What Does Success Mean to a Poet? What Does it Mean to You?

“Do what you love, and the money will follow.” I’ve heard this time and time again. But is it really true? Is it an expectation we should set up for today’s young people who, let’s face it, are going to be lucky to get any kind of job? Should we make them feel like failures for taking a regular job that pays the rent because it’s not something they love? It’s a quandary I struggle with when I’m giving younger and beginning writers advice. Boomers and Oprah – they love to say, “follow your bliss.” But I cringe when I hear that advice. I’m much more likely to tell a young writer to go be a technical writer for a few years to get health insurance and enough money to pay their rent. See? Maybe I’m a non-romantic, but…for most people, the “Do what you love…” works if they love doing something that makes a lot of money, and you’re one of the best in the world at it, you know? For Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Meryl Streep, that advice works. But what about the rest of us?

I saw a job advertisement on one of my job lists today: “Unpaid Editor Needed for Online Journal.” Unfortunately, that is the norm in the writing world today; very few paid editor-ships, very few tenure-track jobs, and even the journalism world, that last Bastion of the Hemingway-type-writer/worker, as it shifts from paid professionals to unpaid bloggers, is no longer a shelter of paid work for the writer. Same goes for advertising writing – it’s been a quiet shift, but there are fewer and fewer copywriting and copyediting jobs lately. You’ve probably already read about how universities are choosing to employ many underpaid, overworked adjuncts rather than hire full-time teaching staff for whom they have to provide a salary and benefits, and that trend isn’t going away.

So, I assume no one goes into poetry for the money, anyway. So how can we measure success? Number of books sold, classes taught, editorships taken on? Prizes? Grants? Fellowships? Residencies. In a way, yes, these are all solid, measurable means of seeing where we are on the sliding and slippery scale of success. But in a way, they tell us nothing about who we’re affecting, who we’re really reaching, whose life we might change in a way we won’t ever know about. Money does not equal a true measure of success for writers, or any kind of artist, I don’t think.

So what kind of goals do we set? When do we pat ourselves and our friends on the back? When do we know we’re reached…whatever bar we’ve set for ourselves. When I started out pursuing poetry seriously after twelve years or so of being a technical writer, editor, and manager, I gave myself three years to publish a book. That was how I measured success then. But I’m not so sure now that is a yardstick anyone should use. I’m struggling now to learn how to build a poetry community in a town that isn’t necessarily known for its burgeoning arts scene, and it’s tough. How will I know when I’ve done enough, when I’ve made an impact? How can we nurture our inner artist and produce good art of any sort and make a living and make an impact on the world around us? It’s certainly a challenge…

What about you? How will you know when you’re “successful?” What makes a poet a success in your eyes anyhow? What advice would you give younger writers in this economy?

An Anthology for Fukushima from Japan and Finalizing Proposals

I was so pleased to find this in my mailbox – a contributor’s copy of the beautiful anthology from Japan in English and Japanese, titled “Farewell to Nuclear, Welcome to Renewable Energy: A Collection of Poems.” I was happy to contribute to this project, and proud to have my poem “Cesium Burns Blue” next to Alicia Ostriker’s “Gaia Speaks” in a small section of the anthology called “Poems for Fukushima from Poets Overseas.” It really is a beautiful book, too, and I love to be able to read the poems in English, then flip the book and see all the poems in Kanji. Interestingly, I wrote “Cesium Burns Blue” about the real experiments they did burning Cesium in Oak Ridge, which is where I grew up, a few years before the Fukushima disaster. One of the editors and translators, Yorifumi Yaguchi, and I have been corresponding for months talking about translations, and I’m happy to have discovered another poet I might never have encountered otherwise because of this venture.

I’m finalizing my Poet Laureate Proposal this week, so I’m booking venues for readings for myself, for other poets, trying to put together a panel for this fall, trying to figure out what will attract audiences and balancing budgets and trying to “measure results”…generally doing everything but writing poetry, which I need to get back to one of these days. I’ve been getting acceptances and I noticed I don’t have a ton of poems to send out left on my Excel spreadsheet, always as sign I need to get writing again.

How is your summer going? I can’t believe it is already almost August. We’ve barely had a handful of days over 70 or any sunshine yet…We had a coyote sighting near our house and picked our very first blueberries from our tiny backyard garden. Seattle in the summertime is so beautiful, I just want some more time to be out in the mountains, out in the wild…it’s my own fault for overcommitting, but I’m longing for some lazy outdoor summer days…

Sometime Even Ferries Get the Blues…

So sorry for the terrible losses for those affected by the Colorado shootings. The most moving story about that news for me was the young man, Matt McQuinn, who dove into bullets to protect his girlfriend and her brother, who both survived. For every example of evil, there is an example of an even higher level of heroism. I hope that young man’s name remains more famous than the shooter’s.

Home from Port Townsend after what I think is my worst ferry/places to stay experience ever – a series of logistical nightmares over the whole weekend with places to stay had Glenn and I practically living out of our car, scrambling for lodging an hour away from the conference and places to make food, while in between I tried to attend readings and teach classes and at least see a little bit of Port Townsend. We left at 9 PM last night and arrived home (after being turned away with no warning from Kingston’s last ferry, and getting home on a super-late-running midnight ferry from Bainbridge) last night at 2 AM. I never want to even see a ferry again. I can’t believe I ever lived on an island for a year. Don’t romanticize traveling by boat.

I lived in Port Townsend for a year once, and it felt strange going back this time – so much has changed. The streets look different, the galleries I loved, the coffee shops. I thought the classes went well – everyone seemed really engaged – and it was great to see old and new poet friends. I really loved seeing a coyote versus stag face-off, an otter climbing into someone’s canoe, the seals who always bob their heads up when I sing on the beach (for real – don’t know why, but this has been true for me for years – if you sing to the seals at dusk on the beach in Port Townsend, they will pop up their heads. I think they particularly like Scottish ballads.)

Here are a couple of pics from the conference – the wonderful Kim Addonizio, who was the workshop leader for my very first visit to the Port Townsend Writers Conference many years ago, one of my favorite poets, Dana Levin, conference artistic director and VIDA girl Erin Belieu, Kate Lebo, and me on a cliff by the beach at Fort Warden during a brief stint of sunshine.

Teaching in Port Townsend today and tomorrow

I’m teaching an afternoon class on haiku and haibun (with a little bit of Miyazaki in there for good measure) at the Port Townsend Writer’s Conference today from 2 PM to 3:30 PM at and another class tomorrow at the same time on poetry manuscript organization. Should be fun! And I have handouts!

Getting up here was a bit of a nail-biter – an hour-long wait at the ferry, and then being the last car to get on – and then the B&B we were supposed to stay at that I’d made reservations months ago at didn’t work out, so we had to pack up again, get on the internet only to find everything booked up, and ended up having to stay at a Holiday Inn an hour a way last night and a similar place an hour a way in the opposite direction tonight. Not exactly convenient.

But on the plus side, I got to see Kim Addonizio read and say hi to some old friends, including Erin Belieu and Dana Levin (superpoets!) And I saw one deer, one very large otter, a beautiful sunset  and other various wildlife. Yay for Port Townsend. Wish me a little more luck with my lodgings tonight…

The official announcement: Jeannine Hall Gailey is the new Poet Laureate of Redmond

The official announcement is finally here! I’m the new Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. This is the “new job” I’ve been talking about here for the last couple of months. Redmond is a city located a few minutes from Seattle, across Lake Washington, and is home to Microsoft, in case you were wondering where it is.
I’m very excited about the position and hope to help create excitement about poetry in the community. My new slogan is “Geeks for Poetry, Poetry for Geeks” – what do you think? I’m also going to try to launch a book-reading series called “Redmond Reads Poetry” with our library, where we read a book of poetry a quarter as a community – usually a book with some “geeky” aspects – science, comic books, etc. So I have some ambitions for trying out some new programs. My first big reading won’t be til this fall, but there’s plenty of work to do setting things up til then! I’m dying to know what people in Redmond are interested in, poetry-wise, what they think the community really needs, etc. So if you happen to be a Redmond person, please fill me in in the comments!

Thanks to our Washington State Poet Laureate, Kathleen Flenniken, for doing this feature on me today at her blog: http://kathleenflenniken.com/blog/?p=655 

And here’s the official Redmond site: http://www.redmond.gov/ParksRecreation/artsandculture/PoetLaureate/

 In the last few months, I’ve gotten to meet the mayor (who is lovely,) the City Council, and almost the entire Arts department of the City of Redmond, and spent more time in the City Hall than I ever thought I might. When I made my first visit to City Hall to interview, I saw a fox statue, on its hind legs, near the entrance. I decided it was a good omen, what with the whole “fox–wife” and Kitsune thing. Here’s a picture of me that day with the little guy. Doesn’t the fox look like it’s smiling?