Susan Rich's Blog, page 68

From Around the Blogosphere ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey Interviews Elizabeth Austen

Thanks to Elizabeth Austen and Jeannine Hall Gailey for this practical and smart interview. 

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 - Click here to keep reading this interview!

This May Be the Time ...

Summer Trying Its Best Outside My Studio
Okay, so that title might be a tad overdramatic, but perhaps this really will be the day that summer begins in the northwest. These pansies still look as if they're huddled together for warmth, but they aren't giving up! Yesterday was the last day of classes at the college where I teach and today starts a one week grading frenzy. At the end of the quarter --- and I mean in the last week --- there are some students who decide to put education as their first priority and some make great strides. It's both exciting to see students really "get it" and heartbreaking that they wait until the last possible moment. Yesterday afternoon I simply talked with a student about her ideas and late last night she sent me what she'd written. Her best work of the quarter. All it took was an exchange of ideas, a probing conversation and her work took off.

So perhaps it's not summer yet given what's on my mind... I don't usually post my own poems here but I think since I am teaching "Paradise Now" and my students are writing about the film right now, I'll share this poem. Happy Friday!

Paradise Now at Highline Community College

The boys argue about the end of the movie, did the bomb detonate?
They can't agree. They try out multiple meanings for white

light, two human eyes, the break-neck speed of Said's life;
his grief. The black ash of question marks begins to rise

reluctantly about their freshman heads --- the procrastinated
fall into inquiry, so what has this to do with me?

I cry out flashback, foreshadow --- hope to teach the world
of mise-en-scene --- to watch students interrogate

their own thinking. They side so easily with the suicide
bomber; understand instinctively two best friends

toppled by geography, their familiar junkyard lives.
In class discussion my students appear almost dreamy ---

Can there be a film industry without a country? 
Intifada and Mossad lift off their tongues

with new found confidence; the glossary --- their global gun.
On which side of the checkpoint can they rely? Arab

or Israeli? The questions with new answers lead them on,
keep them fractured, shapeshift some through to another side.

The New Issue of Crab Creek Review is Out and Beautiful!

Crab Creek Review is a perfect-bound print literary journal dedicated to publishing the best poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.  We are interested in publishing both emerging and established poets and writers. Over the years we have published: Naomi Shihab Nye, Rebecca Wells, William Stafford, Madeline DeFrees, David Guterson, Lyn Lifshin, Dorianne Laux, Marvin Bell, Peter Pereira, Ilya Kaminsky, David Wagoner, Kathleen Alcala, Denise Duhamel, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Peggy Shumaker, William Doreski, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Susan Rich, Ryan G. Van Cleave, Alison Pelegrin, Mary Biddinger, Frances McCue, Virgil Suarez, Nancy Pagh, Alice Fogel, Oliver de la Paz, Martha Silano, Jim Daniels, James Bertolino, Ciaran Berry, Kathleen Flenniken, Patricia Fargnoli, Sam Hamill, Tod Marshall, Joseph Powell, Alice Derry, Marjorie Manwaring, Joannie Kervran Stangeland, Molly Tenenbaum, and Kary Wayson.

2011 Vol.1 Now Available!
Order our current issue, 2011 Vol.1,  here --
featuring interviews with Mark Doty and Todd Davis, and our fiction contest winner, Hal Ackerman, and poetry contest winner, Cameron Aveson.
Cover Art: NightFall, by Ben Mann (painted in response to the disaster in Japan, depicting the spirit of survival in the wake of devastation: "The black stems honor the citizens either killed or missing. Plum Blossoms, to me, are iconic of Spring and therefore renewal." ~Ben Mann)
Crab Creek Review publishes two issues a year.

Postmark for Poets on the Coast ~ Midnight Tonight!

Women Writers-- Last Day for Poets on the Coast Retreat in Oregon at Discounted Rate
We're filling the final places for this retreat (thank you to the women who have
signed up and written us over the last 2 days!) and there was a question I
wanted to answer--

Question:
If I want to sign up, but am not paying by PayPal, can I email you the 
registration form for Poets on the Coast  then mail the check today 
on May 31?


Answer:  Yes.  That is absolutely fine.  Just email us the registration form 
so we can hold your place and mail the check today.  As long as it's 
postmarked 


May 31, you are welcome to the discounted price.  


~~~


Kelli and I met yesterday and some of the topics poets want discussed
are putting together a chapbook and questions on publication, so those
will be two things we will definitely be discussing. The number one thing
that everyone is excited about is a private one on one meeting to discuss
your work, your life, your questions ...

Plus, yoga in the morning if you choose, chocolate, beach and writing
time, dinner together in one of the most incredible hotels around -
the Sylvia Beach Hotel.

All information and registration for Poets on the Coast can be 
found here .

Hope to see you there!

A Dream of Honey by Matthew Sweeney

A Dream of HoneyI dreamed that bees were extinct,
had been for decades, and honey
was a fabled memory, except for jars
hoarded by ancient, wealthy gourmets.
Honey was still on the shelves, of course –
that's what they'd named the sweet concoction
chemists had arrived at, and it sold well,
not just to those who knew no better,
and the day was coming fast when no one
alive would be able to taste the difference.Then one Friday morning in Riga
a peasant woman arrived by horse and cart
at the old Zeppelin Hangars market
and set up her stall with jars of honey
flavoured by the various flowers. Around her
sellers of the new honey gawped, then sniffed
as she screwed the lids off, then glared
as her jars were snapped up in minutes,
and she climbed on her cart again
and let the horse take her away.In the dream, e-mails sped everywhere
about this resurrection of honey,
and supermarket-suppliers scoured Latvia,
knocking on every door, sending helicopters
low over houses, looking for beehives,
but after a month they gave it up,
and the woman never appeared again
though rumours of her honey-selling
came over the border from Russia
and continued beyond the dream.MATTHEW SWEENEY (2001)

Room is Running Out at Poets on the Coast - Monday is the Deadline for Saving $

Join us for poetry, peace, and writing prompts. All this and snacks, too.

Join Kelli Russell Agodon and me for our first ever Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Writers.We have only a few spaces left and you know it would be cool to join us. Women are coming in from all corners of the country to be part of this event. We have poets and non-poets, journalists and children's book writers. A love of language and an openness to experiment is all that's required. See you in Sept.

And Sometimes a Ticket is Just the Ticket

St Stephen's Green, Dublin
Sometimes deciding on a plan is as simple as hitting "submit" on an airline's website. Yesterday I bought a ticket for Dublin and so I am Ireland bound this summer. This will be my third visit to Ireland but my first time in the southwest of the country. I will begin my travels in Dublin, then County Cork and then anything is possible. Before I bought this ticket, I was anxious and depressed about my life and suddenly with an adventure on the horizon all that's changed. I now love my life again. It is with a bittersweet taste I realize I will be gone during some of the most beautiful Seattle weather and the garden will move on without me. So why am I leaving? What calls to me across the Atlantic? Is the thirteen hour flight with an eight? nine? hour time difference worth the trouble?
In a word: yes. Of course Ireland is a country of poets and gorgeous besides, but that's not why I go. I've worked in Gaza and South Africa, bartended in Scotland, monitored elections in Bosnia and here's the secret: I travel to feel the world more intensely than is possible at home. I go to see who I am stripped of comfort and middle class privilege. Of course just that I have the freedom to travel means that last sentence is highly suspect, actually wrong. What I mean is that when I travel, I connect more fully to a basic humanity. My mind is open to possibility in a way distinctly different from when I go for a morning walk where I live. There is danger and ecstasy possible in travel -- in the discovery of a sculpture or the sight of a mountain view.
When I travel alone I'm a stranger in the world. And really, aren't we all strangers? I travel to find myself lost along a Spanish dirt road or in the middle of a city park. I make momentary friends with taxi drivers who recite Patrick Kavanagh by heart. I go in order to challenge myself to love life with all my heart.

Dreaming of Travel: Needing to Decide Soon ...

Cork City, IrelandThis afternoon a colleague stopped me on the stairs of our faculty building. Have you decided? she asked. She didn't have to explain. At our college, summer begins in two weeks. Everyone is talking about their upcoming trips to London, Istanbul, Croatia. Most of my friends are far better planners than I am. I'm decidedly slow. There are so many places in the world to visit. How to choose just one? Or two? And let's be honest. My last international trip ended in wildfires and an early evacuation home. Travel is complicated. Like love.

And yet I need it to feel alive. Travel challenges me and makes me confront the unknown within the world and within my own body. I promised my friend (she has at least four separate trips planned this summer!) that I would work on getting something figured out. And immediately I remembered an artist residency in Ireland that I'd read about - Anam Cara in the southwest of Ireland. Then I remembered I had friends in Ireland. I like to travel to artist residencies and I like to see friends in faraway places -- places that I have some familiarity with. This would be my third trip to Ireland but my first trip to the southern area.

My goal is to decide on an adventure by the end of the weekend. This is the time of year that airline tickets start to skyrocket. Kayak says three tickets left at this price! I am open to any and all suggestions.
Where was your best travel experience? Where shall I wander this time.

Are You Still Putting Off Your Blog? Smart Tips by Midge Raymond

Well, the tips are to actually get you started blogging. Or to reinvigorate a blog that's become stale. I hope to follow at least half the good advice presented here. My one quibble is with the emphasis on staying on topic. However, since my blog is meant to cover the creative writing life, that leaves a great deal of room for new ideas. I especially like the idea of essentially having a weekly column like January O'Neil and Kelli Agodon do for Confession Tuesday or Thankful Thursday. Maybe I will try this.  
 Since today is Thursday let me say I am thankful for smart writer friends like Midge, Kelli, and January for their generosity of spirit and their best words in the best order. Happy day!
Book Promo 101: How to create a successful blogby Midge RaymondThe first bit of advice most writers get about book promotion is usually: "Write a blog." And it's great advice. Yet writers often think, "Wait…I've just spent six years on this novel, and now I have to write more?"Well, yes.Of course, some published writers are published solely because of their blogs (there are too many success stories to name, but surely you've heard of Sh*t My Dad Says and Julie & Julia). So if you're writing nonfiction, you're at an advantage; whether it's cooking or travel or advice for moms, nonfiction lends itself well to blogging. If you're enough of an expert in something to write a book about it, you probably already have a blog, which means you've got a platform and you've got great stuff to take to agents and editors.But if you're a fiction writer or poet, you may not have considered writing a blog. You may be far more interested in writing drafts of stories and poems than in trying to create content for blog posts and worrying about building an audience. And I feel your pain; I put off blogging as long as I could, until I finally gave in and started a version of this blog back in 2006.When I began my blog, I was juggling a zillion things and barely had time to write as it was — and I wondered why I should write a blog when I could be writing stories. To continue reading click here ...

I have loved this song for a long time

I have loved this song for a long time but not known who sings it. How happy I am to be introduced to Yael Naim  who was born in Paris, France to Tunisian Jewish immigrants from Tunisia. At the age of four, she moved with her family to Ramat HaSharon, Israel, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She served in the Israel Defense Force as a soloist in the Israel Air Force Orchestra.

Yes, it's a pop song, but sometimes there is a good reason that pop songs are popular. This is the song that got Naim noticed when it appeared in an advertisement for Apple Computers. This video however, has a different message. It makes me happy each time I watch it.

Thank you to Kelli Russell Agodon for posting this today and solving the mystery of an otherworldly voice that has haunted me for months.