Father’s Day Poems
Interesting how fathers show up in poems. Kelli Agodon’s second book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, has several great poems about fathers in it (here’s a link to one of them.) Spencer Reece has a poem about his father who worked at Oak Ridge (!! – Just like my “Robot Scientist’s Daughter” series) in the latest issue of Poetry. Spencer Reece, are we long-lost twins?
She Returns to the Floating World does dwell on my relationships with guys – mostly my brothers and husband, but it has a few poems where my father turns up as well. (My new manuscript, “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter” is really a tribute to my father.)
So here is a poem for Father’s Day from my new book:
Chaos Theory
Elbow-deep in the guts of tomatoes,
I hunted genes, pulling strand from strand.
DNA patterns bloomed like frost.
Ordering chaos was my father’s talisman;
he hated imprecision, how in language
the word is never exactly the thing itself.
He told us about the garden of the janitor
at the Fernald Superfund site, where mutations
burgeoned in the soil like fractal branchings.
The dahlias and tomatoes he showed to my father,
doubling and tripling in size and variety,
magentas, pinks and reds so bright they blinded,
churning offspring gigantic and marvelous
from that ground sick with uranium.
The janitor smiled proudly. My father nodded,
unable to translate for him the meaning
of all this unnatural beauty.
In his mind he watched the man’s DNA
unraveling, patching itself together again
with wobbling sentry enzymes.
When my father brought this story home,
he never mentioned the janitor’s
slow death from radiation poisoning,
only those roses, those tomatoes.
Happy Father’s Day. Love, Jeannine
The Journal’s New Issue and the First full-length review for She Returns to the Floating World
One of my favorite literary magazines, The Journal, has revamped its web site and posted its new Spring/Summer 2011 issue, which includes several poems by yours truly. Click here to check out my poem “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter: One of Us.” Other poets in this fantastic-looking issue include C.J. Sage, Martha Collins, and fellow Seattle-ite Amy Shrader. I love their new layout!
Had to post this little bit of news: Click here to read Kristin Berkey-Abbott’s thoughtful full-length review of She Returns to the Floating World on her blog. Thanks, Kristin!
June Gloom, Art is Good for the Soul, Book Ranks, AmWriting, Book Launch Approaching
Yes, though most of June has been an undifferentiated mass of grey skies and chilled, sixty-ish weather in the Great Pacific Northwest, the day after another lunar eclipse, the sun shines down out of blue skies on us. It makes me feel optimistic. Plus, yesterday I had blueberries, and we all know they are a superpowered fruit! (And I may have had a couple of recent poetry acceptances – after some small flurry of rejections – from lit mags with initials COR and APR to cheer me up as well!)
Today I am going downtown to meet up with awesome artist Deborah in her studio. I may also make a quick trip to check out the new exhibits up at Roq La Rue (since our bridge to downtown will be closed all weekend…)
I thought you all might enjoy this longish lyrical essay on the pitfalls of saying: I am writing.
Mary Biddinger made me aware of this new evil Amazon thing: tracking Hot New Poetry Releases. My new book is right now, at this second, #61. Now we authors can torture ourselves not only with overall rank, but how our book is ranking with other hot new books! Oh, the humanity! (Did I mention today was the first day my new book has a rank?)
Kristy Bowen joins the discussion of book poetry contests started a few weeks ago on HuffPost. She points out, quite rightly, that getting it to some independent presses without being friends with right clique is even less likely than winning a poetry book contest. Thank goodness for independent presses that look outside their own circles for likely talent! Like my presses (Thank You, Steel Toe Books and Kitsune Books, for taking a chance on me!) This is what I would say to poets trying to get their books published: I think you have to try all the avenues to know which avenue is the right one for you.
Interview with Collin Kelley: Poets Using Social Media
Today I’m interviewing social media expert, poet, and fiction author Collin Kelly. Collin Kelley is the author of the novel Conquering Venus and the forthcoming Remain in Light. His poetry collections include Better To Travel, Slow To Burn and After the Poison. I discovered Collin’s poetry first, when he wrote some charming persona poems in the voices of some of my most beloved characters. (I believe we share a love of such pop icons as Wonder Woman, Buffy, and Twin Peaks, among others…)
Links: collinkelley.com; facebook.com/collinkelley; twitter.com/collinkelley
Q&A
Jeannine Hall Gailey: Thanks for doing this Collin! I’ve been an admirer of your work for some time (it doesn’t hurt that we watch the same television shows and both write persona poetry!) and really admire the way you were an early adopter of mediums (tools?) like Twitter and Facebook to promote your own work. Could you talk a little bit about how you got started?
Collin Kelley: I started blogging back in 2003 just as blogs were becoming all the rage. This was before MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. I had a static website before that, but once I started blogging all the traffic started going there, so I dumped the site and made my Modern Confessional blog my main “hub” on the Internet. I was an early adopter of MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, and they all felt like a natural progression from blogging. The blog is still there and updated regularly but Facebook and Twitter are really where I interact the most these days. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a big computer nerd and Internet addict either.
JHG: What has been the most effective way, do you think, for your own books (poetry and fiction) to get the word out? Do you notice a sales bump from online reviews, blog tours, twitters?
CK: I think a good recent example is when I posted the sample chapters from my forthcoming novel, Remain in Light. I posted the pages at Scribd. (another great site for writers to share their work) and then linked it around to Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and my blog. In 24 hours, more than 100 people had read the chapters and since then hundreds more have read them. Social media drove readers to the chapters and will, hopefully, make for good sales when the book is out later this year. Since I’m poor, most of my promotion for the previous novel and poetry collection was online. Without social media, there wouldn’t have been nearly as many readers or sales.
JHG: What advice would you give a nervous poet new to new media about getting on-board with Twitter, blogs and Facebook?
CK: Don’t be frightened of it and start slowly. I guest lecture and lead classes now on social media for writers and the most asked question is “What do I do once I’m on Twitter and Facebook?” I highly recommend setting up a Facebook page for your book, so that you can be more direct in your promotion and sales, but you don’t want to “hard sell” your book. The goal is to build community, so help other writers promote their books, find topics that relate to your books and interests, post funny YouTube clips – you’re selling yourself as much as the book and readers want to get to know authors, so let them into your world a bit. If you go on Facebook and just say over and over again, “Buy My Book,” it’s going to turn people off. The same applies to Twitter. If you want more followers on Twitter, become a source for good links and information, re-tweet links and information from your followers, and let your interests and personality shine through. Cultivating and building community on social media sites takes time, so work on it daily, but don’t go crazy. Time management is the key. Spend a half hour each day updating your social media then get on with the actual writing.
JHG: Just out of curiousity: poetry blogs – over or not over, and why you think so.
CK: I don’t think poetry blogs are through just yet, but you’ll notice more and more that poets are setting up their blog posts to link on Facebook and Twitter. That helps drive more traffic. I’ve seen a big drop in traffic at my blog over the last year, while the number of people following me and engaging at Facebook and Twitter continues to soar. There are some great poetry bloggers out there – C. Dale Young, Nic Sebastian, Kelli Russell Agodon, January O’Neil, Charles Jensen, Jessie Carty, Barbara Jane Reyes and a certain Jeannine Hall Gailey all come to mind. There is always going to be a place on the web for more in depth writing and niche interests, so blogs will survive because of that. But faster and quicker ways to communicate, like Facebook, Twitter and whatever is being dreamed up by some teenager in his dorm room right now, are where the action is now.
JHG: You and Deb Ager have been running the “Poet Party” on Sundays on Twitter. How did that come together, and what do you think it’s accomplishing? I really love to see the connections between poets that might not have met otherwise, and getting advice on things (Like Facebook pages for a new book!) in 140 characters or less is kind of fun!
CK: Deb created the #poetparty (just follow the hashtag, as they say in Twitter-speak) last fall and it took off quickly. She asked me to co-host early on and we’ve built a solid following on Sunday nights. Introducing poets to each other, sharing links for submissions, contests and poetry online is the real success of the #poetparty. While the event only lasts an hour (9 to 10 p.m. ET), we’ve noticed that poets continue to comment and share info throughout the week using the hashtag. It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s a very supportive group of poets who show up every Sunday night and we welcome poets of all stripes to join us. I also think the #poetparty is proof-positive that you can have active discussion, debate and community building on Twitter in real-time.
JHG: Any other new media advice or news we poets should know?
CK: If you aren’t on Goodreads, get there. The site continues to grow and grow and it’s such a great way to interact with authors and readers. It’s like Facebook in a way, but totally devoted to writing and literature, and not quite as intensive. There are great groups to join where you can discuss favorite books, post reviews and promote your own book when it’s released. I find myself spending more and more time there.
She Returns to the Floating World First Pre-Review!
Kristin Berkey-Abbott writes a preview post about She Returns to the Floating World. Thanks Kristin! Between this and my new book appearing for pre-order on Amazon, I feel like the book is real!
Relative Success, Relative Failure: Life as a Poet
I met with some writer friends last night where we talked about what success really meant for a poet: a certain number of books sold (maybe over 1000?) or a certain prize (one with a sticker, one of the members of our party said) or certain publications (Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review.) A reading at a prized venue? A PAID reading? A teaching job? (We talked about the job market: jobs that used to require two books now require three.) Does success mean that someone across the country who has never met you might recognize your name? A Pushcart Prize? A grant? A review in the New York Times?
One of the party mentioned that poets ask for so little. That’s true, really. When I worked (albeit briefly) in technical book publishing, a goal of selling 60K of a certain title was considered pretty modest. When a book only sold 10K, it was considered a sad failure. On the other hand, a poet with 10K sales should throw a party. 60K would be considered pretty off the charts of a poetry book.
We talked about the things that help promote poetry books and which thing was the most effective: readings? reviews? We agreed that reading could be unpredictable (stories of a reading with 100 attendees and 0 book sales, or 12 attendees and 10 book sales, etc) and that the rewards of reviews were not directly tied to sales and were mostly intangible. Still, we poets do what we can. Not for the money, not for any specific expectation of reward, but more of a kind of intangible goal: to connect with other people with our writing.
We have dreams that a first book will change our lives. With a second book, we know the book won’t really change anything, but we hope for the best.
Interview with poet (and radio expert) Elizabeth Austen
Today I’m starting a new summer feature of interviews with poets on the blog! Today’s featured poet is Elizabeth Austen, who is not only a fine writer herself, but is a literary producer for Seattle’s local NPR network affiliate, KUOW. Here she talks about her new book AND gives tips on how poets can be better on the radio!
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 yourself. Hopefully you’ll get an interviewer who is genuinely interested in you and your book, but you can’t depend on that.
I’m a great believer in preparing for anything, and then letting go of the preparation during the interview so you can respond to what’s actually happening in the conversation. The preparation will be there for you—you can trust that and relax and enjoy talking about your work.
JHG: Any tips for reading poems on the air? Any differences you’d want poets to note between our usual “live” readings and one for radio or recording?
EA: Yes—keep it short. I was interviewed by Radio New Zealand in 2006, and despite my experience doing radio myself, I made the mistake of bringing long (more than one page) poems to the interview. The result was that they had to excerpt them—not ideal!
Make sure the poems you read are reasonably accessible, too–remember that radio listeners are almost surely multi-tasking.
Think about how you’ll introduce the poem—you might want to give a little more information than you would at a reading, where you (hopefully!) have your listeners’ undivided attention.
JHG: Your new book, Every Dress a Decision, just came out. How are you using audio to promote your book?
EA: I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Steve Scher on KUOW’s Weekday just as the book was launching (along with Billy Collins, which was fun and kind of surreal), so I have a link to that on my blog and I shared it on Facebook. Now that I’m through the first, intense round of readings, I can start thinking about ways to use audio to promote book—check back with me in six months!
JHG: How would you recommend that a local poet approach a local radio station for a feature (from your own experience…)
EA: Start with your local NPR-affiliate and community radio stations. The most important thing to do is to scour the station’s website to find out which (if any, let’s be frank) programs and producers cover poetry. Then listen to some examples of their poetry-related programming. (If you don’t do this homework first, you’re likely wasting your time and review copies.) Start with an email, introducing yourself as a local writer and describing your book. Include the press release and local reading dates, and inquire if you can send a review copy.
If you’re touring with your book, check the sites of the NPR affiliates in the cities where you’re reading. If they feature poetry, send an email with the dates that you’re in town and where you’ll be reading, your book’s press release, and an offer to send a review copy. If you’ve got any audio of yourself being interviewed or reading online, include a link.
The important thing is to remember that producers are looking for content that fits their programming needs. If you do a little work up front, you can write your email in such a way that you show how you are a good fit with their program. Make it easy for them by keeping your correspondence brief and professional—you know, the same way you’d approach the editor of a journal.
I’ve featured lots of poets on KUOW who approached me first via email, whose work I didn’t yet know. Now it’s time for me to take my own advice and write some queries! Good luck putting your work out there—radio is a terrific medium for connecting with new readers!
Summer Part I – Ocelot Kittens, Seattleites in the sun, and Book Promos Going Out
The first day in nine months with temperatures over 70 degrees, a cloudless blue sky…and with my grades turned in…Glenn and I took a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo, which we knew was going to be super crowded, but I really wanted to see the new ocelot kitten, (http://www.king5.com/news/local/Woodland-Park-Zoo-ocelot-kitten-to-greet-the-public-121275484.html) who was out and sleeping peacefully, unlike the poor snow leopard, who was panting in the 80+ degree heat, and the jaguar, who was the happiest and most active that I have ever seen. We also enjoyed the snuffling of the arctic fox and red pandas – I wish I could adopt both! I swear, if I ever become a super-rich supervillainess, I am totally going with a wildlife-preserve-for-giant-cats hideout, with foxes and red pandas. Having already made the trip across town, we also made the trek to the super-crowded Golden Gardens park and beach, where many people of various shapes and sizes were walking around without shirts (ah, Seattleites! No California-esque body consciousness for them!) and the brisk wind made the milder seaside temperatures feel even better. I wanted to snuffle around in the grass myself, but it was too crowded to do much more than walk up and down the marina and sidewalk. Then it took us a million hours to get home, because every single person who lives in Seattle was on the street, driving five miles an hour, dazed from the appearance of our giant mountain in the sky and drunk from sunshine. All told, we spent four hours outdoors, which I think is more than we’ve been outside total since we moved back to the Northwest.
Yesterday Kitsune Books sent out little press releases for my new book, which is supposed to be available for pre-order now at Kitsune Books’ web site, and should show up on Amazon next week. I guess this book is really happening! I’m starting to get some readings and visits booked and looking at my travel budget for next year (well, no mystery really, it’s quite small!) I got invited to read in NYC and I would love to go, but a trip out there is $$$. Maybe I will have a grant or a wealthy mystery donor come my aid! A girl (or-supervillainess-in-the-making) can dream, can’t she?
Dream Versus Reality: Confession
Ah, the dream of being a writer/poetry teacher. It’s very glamorous. In my head I am sitting somewhere like the garden of The Barefoot Contessa, in bare feet surrounded by flowering herbs. I am studiously and enthusiastically penning long notes to students, continually getting inspirations for my own poems as I do so, jotting notes down on personalized stationary that I carry with me at all times, along with a beautiful old-fashioned fountain pen. I am pretty sure I’m wearing some kind of floaty-but-perfectly tailored sundress. And the sun is shining.
Reality: I have had a nasty virus for four days, all of Memorial Day weekend in fact, so my days have gone something like this: try to grade a five-page final book paper, nap. Wake up, eat jello, drink water, take pills, try to make cogent comments on twenty-page chapbook. Nap. Try to make interesting comments on interview I’m working on for intelligent, academic blog. Look out window at rain. Drink broth my sweet husband made. Take my temperature. Nap. Wake up in a panic, send out online submission while balancing cat on my laptop. Grade two more papers. Ad infinitum.
All my glamour remains on the page, and in my imagination, I’m afraid.
Poets and Artists, Biker Bars, and More Prep for the Book Release
First of all, I want to say that I have really felt blessed to spend time with interesting people in the last few days. I had a good talk with my poet-friend-in-the-Bay-area Natasha (featured in this article on a 14 Hills reading in SF Weekly, with amusing results) and then had a coffee meeting with artist Deborah Scott who talked in a fascinating way about the artistic process of her paintings (see a few of them here) which reminded me of all the ways that poets and artists work in common. We looked at Tarot cards and talked fairy tales, which was really fun.
But Natasha reminded me that she had been reading my blog and didn’t see the full title of my upcoming second book anywhere! Egads, PR disaster! She Returns to the Floating World, due out officially at the end of July, has arrived in ARC (advanced reader copy) form. Contact Kitsune Books (contact at kitsunebooks dot com) for a copy! You can pre-order it now too. I got a copy of the ARC and have become so excited about the physical artifact of the new book – I mean, I can’t imagine getting so excited about the launch of an e-book, can you? Seeing the cover, the back, the little ISBN number…yes, I’m a paper-book-geek all right.
And those of you who’d like to know what this second book is all about? Well, one of the Tarot cards I picked up while visiting with Deborah was a picture of a young woman holding a lion by the mouth. One of the interpretations of the card is about how a person interacts with their animal nature, especially a woman – the being inside us that is instinctive, fierce, blood and lust. That is one of the themes of the new book – one of my abiding interests, including how to be heroic, is the idea of the transforming woman, in between states, from fox or willow tree or seal or dragon and back into a human body again. The book has a series of poems about little brothers and big sisters, another about the frustrations and beauties of married life, and a third about the dangers to our earth, the apocalypse. It is also a book about the intersections between Japanese and American folk and pop cultures.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
