Deborah Ager's Blog, page 25

VIDEO: Tracking Poetry Submissions

Jessie Carty used to have video editing software. Now that she doesn't, her Youtube channel isn't used nearly enough. Lack of editing is why she does everything in one take and why she no longer edits her pet project Shape of a Box, which was the first (as far as she can tell) YouTube based literary magazine.

December Dry: On Not Writing

A guest post by Joshua Gray

I didn't write any poetry this December. Maybe it's because I've been on yet another round of antibiotics to purge yet another infection. Maybe because I've had to put my cat to sleep. Or maybe because it's Christmas and anyone who knows me knows I'm a Scrooge. I could say the #novpad challenge sponsored by Robert Lee Brewer (@robertleebrewer) wore me out, but I know that isn't true.

I actually think it's the weather. If you haven't already noticed, it's cold outside. It's colder than usual for December, at least in the DC area.

Rainy weather makes me want to sit on the couch with a cup of Joe and a good book, a cat purring beside me. And now I'm beginning to think the colder it is, the more the muse wants to hibernate.

One December day it snowed. Not much mind you, but quantity doesn't really matter to me. When it snows I don't dream of a white Christmas. I don't go searching for my sled or pop "A Christmas Story" in the DVD player. When it snows I want to watch "The Shining" as a matinee and read Robert Frost's "Desert Places" whenever I can. Both the poem and the movie have a bold share of loneliness in them. When it snows I think of Narnia and how lonely Tumnus the fawn was.

But even after thoughts of Narnia disappear and "The Shining" has ended, if I've already re-read Desert Places I will re-read it yet one more time, or maybe twice or thrice more.

The loneliness in this poem, the loneliness in the stars, in lairs, in the woods, within the poet, the loneliness of the night, is how I feel when it's so cold outside that I refuse to call the cats in; the cold makes us isolated. This must be the reason why I can get so December dry.

Sebastian Matthews: An Interview with Serena Agusto-Cox

1. How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I start by assuming they aren't ready to hang on my every word. I hope they want to but just need a little help getting into the mood. I will start with a poem that I hope has some extra energy, a little spark—maybe something funny or dramatic—and I try to introduce the work in such a way that a conversation with the audience begins to develop. What I am aiming for is that back-and-forth talk inherent in all good readings. The work should provide any necessary biographical info. Too much back story provided by the poet can kill the reading's momentum. The banter should merely frame and light the work at hand.

More and more, I see giving poetry readings as akin to stand-up comedy. Problem is, I'm not that funny.

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

Powerful in different ways. Though I am an advocate of work, and of performances, that bring the two strengths together. If a spoken word performance wakes up an audience, that's great. But the poet needs to take the opportunity afforded him or her to present their strongest and deepest work. Likewise, a strong "page poet" can't just mumble his way through a poem anymore. The work has to rise up into the air, as my friend Keith Flynn insists.

As for making humanity more tolerant or collaborative, I don't know. I guess I have lost faith in humanity. We've done such a bum job of late. I think it's a person-by-person crusade. A good poem should seduce a listener to want to work hard to understand it; they have to provide the platform for the work to reform itself. In this way, yes, poetry can revolutionize someone. In my mind, true collaboration is revolutionary by nature.

3. Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

That's funny. I have lots of obsessions, but only a few I feel comfortable sharing. I am obsessed with collage—both with the collage method and the physical act of cutting and pasting. I am a bit obsessed with the collage artist, Ray Johnson, and his early work at Black Mountain College. I am obsessed with Black Mountain College. (Obviously, as a poet, I like making lists.)

What else? I am obsessed with following the NBA season. I am a Knicks fan in the east, a Suns fan in the west. I watch a few games but catch most off the Internet. Every morning. Coffee and the NBA scores from the night before. I love all the little news, like players rehabbing injuries, obscure records being broken, etc. There's a history to it that I share by having been a fan for over 30 years, since I was a kid.

I am obsessed with my son, Avery, who is seven. Obsessed with for once beating him at Wii tennis. And with walking my 10-year old dog. Taking snapshots. Building fires. I should stop there.

4. Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any "writing" books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I have done all of the above and found them all incredibly helpful (some more than others). I have moved into a new stage, though. I call it my Una-bomber paranoid phase. I hole up in my house and work on my "pieces," which have become half-literary and half-collage art. It's hard to describe.

A few years back, I put together an issue of RIVENDELL (a journal about place)

that focused on "woodshed to workshop," which I see as the movement back and forth between solitary work and communal creativity. I think we all live somewhere on that continuum. Going to Bread Loaf or Swanee, that's as social as a writer can get. Staying home for a month and working on a novel or a book of poems, that's a retreat into the woodshed (a jazz term). I think a place like Vermont Studio Center provides an excellent balance. You get lots of free time to write and some lovely social time. I also love that writers come after the visual artists there. It's good for our egos.

I think Michael Ondaatje's book with the film editor Walter Murch, The Conver-sations, is a must read for any writer.

5. Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

No, I don't think we have an obligation to dispel the myth. We're too busy making new ones. Maybe our job—as teachers, as well—is to replace the old ones. Truth is we should all be learning how to read our work as best we can. There's nothing like a strong reading to send new converts home with a poetry jones. Bad readings bore readers, and this only confirms what they thought coming in.

I have given my share of crappy readings. But I am working on my act. A dancing bear might help.

6. When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don't listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

Oh yes. Not songs though. Whole albums. Lately, it's been Bill Frisell, especially his album with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones. Old favorites include Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Red Heart the Ticker (a Vermont-based Indie band), old Dlyan, Cassandra Wilson, Joni's Blue, Van Morrison, Bach cello suites, King Sunny Ade, Nick Drake. The music needs to have a groove, a quiet swing to it. If there are words, I need to know them so thoroughly I can ignore them. It's really a current (like coffee) to ride along.

7. In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

I have always lived with, around, among and in relation to writers. It's in my family. But I must say over the last decade or so, my poetry friendships have deepened and grown in importance. I have a small circle of poet friends who serve as my posse. I am in their posse, as well. We meet up at AWP conferences and go looking for novelists, hoping to start a rumble ala West Side Story. I have always loved the idea of gangs dancing together as a way to enact violence. (Whoops, that's an obsession. See, don't get me started.)

8. How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

Walking, making collages, taking breaks from the work, hanging with my family, shooting hoops with my son, traveling, etc. I try to spend as little time at the computer as possible, if that makes sense. I go to cafes with pages to mark up. I even write on some of my favorite walking trails. It only works when you're good terms with the rocks and roots.

There's something entirely unhealthy, or unbalanced, about writing. At least for me. So I try to build a life around it—which includes a small amount but not a large amount of teaching—to balance the equation.

9. Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer's block?

An awesome question. Chocolate, of course. Coffee, if that's a food.

As for writer's block, I don't believe in it. The little weasel is imaginary. Make a quick PB&J sandwich and get back to work, I say.

10. Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

I don't believe in ideal writing spaces, either. They're traps, literally. I write (as I am now) at my kitchen table, willfully ignoring the desk in my study. I write on the trail, in cafes, on planes. That's what's great about poetry—as opposed to a novel or a long essay—you can take your work with you, in your pocket, in your slowly deteriorating brain.

11. What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

I am working on a novel. It's loaded with collages and photos. I call it a graphic novel, but really it's a bunch of illuminated pages. I am also writing essays on writing that look to other art forms for inspiration. Putting the finishing touches on a new book of poems. That's about it. It's already too much. But it's fun. I like the full stove of bubbling over pots.

Thanks for letting me answer these refreshingly quirky questions. Perfect angle on this weird "po" biz.

Thanks to Sebastian for answering my quirky questions. Please do check out a sample of his work below:

The Sadness That Resides in Everything

You see it in the carriage of the woman

once a man, in her careful

navigation of cobble, hands jammed

in the pockets of her leather jacket; it trails

like a scarf, lingers in the shadow

that slides along the church wall, hovers

around her booted ankles in a swirl

of trash and crushed leaves. It makes you

want an accordion player to follow

behind her in perpetual serenade, though

that too would be devastatingly sad—

the old musician stumbling finally

to bed, the accordion left in the hall

to fart itself into restless silence.

And you can spot it in the young man

allowing life to stream around him:

it's carried in his shoulders,

that hang on a broken coat hanger,

and caught in hands that mime

knotting a rope from a boat decades

shipwrecked. It's there in the dusty

old dog napping on its side

in a depression of sun, and in

the young girl's hard pull

against mother's restraining hand.

In storefront signs, handbills

blowing down the street; in the clouds

huddling above your head. And

there in your chest, hard

as a plum pit, cracked and brittle;

and in your eyes squinting

into the day's last sun; in the fleeting

look that no one cares to read, reflected

in the window of the kite shop

closed for the season.

What's Your Intention?

Once upon a time, I was apartment hunting. I was 20 years old and it was really my first time not living in a dorm room, or my parents' house, or in a room in an apartment that a friend of a friend told me about. I was in Boston, and if you know anything about apartment hunting in Boston and needing a home with a 1 September start date, then you know a little bit of something about a particular level of hell that may or may not be documented in Dante's Inferno. I seriously needed to exit an apartment that was quite uncomfortable: my roommates were these dudes from Scotland who all had each other's back, and to them I was That Weird Girl with the breaking down car, who had neither Scottish nor Boston accent, and who was frighteningly short. There were other more legitimate frustrations, but we needn't get into that now.

These were the days of apartment-hunting before Craig's List. And they were tough. Sketchy looking websites seemed to advertise "roommate wanted" situations, and listings were posted in actual newspaper classifieds. It was just the way things were done. It was the late 1990s. And I spent the end of August and almost all of September searching and obsessing over these advertisements and apartment-hunting.

One place was in the shadows of the Boston University campus. The tenants were these women who all had great jobs and seemed to have built some solid connections to each other. It felt like the place I needed to live. But I couldn't help feel like the insufficient person with little to offer. I had a big hole in the left knee of my jeans and a couple of years left to go before finishing college and searching for a halfway-decent job. That place didn't work out. Another apartment—in a neighborhood near what would become my favorite Boston neighborhood—seemed promising. The two tenants were closer to my age and had some recent memories of making that transition from not-quite-a-kid-anymore to self-sufficient Bostonian adult. We liked similar movies, music, books. We clicked. But then things changed. One of them asked me, "Well, why do you want to live here? Why are you leaving where you live now?" I was inarticulate and instead of answering a simple question, I unleashed my frustration about how "wrong" my current living situation was, how isolated I felt, and how much my roommates sucked. Until that point, there was promise. After that point, the current tenants quickly ushered me out of their home.

A couple of days later, I was thinking about my plight. As I was mindless walking the aisles in a drug store, that I thought about intentionality. What I mean is, I asked myself a series of questions—what would a new home open up for me? How could a new place nurture parts of my life that just didn't seem to be thriving? Why did it matter for me to live someplace where more than my most absolute basic needs were met? Until I could answer these questions and figure out why finding a great place to live really mattered to me I would feel "not quite enough" of a match for the people with great jobs and a great apartment, or I would unleash my laundry list of frustrations and scare people away. Something had to give, and that "something" meant my approach to finding a new home.

Once I answered these questions, my apartment search changed. Within 2 weeks I found a room in a great old Victorian with 5 roommates, and it was a community-minded cooperative (read: ex-hippie-commune) house. More than just my basic needs could be met in this place. Everything I came to value about a "home" could be celebrated every day I lived there. The rent was cheap, I found the décor charming, my bedroom was quirky in all the right ways, and the kitchen was huge. It was, to reduce to one word, completely and utterly perfect.

Excuse my hippie-dippiness over here, but I think these things matter. Whether it's finding a new apartment, a new job, or a "home" for one's first poetry collection, envisioning how you want yourself—and what it is that you have created—to thrive in the world matters. There are reasons why publishing your collection matters to you: It's the fulfillment of a personal dream. It's closure to a specific mindset and timeframe of your writing. It's a professionalization mark and will help make getting on the job market, or getting grants, or finding audiences to read to, a little bit easier. But let me ask you why the world of potential readers, job-hirers, audiences, and book buyers might want or need to pick up your book and buy it, read it, find themselves somehow enriched and changed by your poems. What work in the world will your book do? What do you value about the relationship you as a poet can have with your readers and how your poems can fulfill that? What can you wish upon the person who picks up your book?

One day over the summer, when I was sweating out everything I had in me at the gym, I realized that this level of intentionality and questioning pertained to my book. Why did I want it to win a contest? What did I want to convey to my readers (both those who would buy my book in the store AND those who would read my book and pass it on to a judge or editor)? In a world of so many poetry books, why did mine matter? I had some thinking to do, and I found that my answers were not unlike the spirit of my answers back when I was 20 and looking for a room in a Boston apartment. I believe there is something in my writing that builds a bridge between human experience and the need to articulate it. I believe that the voice in my poems, and in my book, speak sincerely for all of the things that people can't easily give voice to. I believe that someone reading my book will find themselves with a strange sense of questioning, longing, compassion, love, and kindness that's more acutely in tune than what they may have understood before. I don't believe my book will solve the poverty problem or will speak to issues of race and prejudice and social justice. I don't believe my book will say something about pop culture, or the conflict in the Middle East, or about compromised energy supplies. My book doesn't tell a narrative-driven story, and it doesn't have an expressly formal focus.

My book is internal, atmospheric, and built on the rhythm of this crazy, searching, and deeply affected heart I have. And it needs to be with a publisher that gets that, that has room for that identity in its catalogue, that values distributing its books to potential readers. There are publishers whose contests and open reading periods I have no business sending my work to, because I know that my work doesn't really speak to what they do. And there are publishers where I think maybe I can fit in—maybe I can stretch the boundaries of their aesthetic and emotional range just a small bit. And of course, there are the dream publishers (and dream judges!). I know who they are. I have had many dreams where I literally get a call on my old, battered cell phone from the poetry series editor of one of those publishers. Or where I get an e-mail that makes my day. Or where I am at AWP and someone puts a hand on my shoulder and says "let's go get a glass of wine…" I won't "give up the ghost" on who those publishers are, lest I jinx myself horribly, but let's just say that I am absolutely clear on who they are.

Do you know what your book's intentions are? Do you know what work your book does in this world? What is its identity? What bridge does it build with its readers?

A comprehensive list of upcoming deadlines for contests—with publishers that might be some of your ideals and all of the others—can be found easily on the Poets & Writers website under the "Tools for Writers" link. A selection of these appear here:

• Tupelo Press, Dorset Prize (December 31, $25, judge undisclosed)

• University of Tampa Press, Tampa Review Prize for Poetry (December 31, $25, judge undisclosed)

• Colorado Review/Center for Literary Arts, Colorado Prize (January 14, $25, Cole Swenson judges)

• BkMk Press, Ciardi/Chandra Prizes (January 15, $25, judge undisclosed)

This is a guest post by Stephanie Kartalopoulos. Follow her on Twitter.

Want to Join the Poet Party?

We had 70 people at a recent Poet Party. Would you like to join us?

Are you curious how you can participate in the Poet Party?

I hope to answer all of your questions here. If I don't, please post them in the comments and I will revise this post to include answers to your questions.

When is the Poet Party Held?

This chat takes place every Sunday night at 9 pm ET.

Who Started the Poet Party?

Deborah Ager of 32 Poems started Poet Party. Poets Collin Kelley, D. A. Powell, Susan Rich, Kelli Russell Agodon, Aimee Nezhukumatathil participated in the first one. We tweeted lines of our poems and asked and answered questions. D. A. Powell worked some of the tweets into a poem.

How do I participate?

Use a Hashtag. Please use the #poetparty hashtag when you post tweets related to the Poet Party chat. This will help everyone participating find your tweet and will ensure your tweet shows up in the transcript.

How to Reply to Questions

When I tweet out a question, I will use Q1 for question one and so on. When you reply, please use A1 if you are answering question one, A2 if you are answering question two and so on. The Twitter stream moves rather fast. Using these markers will help us know what you are referring to during the chat.

Use Software to Track the Chat

Software such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck, or TweetGrid can help you follow the hashtag, @-replies sent to you, direct messages, etc. Once you install the software, you will be able to organize these streams into columns.

How Do I Become a Guest?

So far, I've been taking guests from the active poetry Twitter community. I've chatted with Robert Lee Brewer (Writer's Digest) about his November poem-a-day program and with Reb Livingston (No Tell Motel Magazine/Books) about her poetry press and publishing. Soon, I'll be chatting with Eric Weinstein about his new book Vivsection (New Michigan Press).

Give Lit for the Holidays!

Yesterday, while in the mall, I overheard a sales clerk say, "See you back here next week on Black Friday!" And, I thought, it's Thanksgiving next week!

That means the holiday shopping season is on us. I know, some of you have already bought all of your presents but not me. Why? Well, I don't have that many to buy and I've become fascinated with watching people shop on days like Black Friday. I'm a regular mall walker, so the new influx of shoppers messes up my flow a bit but it is fun to pick out the: Husband who has no idea what to buy, the power Grandma shopper, the kid who got their gift cards early . . .

But, I digress. What I am hear to talk about is what a terrific gift literature can make for the holidays. I'm gearing up for a post on my own blog with specific suggestions, but here is the blog I made last year. The list goes through some poetry, fiction, non-fiction and even books on writing, but you know what is missing from that list? A separate section for literary magazines. I do mention a few magazines but I want to really promote the idea of purchasing magazine subscriptions for Christmas gifts.

When you purchase just a book or gift card, that is a one-time gift. When you purchase a subscription, you're giving something that will come quarterly, twice a year etc. And, unlike the pie-of-the-month-club, a literary magazine won't make you fat…well…maybe unless there is a particular sad poem that makes you really, really, really need a piece of chocolate.

The only issue with giving a subscription is that you need to know what the person might like. I say: ask them. As I noted in the blog post I mentioned above, readers love to talk about what they are reading. You could also check out their shelves or have one of their children or significant others do that for you. What do they already subscribe to? What is comparable? Could you extend a subscription? Is there something you have read that blew you away and you know you just had to gift that same magazine to your friend? (Like 32 poems!)

You may wonder if you'll have your lit mag in time to wrap it for the holiday. When you order the subscription, send a message to the publisher and ask for a back issue (or current issue) to be sent to you so you can wrap that issue and note that the subscription is coming. You could also visit a copy shop and have an inexpensive color picture of the magazines website or cover printed so you can enclose that in an envelope with a card for your gift recipient or along with a nice piece of chocolate (again, I know, the chocolate). Other ideas fair readers?

I've been the recipient of two different literary magazine subscriptions and for a poet/adjunct English teacher, having someone else spend the money on a magazine really is a gift. Maybe even a nice enough surprise that you, the gift giver, will find yourself under the mistletoe . . .

(stop by Jessie's blog on 11-22-10 for this year's holiday shopping guide. We love people who leave other suggestions in comments)

Poetry Readings Online? Yes, Please.

No Shoes Required for this Kind of Poetry Reading

Perhaps it's surprising that poetry, as an art form, has embraced technology so much. I suppose because poetry has never exactly been a commercially viable life-choice, poets have had nothing to lose by embracing the internet. Or perhaps it's because poetry has always existed as an adaptable, and radical, art form. Either way, poetry book sales have not been hit by the digital revolution in the same ways that fiction and nonfiction have.

Online journals, workshops, and literary relationships existing entirely online have reinvigorated poetry and hardened it against accusations of it being a dying art. Part of this effect, I'm sure, is the immediacy that the internet can provide. An immediacy which HTMLGIANT is using to its fullest with their series of 'Live Giants' online poetry readings. Can't get to New York or Chicago to experience Mary Ruefle and Matthea Harvey read? Just tune in online, instead. To be honest, the virtual 'crowd' that gathers for these readings is larger than most poetry readings I've ever been to. Not only does it allows the wonderful poems to be heard by people who are geographically inaccessible, but it provides yet another online platform for poetry folk to come together. Who doesn't enjoy a love-in? Ok, so the animal masks are a little scary, but it all adds to the experience. HTMLGIANT are up to number 8, and previous readings have included Mairéad Byrne, Zachary Schomburg and Sam Lipsyte

Best of all, HTMLGIANT's archives mean you can replay the readings over and over and over until your heart's content. It's always frustrating when you grow to love a poet's work after you've seen them live and can't quite recall the poems in the same way. Well now you can, whenever you like. Doing laundry, cleaning, jumping up and down… the possibilities are endless.

Who wouldn't want poets in animal masks reading you to sleep?

Join the Poet Party on Twitter

Flowers for the Poets

You probably know that a poetry book tour took me to me to a number of places around the country. I appreciated every moment of travel and all the people I met along the way.

Now that I'm back home for a bit, I wondered what a poetry reading would look like on Twitter. How does one give a poetry reading on Twitter? What do we poets do there?

Susan Rich, Kelli Agodon, January O'Neill, D.A. Powell, Collin Kelley, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil agreed to join me (Deborah Ager) in a poetry reading/party online in front of all who care to join. On the basis of their agreement to join me, I can attest to their adventurous natures.

The Twitter Poet Party may be nothing like a reading. You will not be at a college in a comfortable seat or in a bar with a beer. You will not get extra credit for attending. You might be at home in a comfortable seat with a beer. That could be good, right? You don't have to wear shoes. You don't have to talk to anyone. To communicate, you will have to type. If you have a sexy voice, it will do you no good. You can lurk and people won't think you're weird, because no one has to know you're lurking. Are you seeing the possibilities?

Please join Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kelli Agodon, January O'Neill, D.A. Powell, Deborah Ager, Collin Kelley, and Susan Rich for this Twitter Poet Party. Follow the #poetparty hashtag. Ask questions. "Listen" to poems. Sunday, October 24 @ 9 pm ET. As you may know, a hashtag looks like this #poetparty and helps people focus on certain conversations on the constantly moving stream that is Twitter.

Oh! The flowers in the photo? They are for the poets, and they'll never dry out.

Holly Karapetkova at The Writer's Center

This past Sunday, I listened to Holly Karapetkova read from Words We Might One Day Say, which is her new book of poetry. The latest issue of 32 Poems poems features "Love and the National Defense" from this collection.

Although I can't recreate the poetry reading for you, I can share a video of her poem "Parts of Speech."

Parts of Speech from Holly Karapetkova on Vimeo.

September Travels

The past month, poetry readings took me to Georgia, West Virginia, and New York. I am happy for all of these opportunities to read from my book and to meet and visit with poets from all around the country.

This photo is from a trip I took with the daughter to the Maryland Science Center. Marie Howe—who is coming to read at American University in DC on October 27th—wrote a poem in which the speaker hurries the daughter along and then wonders why she's doing that. I find myself in that position (hurry, hurry) and really why am I hurrying so often? When the daughter wanted to stop and watch one of the dinner cruise ships move away from the harbor, I stood there patiently. Okay, maybe I wasn't the most patient, yet I did not tell her to hurry. We watched every single thing they did to move the boat, and I took many deep breaths.

In this photo, she was running towards dessert. Although it was cold, we resisted the end of summer with a last Italian ice at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Now…on to crackling leaves and fires.