Poetry Chain, Productivity, Poetry Monsters and More!

If you’re interested in reading five questions with me at the Poetry Chain Gang:
http://poetrychaingang.blogspot.com/2010/08/poetry-chain-gang-volume-2-jeannine.html
They’ve also recently interviewed Wendy Wisner and Suzanne Frischkorn. A cool project by Michelle McEwan, and thanks to Wendy for suggesting me!

I haven’t been writing as much new poetry lately, but I wrote a lyric essay, a book review, and put together several job applications, so I feel productive anyway. I’m also looking for places to rent back up in Washington State, so that takes some time as well. And I signed the official contract for my second book with Kitsune Books, which makes me feel very happy! The more I work with them, the more I like them.

I won a poetry contest involving monsters, and I’m very happy about it. Will post a link when I can! Really, I should write more poems about monsters. This one involves beautiful zombie clone women.

There has been a dustup in the poetry world about charging for e-submissions. I like e-submissions. I remember when I interviewed for a managing editor position at Missouri Review like seven years ago, I tried to talk them out of charging $3 for each submission, which they had to do because they spent a boatload of money on software and hardware for the project (this is before CLMP had an affordable solution, or submishmash existed.) I said: writers are poor. They said: our magazine needs the money. I didn’t think writers would submit, but apparently, they still do. Since then, I’ve done a lot of volunteering for literary magazines, with bigger and smaller budgets, trying to help them generate subscriptions, sell ads, raise money in various ways. Most magazines (not all) are all volunteer-run, and sell amazingly small numbers of copies. Subscription numbers for most mags are in the hundreds, not thousands. Think about the average poetry book, how it sells – and compare that to lit mag sales. Everyone wants to publish in them, but no one wants to buy them. The business model is tough, especially in a bad economy. Of course, most writers have struggled financially during the bad economy, too. My point is: everyone should have a little mercy.