Natalie Solmer-Writing +Art

“Lilies Falling From The Ceiling”is a poem that I worked on for about 6 years before receiving the acceptance for publication by Atticus Review.It’s a poem that touches on some of the hardest times I went through when my kids were little.

It is a thrill to be published in a journal like Pleiades, which is full of people I admire greatly! It was also cool to by in Issue 39.2, which includes a folio of Afro-Caribbean literature, which is especially interesting to me because my children are half Jamaican. This particular poem is greatly influenced by…

I was really happy this odd little poem about anxiety and patio water gardening (and my obsession with water snails!) found a home at Parentheses Literary Journal. I really appreciate the editors taking a chance on this poem. Click here to view the entire issue or buy a hard copy.

Volume 31 of Briar Cliff Review is so well crafted and gorgeous. I think I might even frame some of the artwork that is in its glossy pages. You can order your own copy here My poem, “The Wind in From Chicago” found a home in this issue, which centers on loss.    

It was a huge accomplishment for me to be published in the Winter 2019 Issue of North American Review for my poem, “The Florist Thinks.” A couple of posts back, I posted a link to the blog I wrote about the process of writing this poem, which I worked on off and on for about…

I’m so excited to have this poem in the Spring Issue of Rust + Moth!  The impetus of this poem was thinking about how most American girls don’t get any sort of ritual to mark their first menstruation, and that it is a time of confusion, shame and often total silence, which was pretty much…

Click here to read my short blog post in North American Review that was inspired by my meditation on the poem, “The Florist Thinks” which will be published in their Winter 2019 Issue. After the acceptance of said poem, I reflected back on all that has happened since I wrote the bare bones draft of…

Krista Cox and her amazing organization, Lit Literary Collective, invited me to be a featured reader in 2018, and later offered to publish poems by the various featured readers to create a ‘zine that is a compilation from this past year’s events. She included my poem “The Two Grandmothers” in said ‘zine, and I am…

I was thrilled to find out that my manuscript, Can’t You Tell You’re Gold, was awarded a semi-finalist position for the Akron Poetry Prize. I am so honored to be among this list of supremely talented writers!! https://www.uakron.edu/uapress/akron-poetry-prize/poetryprizewinner.dot

A huge thanks to Joanna Valente who published this series of visual poems in Yes, Poetry. I created these over the summer of 2018, while participating in a generative workshop with Winter Tangerine. These pieces are made up of fragments of my poems, along with copied photos, maps and prayer cards from my deceased grandmothers….

Click here to link to the August 2018 Issue of Glass: A Journal of Poetry and read my poem that was featured in it. This poem was an important piece for me to write, as it explores the roots of depression, ancestry, mystery, and a lost first love.

Click here to visit Juxtaprose’s site and see my 2 poems recently published in Issue 16. The first deals with poverty (and adjuncting) and prayer and motherhood and the second was written during my former career as a grocery store florist and explores the ever present struggle of self worth. Here are previews–