Writer, editor , writing instructor
“These poems stumble forward, curl back on themselves, crack apart, crack jokes, embodying both that brokenness and the strength we find to survive it. Caroline Manring has written a beautiful and heartrending book” —Dan Rosenberg, author of Bassinet and Cadabra, on CERULEANA
“This must be a universal truth for our beings, our bio-psycho-social beings! It could as easily describe […] what I try to teach, what great athletes and writers and artists and performers of every type describe doing: something akin to keep on keeping on” —JohnM, Psychiatrist, Educator, Notes from the Dishwasher Cafe subscriber
OFFERINGS
Notes from the Dishwasher Café : a short, weekly humor essay on the challenges of being a human, a writer, a parent, & a compulsive meaning-maker, among other gigs. Subscribe FREE for one each month, or get one in your inbox each week if you join the paid subscriber list. A break from the social media hellscape & a playful balm for the thinking person.
CERULEANA : full-length poetry collection (Nine Mile Book Series, 2022).
“Ceruleana is filled with a charged stillness that I have only felt before as a child, when a hurricane’s eye finally arrived and I walked out of the boarded-up house to wonder at my small, quiet, broken world. These poems stumble forward, curl back on themselves, crack apart, crack jokes, embodying both that brokenness and the strength we find to survive it. Caroline Manring has written a beautiful and heartrending book that proves her hypothesis: “layers / of pain like / paint make / luminosity.” – Dan Rosenberg, author of Bassinet and cadabra, winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize
“Caroline Manring’s Ceruleana comes from the deep wood and the blasted fields, unexpectedly in the dark, arriving with the light in the nick of time. These remarkable poems sing, come to your ear like the birdsong you know and yet don’t: they are rare, heart-stopping, and necessary. I will listen again and again.” – Annie Lighthart, author of Pax and Iron String
Editing & writing coaching services : Copy-editing & developmental editing for writers of any experience level.
Workshops & courses : Occasionally I offer one-day or series workshops. These sessions are joyful, inclusive, and flexible. My goal is to invite you in and introduce skills and insights that will carry you forward in your own writing practice, whatever shape that may take. If you’d like to be notified about future workshops, you can submit your contact information here.
Manual for Extinction : full-length poetry collection (National Poetry Review Press, 2014) of “operating instructions for a disintegrating world” (Cole Swensen), a “rambunctious work, frisky […] with a keening grittiness” (Dean Young), for purchase here and elsewhere.
Poems and essays available in online literary magazines : an assortment of bite-sized literary treats, from a recording of an actor performing one of my poems to an essay on grief and distance running.
Some short videos about parenting on my YouTube channel to make you laugh : Rx for the grind.