et mentem mortalia tangunt (a little about me)

Loosely, “these things mortal touch the soul.” The full line is from Vergil (Aeneid, I, 462): ‘sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt,’ “these are the tears of things, and the stuff of our mortality cuts us to the heart.”  An appropriate tagline for the diary of my journey into the ever-evolving discovery of myself as a poet and artist.

All of my writing on this site was previously unpublished at the time of posting; some of it has since been incorporated into my first book, the somersaults I did as I fell (published December 2008 and officially released in early 2009), or my second, the river and the dead, scheduled for publication later this year.

Additional bits of my work can currently be perused at a couple of other places in and around the web; for an (occasionally) updated list of recent and forthcoming publications, please see here.

You will also find in these pages a (fairly comprehensive) smattering of the events and workshops I help put together as part of the ad-hoc community River City Poets. If you happen to be in Richmond, please look us up!

Meanwhile, feel free to look around, take in some words or art or check out whatever link catches your fancy. As you do so, please keep in mind that all work (unless otherwise specified) is the sole work of the author/artist, and, if reproduced, credit should be given as such. Thanks.

–JSL

If you’d like to hear more about me, what I do, and my thoughts on writing, please check out Blaga Todorova’s lovely interview of me over at Jingle Poetry.