Some notes:
Friday I’m doing a talk at the local library (an august old building in Port Townsend) for the “youth writing group” on comic books, poetry, and persona. Good times! I’m really looking forward to it. It turns out I really like working with high school kids.
Today I was really excited to get contributor copies of the Spring 2008 5 AM. 5 AM is always compulsively readable and I am honored to be a part of it. The poem in there is completely autobiographical, which is a rarity for me. I’m kind of happy it’s not online, because it’s so personal, but the poem also fits in well tone and subject-matter-wise with the rest of the issue, which means some editors are working hard to make that happen!
Steel Toe Books announces two new books chosen from June’s open submissions: http://www.wku.edu/~tom.hunley/steeltoebooks/news.htm
The choreography on So You Think You Can Dance this season is so lame compared to the last two seasons. no? Still my favorite summertime show. I So Wish I Could Dance. That’s my version.
Now I can focus on…moving? Eek!
So, I am feeling much better (thanks to a few doses of antibiotic) and the Port Townsend Writers conference is officially over, so I can get back to regular life. Regular life, right now, equals figuring out:
1. Where to move (city) – looking for hot, dry climates for my asthma. I have to take this breathing stuff seriously for a little while until my lungs get back into working shape.
2. Where to move (neighborhood) – checking Craigslist for rents, etc. If anyone one has any recommendations for neighborhoods around Scottsdale/Phoenix (the most likely city contender at this time) I am all ears.
3. Looking for possible work in the area (also appreciate any tips in that arena…)
4. Getting rid of some stuff from the house so we can move only what we have to (like turtles with our house on our backs)
5. Organizing garage sale (??)
6. Getting ready for family visits from my parents and then my little brother and his wife.
7. Where to maybe send some work out? Waiting for various checks I am owed? Nervously whittling on my two manuscripts or trying to work out some new poems?
8. Wonder why I am having pain in my neck?
Poetry is a weird ride. Sometimes I feel like, yes, I am making a difference, writing poems is really worth it when someone reads them and gets them and maybe it helps them a little bit. Then other times I feel like I am working on some antiquated art form no one cares about and certainly no one wants to pay for so why am I doing it?
The last day of the Port Townsend writer’s conference, and only a little the worse for wear…
The teaching part went pretty well, I sold some books, bought some books, and went to a lot of readings and classes in seven days. The best part of the conference was catching up with friends and getting a few inspirations to write. The weather was pretty if a little chilly (highs in the sixties) and I saw my baby otters again down on the Fort Warden beach. Also, yesterday we had two beserk white kittens on our lawn (which I had to carry back to their home – is carrying kittens not the best chore ever?) and a mother deer and two fawns in the back yard all morning. Apparently July is baby animal month here!
Just to show how small the poetry world is, ran into a friend of Charles Jensen at the literary magazine panel (Stephanie, the editor of Blood Orange review, was talking about how great Charles and LocusPoint were.) The other editor I really enjoyed meeting was Willow Springs editor Sam Ligon. All the Willow Springs folks have been wonderful to deal with, actually. We had a very good discussion about lit mag distribution and then about hybrid forms (he was teaching a class on the short-short story at the same time I was teaching my thing on haibun.)
I wish I was a little physically sturdier these days (managed to come down with another antibiotic-requiring throat infection, and then throw my neck out sneezing ?!?) so I could do even more socializing, but had to kind of chill out on activities in the last two days to recover. Tonight Kim Addonizio reads and there is a little reception afterwards to say goodbye. Should be fun!
Where to find me this week…
Well, if you haven’t been reading the sidebar of my blog, then you don’t know (what? you don’t read my blog sidebars, full of their wonderful links to other blogs and web sites and useful information?!) that…
I’ll be teaching two afternoons this week (Tuesday and Thursday) at Port Townsend’s Centrum Writers Conference on haibun and haiku. Other guest-afternoon teachers include Peter Pereira (great, right?) and the night readings will feature such poets as Anne Waldman and Kim Addonizio. So show up, bring your own popcorn, listen to some writing, watch some otters. All good times.
In other news, while shopping for G’s birthday present (shoes! nice ones!) I ran really hard into a high, sharp-cornered table at Nordstrom, which for some reason was blocking the path (oh, right, there was a sale, so all sides were filled with people.) I hit it so hard it knocked the breath right out of me and made me see stars. Since I have a bleeding disorder (a genetic PAI-1 deficiency, I promise I had it before it was trendy for poets to have blood disorders) this should make for exciting bruise patterns on my right side. First: honestly, what did I ever do to that table? And two, was I always this clumsy? I should really only be allowed to play with children’s scissors and round plastic furniture. Well, that’s it: no string bikinis for me this week!
In still other news: Arizona or San Diego?
I’ve been busy preparing for my class for next week’s Port Townsend Writer’s Conference. It’s on haiku and haibun, so I’m getting exercises together, finding examples and definitions, etc. I’m really loving Sam Hamill’s translation of Basho’s Narrow Road to the Interior. Basho is all poetry-biz gossip and allusion to classic Japanese literature in his haibun – surprising, right? – and Sam’s language captures his tone very well, I think.
I did have a fun break on the 4th – husband G and I got to have brunch with one of my favorite inspirations, poet Denise Duhamel and her husband Nick Carbo, who were in Seattle for like half a day, and then go to local poetry bookstore Open Books, where we met up with fellow Pacific U MFA alum Jennifer Whetham. Denise is just as animated and sweet as her poems might indicate. Then G and I watched some fireworks, just like old times.
In the next week, we have our fourteenth (!!) anniversary, G’s 37th birthday, and of course, the aforementioned PT Writer’s Conference. Too much stuff going on at once!
In good news, we saw a mother sea otter with two babies yesterday, and a multitude of seals. We keep showing up at the beach at 9 PM, and the aquatic mammals keep putting on a show! Better than those expensive aquariums by far 🙂 And I think Port Townsend’s deer are multiplying…
I’ve finally written some new poems in a series I’ve been thinking about for a while now, tentatively called “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter.” Not sure if they’re supposed to be part of one of the books I’m working on, or their own thing. Either way, after a bit of a dry writing spell, yay!
Happy 4th! and interesting bits…
Looking for performance art in Florida based on Becoming the Villainess? Look no further!
http://www.alleycatplayers.org/Site/Current_Show.html
Like to read some poems from the current (and excellent) issue of Willow Springs – my poem among them?
http://www.ewu.edu/willowsprings/current.html
Like some insider information about the book contest process (including, apparently, no small binder clips?)
http://wordcage.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-other-side-of-envelope-part-i.html
What about a breakdown of small presses that accept poetry? (Warning: a little depressing) Trust Seth to run those numbers…I particularly like the little LOTR reference at the top of the post…
http://sethabramson.blogspot.com/2008/07/2008-state-of-small-presses.html
My interview with Pattiann Rogers for Poets & Writers Magazine is now online!
Here’s the link – and hope you enjoy!
http://www.pw.org/content/interview_poet_pattiann_rogers
(Leaving nice comments is always appreciated, too!)
Also, this weather anomoly appeared in the sky while I was teaching at Centrum – it’s the result of ice crystals in cirrus clouds:
I’m done with my stint as a faculty-artist-who-teaches-high-school-students-etc at Centrum. The sun is shining and after a chilly week, it is 80 degrees.
The class was full of amazingly intelligent, sophisticated girls, already as subversive in their writing at 16 as I can ever hope to be. When they got up to read their work on the last day of the class, and the room of parents and students and little siblings applauded them, I was so so proud. You can only do so much in a classroom setting. You encourage them to read. You encourage them to write. You give them exercises that (hopefully) help them think in new ways about poetry, character sketches, mythology, comic book characters, persona. You talk about rejection, revision. You sit with their work and talk about expectation, cliche, tone, surprise. You read them poems, in class we read out loud together chapters from Kelly Link’s “Stranger Things Happen” or a chapter from “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.” You talk about your favorite writers, why you love them. You mention life as an artist isn’t as glamorous as they probably think.You talk about sitting in front of a blank screen all day.
But what they bring to class – their unique skills, humor, imagination – are the real gifts. Anyway, it was all very rewarding and fun, if exhausting. They really were little teenage comic book superheroines.
For some reason all week I kept seeing seals and otters at the Fort Warden beach. One day I got within five feet of an otter napping in the sun underneath an old log before I saw him. They swim and look at you, swim and look away, dive underwater and come back up to peek at you again. They do not seem afraid. It makes me think of the selkies. I think, if I came back as an animal, it might be as a seal.
Now I am ready to sleep and get back to my friends, my family, writing, blogs…
A quick note from the high-school creative writing class trenches
Before the students came in for a quick 20-minute class tonight, I set up the room, putting an array of my own books on each table: Japanese folk tales on one, Greek and Roman mythology on another, “The Armless Maiden” and “The Poet’s Grimm” and “Mirror, Mirror” on another, and the last one filled with comic books (Fray, Buffy, Witchblade, one called “Fables,” X-Men, Neil Gaimon’s Sandman “The Dream Hunters” with his fox-wife-type story, etc.)
When they came into the classroom, there was an audible “Whhoooshing” sound as they ooh-ed and ah-ed over the books. I tell you, is there anything better than people who love books? They even asked for extra time at the end to sit and read. Good times. These high school kids know Persephone, the Selkie wife, Miyazaki. It feels like a magical common language.
Also, the new Fall 2008 Willow Springs is out, and my poem “Risking Our Lives” is in there (from my third fairy-tale manuscript) along with poems by Tony Hoagland, Michele Glazer, Elizabeth Austen (among many others!) and an interview with Tess Gallagher…
Yes, I’m deep in work mode right now, reading and re-reading in prep for my upcoming high school class on “mythology, comic books, and you” for Centrum: “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon, re-reading Kelly Link’s “Stranger Things Happen” to decide which story to use in the class, and a book on the history and origins of superheroes called “Comic Book Character.”
But, I had to surface briefly before I disappear for a week in the class to direct you to new poems on 2River View:
http://www.2river.org/2RView/12_4/default.html
You know, the editor took two poems that I wrote at very different times, but put together, they tell one story. I didn’t realize it until I was recording them both. That’s the subconscious for you.
And, to show you the wonderful work my Becoming the Villainess illustrator, Michaela Eaves, continues to do – here’s the upcoming cover of indie-sci-fi-lit-mag, Talebones! Nice work, right?
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.
