Five Questions with Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken and Autumnal Doldrums

First of all:
A short interview with Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken is now up at my Redmond Poet Laureate Blog here:
http://redmondpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/10/five-questions-with-washington-state.html
Go read all about Kathleen and her new book, Plume (which I reviewed a little while ago for The Rumpus…) as well as her duties as a State Poet Laureate. It’s very inspiring!

So, I’ve been in a serious case of autumnal discouragement, which is odd, because usually September and October are my GO! times, when I’m full of energy and ready to move forward. Part of this has been because of some difficulties at work, some discouragement with the poetry world in general (so much work, so little reward…I know I’ve been doing this for over ten years now, but sometimes writing the checks and submission packets over and over and doing the balance sheets…) and the many little things like cars breaking down, encounters with unpleasant humans doing unpleasant things, long cases of unremitting flu, then the cell phone and refrigerator breaking – I mean, none of these things are tragedies, but all taken together, they certainly have taken the wind out of my normally (I think) perky sails.

The weird thing is that a lot of my friends have reported similar feelings. I mean, we are in the middle of a pretty darn terrible economy, the worst and longest I’ve ever lived through, and that financial woe can be wearing. The elections this year also seem tinged with ill-will and weariness (although I just filled my voter sheet out and felt very American and empowered.) The poetry world is full of stories of presses and magazines folding, universities cutting back, grants shrinking and opportunities overall less frequent. I mean, I still enjoy reading poetry as much as ever, but my own writing has definitely suffered in terms of time and energy in the wake of all the Poet Laureate work, and sometimes I feel like I’m making Herculean effort and ending up with very little to show for it. Is that a poet’s world, after all? Karen Weyant talked on her blog about starting to write short stories, and I admit that I too have been dabbling in prose, flash fiction and essays and non-poetry-book reviews, etc. The question I keep coming back to is: in the current world, is anyone paying attention to poetry? Should we keep at it or try to get our art out in a different medium? The current Poets & Writers talks about the future of poetry. I do believe in a future for poetry, but I’ll admit I’m not sure at this point what it looks like. Twitter haikus and e-books and textual poetry on Tumblr?

Monday I’m visiting a local high school to talk to kids about poetry, and then Wednesday running a book group at Redmond Library to talk about Kathleen’s fantastic Plume. I better get my energy up!

If you’re a poet and feeling discouraged, leave a comment! We should at least try to cheer each other on, right? I hope it’s okay to talk on the blog a little about the bad times as well as the good. At least it’s honest.

What I’ve Been up To…

What I have been up to, you ask, since I last posted.

1. I missed a really cool reading in San Francisco called “Flight of Poets” where I had a wine matched to my poetry and everything. The broken-down car, still non-working cell phone and a new nasty flu were all contributors to this sad missing of a great reading, along with being broke because of said broken-down car. (But this week is basically the Carnivale of poetry down in San Francisco, with events almost every night. It’s a great time to visit the Bay area, the time of LitQuake, if you can ever plan a trip like that for fun – it’s an every year occurrence.)

2. During fever-induced hallucinations (first a respiratory flu, then a stomach flu – pleasant, no?) dreaming of getting a job that pays me more than 10K a year. Any job. And also, not being too sick to work said job. Then being able to pay off not only things like broken cars but also student loans, described in my last post.

3. Got published in the really beautiful new speculative magazine Phantom Drift. They included a little check for my poem (from the Robot Scientist Daughter series) too (thanks guys!) It is really like an old-fashioned literary magazine, with heavy, glossy covers and artwork, lovely printing. Check it out if you’re into “fabulism.” I’m in “Issue 2.”

4. Speaking of fun poetry, check out my review, just posted at The Rumpus, of Juliana Gray’s book Roleplay.  Zombie poems, odes to Nancy Drew, the kind of poetry that is right up my alley.

Career Advice for Young Poets

Is there such a thing as career advice for poets? I’m reading The 6.5 Habits of Moderately Effective Poets by Jeffrey Skinner and wondering if there is such a thing as useful advice for young poets. What could I at 39 have told myself at 25 that would be helpful? One professor at that age told me not to go into debt to get an MFA; in general, good advice for most, but if I had followed that advice, I just would never have gotten an MFA, because low-res programs, while more flexible for folks with families/jobs/health issues/people who live in isolated areas – in short, for everyone is who isn’t a single 25 year old unemployed person ready to move across country for the right scholarship – they aren’t cheap and definitely most of them aren’t fully funded. Was it worth it for me to get that degree, to get to work with great writers, to force myself to think of myself as “a writer” again after years as a corporate middle manager? Sure, I now have some student loans to worry about, and you know what? I have never made the kind of money as a poet, freelance writer, adjunct, or government-sponsored-arts-contractor (which I think my current position might fall under the heading of) that I did as a corporate middle manager that might enable me to make student loan payments easily. I don’t think the answer is straight-forward. A young female college student at my reading asked me about how to “be a poet,” how to “get published.” I mean, where, these days, do we start? I usually tell young people – or older people new to writing – to start with The Poet’s Market, where I started when I was nineteen, to read all about “the poetry business stuff” – writing cover letters, researching the literary magazines before you send to them, trying to get a local group of writers together to critique each other’s work and encourage each other. I tell the to read other poets, to read contemporary poetry especially people their own age, to read the people winning the Pulitzer prizes, to read the writers publishing around them. But what really can you tell someone just starting out? Would I tell myself at 25 to forget about it, that the work is mostly hard and lonely and unrewarding in the deepest possible sort of ways sometimes, that the audiences for poetry are sometimes hard to find, that being a poet is sort of like being a maker of medieval armor, in that there are very few specialists around to appreciate it even when your work is good? That a lot of the work is writing when no one tells you to and stuffing your work into envelopes (or submitting via online databases, somehow even more dehumanizing) and sending it out knowing that most of it will come back with barely any kind of acknowledgement? How to keep going in the face of that? That writing a book of poetry is hard work, that publishing a book of poetry is even harder work and that selling a book of poetry is harder still. This is not exactly sounding like an Oprah-esque you can do it speech, is it? You can always self-publish, I tell people, it’s getting easier every day. I don’t know what the answer is. What would you tell your imaginary 25-year-old self about being a poet? Writing is its own reward? Revising is as important as inspiration? That publishing is as much about persistence as it is about anything else?

Oh yes, and the most important thing: be yourself, for God’s sake. Embrace your own weird self and celebrate it. Write the way you talk, think in your poems the way you think inside your head, and display your own soul because that way, someone else might pick it up and say, “This is exactly how I feel.” You never know. And at least you won’t be derivative. As an editor, I would much rather read poems about driving a big rig or your enthusiasm about playing D&D or your interesting collection of spiders than another poem about a New England barn in the snow. Unless you grew up in a New England barn in the snow, in which case, I probably have very little in common with you anyhow. 

I think now that some advice might have sped things up for me – someone to tell me, for instance, about the different schools of aesthetics for poetry, how Fence was different than Prairie Schooner and what the heck was the school of Quietude compared to Flarf, how poets from New York might differ from poets in LA, to patiently explain that sometimes a helpful rejection note from a good journal is better than an acceptance from a mediocre one, not to rush or worry too much, to just write and do the work, that some magazines are a waste of time because they are only publishing their friends – a closed system – and which ones those were. One really useful thing was a group of friends I used to have that brought in literary magazines I had never heard of and printed out sheets about obscure grant opportunities that we would share and discuss. The blog world of poets – almost eight or nine years ago – was tremendously helpful, as poets then would share the minutia of their lives – the way Kim Addonzio fumed about a bad review or Aimee Nezhukumatathil posted about her little dog or how Paul Guest searched for a job or Eduardo Corral wondered whether he should hold out for certain contests for another year – see what you guys missed out on before those guys got famous and blogs were left behind? About so-and-so’s NEA application woes and so-and-so’s trip to Yaddo or Macdowell. You would learn all kinds of things, you could share the same kinds of rarified weird problems. It was a different kind of world than the one-sentence brevity of Facebook or twitter. So I’m hoping this post might be helpful to someone just starting out, that people might comment with the most helpful advice they had as young writers, that we could reach out to a real community and provide some kind of springboard for new poets.

Things I Learned from my first big Public Event as Poet Laureate

Thanks to everyone who came out for the Inaugural Poet Laureate reading, yesterday. I’ve got some pics but they’re all from before the reading, because once it started, no one had time to mess around with the camera. Here are some things I learned:

–There are a ton of precocious smart kids in Redmond who are interested in technology and poetry.  It gives me hope for the future. Sample quote from a ten-year-old: “My friends and I get together to write poetry together after our regular classes, but I was wondering if there was a way to bring technology and poetry together?” Yes.

–You have to do way more PR than you think (we had posters, an article in the local paper, I posted about it on Facebook, twitter and blogs) but eventually people will find out about stuff. The audience that I was hoping to reach out to – people I didn’t know who were interested in poetry and the arts in Redmond – came. College students, young adults, parents with kids…they were all people I didn’t know who were very interested in poetry. Once again, it made me feel happy! The crowd actually cheered when I talked about removing the barrier between “technology and math people” and “Poetry people.” And asked for “Poetry for Geeks” t-shirts. Huh. Maybe I’ve started a trend?

–I was very thankful for my friends and loved ones who came and helped out with the event. There is no way an event like that can be successful without, say, a husband who helps sell books, a friend who pours drinks, etc. I’m a pretty good people-person, but after the reading I was overwhelmed just trying to talk to folks and sign books (I hope I was coherent!) so I was really grateful for the support.(Thanks especially to my husband Glenn and my friend Annette Spaulding-Convy, pictured below)

–I thought the combination of art and poetry went really well. People were interested in buying Michaela’s art and the SecondStory theater kept part of her art up as a several-week-long exhibition. We had an art show behind me on a big screen while I was reading, one sketch for each poem, and I think it helped keep people engaged. People specifically asked to be told about buying future books, and asked if they would have art in them! So that’s good! (Michaela and I pictured below – I’m only frowning because the sun was in my eyes, not because I wasn’t happy!)

–This event came at the end of a really stressful week for me, but those bad things didn’t ruin the reading. It’s good to remind ourselves that even though things might seem not that great leading up to event…the event will probably still be fine. Although now I would like to sleep for a week. It was a little like planning a wedding – with more of a performance aspect. So, I’m happy we did it, and happy it’s over, if you know what I mean.

My Inaugural Reading Tomorrow at SecondStory, A Story at Redmond Reporter and My Week of Unfortunate Events

If you are out on the East side and looking for something to do on Saturday afternoon, be sure to come by at 4 PM at SecondStory Repertory at the Redmond Town Center. I hear the new Redmond Poet Laureate is going to be reading for her Inaugural Poetry Reading and Party with an interactive art show by Michaela Eaves! (It’s similar to a laser show at a rock concert, but, you know, with poetry and art instead of lasers and rock music.) 20 minutes of poetry, followed by an hour of art and reception fun!
I’ve put together a good setlist of geeky poetry, appropriate for our techie-type community and my current Poet Laureate slogan (art work, of course, courtesy of Michaela as well,) there will be free snacks and drinks, and you will get to meet and mingle will all the artistic types on the East side and beyond! I promise you will have more fun than the usual poetry reading!

The Redmond Reporter kindly did an interview and article about the event and my goals as Poet Laureate here: http://www.redmond-reporter.com/entertainment/172850521.html
Thanks to Samantha Pak who wrote the article and did the interview!

Now, the last week, during which I’ve been trying to put together the above event, has been a little trying. It started when I knocked one of my front teeth loose, leading to emergency dental work. On the way home from the dental work, my cell phone died for good – right at the same second that our car, full of groceries, shut down unexpectedly – as in, everything turned off all at once – on the highway, forcing us to pull off and contemplate our lack of warranties or triple A service (our other roadside assistance program had, to our surprise, expired sometime during the last few months – along with our warranty.) All of this has led to a great deal of unexpected outlay of cash (Many dollars out of our budget, which was already stretched thin with the new townhouse and student loan payments) so we are now dead broke with a broken car and a broken cell phone a day before my very first official Poet Laureate event. Yay! (?)

I promise I have been trying to see the silver lining in the last few weeks’ events, which now include food poisioning, a concussion, a severely ailing-and-expensive car, I think I might have re-sprained my ankle again yesterday along with my jaw (emergency dental work not good for TMJ, note to self),,,on the plus side, the Northwest is having some beautiful sunny weather.
If you would like to send some positive energy, prayers, alien laser blasts, or anything else my way, I could definitely use it. For tomorrow and for general luck.