A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a great little online magazine and newsletter: The Review Review. Writing and submitting tips, interviews with editors and writers, classifieds and literary magazine reviews all in one handy little website.
They just posted an interview with Lissa Kiernan, editor of Arsenic Lobster and the founder of The Rooster Moans poetry workshops. I'm signed up to take a class on form, "Rattling the Cage," this fall, so it was interesting reading more about how the workshops got started. Its a ways away, but reading this interview has made me so excited about taking the class; I'm eager to learn more about an area of poetry that's always been difficult for me.
I always enjoy reading the thoughts of editors; its nice to know a little bit about the person I'm sending my work to. It's less like tossing it out into the void.
In other news,
I decided against writing a poem a day for April. I know, I'm a wimp! but the crushing stack of work to grade, plus getting my work ready to send to contests, and putting together my fall syllabi this month is just too much. oh yeah, and having a 6 month old baby to care for at home..that too, especially now that she's in the crawling stage. She's smart too--when I put a pillow over the VCR, she remembers where it was the next day and looks for it.
My writing has been slow but steady the past few months. I used to always sit down and write a first draft beginning to end, but now most times its built line by line and edit by edit. Its a different way of working but maybe not a worse way.
I'd love to have a tidy stack of 30 poems at the end of 30 days though. Writing a poem a day. I almost talked myself into it--what if I did 15 minutes a day of freewriting? But I talked it over with my husband and he suggested I use those 15 minutes to BREATHE
And he's right. I've been too busy and taking on too much. Its unfortunate that April poetry month is also April crunch-time-for-professors month.
Still, I'm reading poetry to my students before each class to celebrate. And I'm making a point to try to read more blogs and articles by poets this month; perhaps a poem a day will be easier to accomplish in the lackadaisical month of June.
The main thing I got from this post was that you own a VCR. Um, that is way too awesome for words.
ReplyDeleteoh lol! i hadn't even thought about that; we inherited a bunch of electronicy stuff and a tv when we bought the house; i refer to the entire electronics area as "the vcr" even though we also have a dvd player. i guess i'm old fashioned ha~
DeleteHa, we still have a VCR, too. One day those will only be in museums. LOL
ReplyDeleteI think you made a smart decision. I remember how stressful those end-of-semester days were, so you'll have more than enough to occupy you. Why not have your own poem-a-day challenge in June or July?
i think that is what i'll probably do--i'll enjoy it much more when i don't have as much going on!
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