Jeannine Hall Gailey's Blog, page 107

Relative Success, Relative Failure: Life as a Poet

I met with some writer friends last night where we talked about what success really meant for a poet: a certain number of books sold (maybe over 1000?) or a certain prize (one with a sticker, one of the members of our party said) or certain publications (Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review.) A reading at a prized venue? A PAID reading? A teaching job? (We talked about the job market: jobs that used to require two books now require three.) Does success mean that someone across the country who has never met you might recognize your name? A Pushcart Prize? A grant? A review in the New York Times?
One of the party mentioned that poets ask for so little. That's true, really. When I worked (albeit briefly) in technical book publishing, a goal of selling 60K of a certain title was considered pretty modest. When a book only sold 10K, it was considered a sad failure. On the other hand, a poet with 10K sales should throw a party. 60K would be considered pretty off the charts of a poetry book.
We talked about the things that help promote poetry books and which thing was the most effective: readings? reviews? We agreed that reading could be unpredictable (stories of a reading with 100 attendees and 0 book sales, or 12 attendees and 10 book sales, etc) and that the rewards of reviews were not directly tied to sales and were mostly intangible. Still, we poets do what we can. Not for the money, not for any specific expectation of reward, but more of a kind of intangible goal: to connect with other people with our writing.

We have dreams that a first book will change our lives. With a second book, we know the book won't really change anything, but we hope for the best.

Interview with poet (and radio expert) Elizabeth Austen

Today I'm starting a new summer feature of interviews with poets on the blog! Today's featured poet is Elizabeth Austen, who is not only a fine writer herself, but is a literary producer for Seattle's local NPR network affiliate, KUOW. Here she talks about her new book AND gives tips on how poets can be better on the radio!

Elizabeth Austen is the author of the poetry collection Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2010) and the chapbooks The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet (one of four winners of the 2010 Toadlily Press chapbook award and part of the quartet Sightline). She produces poetry-related programming for KUOW 94.9 and makes her living as a communications specialist at Seattle Children's Hospital, where she also offers retreats and journaling workshops for the staff.

Jeannine Hall Gailey: Elizabeth, you're a professional interviewer for our local Seattle NPR station, KUOW, correct? What advice do you have for poets preparing for a radio interview?

Elizabeth Austen: Though I'm called a "literary producer," I have the luxury of focusing exclusively on poetry for KUOW. I produce a weekly poetry segment, introducing a Pacific NW poet and his or her poem. I also do occasional interviews, and have had the pleasure of talking with poets including W.S. Merwin, Jane Hirshfield, Mark Doty, Eavan Boland and Chris Abani.

When preparing for a radio interview, I recommend listening to an example or two of your interviewer's program, so that you'll have a sense of what to expect in terms of tone and approach. Does this interviewer tend to ask more about craft and process, or about the backstory of the book or individual poems? Is the interviewer looking for anecdotes and stories? Does it seem like the interviewer has actually read the book?

I recommend that you spend some time thinking about what YOU want to say about your work. Very often, the person interviewing you will not have had time to read your book, and may or may not feel confident discussing poetry. What do you want to tell listeners about how you developed the collection, your personal connection to the subject matter, why and how you write, etc? Which poems will be a good introduction to the book, especially for someone who may not usually (or ever) read poetry? You're essentially interviewer-proofing yourself. Hopefully you'll get an interviewer who is genuinely interested in you and your book, but you can't depend on that.

I'm a great believer in preparing for anything, and then letting go of the preparation during the interview so you can respond to what's actually happening in the conversation. The preparation will be there for you—you can trust that and relax and enjoy talking about your work.

JHG: Any tips for reading poems on the air? Any differences you'd want poets to note between our usual "live" readings and one for radio or recording?

EA: Yes—keep it short. I was interviewed by Radio New Zealand in 2006, and despite my experience doing radio myself, I made the mistake of bringing long (more than one page) poems to the interview. The result was that they had to excerpt them—not ideal!

Make sure the poems you read are reasonably accessible, too--remember that radio listeners are almost surely multi-tasking.

Think about how you'll introduce the poem—you might want to give a little more information than you would at a reading, where you (hopefully!) have your listeners' undivided attention.

JHG: Your new book, Every Dress a Decision, just came out. How are you using audio to promote your book?

EA: I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Steve Scher on KUOW's Weekday just as the book was launching (along with Billy Collins, which was fun and kind of surreal), so I have a link to that on my blog and I shared it on Facebook. Now that I'm through the first, intense round of readings, I can start thinking about ways to use audio to promote book—check back with me in six months!

JHG: How would you recommend that a local poet approach a local radio station for a feature (from your own experience...)

EA: Start with your local NPR-affiliate and community radio stations. The most important thing to do is to scour the station's website to find out which (if any, let's be frank) programs and producers cover poetry. Then listen to some examples of their poetry-related programming. (If you don't do this homework first, you're likely wasting your time and review copies.) Start with an email, introducing yourself as a local writer and describing your book. Include the press release and local reading dates, and inquire if you can send a review copy.

If you're touring with your book, check the sites of the NPR affiliates in the cities where you're reading. If they feature poetry, send an email with the dates that you're in town and where you'll be reading, your book's press release, and an offer to send a review copy. If you've got any audio of yourself being interviewed or reading online, include a link.

The important thing is to remember that producers are looking for content that fits their programming needs. If you do a little work up front, you can write your email in such a way that you show how you are a good fit with their program. Make it easy for them by keeping your correspondence brief and professional—you know, the same way you'd approach the editor of a journal.

I've featured lots of poets on KUOW who approached me first via email, whose work I didn't yet know. Now it's time for me to take my own advice and write some queries! Good luck putting your work out there—radio is a terrific medium for connecting with new readers!

Summer Part I - Ocelot Kittens, Seattleites in the sun, and Book Promos Going Out

The first day in nine months with temperatures over 70 degrees, a cloudless blue sky…and with my grades turned in…Glenn and I took a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo, which we knew was going to be super crowded, but I really wanted to see the new ocelot kitten, (http://www.king5.com/news/local/Woodland-Park-Zoo-ocelot-kitten-to-greet-the-public-121275484.html) who was out and sleeping peacefully, unlike the poor snow leopard, who was panting in the 80+ degree heat, and the jaguar, who was the happiest and most active that I have ever seen. We also enjoyed the snuffling of the arctic fox and red pandas - I wish I could adopt both! I swear, if I ever become a super-rich supervillainess, I am totally going with a wildlife-preserve-for-giant-cats hideout, with foxes and red pandas. Having already made the trip across town, we also made the trek to the super-crowded Golden Gardens park and beach, where many people of various shapes and sizes were walking around without shirts (ah, Seattleites! No California-esque body consciousness for them!) and the brisk wind made the milder seaside temperatures feel even better. I wanted to snuffle around in the grass myself, but it was too crowded to do much more than walk up and down the marina and sidewalk. Then it took us a million hours to get home, because every single person who lives in Seattle was on the street, driving five miles an hour, dazed from the appearance of our giant mountain in the sky and drunk from sunshine. All told, we spent four hours outdoors, which I think is more than we've been outside total since we moved back to the Northwest.

Yesterday Kitsune Books sent out little press releases for my new book, which is supposed to be available for pre-order now at Kitsune Books' web site, and should show up on Amazon next week. I guess this book is really happening! I'm starting to get some readings and visits booked and looking at my travel budget for next year (well, no mystery really, it's quite small!) I got invited to read in NYC and I would love to go, but a trip out there is $$$. Maybe I will have a grant or a wealthy mystery donor come my aid! A girl (or-supervillainess-in-the-making) can dream, can't she?

Dream Versus Reality: Confession

Ah, the dream of being a writer/poetry teacher. It's very glamorous. In my head I am sitting somewhere like the garden of The Barefoot Contessa, in bare feet surrounded by flowering herbs. I am studiously and enthusiastically penning long notes to students, continually getting inspirations for my own poems as I do so, jotting notes down on personalized stationary that I carry with me at all times, along with a beautiful old-fashioned fountain pen. I am pretty sure I'm wearing some kind of floaty-but-perfectly tailored sundress. And the sun is shining.

Reality: I have had a nasty virus for four days, all of Memorial Day weekend in fact, so my days have gone something like this: try to grade a five-page final book paper, nap. Wake up, eat jello, drink water, take pills, try to make cogent comments on twenty-page chapbook. Nap. Try to make interesting comments on interview I'm working on for intelligent, academic blog. Look out window at rain. Drink broth my sweet husband made. Take my temperature. Nap. Wake up in a panic, send out online submission while balancing cat on my laptop. Grade two more papers. Ad infinitum.

All my glamour remains on the page, and in my imagination, I'm afraid.

Poets and Artists, Biker Bars, and More Prep for the Book Release

First of all, I want to say that I have really felt blessed to spend time with interesting people in the last few days. I had a good talk with my poet-friend-in-the-Bay-area Natasha (featured in this article on a 14 Hills reading in SF Weekly, with amusing results) and then had a coffee meeting with artist Deborah Scott who talked in a fascinating way about the artistic process of her paintings (see a few of them here) which reminded me of all the ways that poets and artists work in common. We looked at Tarot cards and talked fairy tales, which was really fun.

But Natasha reminded me that she had been reading my blog and didn't see the full title of my upcoming second book anywhere! Egads, PR disaster! She Returns to the Floating World, due out officially at the end of July, has arrived in ARC (advanced reader copy) form. Contact Kitsune Books (contact at kitsunebooks dot com) for a copy! You can pre-order it now too. I got a copy of the ARC and have become so excited about the physical artifact of the new book - I mean, I can't imagine getting so excited about the launch of an e-book, can you? Seeing the cover, the back, the little ISBN number...yes, I'm a paper-book-geek all right.

And those of you who'd like to know what this second book is all about? Well, one of the Tarot cards I picked up while visiting with Deborah was a picture of a young woman holding a lion by the mouth. One of the interpretations of the card is about how a person interacts with their animal nature, especially a woman - the being inside us that is instinctive, fierce, blood and lust. That is one of the themes of the new book - one of my abiding interests, including how to be heroic, is the idea of the transforming woman, in between states, from fox or willow tree or seal or dragon and back into a human body again. The book has a series of poems about little brothers and big sisters, another about the frustrations and beauties of married life, and a third about the dangers to our earth, the apocalypse. It is also a book about the intersections between Japanese and American folk and pop cultures.

Good news in tough times

The Good, The Bad, The Sad, and the Ugly...
This week is the last week of the class I teach at National, the week with the most intensive work, and my elderly blonde cat (a little over fifteen) has stopped being able to eat well though the vet couldn't find any reason. We've been feeding her tiny amounts of chicken, which she seems to be able to keep down, and give her plenty of petting, brushing, all the stuff she loves, so in case these are her last days, they'll be as pleasant as possible. But it makes it hard to focus to anything else. Urgh. You'd think with me growing up on a farm - my first experience with death was finding my beloved gray kitten half-eaten by a local dog when I was about five - would make me better about dealing with animal mortality. But no.
Along with that, my injured ankle - the same foot that I broke a bunch of bones in two years ago - seems to not want to heal - the tendon keeps healing and then re-inflaming with the slightest provocation. It's frustrating being on and off crutches and a cane months after the original injury.
So, I was feeling a bit down, a little cranky/overwhelmed, and then I received word about a poetry acceptance that is pretty exciting for me - at a magazine I'm going to be really proud of being a part of. (I'll reveal the deets after I get the contract.) And my publisher is sending me ARCs in the mail, and just sent me a cute little box of bookmarks - aren't they sweet? I was thinking about the fact that I received word about my Dorothy Prize a few years back the day I got out of the hospital for a horrible respiratory infection and my landlord at the rental house we were in at the time had neglected to pay his propane bill for so long that they repossessed it so we had no hot water or heat in the house.
So what does this all mean? It seems there is never good news without a little balancing badness, and yet, we are never allowed to be utterly miserable because then, that moment when you're ready to throw in the towel, is when someone will call with the news of some unexpected blessing.
So I'll go back to taking care of my sick cat and injured ankle with a slightly lighter heart. (I'd give you a reading report on Billy Collins recent SAL Seattle reading, but you know, it was a regular Billy reading, though he seemed a little more tired, with a bit less of a twinkle, than the last time I'd seen him in California. Maybe it was that party at the White House with Aimee Mann and Common.)

A little LA Weekly Style...A California Poetics

Hey readers! A quickie: I just thought you might like to see my poem "Introduction to California Poetics" which was featured today on LA Weekly:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2011/05/poem_introduction_to_californi.php

Looking Forward To Launch

Not the space shuttle, but the second book. The "advanced reader copies" or ARCs for She Returns are heading out of the printer this week. I'm scrambling to make summer plans for places to stay for June and July mini-trips, as well as fall plans for readings in multiple cities - at least Portland, OR and Cincinnati, OH for sure.

I was thinking and wondering what I'd be doing differently this time around with my second book, what I'd learned from the first book, that might be useful to you all. Here are some things I learned:

--Since my last book came out, things like Facebook and Twitter have been invented. Crazy how technology changes in six years (and that's not even touching the e-book issue.) It's true that in some ways it is easier to get the word out about projects...but you're also competing with lots of other people who are also virtually shouting at the top of their lungs about their own projects. Take advantage of new media, but don't spam people to death.

--Do as much ahead of time as possible. I didn't know what to expect with the first book, but this time, I asked my publisher a lot of questions about how I could make this easier on them, what I could give them that might be helpful to promote the book, and started asking for readings six months ahead of the book's launch. FYI: Six months is still probably not enough lead time. (Or readings are harder to get now than they were in 2006.)

--Do not go bankrupt trying to promote a poetry book all across the USA. This means being excited - but judicious - about reading in other cities. Think about where you have a good audience, maybe family or friends, places you might like to visit, conferences that might be worth attending, and pick a handful. Do not try to hit five cities in five days for readings unless you have an immune system (AND nerves) of steel; know your limits. Traveling for readings can be tough and expensive. It's hard to sell enough books to make an overnight trip pay for itself, but everything within driving distance is worth doing. You never know if you might meet a new friend, or find out about a magazine/great bookstore/awesome co-reader. I personally get a huge kick from visiting high school classes and college classes, so those, for me, are always worth doing.

--I know some things are out of my control. I can send out review copies, but that doesn't guarantee a review; and I know now that even if you get a review, it doesn't guarantee anything about book sales. I can't control who likes or doesn't like the book. I can't control if it gets picked for an award or something like Poetry Daily or Garrison Keillor or a big anthology or other people's college classes. Those things would be great, but all you can do is put your book out there and hope it gets into the hands of people who will be kind to it. (The corollary of this: don't freak out too much about a bad review on Goodreads or Amazon. It is not the end of the world. )

--Be gracious, be grateful, and enjoy the good. In the larger scheme of the world, my little poetry book is not that big a deal. I will try to enjoy the little things as much as I can and try to be kind along the way. (Also, avoid obsessing over Amazon ranking or etc.) I will try to return as much love as possible to my publisher, Kitsune Books, who has championed my quirky manuscript and made me things like bookmarks and is kind enough to send out my book to reviewers.

Please post your own wisdom in the comments! I'd love to hear from folks what they've learned (from their first, second, third, fourth...books) and their suggestions!

Reading Reports, haibun and Seattle Adventures

A few little reading report details and Seattle adventures. Needless to say I am drowning in new books!

I was so happy to get my copy of American Poet (The Journal of The Academy of American Poets) Spring 2011, which contains a wonderful article by Aimee Nezhukumatathil on haibun, featuring some sample haibun…including Basho's from The Narrow Road to the Interior, Aimee's "When Mountains Fang the Sky," Kimiko Hahn's "Untitled," Lee Ann Roripaugh's "Inquiline" and my haibun, "The Fox-Wife Describes Their Courtship" from She Returns to the Floating World. A great article if you teach haibun! Thanks Aimee! I feel honored to be in such great company.

So a few notes from my four days of whirlwind readings:

C. Dale Young's poetry reading was funny, dark, moving…Torn is a completely great book. My husband says it was some of the best poetry he's heard at Open Books. I also got to see Tacoma poet Jeff Walt and Rick Barot, who says he is working on both another book of poems AND a book of prose, so yay for that!

Rae Armantrout read some from Money Shot, and I clocked references to True Blood, Buffy, the financial scandals, Little Red Riding Hood, pornography, and that was just in the first couple of poems! Her poems are full of little inside jokes and references to pop culture, which can seem difficult, but when she reads them, just seem like the natural progression of her thoughts. Glenn also got to catch up with Rae's very sweet husband (another supportive poetry husband – got to love those guys)

Maya Zellar's new book, Rust Fish, (http://www.amazon.com/Rust-Fish-Maya-... a girl's coming-of-age in the Pacific Northwest. One of my favorite poems from the book involves an argument about using Round-Up.

I also got ahold of a few other books, Jeremy Halinen's What Other Choice (who, among other things, reconstructs the story of the garden of Eden in interesting ways) and a totally charming chapbook about travelling through Japan by Matthew Thorburn called Disappears in the Rain. I also got Eaven Boland's A Journey of Two Maps, which has a whole essay about the underworld and the character of Nausicaa, so I had to buy it.

In the few spare minutes in between going to poetry readings, we managed to visit Golden Gardens park, going to the beach and pier and seeing the beautiful snowy mountains against the ocean, Pike Place Market (acquiring some giant pink tulips) and my favorite Seattle art gallery Roq La Rue, that was doing an exhibition of tiny sculpted cities and another of Victorian daguerreotype of family members posing with, say, yetis or a giant squid. That was mostly during our four hours of sunshine on Saturday. It's been a cold and nasty spring, as I think I've mentioned, so when the sun shines at all, all of Seattle goes crazy to get out in it. Oh, and a quick fundraiser during Capital Hill's Art Walk for the Japanese earthquake disaster, at which I got a crazy cute art toy designed by Yumiko Kayukawa and two of her posters.

Back Cover, New Artists, and Locus Awards

Hey there! Are you guys as excited to see the official back cover of my second book, She Returns to the Floating World, as I am? ARCS are next...

Through an artist friend, I've discovered this awesome myth/fairy tale artist - her name is Deborah K. Scott. Check out her Red Riding Hood/Target painting here:
http://www.deborahkscott.com/gallery/102551/2011
It's pretty fierce.

Ellen Datlow was nominated for a Locus Award, as was the anthology she edited that I was lucky enough to be included in, Beastly Bride. Congrats Ellen!

Tonight I'm going to try to sneak in a quick visit to this fundraiser for the Japanese earthquake disaster - where some kickass artists will be donating their work:
http://tsunami.fundraising.iamebi.com/
That's before I go to C. Dale Young and Luke Johnson's reading at Open Books.
It's a whirlwind tour this weekend, with another friend's book launch party, and poetry, poetry everywhere. If I can make it to a third of the stuff going on this weekend, I'll consider myself lucky.