An Anniversary of Gratitude

Three Years!

I started this site 3 years ago, when I decided it was time to be a writer again.  It was time to flex my poetic muscle, should I have any.  Turns out that is the only place I have muscle.

Around the same time I started this blog, I also began going to open mics, and after about a year of that, I threw my poems to the wolves of publishing.  I have been blessed, finding more Yeses than Nos to my work.  Here is the first poem I had published online, with Eunoia Review, and the most recent, with Poetry Super Highway.

In these three years much has happened, including my first chapbook coming out, The Truck Driver’s Daughter,  from ELJ Publications, I founded an amazing magazine, Wherewithal, and am attending Queens University of Charlotte as a MFA candidate.

Overall, though, I have been grateful for the support that has come my way.  Followers of this website, encouragers of poetry everywhere, and those willing to lend an ear, to what more often than not is a whiny woman looking for unattainable answers to the questions she hasn’t even asked yet.

Thank you all.

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1 Year, 1 Week, and 1 Day Anniversary

I’m not talking a stupid anniversary.  You know the types: weddings, birthdays, job hire dates, last time you went to church.

Not those type at all.  This is far more important on July 11, 2012 I started this blog, because I wanted to write again.  I wanted to not only write, but also submit poetry for consideration of publication. Going to open mics was on the to do list as well, all while teaching high school English and Creative Writing, and being sure those students found a joy in writing.

I started off pretty strong, I think.  Summer is my “free” time so I headed out to reading, sat down for the very first time and submitted poems online (and quickly felt the smack of rejection).  And I wrote, sometimes until my eyes closed without my will and pen left ink stains tracked all over my comforter as if it was trying to write when, even I couldn’t.  But the school year beckoned and my focus became my students, letting my own goals slip a bit (maybe too much).  That being said, I’m proud of what the year, in writing, has brought.

Over 50 pieces of my student’s writing can be found online and in print at various journals including Poppy Road Review, Rose Red Review, Eskimo Pie, Daily Love, Toucan Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Rusty Nail, and so on.

Personally I have seen 15 different publications accept my work this year.  I know there are some of you who do that in a month, but I only submitted to 39 magazine (2 a few times so like really 45 tries) that’s like a 33% acceptance rate, that has to be good, right?  I don’t know what good is, this is my best guess.  (by the way just received a rejection)

I’ve done my best to go to poetry readings, sometimes not my best.

But most of all I have written with no regards to where I was, what I was writing on, or if it would turn into a poem or not.  I have written so much that I find poems strewn through my house, sometimes beneath couch cushions or with outgoing mail. I find poems in the cubby of my banged up Camry, and beneath the seats.  When there is no paper and there are ideas  I text to a friends and they know never to ask why I texted, “your hands surface over my body like a rock climber searching for a grip to hold on to.”

In the end I have learned not to apologize for what I love, and wish everyone else would be as proud of what they love.

To this end, I now focus on what I love and finding like-minded people as I bring together all I need to apply to MFA programs.  1 year and 3 weeks from now I will be writing from my MFA program, and complaining about the work, while revelling in every bit of it.