Dorianne Laux at SAL, Poet’s Market 2012, and Mari L’Esperance
- At October 06, 2011
- By Jeannine Gailey
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Had a wonderful time at the SAL reception and Dorianne Laux reading/Q&A last night. It was cold and rainy as heck – one of those “classic Seattle weather” days – but I had a lot of fun. I saw some old friends, as well as my Crab Creek Review pals – and Dorianne read really well. Also, I met a friend I had made from the twitter “poetparty” – that’s social media for you!
So I’m finally getting around to talking about Poet’s Market 2012. I’ve got two articles in there, one about how and when to target a micropress, and another about how and why to put out a chapbook. But besides that, I think this is the most well-organized and helpful version of Poet’s Market I’ve seen, so kudos to the book’s editor, Robert Lee Brewer. There are 150 incredibly useful pages of advice and interviews before you even get to the market listings, from”must-know-before-you-start-sending-out-your-work” articles in there like “How to build a press kit” – something I wish I had read for my first book – as well as articles on craft, like a prose poetry essay by Nin Andrews and an article on formal poetry by Annie Finch. Collin Kelly talks about blogging and tweeting, Diane Lockward talks about how to get your poetry into the hands of readers. I used to sit for hours with Poet’s Market circling and marking good-looking journals when I first became a poet, and it’s still a good resource for those of us who like old-school market listings on paper. (I know we can always check a web site, but it’s nice to have these compiled in one handy place.)
I also wanted to talk a little a little bit about Mari L’Esperance’s book from 2008, The Darkened Temple, which won the Prairie Schooner book prize a few years back. Mari loves Japanese folklore and landscapes and these tropes show up throughout her book. From “The Bush-Warbler Laments to the Woodcutter:”
“You will say a grand house once stood
in a forest clearing. Then: nothing but birdcalls.
Longing itself is nothing but the heart’s empty spaces.”
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.
