Interview with Renee Emerson, and a little bit about discouragement
- At November 19, 2013
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
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If you’d like to know which poet I’d like to trade places with, which first books I recommend reading, and other sundry items, check out this interview with Renee Emerson at her blog:
http://www.reneeemerson.com/2013/11/interview-with-jeannine-hall-gailey.html
Thanks Renee!
I was just talking to another poet about how much of the poetry world is grinding our teeth, waiting to hear things, pondering whether or not we should continue to do blank and/or whether this or that is worth doing. I mean, it’s enough to put you in an existential crisis, right?
But the big thing to remember when you are going through a tough period – the loss of your job or your writing spark, the countless rejections, the disappointment of a grant not received or prize not won, is that the single most important key to success – and this is something I have heard over and over again from people who are very successful writers – is to learn to put that energy – the toothgrinding energy, let’s call it – into trying again. Writing another poem or story, sending out your work to another market, making plans to start your own magazine or publishing company.
I watched the movie Frances Ha and was reminded that sometimes when life feels like a bunch of rejections (in her case, by a boyfriend, a best friend, a job situation) that maybe it’s because life is pushing you in a different direction. Because she couldn’t stay in her in-between (jobs, partners, apartments) position comfortably, she was forced to do new things – in her case, she wanted to be a modern dancer, but instead accepted an admin job at the dance company and started doing choreography. I thought it was a charming way to talk about the artistic life – sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want, you don’t get to be the star dancer of the dance company, but you get to contribute and create in a way you didn’t expect. At 27, for a dancer an advanced age, you have to either give up or alter your goals. For writers, the age limit isn’t quite the same – many great writers started late and still ended up very successful – but at one time or another, we will all hit a wall in between our beginning lofty goals and what is realistically achievable. I am 40, and I feel I am eying that wall right now. What is it I want, and what can I achieve from here? We might not get the things we wanted, but as the Rolling Stones said, we just might get what we need.
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.
