Deborah Ager's Blog, page 26

A Poem's Journey: From Personal Page to Publication

While I was still an undergrad in the late 90's, I wrote a poem titled "Power."  I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked it enough to start submitting it in 1998 a year or two after I had written it. (I didn't keep good records back then so I'm not sure if I first began drafting it in 1996 or 1997).

I submitted the poem three times between 1998 and 1999, which was a lot for me back then. I didn't send it out again until I submitted it twice in 2008 and then once in 2010. Why all the gaps you might ask?

In 1998, I received my BA in English. I took a job as an insurance claims adjuster and my writing stagnated. I didn't have a writing community around me, and I still had not reached an understanding of how revision was often "re-visioning." As a result, my poems didn't change much as I sent them around.

I stopped submitting work (and I didn't write much) from 2001-2005. Since I'd kept most of the poems I wrote in the 90's, I'd go back to the stacks of old poems to see what was there when I started writing in 2006.

As I made my way through those old poems, I came across "Power" in one year into starting an MFA program. There were many pros to my MFA experience, but perhaps one of the biggest was opening up my ability to revise. I revised the poem and submitted it. After two rejections, I just wasn't quite feeling the poem anymore. I liked it enough to keep it though. It sat in a file until I read a poem on a similar topic (a sibling convincing their other sibling to touch a wire fence) and I decided that maybe my poem deserved another look. Although, to be honest, the other poem on that topic The Bells in My Skin Still Ring by Rhett Iseman Trull, was so good, I initally wondered why I should bother!

I put the piece through one more revision and sent it out in July 2010. It was accepted for publication in September 2010. It is now online in Rose & Thorn.

So, what does this all mean? Is this a story of why you shouldn't throw things you've written away? Is this a tale regarding the thrill of revision? Is this a parable of patience? Is it, most of all, a lesson that you should always revise the word "dappled" out of a poem? I think my poem's journey shows a little bit of each. It also has something to say about how much being around other poets can help you develop as a writer.

I am glad a magazine published "Power," and I think it'll be added to my second full-length poetry manuscript. However, I hope it doesn't take every poem I write over 10 years of revision and submission before they are published.

Jessie Carty is a regular blogger for 32 Poems. She's a blogger, poet, and teacher. Find her on Twitter.

Poetry Book Contests: Spinning it Round and Round…

I have a confession to make: I love spin class.  And the elliptical machine.  And dead lifts.  And oblique crunches.  But most of all, I love spin class.

Which is to say, for the uninitiated: I love spending time in a sweaty room filled with 30 or so people all on stationary bikes listening to the army-drill-esque shrieks of the instructor telling us to increase our resistance, or pedal faster, or climb the (imaginary) mountain like it's our only path to salvation.  And I love the light-headed, dizzying feeling when I step off the bike and back to earth and the way I need to remind myself—when I am still sweaty, when my feet have made solid contact with the gym floor, when I exit the room and head out of the building—that there is a world and a life I need to deal with.

While I honestly enjoy the actual activity of a spin class, I greatly appreciate that while I am there all I can concentrate on is the present moment: pushing my body to pedal faster, increasing my bike's resistance to support my body as I stand and climb, feeling what it is for so many parts of my body to manage a ridiculous variety of motions at the same time.  There is no mental space to worry about whether I bought more cat food, or how I will find enough time to grade papers, or when I last updated my to-do list, or whether I'm happy that that poem is—like so much of what I have been writing lately—in long-lined couplets or whether I should try shorter-lined tersets.  All that matters is that moment of pushing my legs into perfect little circles on the spincycle.  The rest of the world fades away…

In the strange ways, this gives me hope.  The fact that there are ways that I can exist purely for the moment—or that my experience of life is entirely in the moment—makes me wonder about the individuality and "of the moment"-ness of what I create.  Specifically, what I want to get at here is my manuscript.  To me, it's this culmination of years and years of writing, revising, building confidence in myself as a writer who can find a readership.  There is a history for me over my manuscript that places it within a context that I can't entirely forget.  No matter how much I numb myself to the types of strange, precious attachment I could have to my work, my mind is still an active timeline on the history of this book and how it came to be.

To a reader in a contest, however, my manuscript is not that different from the sweat-bomb version of me atop the spincycle.  My work—57 pages, binder clip, stanzas and titles and metaphors all over the place—is absolutely its own beast.  The context I know is utterly irrelevant.  There is no intimate understanding of the boundaries or signature marks of my aesthetic range.  My work is considered a potential book and only has to answer the question of whether or not it is existing well—completely—wholly—as a potential book.  Just like in the spinning room my task is to climb to the top of a mountain—three times—at the end of an ass-kicking 45 minute workout, my manuscript needs to be solid enough—at the end of my ass-kicking writing process—to rise above the thought that it could be easily rejectable or somehow complete and engaging enough to capture someone's attention.

Last year, when I sent my manuscript to contests, it was constantly changing.  The ever-shifting table of contents, title, and page length left my book anything but able to "exist in the moment" as an individual, complete, and whole entity.  Instead, my book was just the next moment in a string of manifestations.  Any contest reader could pick up my book and know that it still had holes, had obviously come from something, and was still on its way to another state of existence.  I sent my work out while it was still vulnerable to serious edits.  And I would often think to myself, "well, the editor of the press is an expert in this and just needs to know what I'm going for and buy into it enough that he can then do his job" and, well, edit my manuscript into a viable shape.

Now I don't know the fate of my manuscript in this year's contests, but I know that I believe in the actual manuscript that exists—the computer file, the binder-clipped collection of papers, the thing I am sending out to way too many contests—as a complete, ready-to-shelf book.  Without preciousness or needy attachment, I can say that I love my book.  It's interesting, engaging, soulful, and chock full of interesting words and sounds.  I spent a lot of time ordering, re-ordering, thinking, revising, filling in holes.  I spent a lot of time learning how to believe in myself as a writer who can put together a real, worthy, engaging, interesting book.  And now, I can absolutely trust that whoever reads my work will find something that is whole and that exists independently of my authorship or someone else's needs as a reader.  No matter how my book fares in this year's contests, I can at least be proud of that.  And maybe it's coincidence or divine intervention or luck of the draw, but it happens that many of the judges I know about for this year's scheduled submissions are straight from my list of "dream judges."

What about you?  Does your manuscript exist as a nicely whole entity that someone can read without sensing what else might be there—just beyond the words, the line breaks, the pages?  How do you feel about what you're sending off to contests?

October-November is full of book contest/open submission deadlines. More information on the listed prizes can be found on the Poets & Writers website.  Which ones are you submitting to?  Can you guess where I am sending my work?

Carnegie Mellon Press (open reading period, $15 reading fee): October 31
APR/Honickman Prize ($25 fee, Marie Howe will judge): October 31
Canarium Press (open reading period, no reading fee): October 31
Hollis Summers Prize/Ohio U Press ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
Elixir Press Poetry Awards ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
Lexi Rudnitsky Prize/Persea Press ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
TS Eliot Prize/Truman State Press ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
Miller Williams Prize/ Arkansas Press ($25 fee, Enid Shomer will judge): October 31
Bakeless Literary Prize/Greywolf Press ($25 fee, Carl Phillips will judge): November 1
Walt Whitman Prize/LSU Press ($25 fee, Fanny Howe will judge): November 15
Nightboat Book Poetry Prize ($25 fee, Kimiko Hahn will judge): November 15
Perugia Press Poetry Prize ($25 fee, judge unknown): November 15
Yale Younger Series Prize/Yale Press ($15 fee, Carl Phillips will judge): November 15
Vassar Miller Prize/U. North Texas Press ($25 fee, Lisa Russ Spaar will judge): November 15

Stephanie Kartapoulous is a guest blogger for 32 Poems can be found on Twitter.

Spinning it round and round…

I have a confession to make: I love spin class.  And the elliptical machine.  And dead lifts.  And oblique crunches.  But most of all, I love spin class.

Which is to say, for the uninitiated: I love spending time in a sweaty room filled with 30 or so people all on stationary bikes listening to the army-drill-esque shrieks of the instructor telling us to increase our resistance, or pedal faster, or climb the (imaginary) mountain like it's our only path to salvation.  And I love the light-headed, dizzying feeling when I step off the bike and back to earth and the way I need to remind myself—when I am still sweaty, when my feet have made solid contact with the gym floor, when I exit the room and head out of the building—that there is a world and a life I need to deal with.

While I honestly enjoy the actual activity of a spin class, I greatly appreciate that while I am there all I can concentrate on is the present moment: pushing my body to pedal faster, increasing my bike's resistance to support my body as I stand and climb, feeling what it is for so many parts of my body to manage a ridiculous variety of motions at the same time.  There is no mental space to worry about whether I bought more cat food, or how I will find enough time to grade papers, or when I last updated my to-do list, or whether I'm happy that that poem is—like so much of what I have been writing lately—in long-lined couplets or whether I should try shorter-lined tersets.  All that matters is that moment of pushing my legs into perfect little circles on the spincycle.  The rest of the world fades away.

In the strange ways, this gives me hope.  The fact that there are ways that I can exist purely for the moment—or that my experience of life is entirely in the moment—makes me wonder about the individuality and "of the moment"-ness of what I create.  Specifically, what I want to get at here is my manuscript.  To me, it's this culmination of years and years of writing, revising, building confidence in myself as a writer who can find a readership.  There is a history for me over my manuscript that places it within a context that I can't entirely forget.  No matter how much I numb myself to the types of strange, precious attachment I could have to my work, my mind is still an active timeline on the history of this book and how it came to be.

To a reader in a contest, however, my manuscript is not that different from the sweat-bomb version of me atop the spincycle.  My work—57 pages, binder clip, stanzas and titles and metaphors all over the place—is absolutely its own beast.  The context I know is utterly irrelevant.  There is no intimate understanding of the boundaries or signature marks of my aesthetic range.  My work is considered a potential book and only has to answer the question of whether or not it is existing well—completely—wholly—as a potential book.  Just like in the spinning room my task is to climb to the top of a mountain—three times—at the end of an ass-kicking 45 minute workout, my manuscript needs to be solid enough—at the end of my ass-kicking writing process—to rise above the thought that it could be easily rejectable or somehow complete and engaging enough to capture someone's attention.

Last year, when I sent my manuscript to contests, it was constantly changing.  The ever-shifting table of contents, title, and page length left my book anything but able to "exist in the moment" as an individual, complete, and whole entity.  Instead, my book was just the next moment in a string of manifestations.  Any contest reader could pick up my book and know that it still had holes, had obviously come from something, and was still on its way to another state of existence.  I sent my work out while it was still vulnerable to serious edits.  And I would often think to myself, "well, the editor of the press is an expert in this and just needs to know what I'm going for and buy into it enough that he can then do his job" and, well, edit my manuscript into a viable shape.

Now I don't know the fate of my manuscript in this year's contests, but I know that I believe in the actual manuscript that exists—the computer file, the binder-clipped collection of papers, the thing I am sending out to way too many contests—as a complete, ready-to-shelf book.  Without preciousness or needy attachment, I can say that I love my book.  It's interesting, engaging, soulful, and chock full of interesting words and sounds.  I spent a lot of time ordering, re-ordering, thinking, revising, filling in holes.  I spent a lot of time learning how to believe in myself as a writer who can put together a real, worthy, engaging, interesting book.  And now, I can absolutely trust that whoever reads my work will find something that is whole and that exists independently of my authorship or someone else's needs as a reader.  No matter how my book fares in this year's contests, I can at least be proud of that.  And maybe it's coincidence or divine intervention or luck of the draw, but it happens that many of the judges I know about for this year's scheduled submissions are straight from my list of "dream judges."

What about you?  Does your manuscript exist as a nicely whole entity that someone can read without sensing what else might be there—just beyond the words, the line breaks, the pages?  How do you feel about what you're sending off to contests?

October-November is a ridiculous time for book contest/open submission deadlines. more information on the listed prizes can be found on the Poets & Writers website.  Which ones are you submitting to?  Can you guess where I am sending my work?

Carnegie Mellon Press (open reading period, $15 reading fee): October 31
APR/Honickman Prize ($25 fee, Marie Howe will judge): October 31
Canarium Press (open reading period, no reading fee): October 31
Hollis Summers Prize/Ohio U Press ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
Elixir Press Poetry Awards ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
Lexi Rudnitsky Prize/Persea Press ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
TS Eliot Prize/Truman State Press ($25 fee, judge unknown): October 31
Miller Williams Prize/ Arkansas Press ($25 fee, Enid Shomer will judge): October 31
Bakeless Literary Prize/Greywolf Press ($25 fee, Carl Phillips will judge): November 1
Walt Whitman Prize/LSU Press ($25 fee, Fanny Howe will judge): November 15
Nightboat Book Poetry Prize ($25 fee, Kimiko Hahn will judge): November 15
Perugia Press Poetry Prize ($25 fee, judge unknown): November 15
Yale Younger Series Prize/Yale Press ($15 fee, Carl Phillips will judge): November 15
Vassar Miller Prize/U. North Texas Press ($25 fee, Lisa Russ Spaar will judge): November 15

Is the Irish Poetry Collection at Emory a Kind of Cultural Theft?

Emory's extensive archives of Irish literary papers and manuscript archives are utterly astounding. So much so they've been nicknamed Emory's 'Irish Poetry Village.' This week they welcomed Joan McBreen into the fold, and on Thursday evening celebrated that fact with a reading from her.

McBreen is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Heather Island. She has put together several significant anthologies of Irish poetry, including The White Page: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets. McBreen's is a poetry of memory and rooted in the Irish landscape of her various homes in Sligo and Galway. She enters into the Irish poetic tradition of emotional geography, mapping her relationships onto the surrounding terrain. It is a terrain traversed by Michael Longley and Eamon Grennan, who are McBreen's neighbours both in Ireland and in Emory's archives.

Personally, it's incredibly exciting to have access to such a wealth of material, and I cannot wait to explore them. Still, something seems not quite right with the situation. Ireland has an immense cultural heritage and, as recently highlighted in Brian Cowen's inaugurating speech for Harry Clifton as Ireland Professor of Poetry, poets are particularly elevated within the Irish arts. So surely the archives and manuscripts of Ireland's brightest literary stars belong on their home turf? Emory's collection even includes the papers of the Nobel laureate and arguably Ireland's second largest export (after Guinness, of course), Seamus Heaney, despite the fact that Queen's University Belfast has a wonderful centre for poetry named after him.

To look at it negatively, this collection could be viewed as cultural theft. Or it could just be admiration. So, is a nation's literary heritage bound to geographical borders? Or is it free to the highest bidder?

Caroline Crew is on Fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, GA for 2010-2011. She is an editorial assistant at 32 Poems.

Confession Tuesday

This week, I confess that life stepped in front of poetry. I confess that I wrote poems nine and ten on the 15th day of a 30-Day Poem Writing Challenge. I confess I'm not perfect, but you knew that.

Instead, I've written essays. I'll confess that too. If I count the words, I'm doing all right. If I count the poems, I'm not doing all right.

I'll count the words.

I'll confess I'm pleased as punch to have Stephanie Kartalopoulos, Caroline Crew (our 32 Poems intern!), and Jessie Carty blogging with me here at the 32 Poems blog. They have many an interesting thing to say. Stephanie will be writing about the poetry book contest submission process. Caroline wrote about illegal haiku in Atlanta, and who knows what she'll do next? Jessie Carty will blog on a variety of poetry-related topics.

Atlanta Bandit Haiku Angers Some

As a Brit brought up on a diet of the BBC and the National Health Service, the experience of American advertising came as quite a shock. A big, in your face, buy-this-drug-to-make-you-happy, shock. So the recent spate of subversive road signs around Atlanta has had me thoroughly amused. The usual 'get rich quick' and 'get thin quick' and 'sell your ugly house quick' messages have been lampooned by artist John Morse, who has created imitation signs of bandit advertisements.

Morse has penned ten haikus in total, and placed them all over the Metro Atlanta area. You can find a map of all the locations here. Saying that these signs, read by almost everyone in a quick glance in traffic or on the bus, offers 'an ideal place for poetry', Morse aims to make 'compact observations and commentary on modern life'. My personal favorite packs a ton of poignancy into just seventeen syllables:

CASH 4 YOUR OLD GOLD

The Value of Memories

Measured by  the Ounce

Still, it seems that not everyone is a fan of the public poetry. Speaking to Atlanta's wsbtv.com Peggy Denby from Keep Atlanta Beautiful said, "We call signs like this, 'litter on a stick'".  This is not empty griping, either. Flux Projects, the arts program sponsoring Morse's poetry signs, has been notified of the illegality of the signs and advised to take them down. Fines for the offense range from $50 to $1,000.

Such controversy can only lead to more attention for the project—and maybe even inspire some copycat signs!

What do you think? Are unauthorized signs always litter? Or does art have a higher law?

You can find out more about the roadside haiku project with a video from John Morse here.

You Can Call Me "Poetry Contest Girl"–Guest Post

Books at a Charlottesville Bookstore

We welcome a monthy guest post by Stephanie Kartalopoulos. Ms. Kartalopoulos will blog once a month about poetry contest submissions.

Over $400 in poetry book contest submission fees. Somewhere around $50 in postage. Who knows how much in printer ink, reams of paper, time, and my own personal worry?

Though these sound like the normal statistics for any writer who sends her work out into the publishing world, it holds a really specific sort of...

How I Found 32 Poems and Why You Should Subscribe to Lit Mags

Subscribe to Literary Magazines

When I received a message (a Tweet in fact) from 32 Poems, asking me to guest blog, I was thrilled! I immediately wondered what I should blog about first. How about looking back at how I came to know and love 32 Poems?

I first submitted to 32 Poems in 2008. I discovered the lit mag after networking with writers such as Emma Bolden who had been published in 32Poems before. I seek out journals that publish people I admire.

My poems were rejected. My response...

Announcing the 32 Poems Fall Cover…

32 Poems on WYPR Radio

You can now listen to the archived radio show.