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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Submitting Is the Hardest Thing to Do. . .In Poetry!

courtesy writingforward.com

Let’s face it, it is difficult to decide to submit your work, your poems, your babies out there to a careless, heartless, ruthless editor.  And what is worse is that ugly NO that comes back more often than not.

Here’s the thing, if you don’t let your poems out there into the world, no one will know how great you are, except you, and maybe a few friends.  To be honest, editors are not (normally) careless, heartless, or ruthless.  Most editors are dying for really good work to hit their inbox, and you could be hiding that poem that will rock their world from them.  I cannot begin to fathom how many magazines and journals are out there waiting for work.  Duotrope (great tool, but does cost $50 a year-worth it if you are going to really use it) might be able to help you a bit, or Poets & Writers for that matter, but I can talk about a few places that I think would be kind to you as you start or continue your journey into the publication world.

Let me start with the guy that I hands down think is the nicest EVER, Russell Streur, and his journal The Camel Saloon.  He has guidelines to follow as all of these will have, but he will also write you back quickly whether it is an acceptance or a rejection.  He also, on rare occasion offers information on new journals.  Big bonus he has a great list of other magazine to check out on the web.

Is your writing a bit dark, maybe twisted, or just simply strange.  Carnival Literary Magazine wants YOU and your work.  Currently the editors are Shannon and Jose Miguel.  I find the work on these pages refreshing and risk taking.  Nothing good happens without risk.

 

Next up Gutter Eloquence, founded and edited by Jack T. Marlowe.  This is a quarterly magazine ran by a darn good poet.  the work here is relevant, gritty, hard truths with powerful imagery, more often than not.  Send him work (when not on hiatus) that knock the proverbial socks off.

We all write about heart ache and heart-break, and Napalm and Novocain wants to hear all about it, in fresh imagery and poems that knock the wind out of the reader.  What is great about this press is Amy Huffman actually has several online magazines catering to different styles of poetry and flash fiction.  Write Haikus? There’s a place for you.  Write nature poems?  She’s got that covered too, and so much more.

Eunoia Review has a dear place in my heart, because when Kevin says he wants to help the new writer find a place, he means it.  This is the place that first accepted my work, over two years ago.  And Kevin continues to give new writers a place to call home.  Send to him, and he will respond with lightening speed.  Always kind, even when it’s a no.

Nice intelligent people, that love poetry, are not as hard to find as you would imagine.  Take for example Ariana Den Bleyker, who genuinely wants to bring new work to the public.  She does so through her press, and this journal, Emerge Literary Journal.  I should disclose that her New York Press, ELJ, is publishing my debut collection in October of this year.  How much more must I say to prove how nice editors can be?

 

Before you go off and start sending your work out, still make sure you read the magazines, and their guidelines.  The  quickest way to be rejected is to ignore guidelines.  Most (editors) won’t even read your work if you fail to follow those rules set by the magazines.

Happy Poeting Cats and Kittens.

 

 

All pictures from said magazine’s Websites

Ringing Out the Year Like a Poet

Thanks to Eunoia Review, As a Poet, I am ending 2012 on a rather high note.

Please check out my poems, Little Girl Allergic to the Dark and The Haircut,  that appear on the site today, and for all my writer friends in this blogverse, considered submitting.  The response time is amazing.

Here is one of the poems, a prose poem at that:

Little Girl Allergic to the Dark

Posted on December 30, 2012

Just before sunset she starts to shake, her eyes glaze over, and sweat fills her brow. There are no prescription pills she can take. Her mother has tried many things, practicing Tao, herbal medicine, even called in a witch doctor, but still the convulsions followed sundown.

Her mother longs to swap places, but mothers cannot be allowed to live their children’s lives. So she does what she can; turns on the reading lamp, readjusts the closet light, and even leaves open the Frigidaire. It’s a small price to pay, wilted vegetables and curdled milk.

Worst Poet, Less Worse Than Before

I’m still not a good poet. I don’t submit work like I should. There should have been an onslaught of submissions from me, after all it was summer, but I only mustered up 14. Which I guess is far better than I did at any other time, ever. Because technically I have submitted more this summer than I ever did in my entire life. I have gone to more poetry readings alone than I have ever done before. Well sans the Tuesday Night Poets days (but those days were gatherings of writers, not actual poetry readings. gatherings of friends to drink as much as share poetry). So I am making strives forwards.

My issue is, I guess like every writer, I always think that no poem is ever done. So hard to submit. I’m constantly changing things. I literally was forced to handwrite a poem (because of my possessed printer) I had on the computer for a very long time, “Abel” and as I rewrote it prior to a reading. As I rewrote it through my hand it changed. Went from 20 lines to 16, and I think better. though I hate single word titles and that haunts me.

But “Abel” leads me to a week of learning that submitting actually pays off, and perhaps my downward spirals are not to be traveled with such zeal. My friend, Alan often tells me that rejection means that I am doing it right, because no rejection means you aren’t even trying. I felt like I was doing it well, after 6 straight rejections. But Monday when I woke up I had an acceptance from Bop Dead City, and while I was at the dentist, Eunoia Review took three of my poems, but not to become arrogant I was put to bed with another rejection (#7 for the year). Wednesday “Abel” was taken by San Pedro River Review, and they actually offered me help to make it even better. Last night I was put to bed with an acceptance from Gutter Eloquence. Well with the acceptance and a five-line poem about Jessie, my AA friend who is cool enough, but I like drinkers, because there is always somewhere to hide with a drinker.

All good news, right?

Now the problem, I only have 3 submissions out, so before Sunday closes its eyes on me, I have to submit. It’s the only way to do this right. And as a less worse poet than I once was, it is a requirement to continue.