2018 acknowledges that last year wasn't skipped

Apparently, I went all of 2017 without posting on this blog, but Kelli Russell Agodon and Donna Vorreyer have organized a blogger revival for 2018, so a lot of us intend to post regularly again. Hopefully once a week. You can find a list of participating bloggers here:
http://ofkells.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-2018-poet-bloggers-revival-tour.html

So what would have been worth blogging from last year? I hardly sent out any poetry submissions, so I only got like 2 or 3 things published.  However, I did go to my first ever AWP conference in DC (thanks to a grant from the Arizona Arts Commission).

Since I'm not affiliated with any writing program and never even went to college, I always feel like such an outsider at those types of things. But it was very cool that I got to be involved in a great offsite reading by Five Oaks Press and Sundress Publications (because my recent chapbook Faithful as the Ground was published by Lynn Houston at Five Oaks).



I loved meeting the other Five Oaks poets like K.T. Landing and Peter Murphy  and all the Sundress Publications poets like Donna Vorreyer, Sarah A. Chavez, Krista Cox and Luci Brown. They truly felt like a sibling press. After all the outsiderness of wandering through all those conference room corridors, I felt at home in this back alley art gallery with these people.
I was also very excited to get to meet up and read with Charles Jensen who did the wonderful emoji blurb for my chapbook, since his new collection Breakup/Breakdown was also just published by Five Oaks.


I'll write more about my current projects soon.
Thanks for reading if you're reading.
And remember to check out all the other writers who are committed to posting more blog posts in 2018.