I’ve joined Jessica Piazza’s Poetry Has Value project for 2016, meaning I’ll be keeping a public record of my poetry submissions, fees, acceptances, payment, and rejections. I’m excited (and somewhat terrified) to be part of this!
If you’d like to see the parameters of my project and/or if you’d like to read a specific list of things I fear, here is my introductory post.
I’m realizing my dream of starting a new literary journal. Welcome, Whale Road Review!
Whale Road Review is a journal of poetry and short prose. It will contain short creative work (everything under 500 words) that lingers long after it’s read. It will also include short pedagogy papers and a range of reviews. It will be simply designed and mobile friendly. The first issue will be published in December 2015.
Please like WRR on Facebook and Twitter, and send some work!
It’s become clear to me that a poetry book is just a larger poem. The poems in it are lines, and sometimes I have to cut good ones because they don’t fit, and I have to create a sense of flow and keep people reading. Every poem I’ve ever loved doesn’t need to be in a book, or at least not right now in this book. This feels so obvious to me now, but it definitely wasn’t before.
For some reason, I had always thought about poetry books as a storage container for all of the poems that I like the best and want to keep together (or, even worse, that I wrote within the same time period). Maybe I’ve read too many Collected Poems. I’ve been working through a manuscript and going wild with cutting and adding and rearranging and revising. Creating a book was easier with my chapbook The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman because it has a clear narrative arc. It’s much harder with the collection I’m working on now that has a wide variety of poems swirling around a central theme.
And now back to work.
This sleepy mother writer made it to the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu this morning for the APU writers’ retreat (with a little help from Starbucks and Mika… I was sleepier than I’d like for that 3-hour drive after waking up with the baby at 4 a.m.).
I’ve been writing away since lunch: two new poems drafted and a few more ideas jotted down. I don’t have an ocean view like last year, but I do have a jacaranda tree right outside my window, and I get a lovely breeze. I’m ready for a few days of writing here.
Nicelle Davis put on an amazing event! On Saturday, Feb. 28, 10 poets read at the freakishly fast carousel in Griffith Park (and other strange and wonderful things happened too). See the video here.
Also, buy Nicelle’s new book, In the Circus of You, here. It’s amazing too!
I had expected to go to this event without my family, but then I couldn’t bring myself to leave my poetry-and-carousel-loving 3 year old at home, so my husband and sons came with me.
I read bizarre pregnancy dream poems from my chapbook I Awake in My Womb. I made it through most of my reading just fine, but before my last poem, I saw my Elliott’s crumpled sad face in the back of the crowd. He wanted mommy and the microphone. I decided in a moment that I cared less about appearing “polished” and more about letting my son know that I’d stop the world for him, so I called him up to me. He said hello in the microphone, and I read the last poem with him on my hip.
I got to visit my poet-friend Nicelle’s class yesterday evening at Antelope Valley College, and her students were so wonderfully engaged and thoughtful in their observations and questions about The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman. Then Nicelle took me out to a fantastic Thai dinner with two of her high school poetry club students. For someone who loves poetry, people, and Thai food, this was as close to perfect as an evening gets. 🙂 Thanks, Nicelle!
My guest blog post for Editing Addict is up this morning: “How to Submit Poems for Publication.”
I hope it helps someone!
This has to be the coolest list of poets that has ever included my name…
Thanks for using my “Why I Write Poetry” blog post as an exemplar, Ruben Quesada!
Incidentally, if you are a latin@ poet, you should submit a video and written essay to Ruben’s “Why I Write” project.
I feel like I should wish a happy first birthday to my three chapbooks that were published last summer, but then that’s not quite right. They were born long before they were published. Maybe publication is more of a coming of age than a birth. Maybe this is an anniversary.
Regardless, I’ll start with the first…
Happy first year of publication to The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman! This collection was the first intentionally unified, researched-based collection I ever wrote, yet the persona poems manage to capture more of my own faith/doubt than any overtly autobiographical poetry I’ve written. It will always be special to me, and I’m glad that it was the first to be published.
During this first year, I especially loved sharing these poems as the featured poet at PLNU’s Poetry Day last September and as the keynote speaker for Biola’s Zeitgeist Conference in May, and, of course, I loved wearing my Jesus costume at the AWP bookfair to get people to stop and talk to me about this book.
I was also thrilled to have a poem from this collection, “Where Death Is Not an Is,” featured on Verse Daily in September.
Thank you to everyone who bought this chapbook, read these poems, listened to me read these poems, talked with me about these poems and the stories behind them, reviewed the collection, interviewed me in print and podcast, and stopped to talk and take pictures with Jesus/me. I’m so honored to be able to do this work.
If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman, you can still do so from Amazon or from Wipf & Stock. Or better yet, you can buy it straight from me and I’ll sign it for you. 😉
I have an ocean-view room at the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu, where I’ve spent the last day and a half working on poems and enjoying the ocean breeze. Sometimes real life is peaceful and full of poetry. More often it’s full of poop and toddler tantrums, but those are mixed in with toddler humor and snuggling. I’m thankful that I get to experience all of it.
I’m working on finishing up the first draft of a new poetry manuscript, tentatively titled All That Remains. When my colleagues at this faculty retreat ask what I’m working on over shared meals in the dining hall, I like to tell them that I’m rewriting the Bible. I wish I’d been raising my camera immediately to snap photos of the facial expressions I’ve gotten in response: most people smile or laugh, and everyone’s eyebrows rise up to full staff.
The longer explanation is that I started this poetry project because I needed an assignment. In 2012, with a new baby and a new full-time job, having just finished my dissertation, I thought that I’d better give myself a structured writing project that would keep me writing even when the world was against my actually writing anything. I was feeling particularly angry at the time toward people who take Bible verses out of context and use them as weapons against anyone who disagrees with them. I thought, “I can take biblical language out of context too!” and set out to satirize this practice. What started as angry satire quickly became playful and interesting: anagrams for titles, word-bank-style found poetry. I’m enjoying the process and feel excited about the results so far.
As of this afternoon, I’m 12 poems away from finishing a complete draft of this manuscript! Now back to work…