Happy New Year!

As a first step toward a year in becoming more of a professional poet, I have finally gone about creating a portfolio or profile website for myself (this blog is in the navigation bar).


Here are some of the next things I'll be working on this year: 
  1. I'll be looking into different poetry contests (contests for single poems, not manuscripts) and figuring out which ones to enter. Every poetry contest out there requires some sort of entry fee, so researching and narrowing down which ones to submit work to will help make these submissions much more economic and more like an investment than just throwing money and poems around to everyone willing to take them. 
  2. In February, I will have the opportunity to travel to Seattle to attend my first AWP Conference as part of the Rose O'Neill Literary House crew. This Conference is not only a learning opportunity (with the multitude of panel discussions on craft), but also a fabulous opportunity for professional networking. Hundreds of writers, small (and larger) presses, literary magazines and journals, and writing programs will be there ready to mingle. 
  3. When my chapbook is released in the next month or two from dancing girl press, I will be active in trying to promote it a bit: inquiring around to different chapbook-reviewing venues such as Rain Taxi Review of Books (which has a "Chapbook Corner"), Weave Magazine, and decomP magazinE (which includes poetry reviews as part of each issue and which published a selection of poems from this chapbook manuscript in April 2013) among others.
  4. I will also be continuing work on the Catechesis manuscript project, which is still coming along slowly (but surely). 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Imago" on Hannibal season finale

Image
While watching the eagerly-awaited season 2 finale of Hannibal (one of my absolute favorite TV shows of the moment), I was happily surprised when a vocabulary lesson emerged mid-conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. — "Do you know what an imago is, Will?" — "It's a flying insect." — "It's the last stage of a transformation." — "When you become who you will be?" — "It's also a term from the dead religion of psychoanalysis. An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives." — "An ideal." — "The concept of an ideal." Of course this term, in both of its definitions, has some great significance for me. It is a word I didn't even know until I stumbled across it in my dictionary browsing and knew immediately that this is the title of my chapbook . It was perfect. So when it snuck up on me again in my favorite TV show, in
Read more

There are birds here

Image
We are now in the full porch-swing of summer, which means Summer Poetry Salons at my beloved Lit House. In celebration of the second salon of the summer on June 24 (tomorrow!), I was given the unbelievably fun task of designing and printing a letterpress broadside for Jamaal May's poem "There Are Birds Here,"  a love song for Detroit. As much I loved this poem on my first reading (and second and third), it was a particularly difficult design challenge. Don't get me wrong — there are so many ways  to illustrate this poem because it is so packed with images. But to illustrate it in a way that actually adds to the text, that builds on the complex foundation set down by the poet — that is the challenge to be met. That is the challenge we always aim to meet at the Literary House Press .   So that means no birds and no buildings. For me, those are the two most obvious, but least important images in this poem. Those details are just the shell around the actual poem
Read more

On the end of a year & a decade: 2019

Image
In this last month of the year, I've had five poems accepted by three different literary journals and two new reviews of my book appear in The Cincinnati Review  and Harbor Review . I also completed the letterpress printing of the Rossetti Prize broadside for American Literary Review , designs for four more digital broadsides , and the initial edits & contributor proofs for Cherry Tree 's sixth issue. Whew! It's been an amazing and overwhelming and utterly fulfilling year ; and I'm riding into the new year on 2019's coattails.  Also featuring the gorgeous handmade scarf that Jehanne Dubrow wove for me this past year. One of my favorite December inventories will always be reflecting on a year's worth of personal accomplishments and progress. By the time the end of the year arrives, it's so easy to forget all that happened just a few short months ago. Making a list has a way of bringing it all into perspective. Here's my roundup for the yea
Read more