Writing, writing, writing...what else is there?

On...imitation

2012-01-24T15:35:00.002-05:00

And the class is divided. Half howl that imitation is somehow cheating and the other half cling to Sellers' idea of "scaffold" as if it were a liferaft - which I think it can be. They seemed happier with the idea of riffing off one line after another than with the "mad libs" idea of "fill in the blank."

After talking around the subject, I led into my in-class Kincaid exercise. Poems were born...about corgis and cutting, horses and problems with french pronunciation. I fielded questions about footnotes and foreign languages in poems. I think the exercise earned its place in the plan.

Feel free to imitate :) There's an link to an audio clip of Kincaid reading the poem on Links Out Loud.

Class Exercise #3: An Imitation of Kincaid's "Girl"

Kincaid’s piece presents two speakers (perhaps)—one handing out advice and the other listening and chiming in. A common experience. Take a moment to pick an instance from your life when you have either given or received advice. Now re-read Kincaid’s “Girl” (page 55) and get ready to write your own imitation.

Kincaid’s first “line” is “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap;” An imitation on the general subject of “advice about choosing a dog” might be “Choose a dog that runs towards you and make sure you write down his name;” An imitation for a poem on the general subject of “buying groceries” might be “Bend the beans in half and see if they snap;”

End each line with a semi-colon and the poem with a question mark. Have the Kincaid open as you move through each line. Write fast. This is a practice draft. You’ll revise later in your own time. Here we go!

1. Write a command starting with a verb (i.e. Bend the beans to see if they snap;)
2. Write a command starting with the same verb (i.e. Bend the carrots to see if they’re old;)
3. A “don’t” command (i.e. Don’t let the man with the beard and apron see you do this;)
4. Command starting with a verb;
5. Command starting with a verb;
6. General advice;
7. Command starting with a verb;
8. Question about truth that includes a day of the week;
9. An “always” command;
10. Advice using the same day of the week;
11. Command using the same day of the week;
12. A “don’t” command.;
13. Response from speaker “B”;
14. “This is how to” line;
15. “This is how to” line using same verb as the previous line;
16. “This is how to” line using same verb as the previous two lines;
17. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
18. “This is how you” line using the same verb as the previous line;
19. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
20. “This is how you” line using the same verb as the previous line;
21. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
22. A “don’t” command;
23. “This is how to” line using a new verb;
24. “This is how to” using the same verb as the previous line;
25. italicized response from speaker “B”;
26. Question from speaker “A” that starts “You mean to say…?”;

Things to consider as you revise. Kincaid has high energy moments. Her advice about avoiding sluthood is an example. Another is the turn to blackbirds and spit. Try to incorporate some energy peaks in your own piece. Also, Kincaid tells us something we probably didn’t know – benna and duokona. Try to tell your reader something new in your own piece.

On...Expectations

2012-01-09T17:41:00.002-05:00

So a friend of mine is teaching a half-semester freshman creative course, and she's asking her students to hand in a ten-page portfolio plus weekly responses to readings. And there's me walking into a 200-level course next week with a seven-page requirement and no response requirement.

How much is too much? Does a high weekly page count dilute the quality of those pages...or is a little stretching good for the writerly soul?

I think I'm going to stick to my page counts, but I am upping my in-class writing requirements to two per week. I enjoy thinking up the ten-minute exercise prompts and building them into a collection that fosters something...cohesive. It reminds me of how those huge frescos come into focus when we walk backwards. So my plan is to have the class, through a series of in-class mini write-a-thons, build families of usable characters and landscapes with both interior and exterior elements. And then to give those family members dilemas or desires. A case of personality, place, and problem.

Oh, and of course, to push myself to paint the same kind of fresco!

On...A Room of One's Own

2011-12-27T19:33:00.002-05:00

So this is how it usually works. I know I need to be writing. So I do everything else that I can think of: I clean the bathroom, hoover the living room, wrap tape around my hands and “de-fur” the sofa. I even take the trash to the tip. When I’ve exhausted all my excuses, I take myself off to my tiny office off the kitchen, find some inoffensive classical on the radio, and begin to write. I get up for Triscuits and coffee, but I write until I have a first draft…or taste…of something. When I’ve finished, I’m back in love with writing and I have a nice clean house.

But what to do now? I’ve moved in with my man into his wonderful restored 19th century flour mill—all open plan and reclaimed wood—and my rituals are useless here. He’s a neat-freak, so there is no accumulated crap to distract myself with. His couch is tabby-coloured, so there are no scads of fur that need my attention. And the city pick up the trash on Fridays. Plus, I can’t find a place to actually write. The available perches are beautiful: a huge breakfast bar, a Danish modern 10-seater table, recliners galore, but none are as antiseptic and “closed off” as my old little office with its table’s legs pasted with Ginsberg poems and its top covered in rejection slips. It’s not “a room of my own.”

So, what to do? Bose headphones? Go and retrieve my old table and set myself up in the store-room next-door? Get up 5:00am and face the wall?

I hadn’t realized how wonderfully selfish my old solo life was for writing and for the rituals that I surrounded it with. I’ll have to work out a new way forward, new rituals, a new way to move into the writing.

On navigating

2011-07-10T22:59:00.006-04:00

My thoughts in recent days have become terribly difficult to unravel. I seem to lurch from one extreme solution to the next; I am in something of a wilderness and it is much of my own making. When I play the bones of my predicament to friends, someone will always say, "You should write about this" but that has proved impossible. It is as if real life has to cool down a little before it can be turned out from its tin without damage, before I can "eat it" and benefit in any way not only as a writer but as a human being. The thought of using my present situation as material seems plain wrong. But I know that writing is my way through things. It is NOT therapy and I'm adament here. Therapy is hitting a tree with a baseball bat (thanks, Darcie) or eating ice-cream by the half-gallon with a teaspoon...or arranging crockery into sets and colors in second-hand stores.

But these times have to be caught if only to enable me to return here in the future and see the arc of this situation--to see its beginning and consider its wild trajectory.

While I was in MA, I came across a booklet called "Recovery Instructions" by Jim Weigang. He outlines, among other things, a principle called Early Morning Journaling. I began the practice in June while I was away and have continued it religiously ever since. It creates, for me, a kind of daily footprint in the sand of my thoughts. Without writing this down each morning, the footprints would be lost, sucked into my current life's quicksand. I hope Jim won't mind my outlining the principle here:

Grab coffee if that's what you need, but apart from that, wake up and take a notepad somewhere quiet, preferably outside or within sight of the outside. Take three deep breaths to quiet yourself and then try to let your mind open up to whatever thoughts come its way. Write down that thought and then let it go. Breathe, listen and then write the next thought. There is no requirement for connection here. In fact, disconnection is preferable. So, breathe, open your mind, write the thought, breathe, open your mind, write the thought...and so on.

I continue until I have filled a page in a subject notebook. Sometimes there are just one or two seemingly unrelated words on a line. Sometimes, a la Ginsberg, my thought runs across two or three lines. I follow Jim's advice and don't allow myself to rant or complain or to catalogue things I need to do that day.

Try it for a week or two. It's fixed now in my meditation and I can't imagine beginning a day without it. Some quotations cribbed from Jim's booklet that explain better than I am able the power of this process:

Of all strange and unaccountable things this journalizing is the strangest: Thoreau

and my favorite...from Kafka.

You do not need to leave the room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

My journalling won't solve the problems I find myself tangled in today, but I think I might learn something from it tomorrow.

On words

2011-06-05T22:28:00.003-04:00

I'm reading Three Philosophical Poets by Santayana at the moment and have had to stop copying out marvellous quotes for fear of transcribing most of the book by hand. It's the kind of book I read with a good dictionary by my side. I hate to think I might be missing out on a gem because the terminology falls outside my narrow seam of understanding.

Today, I discovered "weal" as in "their judgements made their ... sense for impending weal or woe quite overpowering" (90).

Weal: happiness or well-being or prosperity.

At first, I was surprised given the destructive nature or history behind "weal" as in "welt," the mark of healed wound. But perhaps a healed wound is,in is own way, a mark of well-being.

Writing on...scrambling cliché

2011-04-02T12:33:00.003-04:00

An early semester exercise is to spend some time writing really bad cliches. I chalk the following lines on the board and ask my Intro Creative Writing students to fill in the blanks with the expected words and phrases:

He was _________, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful ____________ _________________ hair.
The waves _____________ upon the _____________ beach.
The baby _______________ happily.
Her eyes shone like __________________.

We end up with something like this:

He was tall, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful, long blonde hair.
The waves crashed upon the sandy beach.
The baby cooed happily.
Her eyes shone like diamonds.

Then I ask them to fills the blanks again but this time with surprises:

He was dead, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful slashes of grey hair.
The waves sucked upon the bubbling beach.
The baby urinated happily.
Her eyes shone like dead roses.

This don't always work, but the exercise enourages students to break rules. We then take the words from the first set of blanks and switch them around.

He was long, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful, diamond-bright hair.
The waves cooed upon the tall beach.
The baby crashed happily.
Her eyes shone like sand.

All in the service of breaking up word packages. For the next week at least, they take chances with their writing. This risk taking sometimes wanes as the weeks go on, so the topic should be revisited several times. It's a good ice-breaker for those sessions where no-one wants to talk or write.

Writing on...Pattern

2011-03-24T11:17:00.002-04:00

I like to think we had a good time in English 261 today. I'm using Heather Seller's text The Practice of Creative Writing because it works well with a sixteen week semester. She splits the book out into seven "tools" which allows me to teach/practice a tool (energy, form, insight, image...) for a week and then workshop student work featuring the use of that tool the following week.

Today was our second session on Pattern and we looked at Dinty Moore's cnf essay Son of Mr. Green Jeans: Alphabetically Arranged.

They read the essay as an assignment and then in class, we discuss the first six sections (A-F)and the connections that stitch them together. They then split out into pairs to discuss the pattern of connections between the remaining sections. The benefits of this exercise are two-fold: they always find new connections that have escaped me, and the opportunity to listen to their peers make connections opens up the essay for them.

However, at the beginning of class, before any discussion, I have them select three tiles from a Scrabble bag. The bag contains 26 tiles - A-Z. Then they write for five minutes on one of their letter tiles. The prompt for today's writing is An Essay on Studenthood: Alphabetically Arranged. After that first in-class writing session, we discuss Moore's letters A-F. Then they write on a second tile before they head off into their paired work. Finally they write on the third tile before we discuss their analysis of pattern in Moore's entire essay.

Towards the end of the session, they read their tile pieces out loud, in alphabetical order. A later assignment will be to polish these pieces and email them to me. I then collate the pieces and create a full collaborative alphabetical essay. I use this to kick off their end-of-semester readings.

On Troubling Inspiration

2011-01-08T13:18:00.002-05:00

I think it was Keats who said that if poetry didn't come as leaves to the tree, then it shouldn't come at all. In the days following my listening to an NPR segment, a new poem has been coming, and in some ways, I wish it wasn't. The segment talked about the execution of homosexuals and alleged criminals in Kabul. On the top of aptly named Swimming Pool Hill, the condemned were led out onto a diving board 30 feet above an empty concrete pool and pushed off. The pool was full of blood and bodies.

Kabul's teenagers now skateboard across the pool's smooth surface.

Afghanistan still plays host to those in search of adventure. Backpacks are replaced by flak jackets. Guides are tough and street-savy, not bearded and beaded a la Bali.

Having spent much of the late 80s and early 90s backpacking Asia and Europe, I think I know danger. The leering threat of a full body search at Ovda, a two-hour detention at Kunming airport, a fishing smack and a storm off the coast of Cambodia. I can "travel back" and write about those. But Swimming Pool Hill?

I've tried to feel that board under my feet, the wind, the prayed-for blindfold, the noise of the jailors behind me. I've considered the possible freedom on the jump but I cannot stay with the process to the concrete of the deep end.

I suppose leaves don't necessarily come easily to the tree. Who can know how difficult it is for the tree to produce the things it needs.

On Splitting

2010-10-13T08:11:00.004-04:00

As a kid, I fell in love with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and tried to get there through my own closet, a rickety affair full of hand-me-downs and lacking both fur coats and a gateway to Narnia. But the act of crouching inside in the dark, metal hangers clattering above my head and my hands skimming its wooden walls for magic door handles, moved me--or split me--from the world of a 1970s council housing estate to the possibility of somewhere--and someone---else.

This need to split stays with me. But today, it's a tool in this thing we perhaps too grandly call the creative process. I have to become the person, the thing, the event I'm writing about. When this is sustained--for example during the lengthy process of novel writing--this splitting can become problematic. My continual split into my character Tot, a nine-year old girl, left me a little scattered. I found myself considering Lucky Charms in the cereal aisle and buying Iced Gems for dinner. With poetry, it's often a quick dip...into the reality of a man who can't stop drinking cheap wine, or the hedgerow in October and how the trash moulds to its/my twigs, or dogdom and the feel of the road against the nose as it/I follow the scent of something unseen.

I'm working through a poem about the things the ground hands over. I have to have those things in my hand as I write, to "split" from myself into the thing itself: the jawbone of a deer, a kid's plastic space, wooden wheels. If I write about things rather than from things, my words feel removed, at a distance. If I AM the wheel, I can write the wheel.

On Comp versus Creative

2010-08-16T23:18:00.004-04:00

I spent some time on Friday pulling up the spent tomato plants and unhitching the watering system. It's not that the summer is over in the vegetable plot, more that my summer is over in the garden. School starts in a little less than two weeks and it's time to prepare.

So I pull plants that I won't have the time or inclination to tend. Nature has been kind in that she's killed them off already, so I don't have that guilt as I load the wheelbarrow. Once the vegetable beds are done with, I pull down the revision strips (lengths of pipe insulation attached to my book shelves) in my office. They've been "knob pin" home to poetry this summer: finished drafts, early versions which are more "random words on a page" than poetry, lines of inspiration for poems not yet begun. Once these are all down and boxed, I can see my books again and I can get ready for the semester.

In the fall, I teach two sections of College Comp. I'm meeting them where they live this semester. I've discarded the text book from previous semesters and am entering the classroom with a cracking grammar handbook and a collection of sports-related texts: Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, some essays from Best of Sports Writing, Raging Bull, and three issues of Sports Illustrated.

I also have Houseman's "To a Dying Athlete." Maybe we'll get that far. Maybe we won't.

I'm currently in "mourning tomatoes" mode. This too shall pass.

On reading second-hand books

2010-07-24T10:30:00.004-04:00

When I bought Murdoch's The Bell at Givens, my favorite second-hand book store, I opened it up to find the price - $4.95. There was a pencilled name on the fly too--E. Cash. I didn't give it too much thought, just bought the book and left.

On turning to the first page, I was a little crestfallen to see so much pencilled underlining. E. Cash was a close reader. An underliner. He (I have him down as a He) had underlined character names (Dora Greenfield, Paul Greenfield) and sentences that had some significance to him ("She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence"). His boxy handwritting made rare comments ("good, good") and copied out definitions of words (animadvert, rebarbative...).

At first, I found them intrusive. But after a while, perhaps by chapter three, I found myself nodding in agreement as E. Cash and I pondered the significance of the same line or feeling grateful at his pencilled definition of an obscure word in the top margin. His isolation of some pertinent passages in an early chapter shed some light on a question I had without diluting my own exploration of the text.

Occasionally, I came across an exclamation or question mark in the margin and felt a little disappointed that Cash and I couldn't somehow discuss Murdoch's line ("Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself").

Cash was clear about his quest: to search for the book's theme. His notes indicate that he felt the theme was the need to see reality. I wanted to ask him whether it might be extended to include the perils (or illicit joy) of living in fantasy or at least untested reality.

It was almost as if Cash and I were reading together. It was like being a member of a book club without the noise, more a shared nodding or shaking of heads. I know that I'll look for E. Cash's name on flys. I hope we meet again.

Nailing it: Murdoch on girls become women

2010-07-22T09:16:00.003-04:00

"Youth is a marvellous garment. How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity, when, as in her own case, one ceases to be une jeune fille un peu folle, and becomes merely a woman, worst of all, a wife. The very young have their troubles, but they have at least a part to play, the part of being very young" (19).

The Bell

On Recording

2010-07-21T09:08:00.002-04:00

It seemed that all my inspired thoughts arrived when I was driving. Usually when there was no paper or pen to hand. I'd sit in traffic running the line or idea through my head in an attempt to fix it there until I got home or to my desk and could write it down. But it never seemed to work. Between the idea arriving and my being somewhere with a pen in my hand, the words had either disappeared or had lost their verve.

So I rifled through my cupboards and found my old hand-held recorder, a gadget I had bought in grad school to capture lectures when my brain gave out. I stored it in the car's center console with the CDs, receipts, sticky coins and Starbucks coffee sleeves. When the next line arrived, I grabbed the recorder and gave it the words...which would have worked a treat if the thing had housed batteries with a little life in them.

So I put in batteries. Expensive non-supermarket ones. Then I moved my zippy velcro'ed CD holder from the passenger seat visor to the driver's seat visor so I could slip the recorder in the little mesh holder on the front--just at the right height for recording mouth-to-mic. And I worked out how to work the voice recognition switch so it would turn on automatically when the words came.

Since then, the words haven't come. Not once. Now, I'm wondering if they ever did or whether I imagined it. Sometimes I think I am better at preparing for writing than I am at writing itself. Or at least, if I enjoy the preparation more rather than the writing. Maybe it's just easier to control.

On deconstruction

2010-07-20T09:32:00.002-04:00

At first glance, it's a lovely problem to have. What to keep and what to call it?

I have fifty-eight pages of poetry that I'm happy to put my name on and two possible collection titles that don't keep me up at night. The summer has given me that. The collection has grown from a scant twenty-eight pages in January (those lovely days spent in the corn crib at VCCA) to this veritable stack at the tail end of July. The problem is that I would quite like to be published with some chapbook publishers who want a twenty page collection...or twenty-four or twenty-eight.

It's daunting. The full collection is like a complete skeleton. If I cut off the shins, the thigh dangles and the foot is obsolete. If the full skeleton is a man called Roger, and I decapitate him and graft on Jessie's spine and left hand, who is he/she? Can I still call him Roger?

I want to submit to the Camber Press chapbook competiton (guidelines state twenty-four pages). They're great in that they care more about thematic direction than number of pages, but having said that, the page count will still stand. So I have a stack of twenty or so poems that I really like. Now all I need to do is to discover who this pile of bones might have been and in what order I need to pin them together so it might walk.

Because it as sure as hell isn't Roger anymore.

On Serving

2010-07-19T18:00:00.003-04:00

At heart, I'm lazy and if I'm going to serve anyone, it'll be me. And yet, I like to have my finger in things: pies, Brie, running water, other people's business. So I am often in the middle of a dilemma. I want to be involved...but I'm loathe to commit.

Which explains my "Oh God :) Oh God :(" reaction to a recent email letting me know I had been elected "in absentia" to the position of Vice President of my alumni association's board. I have no idea what it entails and after a 15 hour drive home from a reading in Freeport, Maine (my alma mater's home town), I'm hoping that board members are electronically connected and savvy rather than planning on meeting for coffee. But the excuse to visit Maine a few times a year is a blessing. I'm making plans to read at a pal's bookstore, The Wife of Bath, in...Bath, and it would be good to see if I might finagle a reading at The Gulf of Maine, a great bookstore in Brunswick.

This is my time to get plugged into a wider life...even if it feels uncomfortable: my career at Randolph requires me to step up and pitch in with college events and committies; feeding my writer's life through networking with my fellow Stonecoasters is a good idea however I look at it; and living in the cut and thrust of people and all their doings and goings on keeps writing green.

A good day, all in all...even if the responsibility that service brings scares me shitless.

On Clifford Garstang's In an Unchartered Country

2010-07-18T16:12:00.000-04:00

I don't usually do book reviews, but I took Clifford Garstang's In An Unchartered Country with me to Maine and I couldn't stop reading it. At first delve, it's a collection of short stories linked by location (Virginia's Blue Ridge) but the wonderfully canny thing is that as you read through, you realize the characters walk through each other's stories. Garstang has the ability to put the reader right inside the location--whether the location is a gift shop, a flooded river lit by police lights, or in the front yard of a man who has just shot his dog. I don't think the reader needs to know the Blue Ridge to love these stories. Garstang's writing is clean and sharp and draws both characters and location with a clarity that cuts through the sticky nostalgia and sentimentality that can sometimes accompany mountain stories. A good book for travelling.

(Winner of the IPPY Gold Medal for Mid-Atlantic--Best Regional Fiction 2010.)

On Old Friends New Poems and Shopping

2010-07-17T15:37:00.006-04:00

I'm coming to the end of a week in Freeport, possibly Maine's scariest town for the non-shopper. It's outlet central, with L.L. Bean, Banana Republic, Gap, Nine West, and so on and so on. It is clean, clean, clean and the pavements are crowded with holiday makers toting shopping bags rather than beach towels.

Thank goodness, I'm not here to shop. I would be terrible at it. I came to do a reading at Stonecoast (USM's MFA location) with fellow Alumns Kathy Briccetti, Linda Sienkiewitz and a nice man called Hank who rode a bicycle for over an hour to make the reading. The reading was great fun and it was good to hang out with Kathy and her son and Jake Strunk, another fellow Alumn, for a few days. Reading brand new work was very catharic. At home, I rely on my writers' workgroup for feedback and I really value their input, but to get positive reaction from an audience that doesn't know me? That strokes my ego enough to keep me producing. At this end of the summer, I'm very close to a body of work large enough to submit for first book contests. The old manuscript The Weather House has been retitled The Rub and Chafe and is looking very much like a collection.

But back to shopping...we trawled round LL Bean's today in search of bargains. We left empty-handed and felt something of an oddity in a sea of pedestrians clutching the string handles of logo'ed bags. It seems I don't need anything badly enough to part with cash. As long as you don't count ice cream. Jeffry has dropped about $20 on the stuff so far: Ben and Jerry's is king (are king?)

Writing on...community

2010-05-01T10:24:00.002-04:00

Despite April's cruelty, what with sun and then sudden frost, the manic rush towards Finals with its portfolios and surprises, and the summer looming with its large promise of enough time and accompanying lack of excuses not to write, this month has perhaps been the most productive for poetry in a long time.

I was invited into a community of writers (old hands from my MFA program) to commit to a poem a day for April. Here I am at the end of the month with 30 new poems and renewed friendships with a small group of talented writers. We had such a constructive time, we're extending the challenge--austensibly for May--in order to revise and critique. My hope is that this new community of poets will carry on for as long as we can work together and benefit.

I used to say that all I needed was a keyboard and a deadline to make the words flow. It's still almost true. I need to knock out that word "all" though. I also need to be around other writers who take this writing business seriously. We don't need to be friends, or do coffee, or swap books or anything (although that's definitely not verboten); we just need to spur each other on. Sometimes that happens purely because I see someone else put down some brilliant words, and I'm jealous and need to compete. Or sometimes it's because I'm the the one who finds the brilliant words . Either way, the community acknowledges the event and supports the effort.

I'm hoping the lack of a daily deadline for May won't dilute my enthusiasm or output. I'm hoping to revise ten poems from the April batch which means I need to be posting every three days. That's probably compulsive enough for me.

Image from the USM Stonecoast site: The Stone House, Maine.

Writing on...Finalist at Longleaf Press

2010-04-23T21:09:00.002-04:00

What's that phrase about always the bridesmaid? Got a letter today from Longleaf Press to tell me I was a finalist in their 2010 Chapbook Contest...but that Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes had won with her collection Everday Chica.

But it's not a bad average so far. Eight chapbook entries and one refusal and one "made the final cut' so far. Plus rejections from Connecticut Review, Agni and Greensboro Review. It's getting to the end of the reading phase for many literaries, so the rejections should start coming fast and furious.

Today my copy of Poets and Writers arrived. So I need to take a look at the call for submissions in the back and keep this process rolling.

Writing on . . . Finalist

2010-03-02T10:23:00.004-05:00

An email arrived late last night from Reed Magazine. I didn't recognize the sender and the subject header was of the "congratulations" type. I was close to deleting but decided to open just in case it wasn't from a woman with cancer or a Nigerian leader in exile.

Glad I did. The email told me they wanted to publish the work I had sent them. Thing was, I couldn't remember sending anything to Reed Magazine - I tend to stick to the literary journals and this one didn't ring a bell. So I wasn't even sure what I had sent them - no trace on my submission spreadsheet either. It was a mystery.

Hurrah for electronic submission pages. I clicked on their site, and then Submissions and logged in. There were my five poems and their response: "you are a finalist for the Edwin Markham Prize in Poetry." A double whammy.

My joy was a little shortlived. A few emails later, the editor let me know that the "prize" had gone to another entrant, but they would be publishing "Misfits," a poem from the Weather House collection. Shame about the $500 but very happy to have a poem at Reed. First publication in poetry since around 2006.

I spent two weeks writing and submitting in January. It's paying off.

Writing on . . . Finding Matthew Dickman in a Wig Shop

2010-01-09T11:46:00.007-05:00

One of the things I enjoy about the internet is how it's like walking in a strange town. You intend to walk to the post-office at the end of the street--in fact, you need the post-office and have to be there by four--but you see a wig shop down a side alley and find yourself turning left. You quickly tire of the wig shop but buy a coffee from a kiosk outside and meet a woman who breeds Pomeranians and while you don't like Pomeranians, she's married to a man who carves totem poles and he has a shop front on 7th, so you head over there and put down a payment on a pole celebrating the artist's relationship with alcohol (hacked out glasses, bottles, corks, toilet bowls, etc) and before you know it, it's 4:40pm and even if you knew how to get back there, the post-office is closed.

That's how I found Matthew Dickman. I think I was over at the Poetry Society of Virginia when I clicked a link to something that sparkled and then leaped onto someone's Blogsite and got a link to Narrative Magazine and browsed there on some Dobyn's poetry and joined up and then saw a link with the word "Whiskey" and "Cheating" and had to click...and there was Dickman.

I don't usually like watching video clips but he has this cute floppy hair thing going on and he's wearing a suit, and I always wonder about poets in suits. I'm clicking and twenty minutes later, I have a new Favorite.

He has this way of spinning the line like a fly-fisherman. He is a poet who moves from flippant to light-hearted, then into breathless rifts that slash your wrists in long vertical lines. He makes the word in the line and the word in his mouth come at the same time.

That's rare.
.

Writing on . . . stink bugs and horses

2010-01-08T23:14:00.004-05:00

It's strange. I walk past two horses every evening on the way to dinner. They're big beasts and look pretty hardy. They're doing horse things: eating hay and crapping. One of them snorts at the other--there's a hierarchy going on. And yet, even though they're so obviously horses, I find myself thinking about them in human terms. I wonder if they're bored...of their field, of eating the same stuff every day. I find myself getting pissed off at their owners for not riding them or talking to them. And yet they're horses and it's more than likely that they aren't thinking about the same kind of crap that I'm thinking about.

It doesn't stop there. My room is full of stink bugs. After ten days, I've decided I rather like them. They don't sting or make annoying buzzing sounds. They do fly, but not very often. And at night, when I'm working at my pc, one of them does circuits of my desk. He even crawls onto my keyboard and I have to be careful not to "type" him as I work. He gets the same treatment as the horses; I wonder if he's bored or if he knows where he's going...or if he ever get there. I wonder what there is to eat in here for him. I never consider that "he" might be a group of stink bugs all visting my desk at random.

For one moment earlier this evening as I watched him fall off the cable from my laptop to the printer and struggle for a second or two to right himself, I even considered taking him home with me.

Attaching human qualities to nonhuman creatures. I do it a lot. I tell myself it's normal.

Two more nights here at VCCA and then back to the real world. I've missed Jeffry, Bubs and the cats, but I haven't missed much else. I've cleaned up around 30 poems, written four new ones that I'm pretty happy with and have ten more at first draft stage. I've read all my notebooks and picked out the pieces that merit more work. I've filed all my MFA correspondence with Ted, Baron and Clint and have read a bundle of Poetry journals and several copies of TWC.

I feel as if the time here has been more than useful. Ten days would have been long enough for the work, but fourteen days has allowed me to open up a little to the other artists who share this space. Given three weeks, who knows? I might have left my corn crib and become a party animal.

On second thoughts, perhaps not. I think I'm a loner who's happy with the stinkbugs.

(photo by Marlin E. Rice at Cornell University)

Writing on . . . Chapbooks and Composers

2010-01-07T22:31:00.003-05:00

Busy administrative day today. It takes as long to deal with the submissions and record keeping as it does to write a clutch of new draft poems. But there is an element of satisfaction in a stack of manilla envelopes containing competition entries. The Weather House is now out there at seven chapbook competitions, and I have submissions in at seven literaries. It feels good to be back in the submission saddle (which sounds a little dodgy!)

Today was a visual and audible treat. Four visual artists opened their very different studios for an hour. Megan Marlatt is doing wonderfully round things with Pinocchio and Olive Oil. Her studio was surreal with Mexican cowboys bareback riding dismembered clowns and shooting at Mickey Mouse. Reminds me of Jennifer Balkan's work. Rebecca Allen was zooming the landscape and incorporating cutout cars, Heidwig Brouckaert had some really interesting mixed technology work involving magazine cutouts, a scanner/printer and carbon paper/pens. Some very close parallels in her studio to the editing/revision/revisioning of poetry. And Claire Van der Plas's subjects feels so real because they are; Facebookers meet Canvas and the results are spot on.

And there was more. Three composers--Nolan Stolz, Tom Cipullo and Laura Kaminsky--shared their work. I don't have enough words left to adequately describe their work but again, the parallels to poetry were all there: Tom's ghazalish collage of voices and piano, Nolan's free versish classical fusion with huge amounts of what C.K. was calling lyric art in language, and Laura's environmental orchestral "tiara" of sonnet-movements with their jinkish turns. Much talk about audience and craft which left me astonished at all these links. I left musing about the relationship between the integrity of the line in poetry and the creation of melody.

And maybe that's the main joy of a residence. You can't help but think...about other people's works and your own and all the connections.

Writing on . . . Revision

2010-01-06T22:19:00.005-05:00

A great ten days at VCCA...and four more to go. I leave on Sunday. Thank God for the Randolph Visiting Writers Program. Without it, I wouldn't have had a chance to chat to Claudia Emerson who told me about the relationship between sleeping in your studio and high performance. It certainly worked for me. My little space in the corn crib (you can just see the gable roof in the bottom right corner of the photograph) feels like home. Its walls are full of my poems, all coded with post-it notes and scrawled over with edits. And during what must have been the coldest snap at VCCA in years, I have been snug and warm, thanks to a huge duvet, a pile of pillows and long-johns.

I've finished the chapbook manuscript. I had been hoping for a full collection, but the poems just aren't there yet. I have about 40 pages of work I am happy with and need 48 for a full collection submission. So I'm heading down the chapbook route and have six sets ready to go. The other poems will come; all I have to do is be patient and wait.

As I was clearing up my directories and getting all the old drafts zipped and filed, I came across my correspondence with Ted Deppe from the manuscript's early days at the Stonecoast MFA program. I was blessed to have Ted and Baron Wormser as mentors and they both wrote bloody good letters. I'm glad I kept them. My stance on revision remains the same; it's scary and hard. From a letter to Ted:

I’ve revised two poems. They’re both already published and I hate to touch them. Not because I feel they’re finished, but I worry about ruining them. I mean, writing new poems is like birthing babies – you have no idea what they’re going to become but they just have to be got out. And then initial revisions are fine – the patient’s hanging onto life and the revision gives them a chance to breath. But when they’re so nearly finished, it’s like plastic surgery and they could end up with hideous lips.

I still feel that way. But as I compare today's versions of these poems with those from 2007, I'm glad I held off submitting them to journals. They needed work and I hope I've done that during my time at VCCA. Time and rejection notes will tell.

*Image from VCCA web site

Writing on . . . art versus meaning

2010-01-04T14:57:00.003-05:00

C.K. Williams interview (Christian Teresi) from the December 2008 edition of The Writer's Chronicle

Teresi (in an indepth yet accessible interview) asks Williams whether he feels that poetry and its particular sub-genres (the pastoral, the epic, the tragic, etc) might be cyclical, or whether they might be "constantly evolving" and therefore prey to extinction. I like the clarity of William's response, his distinction between the two functions of poetry--art and meaning--and his underlining of the overlap.

C.K. Williams: I think that there can be a fundamental misunderstanding of what we mean when we speak of "conventions" in this context. Poetry has always had several dimensions, several purposes, several potentials. First of all, there's what has always been meant as "art," what might be called the song, the singing, of poetry. The first poetic conventions developed with this as an aim: what the audience desired, and expected, was to hear the poet sing, hear how the language was being transfigured and exhilarated and made sublime by the poet's skill. Any information that the poem might impart along with this singing was, is, relatively incidental Those conventions of poetry are closest to pure music in this sense: we don't listen to Mozart or Beethoven, or any composer we love, to "learn" anything; there's nothing to learn from a piano sonata, though we can become almost ecstatic from listening to it. (Neither do we expect an ode by Pindar or a pastoral by Virgil to tell us anything about our lives, other than the most basic emotions of temporality and mortality. Pindar is so untranslatable because all he was really doing was singing, and to imagine that we might experience his work anything like a Greek audience is quite far-fetched.
The other function of poetry has to do with the meanings it brings to us, the insights and revelations we need in order to live our lives to the fullest, and, although the musical element of this tradition of poetry is essential to it—because it's poetry, not philosophy or polemic, and comes to our consciousness in a different way and to a different place—still, the matter, the information it embodies, becomes as important to us as its singing. This is poetry in the tradition of the epic and the tragic. I think this is where the confusions you're talking about in your question arise: because so much of modern poetry, really of much poetry since the Renaissance, has its roots in the tragic, and responds to the tragic elements of human existence, the enactment of conventions like the pastoral have tended to become secondary, or, perhaps more accurately, they've become resources for poetry rather than ends in themselves. Campion and Wyatt and Jonson were well aware of the conventionality of their lyric poems, of the fact that they were essentially creating variations on themes, just as the composer of a sonata or a symphony is quite conscious of contriving a new embodiment of an existing form. I think modernism, and the advent of free-verse, reinforced and accelerated the shifting of the greater part of poetry towards the tragic away from the lyric....

Writing on . . . Wormser and Worry

2009-12-31T08:31:00.002-05:00

I came across Renée Olander's interview with Baron (my mentor at Stonecoast) in the March/April edition of The Writer's Chronicle and wanted to pass it on:

Olander: Do you have fallow periods? Do you worry about not writing?

Wormser: No, I don't worry. I really don't believe in worrying, as far as writing is concerned at least, because it really doesn't do any good, does it? You wind up doing what you do, and you don't know where it came from, so it seems like a false sense of control--if you worry, you can somehow will it into being, or if you keep close tabs on it--because you don't know what's going on anyway, in this vast subconscious--who knows? So no, no worry.

Writing on . . . Inducing Poems

2009-12-30T17:47:00.003-05:00

Like babies, it's a bad idea. They'll both come when they're ready. Unless, of course, non-delivery threatens the mother. And that's never really a problem for the poet.

Today has been a day when I should have sent the obstetrician packing. My second full day and panic made me decide on a poem before it was written. As I said, Bad idea. I "laboured" until about 4:00 p.m., pushing and pushing and achieving nothing apart from crap on the sheets.

And then I gave up . . . or in. I tried a writing exercise* based on Jesse Kercheval's poem "The Hotel Where My Family Used to Stay" and now have an early draft of a new poem on the subject of loss. NOT where I intended to dwell this morning! Then I revised an old poem called "Unbuckled" and found that if I match content to form, things work out.

*"After Kercheval: Write about a place that has been lost to you for some reason. Write about the reason and use several essential, sensory details of the place."

Writing on . . . time to read

2009-12-29T17:40:00.003-05:00

I'm lucky enough to have two weeks all to myself and all to my writing. I have a nearly-completed poetry manuscript to work on and arrived at the residency with my PC, printer, paper and box of drafts. Day two and I'm already producing.

The other opportunity the break affords me is the chance to read through "stuff." I have six months of trade magazines, a year's Poetry magazine, notebooks of my own miscellenous writing from as far back as 2003, and some cherished books, including Charlie Smith's Heroin, Alan Shapiro's The Dead Alive and Busy and Linda McCarriston's Eva-Mary. All marvelous to read and all full of spurs and triggers.

I came across an essay by Mary Karr (Liar's Club) in a 2005 issue of Poetry that reminded me of my intention to spend some time over the next fourteen days on meditation and prayer. As ever, we find what we need:

Okay, I couldn't stop drinking. I'd tried everything but prayer. And somebody suggestedto me that I kneel every morning and ask God for help not picking up a cocktail, then kneel at night to say thanks. "But I don't believe in God," I said....The very idea of prostating myself brought up the old Marxist saw about religion being the opiate for the masses and congregations as dumb as cows...My spiritual advisor at the time was an ex-heroin addict who radiated vigor. Janice had enough street cred for me to say to her, "Fuck that God. Any god who'd want people kneeling and sniveling--"
Janice cut me off. "You don't do it for God, you asshole," she said.

Karr, like many alcoholics in recovery, believes God keeps us sober. She credits the bestseller that dug her out of a financial hole to her Higher Power.

So, HP, if you have any great poems up there...

Writing on . . . Online Critique

2009-12-09T07:40:00.002-05:00

I was watching a Bill Talens (aka Reverend Billy) DVD the other day and he was slagging off Starbucks for a variety of reasons, one of which was that the chain tried (and failed) to emulate the literary coffee shops of the past where authors both sides of the pond (from Fielding to Ginsberg) met not only to write but also to meet fellow writers. I’m almost with Talens, but there are precious few alternatives today. I want to write and I want to meet other writers, but where to go?

To cyberspace, perhaps. I used to spend a lot of time in two cyber-workshops: IWW, an email/digest-based writing group; and Zoetrope.com, a virtual “colony” for writers in all genres. I had fun. I read a lot of work—good and bad. I critiqued my arse off and in the process, continued to hone my own skills. And I made friends. A tiny group of us split off from one particular on-line community (Saucyvox) and formed our own group, Mag7.

The group did what all groups do. It started with a bang and boatloads of enthusiasm and then dwindled over time to two hard-core members—me and Kay Sexton. But we had a good run of almost three years.

We’re doing it again. The pair of us have nominated one friend each to join us in a new circle (or a square, what with there being four of us) and maybe we’ll extend that out to six. We’re going to take up some office space at Zoetrope, and that’s my task for the next few days. And then the real work of regular writing and subbing begins. I need it. I have been something of a slacker in recent months.

Writing on . . . Reheating

2009-12-05T09:16:00.002-05:00

It’s been an exhausting week: what with admin meetings at work, friendships, looming finals…and the manuscript. The admin meetings are part and parcel of the job; I’m not particularly good at them, but as I become more comfortable with teaching, I become more comfortable with teachers (professing/professors?). I wouldn’t be without the friendships. For perhaps the first time in my life, they are real and while they, for the most part, glide happily below the surface, occasionally, like turtles, they stick their heads above the water and have me pointing and shouting from the bank. Finals are finals: lots of proof-reading and copying and stuffing into envelopes. Rather be setting them than taking them. Which leaves…the manuscript.

I need to find a new name for it. Manuscript makes me think of parchment, illuminated letters and monks. Book sounds like something that’s published…and this isn’t. I am open to suggestions. But whatever I call it, I had to force myself to open the ring binder and start reading. I had to know. Was I still in love with it, or was I, as with a husband or two, blind to its faults?

I started reading in bed on Thursday morning. With a green pen in my hand. I reached the halfway point by lunchtime, ate a writer’s lunch of soup and stale bread (more bad planning than penance), and then pushed through to the end. I spent several hours rewriting tiny sections, sorting out some continuity problems, and some grammar issues. But at the end, I was okay. I kind of “fancied” the first three chapters but didn’t feel they would work long term, was strongly attracted to the middle bit, and loved the end.

I emailed it to Kay. I wouldn’t trust it with anyone else. She’s both my critic and my best and longest writing friend. I know she’ll tell me what she thinks. And then I’ll have to act on that—whatever that means—and send it out.

It’s a relief to know I still believe in the book. I couldn’t face re-entering the submission/rejection arena if that wasn’t the case. I’m also glad because now I can change focus to finishing The Weather House. I am very excited about that project. Two weeks at VCCA, solitude, a suitcase of diaries, photographs and poetry for inspiration, and no distractions. Bliss.

Writing on . . . Editing in the Woods

2009-11-26T09:04:00.002-05:00

I’m camping over Thanksgiving. They’ve forecast snow, so I packed thermals and a woolly hat and gloves. I’ve also packed a hard copy of The Beginning Things; I’m going to drag a chair down to the river and read through the manuscript. I need to reconnect with the characters and the story before I can bear any critique. My good friend Kay Sexton has graciously offered to read it and comment before I send it to Scribe, so I want to be able to send her a PDF when I get back on Sunday.

Did you ever see The Flintstones? When Fred needs to slow the car down, he sticks his feet through its floorboards, and in a stream of grit and gravel, rocks and steam, he brings the car to a halt before it hits the house. Kay is my Fred. Or at least his fee: she recommended a month of clear time between rejection at PP and submission to Scribe. Time, she said, to review the words that could be cast, if not in stone, then on antipodean paper.

So The Beginning Things gets to spend a few days in the woods and then a week or so in England before it heads for Australia.

On another tack, I head out for VCCA in just over a month. I’m gathering together materials: notes, diaries, journals, photos, poetry I want to read. I intend to hibernate in my studio for the full two weeks, surfacing only to collect trays of food.

Writing on . . . Isolation

2009-11-15T09:15:00.003-05:00

While driving over to Hurt yesterday, trying both to put together a game plan for publishing The Beginning Things and to reconcile myself to its recent rejection, a thought came to me. In the two years of its writing, I had shared only four or five chapters with a fellow writer*. The other twenty-one chapters went from my head to the page and to my publisher with zero input from anyone.

What presumption! What recklessness! What sheer foolhardiness!

Especially since on Thursday evening, I had told a classroom of new writers how important it was to gain input and insight into your own work-in-progress from peers whose writing you respected.

I have moved away from the very things that helped me to get where I am today: a community of writers, critique, and revision. I have lost that which my friend Kathy holds high on her writer’s list--an open mind.

For me, the thing that moves me away from workshop is always the same: fear. Fear of rejection, fear of revision, fear that the work is as good as it is going to get…and that’s not going to be good enough. The reality is that workshop provides pre-submission feedback: the good, the bad and the ugly. Better to have it up front from writers you respect than to receive it in the mail from publishers who can only point out the problems, and who can offer no concrete advice as to solutions.

The game plan is still the same. Wait on Scribe Publishing for an answer and kick start an online-writers group of six or seven fellow writers.

* Kay told me that Tot was whining and that she didn’t like her very much in one of these early chapters. Much the same remark I received from Judy Shepard. There’s a very good chance that they are both right. A workshop in which I TOOK the advice offered could have turned the voice around right at the beginning.

Writing on . . . Wanna buy a book?

2009-11-13T13:33:00.000-05:00

I had forgotten how slamming rejection can be. I think I knew when I saw the Permanent Press envelope in my mailbox this morning that it contained bad news. Bad news is easier to write and read than speak and hear. And so it was: while one of the partners enjoyed reading The Beginning Things, it didn’t, on some level, satisfy her. The other partner, who was also lukewarm about Sticklebacks and Snow Globes, was “not as involved [in the manuscript] as he would have liked.”

I use the phrase “slamming.” That’s what it’s like. I read the letter in the car in the driveway, and it slammed me down into my seat and into my head. I reread it on the sofa and could feel my own negativity pushing its way into the house.

Rejection is nothing new. I had hoped that Stickleback's successful hard cover run followed by a paperback reprint followed by two foreign rights sales would help get this second title on the shelves. But if the financial backers aren’t behind it, none of the predecessor’s history matters.

So, here’s the plan. I’ve contacted the Australian agent to see if she would like first refusal. And I’ve emailed two writer friends to tell on myself and on the situation. I’ve set up a new “Submissions” spreadsheet in Excel for The Beginning Things, and I’ll sit down with it tonight and re-read to make sure it’s as good as I can get it.

And then I start again with the whole submissions deal.

Ack.

Writing on . . . Relief

2009-09-18T07:39:00.002-04:00

I finished the sequel to Sticklebacks at the end of July. It took two summer breaks to complete. Summer 2008 took me to chapter 12 and summer 2009 took me to chapter 24. I proofed it, printed it, wrapped it in its paper band and shipped it to Permanent Press, my publisher, before I left the country to visit my family in England.

That was about seven weeks ago, and I haven't heard a thing yet. I bugged the office manager to make sure they received the package...and they had.

Writing is hard, but there is something driven about it. I can dread sitting down, fearful that the words won't come, and yet, words do. Sometimes they're not great, but always there's that tumbling sensation as the images and their words arrive and I struggle to keep up, to keep them as fresh on the page as they were when they first turned up. By the end of the session, I'm tired but happy.

The waiting for acceptance or rejection is hard, too, but in a scarier way. No news means no rejection which means I don't have to do or face anything: If they accept it, brilliant. But they're "meant to," aren't they? I mean, if I'm a "real writer," I will have written a book worth publishing, won't I? And if they reject, what then? The long slow slog for an agent, the endless submissions, the endless turn-down slips.

So I press "Send/Receive" and wait for an email and then, when it doesn't arrive, I get on with the day. School work, friends, reading, new poems and ideas for chapters for books not yet written. I have it on good authority that this doesn't get any better.

Writing on . . . Pirandellism

2009-06-10T03:25:00.000-04:00

Just finished Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author and musing on Pirandello's quest for answers to the "what is real" question. The play is a great arena for the question and, for me, an exploration of the whole character creation deal.

The father (a pure Character) explains to the Producer (an expert at staged reality) that he should maintain a distrust of the moment's reality since it morphs into illusion once the moment has passed. He then goes on to explain the Character's reality and how it can be expanded by the audience and yet limited by the author. He says, "When a character is born he immediately assumes such an independance even of his own author that everyone can imagine him in scores of situations that his author hadn't even thought of putting him in, and he sometimes acquires a meaning that his author never dreamed of giving him."

It's perhaps trivial, but consider the heart throbs of modern day soap operas and hospital dramas. As women discuss (or consider) Grey's McSteamy or other similar characters, they no doubt place him in a host of personal situations that have never (and maybe should never) be written for him. And yet each situation can be satisfyingly real for the Imaginer.

Pirandello's father character goes on to discuss the Character's nightmare--the author who gives birth to the character in their own imagination and then refuses to give them life on the page. The Stepdaughter describes the way she "tempts" the author to move her onto the page, all without success. She tells herself, "Ah, what scenes, what scenes we suggested to him! What a life I could have had!"

As I work on The Beginning Things and get reacquainted with Tot and meet Dan Grad for the first time, each one moves from the imagination onto the paper and into my own reality. It scares me a little to think there might be a Stepdaughter somewhere outside hammering to come in.

Writing on . . . Orwell

2009-06-09T06:44:00.002-04:00

I heard on NPR that yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the publication of Orwell's 1984. I read 1984 last year and, as ever, kicked myself for not having got to it much sooner. As a writer and a general dickerer with words, I'm fascinated by Orwell's projections re. the demise of language. His character Syme is working on a new edition of the official dictionary and is excited by his task of "destroying words--scores of them, hundreds of them, every day." He says the team is committed to "cutting language down to the bone" (page 45 of the Signet Classic version).

Orwell, the master of the snappy declarative sentence, was keen on cutting, if not to the bone then to the quick. He believed that the English language was being assaulted from all sides, with one of the main attackers being Insincerity which hid inside ornate language, phrases and cliches.

Orwell's essay sets out six rules that will save the English language. With another semester of Freshman Comp looming for the fall, I'm going to add the essay to my summer reading list.

Writing on...Women Writers, Finch, Greer, Salzman and Dowson

2009-06-05T09:22:00.005-04:00

When I saw Annie Finch’ snip on Facebook this morning quoting Germaine Greer in the article "Women's Work: the Poetic Justice Forum" I had to click through and read on. Not only is Annie the Director of my old MFA Program at Stonecoast, Greer is my personal hero. I was interested in both their takes.

On the face of it, it seems pretty obvious that theirs is the only logical "take" women writers can have. It's the same "take" thinking women have had for the last fifty or so years - how can society condone the lack of female voice and representation when that society - on a pure numbers basis - is made up of a majority of women? But as Finch and others point out, of course, it's not a numbers game. It's a power game. Percentage wise, there may be more warm female bodies in the room, but the blokes own the microphones and chairs, and if we don't play nice, they're likely to take them home with them.

On the topic of women poets, Finch quotes Eva Salzman, editor of Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English, who says that “the baggage attached to ‘woman poet’—poetess or not—is more like a lead weight.” Amusing, in a terribly sad way, are Salzman's spot on musings on the imaginary male poet who feels "'belittled by being included in an anthology of male poets, and visualizes “the long-awaited publication of Men Poets of the Twentieth Century'."

On the subject of "Women" anthologies in general, Greer weighs in with:

Unsurprisingly, the blokes like the girls best when they write like the blokes, and extra-specially when they write about girls the way the blokes do. It suits the male poet to believe that neither sex is specifically intended because it encourages him in his view that his specificity is actually universality. The woman poet who knowingly plays the game is not so much a ventriloquist as a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Say no more, she says (blokily).

Finch, in an effort to create an environment where such issues can be discussed, has joined with UK poet Jane Holland and launched the Poetic Justice forum and invited all interested to launch in.

The link also has a sub-link to a great link to a Guardian article and a public letter from Greer to the new UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy in which she talks about loyalties, fetish and avoiding the pitfalls of something she calls "nigger nobility."

And as an extra treat, Jill Dowson wrote a great article called "Humming an entirely different tune’?: A case study of anthologies: Women’s Poetry of the 1930s"

Enough. Back to writing.

Writing on...summer writing

2009-06-01T18:05:00.002-04:00

Well, it took about 10 days to get back into writing this summer. But I'm there now. The routine is in place and seems to be working.

And the routine only goes to show me what an insanely lucky woman I am. Now that the weather is hot and muggy, I sleep out on my screen porch in a tiny narrow bed. So I go to sleep to frogs singing and various unknown animals criss-crossin my yard. And I wake up to a Will-Poor-Will. Yes, one of those. He turned up a few days ago and I hope he's here to stay. I love the sound he makes. Now if I could only entice an owl...

I make coffee, allow myself one pass at the emails and then spend fifteen minutes re-reading the last few pages from the previous day. That seems to refocus my brain. I then write until noon. I'm lucky enough to be working through the fourteen chapters I drafted last summer. I think I'll be adding another six or eight to get my characters through the woods and back on the bus.

It's good to be feeling like a writer again.

Writing on . . . Recession and world-wide publishing

2009-05-23T10:19:00.003-04:00

It's hitting everywhere. My own publisher, Permanent Press, came out with a $88 deal which provides all subscribers with a copy of every 2009 title. A good deal. Brand new books for around $10 each.

And today I see that Salt Publishing in the UK is in trouble. Another great independant publisher who relies on grants and patronage for survival. Hard enough in the best of times, but in the worst of times? Nigh on impossible. They're using the Facebook community to ask their friends to go online and buy a book. If enough people do this, they'll scrape through. I took the opportunity to sign up for their fifty quid USA offer - five books in the mail. Works out about $18 each including postage. Not bad for brand new fiction.

It's important we keep reading. It's even more important that we keep reading quality fiction and nonfiction. For writers, it's also important that we support the independant publishers. They're the ones who give new writers a chance.

Writing on . . . Marilyn French

2009-05-07T08:42:00.002-04:00

“Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?” : Marilyn French

My first husband's sister, who was never my biggest fan, handed me a copy of Marilyn French's book The Women's Room back in 1978. It was a dog-eared paperback - a "pass on" rather than a shiny gift. I wasn't a reader back then. Or rather, I was a new reader. Jim had been schooling me with Thomas Hardy, handing me novels and then quizzing me in The Swan on Friday nights.

I read French. I couldn't put her down. Each page seemed to put into words the issues I was grappling with as a girl/woman growing up in the seventies. I got it. I finally got it. The path that had been marked out for me--marriage, pin-money, part-time job, kids--suddenly split. There were other options--politically, socially, sexually.

But I took the book too late. I was engaged and the wedding invitations had been sent out. Marilyn French had shown me my choices and like a true working-class girl of the seventies, I put on my white dress and took the cinderpath.

French dogged me through the next thirty years. I read and re-read the book. I did as Penny did and handed the book on to my sisters and friends. I watch Lee Remick in the TV movie and fell in love with her. I divorced and read "Beyond Power." At 39, I went to college. I grew into those choices that French showed me.

French, 79, died this week of heart failure.

Writing on . . . Reflecting on Habits

2009-04-22T09:08:00.002-04:00

I'm working on a list of questions for my Intro Creative students to help them with their final project - a creative nonfiction piece that explores their development as a writer during the past 16 weeks. As I came up with questions, I realised that my own answers shone a light over my writing life. I haven't taken stock since graduating from Stonecoast in 2007. I think it's something I might try and do on a regular basis. Here are some of the questions.

1. What did you want to learn about creative writing on day one? What do you think you have learned—about writing and about yourself?

2. You’re probably still nervous about writing. That’s a good thing. Are you still nervous about the same things you cited on day one?

3. You chose three words to describe your writing self and style on day one. Have those words changed? Why? Why not?

4. If you could meet any of the writers from the "Readings" sections of Sellers' book and buy them dinner/lunch/coffee/a beer, who would you choose? Where would you take them? Why? What questions would you ask them?

5. Let’s assume you’re going to carry on with this writing thing. Ask yourself some questions about your current habits and how they might need to change:

a. Do you write every day? If you do, is this a good idea? If you don’t, is this a good idea?
b. Do you talk too much about writing without writing enough?
c. Does fear stop you writing? What are you scared about? Specifically?
d. Do you give yourself enough time and space and materials to write? If not, why not? How might you make changes to do this?
e. Do your friends control your work schedule or do you?
f. What do you need to do to revise your writing life?
g. Is there something you would like to write but feel it is too prickly/scary/dangerous/revealing? How could you get closer to writing this?

I liked Heather Sellers' book The Practice of Creative Writing as lot more as I worked through it. I'd definitely use it again.

School's out from Friday 1st May. Then I have 24 portfolios to grade. I'm really looking forward to reading them!

Writing on . . . plans for the sequel

2009-04-07T11:16:00.002-04:00

My Australian publisher, Scribe, is including links to authors' blogsites on its main page. I'm hoping it might up my traffic a little and maybe spur some more sales. I had a nice response from Cameron Woodhead at the Aussy journal The Age recently:

'There's been a lot of talk about tweens lately. Goodjohn presents their fragile world, before it is punctuated by the stark realities of growing up poor, with poignancy and humour.'

It spurred me on to firm up plans for the sequel. The Beginning Things takes Tot and her family into the late seventies. Tot's around 12 years old (still one of Woodhead's tweens ) and her life expands when her grandfather moves in. Tot's anxious to define love and her grandfather is just anxious!

I'm hoping to spend a month in the summer writing and fishing on the Fox river in Michegan's UP. Hopefully, by the end of August, I will have completed the first draft.

Writing on . . . Bukowski

2009-03-12T08:52:00.003-04:00

Here's Bukowski opening up the curtains to let a little light in (from his book Betting on the Muse)

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Writing on . . . Reciprocation in Hard Times

2009-03-11T16:51:00.002-04:00

Apparently, we're living in hard times. My skinny little personal 401 is on life-support--fluids only. My IRA is confused and is giving me grief rather than interest. Even Dr. Phil tells us it's tough out there; given his shameless plugs for Walmart and Sams, he's feeling the pinch too.

At Chicago's AWP this year, Janet Burroway made a plea on behalf of the struggling independant press. She asked the audience to buy direct from the publisher, rather than routing purchases via the big box bookshops such as Amazon, Sams, and Barnes & Noble. She's right. If we don't support the independant publisher, new authors won't stand a hope in hell of breaking into print.

We have to hold the hand that might ultimately feed us. We have to support the industry and fellow artists.

I bought Fiona Branson's Ukelele Peace Song today at iTunes. For anyone who's read my book, Fiona's house is the Damson's house. Their piano is her dad's piano. There's a bit of Fiona in Dorothy, Lilly and Stacey. She's a pal. She bought my book / I bought her iTune.
We have to do that. We have to. If writers--established and fledgling--don't buy books and art and support new authors and artists, why should anyone else?

We have to buy things all the time, even when times are hard: birthday presents, Easter gifts, wedding presents. We could take all those events and buy something that supports the arts: a subscription to a literary mag, a debut novel straight from the publisher, His 'n Her CDs from our favorite new recording star.

What have you done recently to support the industry? We're a creative bunch - there must be creative solutions out there. I have a feeling this is going to be a long, lean spell and we need to work out how to survive it.

Writing on . . . releasing books

2009-03-08T17:33:00.002-04:00

The weather here in Lynchburg is gorgeous. Mid seventies and blue sky. Having stapled some more insulation to my screen porch (a never-ending diy project) and run some landscape fabric around the base of 1/8th of my new fencing (another never-ending diy project), I felt deserving of an hour on my narrow little single bed out in the screen porch with a good book. Bubs climbed up there with me and as he snored, I read.

After about 30 minutes, I realised the book wasn't doing it for me. I've been reading it in 30 minute burst for about ten days and I'm about 2/3rds through. And then I remembered that Kay had mentioned Bookcrossing.

So I book-crossed that one and another. I'm releasing them tomorrow in Lynchburg. What fun! I get to send them out into the world and see if anyone picks them up and re-releases them.

Another two books off my shelf!

Writing on . . . Baron Wormser and the idea of fallow

2009-03-06T19:28:00.002-05:00

Baron was my mentor for two semesters at Stonecoast's MFA and I was blessed to be able to work with such an accomplished writer one-on-one as I put together my own poetry manuscript The Weather House. This is an extract from an interview he gave to Writer's Chronicle. The interviewer is fellow Stonecoast alumnus Renee Olander:

O: Do you have fallow periods? Do you worry about not writing?

W: No, I don't worry. I really don't believe in worrying, as far as writing's concerned at least, because it really doesn't do any good, does it? You wind up doing what you do, and you don't know where it comes from, so it seems like a false sense of control - if you worry, you can somehow will it into being, or if you keep close tabs on it - because you don't know what's going on anyway, in this vast subsconscious - who knows? So no, no worry.

That helps!

Writing on . . . Shoulds, Oughts and Bookshelves

2009-03-04T10:17:00.003-05:00

I had the pleasure of coffee with M at Starbucks last night. There's something about M. Maybe her openness and frankness about herself fosters the same in me - at least, when I'm with her. When she arrived, I still had the headache I had woken up with. I was grumpy with everyone in the place; a giggle of girls were multiplying like amoeba in the corner, businessmen were talking business L O U D L Y and the damn espresso machine was N O I S Y. I was struggling with a lesson plan and aware that something was out of whack in my world. I just wasn't sure what it was.

And then M arrived and smiled and asked how I was and slowly it all began to flow, puncutated only by her strangely comforting way of saying "ah ha, " or "mm" or however one spells that encouraging noise she makes when you're talking and she's actively listening. We talked about everything: teaching, writing, love, partners, AWP, marriage, dogs, pre-nups, affirmations, morning rituals.

Because of M's grandmother and M's advice, I took five books off my bookshelf today. I chose the five because they made me feel bad. They made me feel bad because they fell into one of the following catagories:

* Classic: Began to read and disliked (Don Quixote: Cervantes)
* Classic: Bought because I should read it and never have (Lord Jim: Conrad)
* Classic: Bought, loved and have two copies (Wuthering Heights: Bronte)
* Contemporary Fiction: Bought because a contemporary writer should like this book and I didn't and didn't finish it (Eating Naked: Dobyns)
* Contemporary Fiction: Bought, loved but probably won't read again (Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight: Brown-Davidson)

I'm going to put the first four on my bookshelf at work since I have six empty shelves and the spines look interesting. The fifth I shall hand on. There's a shelf in the English Department where we can put free books and I like to think that someone else might like the Brown-Davidson and maybe buy another of her titles.

Eleven more shelves and a lifetime to go.

(Marilyn: I DO know who I am!)

Writing on . . . a Valentine

2009-02-13T20:39:00.003-05:00

I'm in Chicago and unable to deliver flowers, a card, a kiss, so I'm handing over a first draft, a very shaky draft. I suppose that's what love does - it makes you take risks.

What I have learned as a lover: a poem for Ish, my best friend
After Gary Snyder’s poem of nearly the same name

All I know about boys, boys growing up in your home town, your home.
The names of Detroit’s streets and the boys growing up there, taller than you.
That boys play at being men from the point they can shout/snare/throw a stick/apple/words.
The names of your sister’s boyfriends, and the way you found magic in running through grasses/mud/water/stretched summers with a friend.
The best way to serve cabbage, with butter, black pepper, cornbread and pintos.

How to unpack a twenty-eight year old tent, unravel its guy ropes, pitch it, live in it, love in it, and then pack it away so it still looks and feels brand new.
How to bank ashes to a glow, how to blow them to flame in the morning for cowboy coffee.
How to make cowboy coffee.
How to drink it black.

Patience.
The illusion of yesterday, its dreams and of tomorrow’s expectations.
To kiss the ass of The Past—yours and mine—and eat its fake-scented shit without choking.
How to fuck The Past’s boney honeyed cock, the white-frocked Prophet of Doom and her beribboned handmaidens: Doubt, Promise and that selfish little bitch, Esteem.

How to love the man, his body: his tight coiled ears, the nubs of bone, like little knees, at each shoulder, the stork’s peck on his leg, his hamster wheel mind, the way he sighs hard on each exhalation of effort, his foot on mine.

Importance:
Of skin, how it calls for company, of slicing onions thick, of jails, bad paint jobs in church basements, cookies, coffee, all twelve steps.

Of Love; the way a mother can save a boy, hold him up in water, shape a smile from panic, how a mother can scratch a boy to sleep.

Writing on . . . Diagramming Sentences

2009-02-10T11:13:00.004-05:00

I couldn't resist this from the grammar wing of the commnet.edu site:

ASK MR. LANGUAGE PERSON

Q. Please explain how to diagram a sentence.

A. First spread the sentence out on a clean, flat surface, such as an ironing board. Then, using a sharp pencil or X-Acto knife, locate the "predicate," which indicates where the action has taken place and is usually located directly behind the gills. For example, in the sentence: "LaMont never would of bit a forest ranger," the action probably took place in a forest. Thus your diagram would be shaped like a little tree with branches sticking out of it to indicate the locations of the various particles of speech, such as your gerunds, proverbs, adjutants, etc.
— Dave Barry

Yes, we know. "Would of bit" is an unacceptable spelling of "would have bitten," but Mr. Language Person is not very bright and to change his spelling would be just plain sic.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/diagrams/diagrams.htm

Writing on . . . Love, Clowns and Endurance

2009-01-28T09:26:00.003-05:00

One of the things I like about the Def Poetry series is the way each episode starts with Mos Def reading a well-known poet's work. It feels like a tribute from one poet to another and also works as a smooth easing-in to what follows. Episode Two starts with Shakespeare's "Sweet and Twenty." It's taken from Twelfth Night and is the clown's response to a request for a song. The clown asks Sir Andrew and Sir Toby if they would like a love song or a song of life. They request a love song, and this exchange is mirrored later in the Def Poetry episode when Jewel Kilcher asks the audience if they would like a love poem or a "song of life."

Everyone, past and present, goes for love:

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What 's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty!
Youth 's a stuff will not endure.

It seems, unlike youth, love--or at least our desire for it--certainly endures.

Exercise . . . Kincaid Imitation

2009-01-27T06:47:00.001-05:00

(From a recent class)
Kincaid’s "Girl" deals with advice given and received. Take a moment to pick an instance from your life when you have either given or received advice. Re-read Kincaid’s “Girl” and get ready to write your own imitation.

End each line with a semi-colon and the poem with a question mark. Have the Kincaid open as you move through each line. Write fast. Here we go!

1. Write a command starting with a verb (i.e. Bend the beans to see if they snap;)
2. Write a command starting with the same verb (i.e. Bend the carrots to see if they’re old;)
3. A “don’t” command (i.e. Don’t let the man with the beard and apron see you bending his vegetables;)
4. Command starting with a verb;
5. Command starting with a verb;
6. General advice;
7. Command starting with a verb;
8. Question about truth that includes a day of the week;
9. An “always” command;
10. Advice using the same day of the week;
11. Command using the same day of the week;
12. A “don’t” command.;
13. Response from speaker “B”;
14. “This is how to” line;
15. “This is how to” line using same verb as the previous line;
16. “This is how to” line using same verb as the previous two lines;
17. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
18. “This is how you” line using the same verb as the previous line;
19. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
20. “This is how you” line using the same verb as the previous line;
21. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
22. A “don’t” command;
23. “This is how to” line using a new verb;
24. “This is how to” using the same verb as the previous line;
25. italicized response from speaker “B”;
26. Question from speaker “A” that starts “You mean to say…?”;

Things to consider as you revise. Kincaid has high energy moments. Her advice about avoiding sluthood is an example. Another is the turn to blackbirds and spit. Try to incorporate some energy peaks in your own piece. Also, Kincaid tells us something about things we probably didn’t recognize– benna and duokona. Try and tell your reader something new in your own piece.

Markets . . . Fugue (poetry and prose)

2009-01-26T14:34:00.003-05:00

There is a reading fee, but it includes a year's subscription to the journal. Because of that, it gets into my list of "good ideas." And due to a cursory rejection from Sonoma, I have some pieces that are still looking for a home.

Here goes (taken from the Stonecoast Newsletter - thanks, guys):

The editors at Fugue, the literary journal from the University of Idaho, are pleased to announce our 8th Annual Poetry and Prose Contest, which awards its first-place winners with $1000 in prize money and publication in Fugue, with publication for 2nd and 3rd place finishers. This year, we will be reading for nonfiction and poetry. We're excited about our two accomplished judges: Patricia Hampl (nonfiction) and BH Fairchild (poetry). See below for details about how to participate--it couldn't be easier!

Submissions for nonfiction may be up to 10,000 words, and poetry submissions may include up to three poems or five pages. Send your submission, along with a $20 reading fee, which includes a 1 year subscription to the journal, to Fugue: 200 Brink Hall, University of Idaho, PO Box 441102, Moscow Idaho 83844-1102. Clearly mark your entry Poetry Contest or Nonfiction Contest, and be sure to include a SASE if you'd like to receive the contest results. The postmark deadline for submissions is May 1, 2009.

If you'd like a sample copy of our newest issue (with contest winners from 2008), we're happy to send you one for $8. You can also visit our website at www.uidaho.edu/fugue. Thank you for your attention, and we hope to have the pleasure of reading your work in the spring.

Writing on . . . audio companions

2009-01-22T10:40:00.003-05:00

I found a CD just before the semester began. It's an audio companion to the Norton English Lit 7th Edition set, but there's no play list. It's been an adventue listening to all the poems and readings--some I know and some I don't.

As I was driving into college this morning, I listened to a great rendition of Burns' "Tam O'Shanter" and was blown away by the following lines on the concept of pleasure:

"But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white - then melts forever;
Or like the Borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evaneshing amid the storm.-"

I'm not sure which image works more beautifully--the poppy or the snow. All are exquisite.

There is nothing like starting your day with a little Robbie Burns on the CD and a dog's wet nose in your hand.

Writing on . . . colleague publishes

2009-01-15T07:46:00.003-05:00

There's a new ritual to my mornings (there's always been a ritual of some kind of another--some healthy, some not so). Nowadays, I'm woken up by a large dog moving around my tiny house in search of catfood/toys/squirrels/shadows/people he used to know. I trust him enough now to let him out of the door on his own while I make coffee, soak his dry food in boullion, give "bad for him" milk to my British cat. When the dog returns (who knew a dog could run like a girl), I feed him breakfast, grab a shower and then pick up email. Picking up the email is liked plugging in the day. Friends recommend friends, my google sniffer tells me how I'm doing and searches for dead poets across American. Amazon sends offers and pals send me jokes/recipes for crostini/lewd pictures/news. My day begins to buzz. I stretch into it.

Today, among news of snow at Wintergreen and a compendium of hints on how to recycle carrier bags, my pal, Laura Long, from Lynchburg College touches base and tells me news of her forthcoming book Imagine a Door, coming out soon through Turning Point. I have to admit to a quick twist of envy--I'm slogging through old and new poems, trying to put together a cohesive collection of my own. So I take a quick peek at the cover and then click on their submissions link and see if they might be a home for my poor deformed children. Then I'm back at Laura's book page, and I'm reading through an online selection. Her "West Virginia Catholic Girl" pulls me in, and while I'm not Catholic or from West Virginia, her poem talks to one of mine.

That's the way poems go. They push connections. They make us see connections in our lives...and differences. Tiny lighbulbs and signposts. Deadends and highways.

Congratulations, Laura. I'm not 100% sure when it's coming out, but the main thing is, it's coming out!

Writing on . . . Review

2009-01-11T09:36:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I've had a review on "Sticklebacks and Snow Globes." In fact, the last "response" I had was a $50 check for 2008 Royalties! I took a hit during the year on booksellers' returns. So while I sold a few, this was the year that the book became a little warm rather than hot and the shops wanted shelf space back for the new wave of debuts.

So it was nice to have my Google sniffer come across this review from Lily. It's doubly special because it's an Australian review and while there have been a few from the industry, I think this is the first "reader" response I've seen.

I think it's important to think hard about expectations when you're a writer. In the beginning, I have to admit to sparkly daydreams about being "discovered" and sitting on O's sofa maybe. They didn't devalue the work. They didn't change the way I approached the task. When I was finally published, I began to realize that the razzle was in my own mind. There were thousands of new authors clutching contracts across America and we all hoped we would make the New Yorker.

While the New Yorker didn't happen for this first book, I did make a TimeOut and NPR. But the main "profit" from the book was that its publication made me resolved to continue writing and to hope a little. That idea of Hope is my touchstone for 2009--not just for writing but for my whole life. Maya Angelou said it was important to look forward with hope and that's my meditation focus for the year.

Oh, and it also made it possible for me to switch careers. An MFA and a book can open doors. After taking the ultimate risk and ditching my 9-5 (and its 401 and health cover) to adjunct for a year, I finally landed a full-time job teaching and running a writing program. It doesn't get much better than that.

2009 plus hope. Sounds pretty good.

Writing On . . . Automated Submissions

2009-01-02T19:29:00.003-05:00

I'd pledged to myself to work on my Weather House manuscript this winter break and to that end, I have about 40 pages of poetry. I need 48...

So, while I work on a few new pieces, I decided to get back into the submission saddle. I'd like to have some work in Meridian, what with it being a local literary. I had a copy on my bookshelf so flicked to the back to find out what their submission criteria were (dates, number of poems, cost etc) and came across their advertisement for http://www.manuscripthub.com/ - their new automated submission process.

It looks pretty good. The idea is that literaries - not just Meridian - use one site for submissions. Writers can upload their work and then decide to whom they want to send each poem/story/play etc. Payment is electronic and it makes tracking your submissions a piece of cake.

I ended up submitting to Meridian's competition and to Sonoma. They had three other literaries up there on the hub, but none of them were accepting submissions.

Meridian cost me $16 but that included a year's subscription (4 issues) and Sonoma was a mere $2. I think the $2 is a pretty good deal. I didn't need to print anything out. No envelope. No return envelope with a stamp and no postage to pay (plus no trip to the post office).

I like electronic. I submitted my novel electronically to Permanent Press, read my galley proofs via a PDF and submitted corrections via email. So sending in poetry electronically feels like no huge leap.

I'm sure there are those who feel the process lacks a little soul but it worked for me today. I sent off eight poems in less than ten minutes and am now feeling very virtuous.

Market . . . Meridian (out of UVa)

2008-12-22T14:12:00.000-05:00

(from UMa Stonecoast MFA Newsletter):

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: MERIDIAN EDITORS’ FICTION AND POETRY PRIZE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Award: $1000
Deadline: January 7, 2009

The $16 entry fee includes a subscription to Meridian. Submit electronically through www.manuscripthub.com.

Poets can upload four poems per entry. Fiction writers may submit one story of 10,000 words or fewer per entry. Please do NOT put your name on the work you submit so that it stays "blind" to our readers. ManuscriptHub links the submission to your contact information, so there is no need to put your name or address on the submission itself.

Event . . . Watermarks Poetry Comp: Deadline 12/1

2008-11-28T23:19:00.003-05:00

Lovers of Ekphrastic poetry might be interested in a local competition that's open to all levels and centers on a current exhibition at our own Maier Museum. Works from the museum's main collection that have some connection with water are offered as inspiration for original poems. All levels (and ages) of poet are welcome. Visit the Museum's web site for an on-line glimpse of some of the paintings in the exhibition. Deadline is December 1 (Monday) but submissions can be made via email.

(From the Maier Website:)

Water Lines: Maier Museum of Art Poetry Contest
The Maier invites poets of all ages and abilities to come to the Maier, be inspired by artwork in the special exhibition Water Marks: Selections from the Permanent Collection, write a poem about a work of art that especially moves them, and submit it for possible inclusion in the forthcoming publication Water Lines. Deadline for applications is December 1, 2008. Want more information? Pick up a submission form at the Museum, or click here.

Writing on . . . Presidential Poets

2008-11-22T09:01:00.007-05:00

Poetry has always loved politics; whether clamoring for social reform or railing against war, poets have torn inspiration from the political landscape. Presidents have also seemed keen to include poets in their plans. At least, in their inaugural plans: Kennedy asked Frost to write an inaugural poem; Clinton asked Maya Angelou, and she gave him "On the Pulse of Morning," a poem about war, deviciveness and peace.

We're told that President Elect Obama has been known to both leaf through a poetry book in his time and to write a few of his own. Online discussions abound about which poet he might ask to write for his own inauguration. Angelou says while she's writing poetry about him, she doesn't think it likely that he will be asking her for anything in an official capacity. As she puts it, she's "somebody else's poet."

Possible candidates are Rita Dove, Patricia Smith, Lucille Clifton, Derek Walcott and Nikki Giovani--to name but a few. A visitor to the About.Com.:Poetry.com poetry forum suggested he choose someone young to represent the new voters stirred into suffrage this month. Any of these poets would be a fabulous choice, but whoever he chooses, I hope he picks on grounds of poetry.

If it's thoughts on war he wants, it's a shame that Thomas Hardy isn't still around to do the job. I know he's a dead British poet, rather than a breathing American one, but his thoughts on war cross both the battle lines of time and culture. He ends the title page of The Dynasts, with a latin epigraph: "Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando," which translates to "And I heard sounds of insult, shame and wrong / and trumpets blown for wars."

Let's hope the trumpets sound a little more softly in the four years to come.

Event . . . Poetry Jack 8:00pm Randolph College

2008-11-19T09:31:00.003-05:00

11/19: 8 P.M. Poetry Reading by Kelsea Habecker ’98
Alice Ashley Jack Room, Smith Memorial Bldg.
Reading from her first book Hollow Out.

Writing on . . . Acrostics

2008-11-14T07:39:00.001-05:00

The next time you’re blogging about your slag of a boss’s annoying habit of calling meetings ten minutes before the end of the day, or dissing your local electrical store or high school teacher on a “Rate your Microwave/Professor” site, consider adding a line or two praising the concept of free speech and thank your stars (and maybe stripes) that you don’t live in Burma. From the BBC news site:

Another dissident, Saw Wai, was sentenced to two years in jail for publishing a poem mocking Than Shwe in the weekly Love Journal. The first words of each line of the Burmese language poem spelled out the message "Senior General Than Shwe is foolish with power".

A colleague of Wai’s received a 20 year sentence for blogging a cartoon mocking the same military leader.

I’m not a fan of acrostic poetry, but I value my right to write it without ending up in orange. Maybe we should all write a verse or two in support of Wai and his colleague and send them to the Burmese authorities?

Markets . . . Persimmons

2008-11-10T20:44:00.004-05:00

(which, I have on good authority, is not pronounced PERCY-mons).

If you're a woman writer over the age of 60, this may interest you (if you're under 60, please forward the information):

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: PERSIMMON TREE

An on-line literary magazine for women over 60
Deadline: November 1- December 15th.

We are seeking previously unpublished poems for the March 2009 issue from women over sixty who live in West Coast states (WA, OR, CA, HI, AK). We're pleased to announce that Lorrie Goldensohn will be the Guest Poetry Editor for this issue. She will select ten poets for publication from the entries. Poetry manuscripts must use the following guidelines to be considered:

— Previously unpublished poems should be emailed between Nov. 1, 2008 and Dec. 15, 2008. (Poems that arrive earlier or later will not be read.) The address is lorriepersimmon@gmail.com. Poems sent directly to Persimmon Tree will not be forwarded.

— Include 1-3 poems in a single WORD attachment. No poem may be longer than a page; use 12 point type.
— In the subject line of the email message, type POETRY FOR PT. In the body of the message, include your name, phone number, and postal mailing address.

http://www.persimmontree.org

(info received from Stonecoast MFA November 2008 newsletter)

Writing on . . . Spurs and Mike, the Mechanic

2008-11-04T08:38:00.001-05:00

I've been in something of a creative void recently. I've written lecture notes, lesson plans, shopping lists, the odd letter, but nothing remotely creative. No fledgling poems. No draft chapters.

Then last week, I went to dinner with a bunch of writers, and we talked about reinstating an old "spur"; Each Sunday, by midnight, we'd email each other a draft poem or a page or two of prose. That was all. No need for polish or critique. The emphasis was on the creation, rather than on the perfecting.

Later that week, during an hour spent waiting for my state inspection, I browsed the only book I had in the boot: a guide book to improving your creativity (sorry, Kristin - I thought I had given this back to you!).

Both of these incidents "broke through" the void. On Saturday, I found myself writing at a picnic table at the Blowing Springs campsite on Saturday while stroking a pair of burnt mechanic's gloves and staring at an apple tree . Let me put that in context:

I was camping with J and while cooking breakfast, he had burnt through the finger of his glove. He told me he'd found them--a pair of mechanic's gloves--in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble several years ago. He said they were ideal for camping. How strange, I thought. Gloves that used to handle wrenches and turn bolts were now turning bacon. I wondered what they thought about that. After breakfast, J went to pull dead branches from an apple tree. He had to climb it and spent an hour throwing down wood and the last of the season's apples. He hadn't climbed a tree for years, and here he was, on a camping trip, rediscovering the experience.

The poems came from all these things. What would mechanics gloves think about camping? What might you find in an apple tree you hadn't climbed for three decades? What "dead wood" might be up there? What kind of apples? How many synonyms are there for "plucking"?

I have two very scruffy poems that might go somewhere or might not. But the pen was moving on Saturday and that's what's important.

Writing on . . . Comparison Synthesis

2008-10-16T13:45:00.004-04:00

Scene: A quiet Starbucks at mid-day. A Barista sits at the end of the counter reading and writing. A young woman arrives, heavily made-up and stick thin, and orders a skinny latte and oatmeal. She walks over to the Barista while stirring her oatmeal.

Woman: Hey, Honey. Whatcha' doin'?
Barista: Studying.
Woman: Yeah? Cool. Watcha' studying?
Barista: Faulkner.
Woman: Yeah?
Barista: (nodding) Yeah. And Hemingway.
Woman: Oh.
Barista: For a comparison synthesis. Looking at dialogue and setting. Impetus. Arc. Motivation . . .
Woman: (Stirs oatmeal vigorously) I was going to do a Masters.
Barista: Yeah?
Woman. Yeah. Didn't though.
Barista: Why not?
Woman: (Laughs) Too boring! Too B O R I N G !
Barista: Ah well. Back to Faulkner.
Woman: Too much life to live! Carté Deema and all that!
Barista: Deema indeed.
Woman: (Hugging Barista) Poor baby! Gotta run. Boss needs his latté.

Barista watches her leave the coffee shop and walk into the shoe shop next door. He stretches, runs hands through hair, then returns to his books.

Writing on . . . Etymology

2008-10-14T11:23:00.007-04:00

I was 'poked' the other day, and I wasn't sure how to take it. If I had been poked in Britain, I would have known what was going down, but to be poked by a fellow Brit whilst living in America? And to be electronically poked? On Facebook?

Being a Facebook poke, I could have just clicked and poked back. But what would that mean? What message would I be sending the Poker? What would it mean to be a Pokee?

So I did nothing.

Until this morning. That Poke was still sitting there, unacknowledged and hanging. I reached for the American Heritage Dictionary and looked up "poke." I found bonnets, plants, pushes, teases, and sacks. I found the root was Middle English from Poken, Germanic from Poke and Algonquin from Paken.

Hmm.

Then I googled. I found an article from the Telegraph talking about the effect of Facebook on language. Indeed, according to the Collins dictionary, 'to Facebook' is a bonafide verb. And a noun. And Paris, the article's author, also helped me out with the whole poke issue.

That's the beauty of language--it keeps growing up. Back in the American Heritage, the study of words, etymology, is defined as "the original and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning, tracing its transmission from one language to another, and identifying its cognates in other languages." In years to come, a visitor to the Collins will work out what it means to be Facebooked, that one couldn't be Facebooked officially until 2008, and that they have social networking to thank for the experience.

So Russell, thanks. I'm going to poke you back, in a decidedly non-British way :).

Writing on . . . Remaindering

2008-10-12T21:55:00.002-04:00

Remaindering is the practice whereby unsold books which remain at the publishing house are disposed of - sometimes by selling them off at huge discounts to stores like Sams or by destroying them (shredding or burning usually). My own contract with PP says that if they want to remainder my books, they have to give me the opportunity to match any third party (i.e. Sam's) offer.

The idea of being "remaindered" used to fill me with dread. I mean, how much worse can it get than to see one's baby on the "75% OFF" stall at some giant discount store, next to a selection of coloring books (with crayons) and The Dummy's Guide to Macramé.

But no longer. I have just finished Hardy's The Return of the Native. I collect Norton Critical editions because I enjoy the critical essays at the back. In addition to the essays, they usually include some kind of historical wash-up, and in the "Composition, Publication, and Scholarship" section appears the following note:

The Return of the Native was published at 31s. 6d. in an edition of 1000 copies on 4 November 1878. The reviews were not flattering, and in 1882 there were 100 quires [unbound copies of the book] and 22 copies in cloth to be remaindered. (322)

It seems that the book was lucky to have been published at all; it was turned down by a number of publishers - book and magazine. Leslie Stephen of the Cornhill magazine turned it down because he felt that the relationship between Eustacia, Wildeve and Thomasic might get a little too dodgy for the magazine readership to handle.

I often imagine that the classics enjoyed plain sailing into publication. I'm finding out again and again that this wasn't so.

Writing on . . . a Quietus

2008-10-02T11:07:00.006-04:00

I've always loved Lawrence--ever since seeing Glenda Jackson in Women in Love. I came to his poetry late, in one of Jim's classes back in 2000 or 2001. I remember coming across his poem "The Ship of Death" during class. It struck me as answering so many of my questions about death and the afterlife. It seemed to explain the journey from here to there.

The opening strophe sets the scene:

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.

Lawrence wrote the poem a year before he died. He had visited Italy and while visiting a tomb had discovered a tiny boat buried along with the body. He was fascinated with "the little bronze ship that should bear him over to the other world, the vases of jewels for his arraying, the vases of small dishes, the little bronze statuettes and tools, the weapons, the armor; all the amazing impedimenta of the important dead" (Norton Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vol 1. 342).

The poem traces the journey through all its steps, and while the opening strophe sets the scene for the poem, the fourth strophe sets the scene, for me, for Shane's memorial service tomorrow:

O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus, make?

and then the final strophe, where Lawrence describes the homecoming and ends with a warning for us all, we who wait, perhaps too passively, for this 'quietus':

The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.

Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.

Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

It's a great poem that is strangely full of hope. I like to think of Shane emerging strange and lovely and at peace.

Writing on . . . For Shane

2008-09-30T22:37:00.005-04:00

Shane Bozeman

You're running now, Shane. But to, this time, not from.

Miss you, Sweetie. This one was always for you.

Unity, Recovery, Service

We play an odds game, James and I,
alumni of Pathways, where 80% go back out,
relapse, so we up our chances through service:
set up the Friday 12-step meeting, make coffee,
unfold streets of metal chairs.

He was quiet in the car tonight--
threw his crutches into my back seat
like two bad children. I’ve caught his mood,
and bitch at the coffee urn, while James,
crippled from birth and cocaine,
slides slowly down the kitchen cabinets to his knees,
retrieves the basket of plastic sobriety chips.

We win these chips--hard-earned like scars:
the first, white for good intentions, picked up shaking, dirty, day one in rehab,
then red for one month clean, rewards before the insurance dies.

James is cursing a tune, something basey, one shoulder blading time
through his jersey. He catches my stare, flips me
a sixty-day chip, green like glass, across the counter.
“Just don’t ask how the fuck I am,” he says,
begins his slow solo tango across the room,
designer running shoes whining irony against the lino.

Outside, the parking lot’s filling up: old timers,
patients, a knot of drunks in search of heat.
Down here, James has danced his way to the table
beneath the Twelve Step banner. He’s paddling his fingers
in the plastic chips when Danny the Clock, eighteen years sober
and always the first to arrive, snares me in a hug,
like a rabbit in a trap.

Over Danny’s shoulder, the smell of watch oil ingrained
in wool, I watch James pull two chips from his pocket
--one white, one red--and return them to the basket.
Danny’s rubbing my back too hard, whispering that God
is keeping us sober.

But James and I know it’s a game of winners
and losers. He holds up a new, clean, white chip,
toasts me with the contents of his sippy cup.

Writing on . . . Donnie Darko

2008-09-13T22:27:00.002-04:00

I'm a Netflicks customer. My queue runs to about 35 titles at any one time, and I tend to add titles onto the end of my queue rather than hustling them up to the top of the list.

That means that by the time the films arrive in the mail, I often have no idea why I've chosen them. Maybe it's because of the director (a slew of Polanski films), or an actor (Bob Hoskins in everything from the Merchant of Venice to Mona Lisa.

This weekend contained a mystery. Why on earth had I chosen Donnie Darko? The write-up was uninspiring. Troubled teen is haunted by visions . . . of a rabbit. It had all the hallmarks of Hoskins and Who Killed Roger Rabbit - but Hoskins wasn't in it. And I'd never heard of Richard Kelly, the director, so that couldn't have been behind the choice. But Patrick Swayze was on the cast list, so maybe...? (I have a soft spot for Mr. Swayze ever since watching North and South when I was fifteen and hankering for a firm hand.) But rabbits? Troubled teens?

Two hours and 13 minutes later, I can only say that I am stunned and amazed by this "edgy psychological thriller." It is perhaps one of the most interesting films I have seen in the past year and I can understand its "cult" label. The lead, Jake Gyllenhaal - the boy with a face that can brood into malevolence at the sudden appearance of a . . . rabbit - played a mesmerizingly good, troubled teen. The rabbit was macabre and menacing. The parents were real, the high school kids authentic and the teachers were frighteningly familiar.

Patrick was a little disappointing. Maybe he has to be in Union Blues. Or maybe I have to be fifteen. But Swayze aside, a great film.

Writing on . . . Songwriting Competition

2008-09-05T07:44:00.005-04:00

There's a close and ancient link between song lyrics and poetry. So consider the possibility of moving between the two forms - poets turning to lyrics and lyricists turning to the stanza.

And then consider Rapunzel's 2008 Songwriters' Contest.

Rules: The competition will be held on Friday, October 17 at 8pm.
Prizes:
1st: $200 plus 8 hours at Packing Shed Recordswww.myspace.com/packingshedrecords
2nd: $100
3rd: $50
Entry fee: $15
Cost for spectators: $5
Judges TBA
All entries must be received by Tuesday, October 14.

Each songwriter may submit one original song, which must be performed live before the panel of judges on Friday, October 17.--Songwriters may engage another musician to perform the song on their behalf.--The contest will be open to 30 participants, and entries will be accepted on a first-paid, first-served basis.--Entries must be accompanied by the entry fee and three typewritten copies of the song lyrics, all of which MUST be received no later than Tuesday, October 14.--Entry fees are non-refundable after Tuesday, October 14.--The contest will be judged according to lyrics, melody and composition. --Multiple Songwriters who are members of the same band may enter individually and still present their material as a group; however, no more than two songs may be performed by the same band.--Order of go will be determined according to a draw, which will be held at 7:30pm the night of the contest. You need not be present for the draw, but you MUST be present for whatever slot is pulled. If you miss your slot, you forfeit your entry.

Please send the following information, along with the $15 entry fee and THREE typewritten copies of your lyrics to:Rapunzel's Songwriters' Contest, PO Box 556, Lovingston VA 22949S
detailing Songwriter:Title of Song:Band/musician performing the song (if other than songwriter)
click here for more info

Writing on . . . my parents and home

2008-08-20T22:33:00.012-04:00

On the face of it, this entry has nothing to do with writing. I just found a photo of my parents and great-niece on Facebook and had to stick it up.

Most days, being 4000 miles from the place I was born--the place I kicked around in when I was a kid, rode my bike, kissed my first boy, cried, made other people cry--isn't something I think about. A day is a day is a day. And then other times, I feel very . . . removed.

My niece posted some photos of the family's latest addition - Baby Bea. She's asleep on a procession of laps. In the photos are other things--mugs, cushions, curtains, shoes, nests of tables. They're all things I know intimately. I've held them all. And if I close my eyes, I can reach out my hand and touch them all again. But when I open my eyes, of course, they're not there.

It's late at night here in the USA and the middle of the night in North London. Baby Bea is asleep in her cot, mum has washed up the mugs and put them away in the cabinet over the fridge. Dad has wiped down the kitchen worktop, drawn the curtains, got the breakfast things ready for the morning and climbed the stairs to bed.

Today's technology scatters us, then pretends to bring us back together again with social networks, email, online photograph albums. But it's all just pixels. When you really think about it, we're all spread across imaginary lines and colored patches on the opposite sides of a spinning ball.

Rambling. Maybe what I'm feeling tonight is like what happens when you put your face too close to a picture in a newspaper. Too close and it's just pixels. But when you relax your focus and pull away, it's DC in the sun.

Guess it's time to pull back.

Night, Baby Bea.

Writing on . . . Self-Imposed Deadlines

2008-08-14T17:54:00.002-04:00

I have a week to go before Orientation and two weeks before classes start.

I'm 13 chapters into "The Beginning Things."

And perhaps because I'm compulsive, or hard-headed, or obstinate, or just plain dumb, I've decided I'm going to finish what I started out to do this summer vacation: I'm going to finish the first draft of The Beginning Things.

I feel as if I have perhaps another seven chapters to go. Which really means drafting one chapter a day. Which is madness. Stupidity.

But when did that ever stop me doing anything?

I feel as if Tot and Dan Grad are now breathing and scheming and falling in love and feeling bad and bitter and helpless. I can't leave them like that.

It's like taking a group of school kids on a nature walk. However much fun the walk was, you have to get them back on the bus at the end of the day, or else there'll be hell to pay.

Event . . . Gravity Lounge, Charlottesville

2008-07-29T23:32:00.005-04:00

Writers share common bonds with other artists--sculptors, singers, musicians, photographers etc. We all create something, we hope for audiences for those creations, we often work in isolation, we're often our own worst critics. Seems only right that we should support each other.

But I don't tend to. I can count on one hand the number of live bands I've seen this year. I've been to one gallery to support local artists. I've even been a little slack supporting the word arts; I saw Gary Gildner at Randolph and Tom Stephens' play at The Renaiscence Theatre. That's about it.

We often complain there's nothing to do, but there's quite a lot going on locally.

One great little venue is just up the road in Charlottesville. The Gravity Lounge is tiny and delivers an intimate setting for local bands. They used to host fiction and poetry readings, but their webpage doesn't mention those anymore. They're in a great location on South First Street, which is just down from ample parking on Water Street. And the main pedestrian drag, with a boatload of great restaurants and shops, is about 20 paces away.

John Pringle is playing on Saturday 2nd. His write-up bills him as a cross between Bob Dylan and David Grey, and Pringle cites Wilco as an influence. I'm going to see if I can drag someone up there to see him - if they still have tickets (which you can order on-line).

So, The Gravity Lounge is an option this weekend...and for the rest of the year. Their calendar seems pretty full.

[Pringle photo from his myspace.com page, Gravity banner from the Gravity site]

Writing on . . . What Would Mary Do?

2008-07-27T21:49:00.003-04:00

I took some time off writing and college prep to spend the weekend on the river with J. We took the canoe from Brookneal down to Long Island and stayed the night just down from Fish Trap falls.

I learned lots of new stuff: how to canoe and handle oars, how a blue gill is different to a small-mouthed bass. It was truly beautiful, too. The water had its own identity and went from smooth and silent to choppy and noisy in moments. We slept under the stars on a rock that retained the day's heat right through to morning. I fell asleep counting shooting stars and listening to bull frogs.

J woke me up just after dawn to show me a formation of Canada Geese heading across the river. After breakfast, we pushed off and followed an Egret as it weaved across the river, intent on fishing and avoiding us. We saw herons, an osprey, a bald eagle, otters and heard beavers slapping through hidden water.

Below the boat, there were underwater weed fields, long-nosed carp, tyres, beer cans, rocks and, in the sand, thousands of empty clam shells.

So much new "stuff" and beauty. I felt as if I should be doing something with it all. Composing poetry, word-sketching landscapes, looking for connections. But nothing came. I wondered what Mary Oliver would do if she was sitting in that boat with all this nature above and below. Surely she'd be writing like a mad-woman? Surely she'd have one hand on the oar and another on a pencil?

There is a part of me that wants to be able to record the exact way it feels when you first hear the river turn noisy up ahead, and the green turns to distant white, and how the chaotic froth smoothes to green bent glass just in front of the boat. How the prow of the canoe first slides up and over the shiny water, and then dips nose-first into the hard-cut waves and gathers up a scoop of water as cold and bright as chain.

But I suppose we can't catalogue everything. Perhaps the answer is to be as fully present in the moment as possible so that these things can fully imprint when they're happening. Maybe if they do that, they stick and we can pull on them later on. I hope so.

Writing on . . . Creation

2008-07-23T07:36:00.002-04:00

Rattle’s Alan Fox took some time to talk to poet and English professor Marvin Bell in the Summer 2008 issue. The interview was indepth and full of gems.

In particular, Fox asked Bell about teaching poetry and spontaneity. Bell responded with an anecdote about Ezra Pound who told fellow poet W.S. Merwin it was essential to write 40 new lines of poetry a day. Bell passes this advice to his students but with a fresh twist that fits it for today’s world of PCs, documents and files.

* Day 1: Open a new file on your pc and write forty new lines of poetry – the line count (or word count for fiction) is up to the writer but keep to the same minimum each day. Give yourself permission to write badly - it’s where the good stuff hides.

* Subsequent days: Open the same file and ADD another forty lines.

Bell tells his students these brand new lines can’t be edited or changed or deleted. Keep them as they come, he says. The process of appending lines each day removes the blank page jitters scenario.

The hope is that your daily lines might include something worth working on. If that happens, you can cut and paste those lines into a new file. Then you’re off the block and kicking up gravel.

Writing on . . . Muhammad Ali and Art

2008-07-21T22:26:00.004-04:00

Poet Marvin Bell says "art is a way of life, not a career." An interesting statement. I think he's talking about the danger of expecting our art's success (written, 2-dimensional, plastic - the whole gamut) to bring us any degree of serenity or contentment (interview with Simon Fox, Rattle, Summer 2008).

He explains that Zen teachings tell us the cause of suffering is inside us. The only way to let go of suffering is to let go of desire - for things, for career, for advancement. He quotes Muhammad Ali who says man is never satisfied "because the objects of our desire are finite, but our desire is infinite"

Bell says he used to feel if he could just get a poem in Poetry magazine, he'd be happy. When that happened, he said if he could just get a group of poems published in Poetry, he'd be happy. Then he wanted his name on the cover. Then a Poetry prize...

I'm so glad I'm not alone.

Four years after achieving the "ultimate" dream of having a novel published, I'm stressing over whether or not PP will be interested in the sequel, whether or not I'll even be able to finish it, or if it'll be any good. But if I do finish it and they do take it, I'll want a Booker or a Guiness Award. Then I'll want a movie director to bring it to film, and I'll want Michael Caine to play Dan Grad.

It's not just desire for literary progress/success/achievement. I remember being nine and wanting breasts. I remember getting breasts but wanting bigger ones. And that was just the start. Desires centering around bigger boyfriends, houses, cookers, patios, cars, bank accounts, etc. merely morphed into today's desire for more and more serenity, wisdom, patience, courage, and time.

But leaving those alone, how do we let go of desire for success and retain art as a way of life? How does one make one's art a way of life without turning into some kind of whining literary Oliver Twist?

It's a puzzle.

[photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons]

Writing on . . . The Submission Saddle

2008-07-18T16:22:00.003-04:00

Before the novel was accepted (back in 2005), my life was a round of submissions, rejections and the odd acceptance. I was sending out poetry, short stories and, of course, the novel. So I was either writing, editing, submitting, updating the database, or tooting about acceptances.

Then PP took Sticklebacks and that seemed to take over for a while. My writing life was a blur of edits, proof-reading, marketing, readings...and now working on the sequel. Add into that mix teaching, divorce and moving house, and I seemed to lose touch (or heart) with the submission process.

A few days ago, I received an email from an old pal from my Stonecoast MFA days. She was touting a couple of new literary venues. I was about to delete it when something made me stop. I looked back at my submissions database (an unwieldy monster I wrote in MS Access), and the last submission date was the middle of last year. I spent a while scrolling through the reports - submissions, rejections, possibles, new markets, etc. - and remembered how much fun I used to get out of submitting. There's researching the markets, e-chatting with fellow writers about both new and cherised venues, the process of selecting the right piece, submission, rejection and then the rare but great day when something is accepted, friend's congratulations...and commiserations. I had forgotten all that. I had forgotten how much fun it was.

So I'm starting again. I sent a non-fiction piece off today (travelogue based on the brothel industry in Thailand) to Memoir And just to limber up.

As I updated the database and printed off the "Out for Consideration" report, I looked at that lone entry and the old excitement began again.

Why on earth did I stop? Complacency? Laziness? I don't know. But I think I'm going to do my best to get back in the submission saddle.

Writing on . . . the madness of writing

2008-07-15T13:56:00.003-04:00

I am a woman of few friends. I am not gregarious. Kind acquaintances have put my inability (or unwillingness) to connect down to my being “quiet” or “shy” or “one of those writers.” Less kind, although perhaps more perceptive, people have called it plain rudeness.

When I examine the list of friends I do have, I find writers, artists, designers and poets. We all seem to pull from the same small, almost incestuous, pool.

It seems safer this way. In a small, like-minded group of people, there is no need for me to explain how and why I think the things I do. I don’t have to explain why sometimes I can be found with my face pressed to a sheet of hardboard trying to work out what a 12-year-old epileptic might “see” from that vantage point and whether that image might stand as a metaphor for denial. I don’t have to justify agonizing over an em-dash in a line of poetry; is the energy of my line compromised by its inclusion?

The conversations we do have (“do you ever sense the world cracking open above your head?”) might be seen by others as evidence of madness. Or at least, cause for concern. But within this pool of friends (some of whom I’ve never met face-to-face), such conversations become everyday…mundane even. How could I begin to safely explain the way the words come? The fact that I sit down and open something inside? How the process is almost a turning off of reality, of myself, and a letting loose of the things that crowd against each other inside my … what? Head? Psyche? Soul? Creative being? To describe the process in those terms (which are the closest I can come up with) makes it feel crass and affected. Like some god-awful high-brow gallery-speak.

Examining the process in such detail also makes me feel a little insane. A little too close to the edge. The devil, as they say, is in the detail. This feeling of proximity to madness is nothing new to me. It is nothing learned. It has always been this way.

Even as a child.

Under the stairs, where everyone else kept their coats and shoes and umbrellas, I kept a Palamino, the one from an I Spy Horses book. Bear in mind, this was not a horse LIKE the one in colour plate, it was the ACTUAL horse. When everyone had left the house, I’d lead the horse out in the hallway, and press my nose to its neck, smelling its mane. This was no Merrylegs, or Champion, or Penwood Forge Mill; this horse had no name. That smell was and still is vivid and dense. That horse and I would stand in the hallway and look at each other. The horse wasn’t for riding. It was for knowing.

Try telling your “normal” friends—or your mum—about that one.

Writing on . . . Writing Full Time

2008-07-09T01:14:00.004-04:00

Back in 2003, I was lucky enough to enroll in a workshop under Roger Heddon, an interesting screenwriter and a funny man. Each time he said something noteworthy, he'd say, "Da Da Dum!" - a kind of verbal drumroll.

I looked forward to his classes. They were held in the evening and about fifteen of us would sit around a huge square table with Roger at the head and we'd go through the rudiments of writing for the screen.

By the end of the course, I'd turned out a ten minute screenplay, which later became the chapter "Wild Plum and Rainbow Slides" in Sticklebacks.

He taught me a lot but the two main things I took away with me are:

1. Beat cards (index cards on which you sketch a scene) can help you move through a chapter, short story or novel as well as a screenplay.

2. Writers have clean houses. Because they'd rather do anything than sit in front of a blank screen and try and fill it with words.

I wrote for six hours today. I turned out a new chapter, wrote a whole roll of dialogue, edited a chapter and worked on some landsape setting. I also spackled some holes in the hall, filled a rotten window-frame, swept the screen porch, filled two buckets with rubble, changed the bed, did laundry, and bought some stuff from CVS.com.

When it flows, it's 100% consuming. When it doesn't, it's an ideal time to clean the house.

Writing on . . . Carving Up Words

2008-07-06T11:24:00.006-04:00

My pal Kay emailed me back an early chapter with crits and had a comment on the first sentence. She was confused by its meaning. When I wrote it, I thought it was sharp and clear, but on re-reading it some 8 days later, I had to agree with Kay. What did I mean? The sentences were: "Sometimes it is possible to be too close to the things that matter. So close that things appear to be what they are not."

In order to edit, I actually had to work out what I meant by "getting too close." I pressed my nose to the wall and had a think about what that looked like, and it was kind of what I was aiming for; you can get so close to something that it begins to look like something else. But there wasn't much in that image to write about.

So I tried pressing against the window pane. Too much going there.

I tried a sheet of wood out in the screen porch, but that didn't feel right for my character.

I really wanted bricks because she lives in a brick house and she might have pressed her nose against the walls now and again. Plus there's that nice double of "up against a brick wall." But I don't have any bricks. No good imagining what something would be like. If I can, I have to actually experience it.

So, no bricks. But I do have rocks. I went outside and grabbed a rock from the fire pit J and I built at the weekend. And this is what I came up with:

Note to Self

Sometimes you can be too close.

Take a thing and hold it close to your eye. Hold it so close, the thing touches your lashes, and your hand—the hand holding the thing—touches the tip of your nose. Close the other eye, and say exactly what you see (shadow. light. sharpness at the edges. a blur. a face. golden ears. a cat’s ear).

Open both eyes, and the thing becomes smaller. Say exactly what you see (my hand. the thing’s golden ear, a hint of my nose).

Close the eye that is closest to the thing, and the thing changes. Say exactly what you see (still a face, a cat’s face from the side. its face in my hand. licking).

Close your eyes and stretch out your hand, palm uppermost. Open your eyes. Say what you have. (a stone. just a stone from the garden. an old rock.)

And you knew that, didn't you? You knew that all along.

That one comment and one sentence took an hour to work on. And I'm still not sure if I'm really closer to where I want to be with this piece. That explains why a first draft is one thing and a final draft is entirely another.

They both have their moments. I enjoy first drafting because the words come in huge rush and they're clumsy and sometimes ugly but they are brand new and that's exciting. But the revising is like carving. You have this big block of something and you keep taking things away to reveal something else, something that's closer to the thing you want to show. The great difference is that with revising, you can always go back to what you had before. Not so, I would imagine, with sculpture.

Writing on . . . Feeling Used

2008-07-01T17:51:00.003-04:00

I walked into my local independant on Friday to see if they needed any more consignment copies of Sticklebacks. He said they had two on the shelf left over from a direct order from Baker and Taylor plus one "used" copy. My initial reaction was one of dismay. After all, if someone sold it back, they mustn't have liked it enough to keep it. But the man behind the counter seemed to take the opposite tack. He thought it was something of a milestone to have one's book on the shelf with a Used sticker on the spine.

Poor little book. It was signed and everything.

Then I took a look at its shelf-mates. It was hanging out with some spectacular spines. Faulkner, Patchett, Stendhal . . . Dr. Phil.

It still feels a little like being ditched though.

Writing on . . . The Whelm

2008-06-29T11:34:00.006-04:00

I bought a house about a year ago. Tiny little place. Looks as if I should be sharing it with a trio of bears. I spent the first few months moving stuff in and around, just playing at living there really. Then, by the time the winter came, I played at Christmas and had a tree and discovered, after three decades of sharing my living space with a significant other, how different the solitary life can be.

I painted a few rooms, bought a sofa, hung some pictures on the walls and concentrated on my new teaching career and its insane schedule.

My lack of involvement in the house began to show. My roof leaked, so I spread plastic bubble wrap over my clothes in the closet where the rain came in. My privacy fence was hit by a storm and I let the two end panels swing. Four roof panels blew off my shed roof and I re-organized the contents so they wouldn't get wet. Other things broke, creaked, refused to work and just plain wore out. But I couldn't seem to get around to fixing anything.

Last week, I finally got my act together and found a roofer willing to do the work for a price I could afford and had my roof replaced I hired a handyman to fix my fence, my shed roof and the door to my attic. On Saturday, J came round to knock down the chimney in the screen porch so I could sort out the flooring. In the aftermath of that little chore, J and I talked about the other things that needed doing; panelling the screen porch, tiling the floor, sorting out the kitchen floor, taking down the other chimney, clearing the brush in the back yard, building a fire pit, buying a picnic table, replacing the fence, putting up a hammock, pressure washing the house, painting the house. As we talked, a corkscrew begin to turn in my chest. It spun my stomach. I felt overwhelmed.

I wanted to do all these things. I wanted to swing in the hammock. I wanted the house painted, but the idea of having to do all that work began to drown me. How would I afford it? When would I do it? How would I do it? What tools would I need? How would I get them in my car?

Overwhelmed.

I recognized the feeling. I've had it for the last two years in connection with writing. I've always known I had to start work on the next book. But each time I sat down, I became overwhelmed. How would I start? Who would I write about? What would they do? What did they want? What where their obstacles? How would I write another 75,000 words? Did I want to?

I wrote nothing because I was getting bogged down in character development, plot, twists/turns, themes, motifs, incentives, point of view, setting, tone.

What I needed to do was write. Just bloody write and see what happens. Get my characters in the room and see what they want. I needed to focus not so much on my mental image of the finished book (with its jacket and photo and blurb) but on the journey. In fact, I even needed to "unfocus" on the journey and just start walking.

It worked and now I'm on chapter 6.

This morning, I took a tin of primer and a paint brush and primed my exterior attic door. It's going to rain today and that needed doing first. While I was there, I primed the facia board I could reach.

There's a lot more that needs doing (and writing) but all I need to do is make a start. If I do that, I'm one step closer to the finish.

Writing on . . . old news

2008-06-26T10:05:00.002-04:00

It appears congratulations are in order.

If I had known, I would have bought a hat . . . and a bassinet.

Writing on . . . Scribe 2008 POTY

2008-06-24T09:04:00.002-04:00

Scribe is my Australian Publisher and has been a pleasure to work with. They've been fast with Rights Acquisition payments and have sent me clips through the mail for every review.

They were awarded Best Australian Small Publisher in 2006 and now they've done it again in 2008.

Congratulations, Scribe.

Writing on . . . Time

2008-06-23T00:06:00.007-04:00

I spent this weekend doing something I love: camping. J and I went out to Northcreek off the Blue Ridge Parkway. J did some fishing while I caught up on some pleasure reading. I took Stendhal's Red and Black with me hoping I would enjoy it as much as I did Flaubert, but unfortunately, I didn't. But I shall persevere. I did enjoy taking some photos and was struck by the scenery and how much it reminded me of the "big" landscapes of the American Hudson River painters, such as Durand and his big landscape "Kindred Spirit." There is transcendence in nature. If ever I had any doubt that there was a higher power than myself, I only need to spend some time out there with the huge trees and the water and those doubts disappear.

But camping made me realise how short my own time is. J's camping kit reads like a fabulous family album; there's the blunt bone-handled knife from his scouting days which is probably around 40 years old, the old army tent he bought as a teen from an Army Surplus which now serves as a firewood cover, twenty-year old wicker plate holders--almost everything in his kit comes with its own history.

My own Rubbermaid kit box (there's nothing better for hauling camping gear around in) holds no such history. I've had to buy everything new in the last five years--it seems that my own past and its relics have been lost or "rationalized" in too many moves and relocations.

If I'm very lucky, the things in my box might eventually acquire some age. There's a tranger set that will probably last. And a knotted dishcloth that Judith made me. And, of course, my Moleskin. But it was terribly levelling to realize that my box will never contain certain items--anything 'my' kids played with, gadgets from my own school camping trips, things I made with wire and bits of string that proved to be invaluable...all those things are lost to me.

And yet, my mental camping box is full. I can remember my father spending the winters refitting cheap old Transit vans into campers, my mother cooking breakfast over the Calorgas stove, still in her curlers and chiffon scarf, my sisters bitching about having to be on a campsite rather than home with their friends, cow-pat football, rain, a raw chicken full of blowfly eggs, rain, souvenir shops, beaches in the early morning, rain, and Welsh pubs full of locals who wouldn't talk to us.

J found a little plastic army figure on the ground when he was clearing up before we left. I put it in my Rubbermaid box. I'm rather hoping it is pre 1990...

Writing on . . . Reasons I Can't Write or My Toughest Critic

2008-06-16T17:22:00.004-04:00

Writing on . . . dissecting roses

2008-06-14T07:30:00.011-04:00

I was talking to J last night, trying to find a better metaphor for growth and discovery than the old tired onion (as in peeling back layers). My problem with the onion is in its connutations--tears, fast food, the fact that how ever much you peel away, it's still an onion right down to its very core. It seems to me there should be something more complex to the metaphor, something more...transformative.

I finally lit on a flower bud, a rose specifically. Imagine it. There's a tight bud on a bush nearby. So tight, the green hard case is still firmly sheathing the bud. The trick--if a trick is what it is--is to remove the stemmed bud from the bush and then gently "destructure it." Each revealed layer discloses something new - something that wasn't there before. Removing the green casing reveals the color of what will be the outermost petals. Then each petal layer, as thin and smooth as a new bible page, is peeled back carefully, so as not to tear, until, at the center, the stamens and pistils are revealed - the heart of the current rose and the possibility of a new one. And there on the path is a pile of change--a beautiful litter of leaves and petals.

It works for me as a metaphor. At each stage of deconstruction, the revealed bud is beautiful and new--but beneath each furled petal is a new more fragile layer waiting to be discovered. We can stop and marvel at how beautiful and perfect the momentary transformation is, but must be aware that the true miracle lies at the heart of the original.

The writing process deals with the debris on the path and with reconstruction. The writer knows what is at the heart of the work. The skill is in rebuilding the rose so that the heart is hidden and that each "peeling back" allows the reader time enough to engage with each transformative layer. The magic is when the reader peels back the final layer and encounters the pistils and stamen.

Writing on . . . Omniscient versus Limited versus First

2008-06-12T07:33:00.003-04:00

I am at a loss to transition from my birthday cake to writing in point of view so I'm going to stop struggling, suffice to say my birthday was brilliant.

But I am struggling a little with voice for Lessons. Sticklebacks was written in Omniscient with First flashes preceding each chapter. These flashes were the only occasion (apart from dialogue) when Tot’s voice was heard directly. And in many ways, these were my favorite parts – to write and to read.

These early drafts of the sequel keep moving from Omnisicient into Tot/Limited Third and I can’t quite make my mind up yet as to what I want to do. I’ve just finished Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones” and I adore the way she uses first person. Her narrator is the same age as Tot and she managed to stay in voice. She does have the advantage of having a dead narrator though and Sophie's vantage point in heaven gives her a certain amount of omniscience.

I think an answer might be to rewrite one of the chapters in first person and see if I lose anything. I’ll have to see if I can sustain depth while staying in her voice.

Of course, the book can have multiple points of view. Dan Grad is in his sixties, so where Tot can’t explain concepts, I can have him take over in his own chapters. Or perhaps in melded chapters…

I have to get this aspect sorted out before I move forward.

I’m still hitting one chapter a week to my “critter”.

Writing on . . . Birthdays

2008-06-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

Today is my birthday. For a while back in the late 80s and through the 90s, I tried to be on holiday for my birthday. I spent birthdays in Argostoli, Athens, Paris, San Rocco, and at a host of seaside locations in Britain. I remember breaking my rule one year and going to work on my thirty-fifth birthday. I sat on the grass outside Maxon Europe in Hemel Hempstead in my lunch-hour and vowed never ever to do that again.

Today I am forty-eight years old. Birthdays are still as important to me as they ever were. Life can be hard and living a good life even harder. Every year I manage that ‘life well lived’ and to look back with fondness over the previous twelve months is cause for celebration. So I celebrate. Today I shall cook myself a good breakfast, see friends for lunch, eat ice-cream, open presents my family sent over from England and play the Gervaise Phinn CDs my mother chose and my father burned.

Elizabeth Jennings, a wonderful British poet who died in 2001, brings two wonderful things to my birthday today. One is her sentiment that “only one thing must be cast out, and that is the vague,” and the other is her poem, Accepted. I found this on-line at Poemhunter but I would like to write it out here as a present to myself…I always learn from poets and their poems when I copy them out myself. This poem says it all about that holding area of one’s forties and fifties:

Accepted

You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life. It could be new.
The sheer not fitting in
With the old who envy you
And the young who want to win,
Not knowing false from true,

Means you have liberty
Denied to their extremes.
At last now you can be
What the old cannot recall
And the young long for in dreams,
Yet still include them all.

Writing on . . . Experiencing

2008-06-10T09:33:00.004-04:00

I've just got back from a great weekend in Michigan. Learned about how the state really can be known 'like the back of your hand,' heard about wet enchilladas, met a rock star, was introduced to a lovely, warm family, spent some good chunks of time with a special person...all in all, it was a great four days.

And I was able to experience a family wedding. Interesting since "Lessons" (working title for the sequel) calls on weddings as setting. Now, mine are British and this one was American, but there are more similarities than differences.

From a writing point of view, the opportunity to sit and observe the real setting when you're working on the same fictional setting is a gift. For me, it's about getting deeper into the picture than the dress and the cake. Say 'wedding' and we all think 'dress and cake' but there is a lot of 'buried' material readers can relate to in the arena of weddings.

For example, how about: DJs, the way little kids dance, tired brides, step fathers of the bride...step mothers of the groom, mis-spelled nametags, table decorations, shoes that hurt, disco music your mother can dance to, hotel foyers...the list goes on.

The reader brings the dress and the cake to the setting without even thinking about it. It's simple Freudian association. But take them to the place where the vicar's got bad teeth, the bridesmaid throws up in the umbrella stand, and where there's no explanation why the step mother of the groom is SO good-looking when her predecessor is so plain, and then you are able to sit them down at the table next to you. In short, you have them and they feel you understand the kind of weddings they've actually been to. The writing starts to do that dance from fiction into fact and back again.

If I hadn't been to the wedding, I would have forgotten about the timeless nature of wedding disco music and the way that tiny bridesmaids go from angelic to tragic. For me, to remember those 'realities' I have to go to the place. It was a blessing to be flown to this particular place at the weekend.

Writing on . . . notes

2008-06-04T17:33:00.002-04:00

New projects tend to spawn new habits. My pal Kay is a Bento fiend - but only because she's working on a new project. For her, a new writing project is always accompanied by a new non-writing obsession. This time, it's Bento. And since I have no scruples about "acquiring" other people's obsessions, I must admit to having googled and ebay'ed and shopped locally for Bento. What's Bento? Not telling you. You'll have to look it up.

My latest project (as yet untitled but to all intents and purposes, a sequel to Sticklebacks) has spawned (apologies for pun) a new habit - or at least, a new notebook. I tend to carry a moleskin around with me all the time for notes, ideas, journal entries, poison pen letters, etc., but about a month ago, I bought a cheap little spiral pad about 6" x 4" and started to write down some "stuff" about my new novel's characters - date of birth, characteristics, wants and needs, passions/obsessions, physical traits, street addresses etc. Then I began to write down some location sketches. I was in the UK and wanted some quintessentially British details. Then a few ideas occurred to me: incorporating letters from Tot to penpals. Then a few more ideas: letters to Rod Stewart, Margaret Thatcher, Agatha Christie... And some facts from the cultural period: fashion, news, tv shows, food etc. Eventually, I used some sticky labels to create tabs for these three sections and I'm adding more - dialogue, themes, motifs, etc.

The notepad is a way for me to keep my thoughts on the novel together and in one place. Each time I open the pad and write something down, I know I have another "in" for when I have to sit at my pc and start writing the chapters.

Started Chapter 3 today. Week 3 and chapter 3. The plan is to reach the end of the summer break and have at least 15 chapters boned out to first draft stage.

Writing on . . . the work of writing

2008-05-25T04:31:00.002-04:00

I think I have finally begun the second novel. I've thought I had begun it several times before--back in November during NANO, in Starbucks at least three times, in my head in bed... but those were false starts. Like thinking you're pregnant but then working out it was just wind after you already bought the bootees and rubbed in the stretch mark cream. The fact is those false starts were actually freewriting rather than first-drafting.

First drafting feels like work, whereas freewriting can feel like floating in water. Effortless. Or maybe like limbering up. If you try to float, you begin to sink. If you try to freewrite, you end up journalling...or overthinking...or imitating.... Either way, you don't end up doing what you intended.

This time, it's first drafting. I know because I have an outline of sorts, I've begun to research, I'm writing two different chapters at once, I have a deadline for one chapter (Tuesday) and the characters (especially adolescent Tot) are beginning to talk to me outside the writing time. There are moments of freewriting during the process and they're great, but the rest of the time, it's like taking kids on a nature walk. You have to make sure they move along the path, that they see everything they need to see and that when you get to the gift shop, you haven't lost anyone. For me, writing a first draft chapter is just like that.

And I'm lucky to have found a book to read that I'm not only enjoying but that is also helping me with slides. Zadie Smith's White Teeth is full of them - character to character, setting to setting, time frame to time frame. And it's English and set in the seventies. Something bigger than me must have put it in my hand in the PDSA charity shop in Hemel.

Writing on . . . Setting and Stealing

2008-05-22T04:54:00.002-04:00

I'm at home with my parents at the moment and spending some of my time working on the sequel to "Sticklebacks." Yesterday, I walked up to the village in the library to write for an hour or so, but Abbots is still operating under feudal laws that close the town down on Wednesdays. So I ended up sitting in the Cricket field writing on setting. I like to get close to landscape so I can replicate it in my work. I take an image or an event and keep going deeper into the detail - it's a kind of seeing with a bigger eye. How far down can you go?

Anyway, it started with a huge park, and then came down to the trees, and then the cricket backboards, and the grass, the grass on the pitch and the smattering of grass around the bench, then mothers and daughters walking, and little boys (George and Anton) on their bikes (or rather one bike and one scooter), then a group of teenage boys and then a collie dog...After 20 minutes I had a word sketch of the place and as a bonus, I think I may have a poem. No rules to say one piece of writing can't split like an egg into two forms. Could I have gone further? Of course. What's the dog's collar like? What do the boys have in their pockets? My detail led me to the trees and the fact that they have witnessed all this for probably a century. Same things, different clothes, different toys, different vehicles. Same birds peeping from the eaves of a park building.

On the subject of detail, I discovered Rick Moody yesterday and his short-short "Boys." Fantastic piece that starts with the line "Boys enter the house, boys enter the house" then goes on to discuss the detail of boys and houses. Great jumping off point for a mirror piece called "Daughters."

The tradition of imitation goes way back. It's a good one and a perfect way to get yourself back into the writing groove.

Writing on . . . People's Choice

2008-05-16T07:25:00.003-04:00

October 2008 is The Virginia Federation of the Art's big award night. Lots of black dresses and tuxedos and wall-to-wall literaries from writers to publishers to sponsors.

But at the end of the day, I like to think that it is the readers who give the awards...by buying the books, by reading them, enjoying them, recommending them. Just yesterday, a friend of mine recommended a book by Tom Winton (and I need to check that name) and as a result, it'll be one of the next books I read.

That's the power of the reader. But it's a power that is being increasingly diminished. It seems a book sells because of other extraneous factors: sponsorship, marketing, backing, hype, "fashionability," etc. I sometimes wonder how many of the copies of best sellers are actually read rather than merely "owned". Does today's patron merely acquire titles rather than enjoy them?

It's important, as far as I'm concerned, that the reader remains on the writer's radar. It's not the first consideration for me - I write what I like to write and hope the audience will come - but I do write in order to be read.

Because of that, I'd like to ask you to take a minute and exercise your rights and power as a Reader and vote in the Virginia Federation's People's Award. This is a category where the reader - rather than critics, fellow writers, judges, publishers, editors - chose their favorite book and authors. If you click the link and don't recognize anyone or anything, pehaps that might guide your summer reading choices and lead you to someone or something you've never experienced before.

But whatever...please vote.

People's Award

Writing on . . . this semester's pearls

2008-05-08T11:55:00.005-04:00

The titles are my own contribution:

Emma Bovary: One Man's Meat or Another's Repeat?: “She thought she was fillet minion, but she was really sloppy seconds.”

No Disciple Left Behind: Global Literacy: “The story of the Bible is one that every human being is truly familiar with.”

Infidelity: Three-in-a-Bed: “She became pregnant with a man beside her husband.”

The Sticky Subject of Gluttony: “Americans have become very glutinous.”

Writing on . . . Memed

2008-05-02T07:32:00.002-04:00

Kay Sexton tagged me with a meme which involves me listing six random facts about myself and then tagging six bloggers who must list six random facts about themselves and tag six bloggers who must ... (etc):

1. I was convinced I was unable to say the letter B when I was a kid and would say to anyone who would listen, "I can't say Boiler...I have to say Goiler."

2. I touched Cliff Richard's shoe at a concert at my secondary school back in 1972.

3. Sometimes I am aware of a crack (or fissure, or bolt hole) opening in the sky/ceiling/space above my head and there being all manner of wonderful and horrific things up there. I don't look. I make tea instead.

4. I eat in concentric circles. It all began with those bobbly sweet biscuits we had when I was a kid. I'd nibble off each ring of bobbles, one after the other. Think squirrels. I do it with most things.

5. I am a side sleeper.

6. I have a fear of clouds.

And I’m tagging:

1. Debbie Spanich
2. Erin Undersood
3. Lisa Romeo
4. Bridget Madden
5. Edita Petrick
6. Kathy Briccetti

Writing on . . . Call for Poetry Manuscripts

2008-04-28T09:34:00.003-04:00

ABZ Poetry offers a $1000 price and publication. Seems like a good place to send and since the deadline is coming up, you won't have to wait too long for rejection or maybe even acceptance. If you win, buy me a present.

48-80 pages, first book-length work, and Heather McHugh is the judge.

Writing on . . . Perfidious Albany

2008-04-21T11:48:00.003-04:00

Henry Rosenbloom, my AU publisher, answers my mother's question: "Why can't your Auntie Marie get Sticklebacks and Snowglobes in Smiths?"

Events . . . now and coming up

2008-04-16T14:22:00.003-04:00

Crazy busy, but here's some stuff happening around town. Make the most of it - when the colleges kick out, the town goes back to sleep.

4/22: RC: Jack Lounge 4:30pm: “A Choir - in Prison?” by Randall Speer
4/24-5/11: Maier Museum: Senior Show
4/25: RC: Jack Lounge 6:00-7:00pm: Hail Muse Student Reading
4/25-4/26: RC: Student Symposium

Writing on . . . Sending Work Out

2008-04-14T11:06:00.002-04:00

My good pal Marilyn and I were talking about our methods for sending out work for publication and what to do about those hallowed venues that take forever to respond and refuse to accept simultaneous submissions. One option is to refuse to play that game. After all, why should you allow an editor to sit on your work for 8 months, only to send you a form rejection? What's the point? Isn't that feeding into their literary egos and perpetuating the editor/writer power inbalance? But the reality is, I want my work in those hallowed venues precisely because they are hallowed. Call me a masochist. Call me a poet. Same same.

For me, the answer is to have so much "stuff" to send out that it doesn't matter if editors take 3 or 6 months to respond.

For example, let's say I have ten poems. My top venue- the place at which I really want to have my work published - is Shenandoah, and let's say their guidelines state they might take six months to respond. So I send them poems 1 through 5. I then forget poems 1 through 5 for six months and make a diary entry for October 14th 2008, so I can review the situation.

My next place is Georgia Review and maybe they take three months. So I send them poems 6 through 10...and forget about those poems until July 14th. If Georgia haven't responded or accepted them by that date, I send poems 6 through 10 out to my next hallowed venue - perhaps Tin House.

In the meantime - in the six/three months - while I'm forgetting poems 1-10, I'm writing new poems 11-20 (and that's core) and sending them out to venues 4, 5 and 6. And keeping good records. Once six months have passed, I have diary entries cropping up every week or so telling me that certain venues have had my work past their allotted time, so I gather those pieces up and send them somewhere else.

William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl, says he has 50 poems out at any one time for consideration with different venues and that seems great advice. You have to let your poor deformed little child-poems (or essays, articles, or short stories) out into the submission playground to fend for themselves. Don't fret about them. When they come back crying, you wipe their eyes and their bloody knees...and send them out again. It severs that poet/poem umbilical cord. And for me, that's essential.

I only send work to markets who require an entry fee if I love them. I see the $$$s as a contribution to their costs - as a tax-deductable donation if you like. Or I send entry fees to those places who give me a subscription or a t-shirt in return.

Having said all that, I haven't sent anything out in months! Roll on the summer and acres of time.