Because it’s not every day an awesome songwriter turns my poems into songs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5-Zw9yJ3WY&feature=colike

I don’t know if you’re the type of person who enjoys listening to music, or poems, or the collaboration between songwriters and poets and performers, but here is the wonderful Joy Mills and her musical interpretation of a poem from my third book, “Sleeping Beauty Loves the Needle,” and me reading the poem and talking a bit about the collaboration. I hope you enjoy it!

Stories In the Hazy Days of May

We had a lovely day today, warm and bright, and I saw a cignet in the water – just one ugly swan-duckling, pale and crying, just like the story! I also saw that the barn swallows and stellar jays were back, a sure sign that spring has sprung, along with the lilacs blooming and the beginning of the peonies. Amid all of this, every day I am watching the new townhouse be torn apart, repainted, floors ripped up and replaced, all the preparations for when we move in – a bit stressful, but happy, these preparations. I bought the least practical thing today – a beautiful glass and copper hummingbird feeder, but I thought it was important in making the new place a home, a place for the hummingbirds. It’s important to have a space for hummingbirds.

This article made me think long and hard about the adjunct teaching I’ve been doing for almost four years now. You wouldn’t guess it, from my being a poet and all, but part of me is deeply practical, and cares about things like paying my student loans and my new mortgage off, you know, eventually. The practical occupations of writers are getting fewer and farther between these days – fewer jobs for journalists, copywriters, teachers, professors. A perilous time for poets.

So what have you been doing with your May days? I am thinking change is in the air. The supermoon is making us all dizzy with it. My little brother posts pictures on Facebook from Venice, Italy, and all the pictures look like illustrations in an old-fashioned book. What kind of fairy tale are we writing for ourselves? A new home, a new life, new beginnings, hummingbirds in the white lilacs.

Winner of the big Poetry Month Giveaway, a new review, a new home

Congratulations to Molly of www.mapsandpoetry.blogspot.com, who is the winner of the great poetry month giveaway! She’s won a copy of my second book, She Returns to the Floating World, Steady My Gaze, and a third mystery book/lit mag! Hope you enjoy, Molly!

Wonderful to receive a copy of Winter 2012 Southern Humanities Review, which has a beautiful long review of She Returns to the Floating World by Celia Lisset Alvarez. Thank you Celia, for the thoughtful review. (Oh, and remember to check out her blog for an interview!)

Well, we’ve turned in the certified check and signed our paperwork, and tonight is our final walkthrough. Hopefully tomorrow we get our new keys!

Last Day of Poetry Month, New Interview, and a Poem in APR – Happy Birthday!

So, it’s the last day of Poetry Month AND my birthday – that very last birthday of my thirties. So how should we celebrate? How about some links and news and stuff?

Celia Lisset Alvarez interviewed me over at her blog as her last poetry month feature.
And, the May/June 2012 of American Poetry Review is out, with my poem, “Once Upon a Time,” amid some really wonderful writers!
And, one more sticker for She Returns to the Floating World – here it is, all official – it didn’t win, but it was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal.

A quick recap of some other poetry news of April:

So yes, there was lots of stress, job interviews, a large handful of rejections, house-buying business, some health stuff…but all in all, I feel extraordinarily blessed this month and grateful. Especially with my husband baking me gluten-free birthday chocolate souffles tonight!
I also have some other exciting news I can’t officially reveal yet. But I promise I will soon!

And, finally, don’t forget to leave a comment at this link for one more chance to participate in the great poetry giveaway.

Social Whirl in Seattle

Yes, within ten days of moving back to Seattle I think I’ve done more socializing than I did in a typical month in Napa! Which is good! Because, it turns out, maybe I don’t love being a recluse. I know, it sounds romantic, but I actually like getting out and interacting with people, especially wonderful poet people like at yesterday’s event – poetry at the Frye Museum.
Here’s a pic with Oliver de la Paz,

Well, my happy mood yesterday was kind of crushed after I found out (via Facebook, of all places) that a good friend from high school had died.

Later on I fell climbing the concrete stairs (still wobbly with the foot cast thingy) and hit my head, which made me dizzy and my vision really blurry, so Glenn took me to the hospital where, after some tests, blood tests and a CT scan of my head, they wanted to book me into trauma and give me 24 hours of observation to watch for something called a “delayed bleed.” I booked myself out of the hospital against advice at around 4 AM last night, and have only four hours left til the 24 hour period would be over. I thought probably someone much worse off than me probably needed the bed in the trauma center, and besides, I don’t spend the night in the hospital getting woken up by strangers if I don’t need to. I’m perfectly happy getting woken up by my husband, who kept checking my pupils and asking me the anwers to multiplication problems.

Bleeding disorders make head injuries a little trickier for doctors. I got a follow-up call this morning from a local hematologist to make sure I was okay. I actually had a good, sharp ER doc last night, someone who had just come on shift, who sat down to discuss the pros and cons of various medicines and procedures. So far I just have a slight headache where I bumped my head and a definite need for sleep . But I guess I’m glad they were looking out for me.

This post is a non-sequiteur

Classes I’m grateful I took as an undergrad:

–Environmental Toxicology

–Medical Botany

–Environmental Law

–Everything in biology that was related to medicine, especially the virology bits and pieces

Sorry for my lack of posts – I had a surprise visit from my little brother and his wife (and he’s coming back next weekend,

Is it that time already? Where I’ll be at AWP:

Thursday morning, 10:30-11:45 at the Bookfair at the Steel Toe Books table #436
Signing books with Superstar Steel Toe author Mary Biddinger

Friday morning, 9 AM (early!)
Giving a little Pedagogy on the persona poem at the Poetry Pedagogy Forum

After that? A few readings, some fun times, maybe a museum or two…a trip to SoHo…bookstores…let me know if you’re doing anything fun and you think I should be there! Looking forward to meeting you there!

So, I was thinking about “inspiration.” I tend to be an “inspired” writer rather than an hour-a-day writer when it comes to poetry (not prose, which I pretty much do every day.) I know that sounds like some kind of mystical thing, or a flakeout for not writing poems more frequently. But when it’s on, I know it, and the poems I write when I get the spark are ten times better than those I force myself to write when I’m not “on.” So now I don’t write when I’m not on. At the pace I wrote last year, it’ll take me all year to publish the poems I’ve already got, so I’m not freaking out about writer’s block or anything.

I thought about the last few years and my writing patterns and here are some things I noticed that inspired multiple poems:

1. Art – Going to galleries and museums really helps me create new ideas, new colors, and new images. Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein and Japanese pop-artists such as Takashi Murakami and Yumiko Kayukawa are a few artists whose work has inspired multiple poems. The weirder, the better. The more I’m around art, there more I think in terms of the visual – and I think that helps my poetry.

2. Novels and short stories. I read a lot of books, but the ones that inspire the most writing lately have been magical-realist types like Kelly Link, Haruki Murakami, and Osamu Dazai (his dazzling Blue Bamboo is a must read for everyone. Loved it!) I think I wrote most of my third manuscript after reading Murakami’s After Dark and Blue Bamboo in quick succession. Of course, non-fic, like Hayao Kawai’s Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in teh Fairy Tales of Japan, can also be generative: I wrote a lot of the Japanese folk-tale manuscript because of that book, along with a lot of Miyazaki films, which leads me to my next thing:

3. Movies and Television. Hayao Miyazaki’s films in particular, and sometimes good/bad (or so bad it’s good) TV fare like Heroes, Alias, and Buffy. Graphic novels and comic books probably should be included here too. My never-ending cycle of consuming pop culture and writing about it is probably unstoppable at this point.

So, these are the things which help me generate the most work, so I resolve to see more art shows, read more novels and short stories, and try to find more films to love (since there’s a writer’s strike, and there won’t be much television to love.)

One thing that surprised me was how little I’ve been inspired to write by reading poetry. I read a lot of poetry, multiple books a week every week, but not much of it launches me to write my own poems in response. Is this because of reviewing, which causes me to switch to critical mode automatically, or a problem of overabundance? I’m not sure.

Anyway, what do you think of the idea of inspiration? What inspires you?

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall GaileyJeannine 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.

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