we are supposed to negotiate that. Our geographies are different, Pierced by landmarks like this; Secluded lanes, alleyways, parks, emptying train carriages, taxi cabs, […]

Categories: Trauma, Violence

The Awakening

December 4, 2017 by zbthompson

I know I am not the first person to admire Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. The book focuses on Edna Pontellier, a married woman, who through her friendship with a younger man discovers her gradually awakening sexuality and desire. Published in 1899, the book was ahead of its time, and Chopin’s book was declared immoral by her contemporaries. Her writing fell into obscurity, but you can hear this podcast on Chopin’s continued relevance for the post-millennium generation: http://wwno.org/post/local-professor-awakens-renewed-interest-new-orleans-writer-kate-chopin I didn’t read The Awakening until […]

Categories: Feminism, Fiction, Motherhood, Poetry

‘Swan’ in ABR

December 4, 2017 by zbthompson

‘Swan’ is out now in Australian Book Review. It’s a poem that I worked on with the poet Joanna Klink at Kenyon College over the summer. I am very grateful to her for getting me to think about getting back to the sensuous kind of writing with which I began. ‘Swan’ is a poem about maternal loss, and it means a great deal for it to be published in Australian Book Review, one of Australia’s leading cultural magazines. Thanks to […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass

October 26, 2017 by zbthompson

‘Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass is out today at Rattle, and it is the Editor’s Choice for the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge. https://www.rattle.com/sonnet-for-the-hole-in-the-glass-by-zoe-brigley-thompson/

Categories: Feminism, Poetry

Loving Vincent

October 24, 2017 by zbthompson

I saw the film Loving Vincent last week, and it was just incredible. Here is the blurb: “I saw 50 or 60 painters painting, and someone told me: ‘Oh it’s you! I’ve been painting you for six months.’ Probably a lot of them knew my face better than I,” jokes Robert Gulaczyk, who plays Vincent van Gogh in a new animation – the world’s first fully painted feature film. More than 100 artists from all over the world created the 65,000 paintings […]

Categories: Art and Photography, Creativity, Film

October Poetry News

October 24, 2017 by zbthompson

I have been working for a long time on the current manuscript, and some of these poems have been published in the last few months. Other are forthcoming, for example in Orion, The Manhattan Review, Poetry Wales, Abridged, and the anthology The Edge of Necessary: Welsh Innovative Poetry. ‘Round Trip,’ a poem about Brexit and Britain’s precarious relationship with Europe, came out in the British/Irish newspaper, The New European. In the US, Permafrost published ‘My Last Beatitude,’ a poem that seeks to challenge sanitised […]

Categories: News, Poetry

The Detective

August 27, 2017 by zbthompson

I am teaching a special seminar this semester on detective fiction, and I enjoyed hearing Jonathan Lethem’s thoughts on the detective as a subject of trauma, and a refusal of individualism. I share it here: http://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-jonathan-lethem

Categories: Uncategorized

Westworld

August 27, 2017 by zbthompson

I loved watching the TV show Westworld over the summer, and I just wanted to share this video, which brings out the meta qualities of the storytelling in the series.

Categories: America, TV, Western

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